WWOR EMI Service was a

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

-based

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cable television Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with bro ