Why in the world would a New York local broadcast station with such a rich history and a distinction of being a Superstation (still being offered on DISH Network) be so weak as a station? I'm not talking about the MY TV affiliation either. For so long, they've been running infomercials all day to as late as 3PM on weekends and their programs are mostly sub-par. Is there any reason WWOR is lacking so much?
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WWOR
- Thread starter upn38fan
- Start date
TV38Fan said:
Simple: Ever since they were acquired by News Corp., which also owns WNYW/Fox 5, most of the programming that people care about are placed on Channel 5, with the second-tier-or-less stuff ending up on Channel 9.
Though WWOR has been airing infomercials for hours and hours on Saturday mornings for as long as I can remember.
As I've already mentioned in other posts, I think WWOR should become a 100% NJ-focused station. Maybe add a morning and evening newscast in addition to the 11pm news they already have, and cover 100% NJ stories. I'm thinking something similar to WLNY as it relates to Long Island. But I think WWOR's My Network affiliation would hinder any chance of this happening.
ansky212 said:
This would make perfect sense, especially with the uncertainty surrounding the future of NJN. However, I think any chance of this happening will have more to do with News Corp's reluctance to re-invest in a full-fledged, fully-staffed, separate news department for channel 9 than any "network" affiliation would.
WWOR should cover northern and central Jersey more intensively than it does right now. And it should have more airtime to do so. During the recent storm, I thought that it really was a disservice to viewers in that area for the station to be simulcasting WNYW's coverage and special reports -- most of which were NYC-focused. **On a New Jersey-licensed station, I would have liked to have seen a news conference from the (acting) governor of New Jersey and/or some other municipal official, such as the mayor of Newark.
In my opinion the absence of WWOR as a stand-alone entity during the storm was not as bad as WNBC on Sunday afternoon (they stuck with network figure skating -- yuck!) or WLNY-TV on Long Island, whose news department is closed on weekends.
**In full disclosure I have no access to NJN right now, so (and this is a big IF) perhaps they did cover that aspect of the storm.
WWOR could be a NJ station but the profit isn't there. It wasn't there in the 50s, when Channel 13 was a commercial station out of Newark.
I recall once on Merv Griffin, Karen Carpenter sang a song in a higher octave and Merv asked her why she didn't do that more often. She replied, "the money's in the basement."
New Jersey as a whole has 8,791,894, while New York City alone has 8,175,133 or 92% of the population of the whole state.
TV isn't about serving the community, it's about making money. NYC is where the money is. Even a tiny piece of NYC is more profitable than half of NJ.
That isn't a slam against the Garden State, it's just how it is.
I recall once on Merv Griffin, Karen Carpenter sang a song in a higher octave and Merv asked her why she didn't do that more often. She replied, "the money's in the basement."
New Jersey as a whole has 8,791,894, while New York City alone has 8,175,133 or 92% of the population of the whole state.
TV isn't about serving the community, it's about making money. NYC is where the money is. Even a tiny piece of NYC is more profitable than half of NJ.
That isn't a slam against the Garden State, it's just how it is.
The only way for there to be a true NJ station would be if the station had a COL in a Central NJ area such as Southern Monmouth/Ocean county, where the sense of being in NJ, (basically not near Philly or too close to New York either, and w/ a significant population) is perhaps the strongest.
With a COL there, the station would have to have its tower somewhere there to provide a City Grade signal there, and by the nature wouldn't be able to service NYC very well. With must-carry though, of course that is not true - the station might go Spanish or religious or infomercial all the time without any local identity, but hey assuming that was ruled out, then maybe it could have worked.
By having the COL of WWOR being Secaucus, it just made it too easy for it to not be a NJ station. But, as it was VHF 9, it couldn't be anywhere south as there could be interference with Ch.10 in Philly (analog TV concern).
Wasn't Ch. 58 (WNJB) once licensed as a commercial station? Channel 58: WRTV - Asbury Park (12/14/1953-4/1/1955).
Couldn't NJ have been able to convince the FCC to make it commercial like that Pittsburgh PBS (WQEX once noncommercial and owned by WQED), and NJ could have earned an additional profit from the sale of it?
NJ would still get NCE service WNJT and WNJN (assuming everything else with the deal with WNET stayed the same) and enough area would get signal of NJTV And maybe a new commercial licensed station could be equivalent to WFMZ 69, providing local news, and maybe Me-TV on a digital subchannel
The only losers would be the cable/sat companies as they would have 1 more must-carry channel to carry.
With a COL there, the station would have to have its tower somewhere there to provide a City Grade signal there, and by the nature wouldn't be able to service NYC very well. With must-carry though, of course that is not true - the station might go Spanish or religious or infomercial all the time without any local identity, but hey assuming that was ruled out, then maybe it could have worked.
By having the COL of WWOR being Secaucus, it just made it too easy for it to not be a NJ station. But, as it was VHF 9, it couldn't be anywhere south as there could be interference with Ch.10 in Philly (analog TV concern).
Wasn't Ch. 58 (WNJB) once licensed as a commercial station? Channel 58: WRTV - Asbury Park (12/14/1953-4/1/1955).
Couldn't NJ have been able to convince the FCC to make it commercial like that Pittsburgh PBS (WQEX once noncommercial and owned by WQED), and NJ could have earned an additional profit from the sale of it?
NJ would still get NCE service WNJT and WNJN (assuming everything else with the deal with WNET stayed the same) and enough area would get signal of NJTV And maybe a new commercial licensed station could be equivalent to WFMZ 69, providing local news, and maybe Me-TV on a digital subchannel
The only losers would be the cable/sat companies as they would have 1 more must-carry channel to carry.
All of the efforts to build a regional television station in New Jersey, with the sole exception of WMGM-TV 40 in Wildwood and that solely because it received an NBC affiliation, have failed miserably. They've all become nothing more than rimshot move-ins for Philadelphia or New York.
Witness WNJU, the original Channel 13 in Newark, Channels 53 and 62 in Atlantic City, Channel 65 in Vineland, and Channel 48 in Burlington to name the obvious ones. Not a single one of them serves New Jersey at all; they're all either gone (Channel 13, which operated as a fifth NY Independent before it became non-com) or fringe specialty stations concentrating on the major city they're closest to. (Three are foreign language, one is pay-for-play, and the fifth is pay-for-pray.)
There's not much room left for anything else, either. The only frequencies available statewide are 2, 3, and 4, with a possibility of a 51 down in Cape May county on the WMGM tower. Otherwise, New Jersey is completely squeezed out by New York.
Personally, I think we're long overdue to start forcing service to community of license again. If we did, only 65 (serving Cumberland County's large Hispanic population) would even have a chance of being relicensed.
Witness WNJU, the original Channel 13 in Newark, Channels 53 and 62 in Atlantic City, Channel 65 in Vineland, and Channel 48 in Burlington to name the obvious ones. Not a single one of them serves New Jersey at all; they're all either gone (Channel 13, which operated as a fifth NY Independent before it became non-com) or fringe specialty stations concentrating on the major city they're closest to. (Three are foreign language, one is pay-for-play, and the fifth is pay-for-pray.)
There's not much room left for anything else, either. The only frequencies available statewide are 2, 3, and 4, with a possibility of a 51 down in Cape May county on the WMGM tower. Otherwise, New Jersey is completely squeezed out by New York.
Personally, I think we're long overdue to start forcing service to community of license again. If we did, only 65 (serving Cumberland County's large Hispanic population) would even have a chance of being relicensed.
WWOR (Channel 9, ex-WOR-TV) was at one time quite THE Independent station. Along with WPIX (Channel 11) and WNEW-TV (Channel 5) these were THE king pins of Independent television in New York City. Unfortunately, with the (almost successful) license revocation from RKO General, except for the first 10 years of "Secaucus, NJ" operation ("The Morton Downey Jr. Show" days et.al.), WWOR slowly began it's long demise to where it became nothing more than an "overflow" station for the FOX O+O WNYW (Channel 5). Which is pretty much what it is now, with MyTV Network. Almost as soon as UPN started, Channel 9 just faded off into oblivion. The WWOR-EMI service days didn't help much in terms of the national audience either. Very little local WWOR programming ever showed up on the national feed except for the news and whatever sports was left on the station was gone rather quickly. How the mighty have fallen.
I also don't know why the FCC decided that WFME 66, the newest NJ license in Northern NJ, should be licensed as noncommercial.
Stations with COL in Northern NJ:
Non Commercial-
WNET - Newark
WNJN
WNJB
WFME - West Milford
Commercial-
WWOR - Secaucus
WXTV
WNJU
WFUT
Isn't a having 1/2 of the available licenses be deemed NCE (noncommercial educational), for Northern NJ, a bit excessive compared to the makeup of most markets in the rest of the country? Even if you look at the whole NYC market as a whole, there is a high number of NCE to commercial makeup, but Northern NJ especially.
Many markets or regions have something like 1 PBS/NCE: 3-5 commercial stations. Not 1:1.
Stations with COL in Northern NJ:
Non Commercial-
WNET - Newark
WNJN
WNJB
WFME - West Milford
Commercial-
WWOR - Secaucus
WXTV
WNJU
WFUT
Isn't a having 1/2 of the available licenses be deemed NCE (noncommercial educational), for Northern NJ, a bit excessive compared to the makeup of most markets in the rest of the country? Even if you look at the whole NYC market as a whole, there is a high number of NCE to commercial makeup, but Northern NJ especially.
Many markets or regions have something like 1 PBS/NCE: 3-5 commercial stations. Not 1:1.
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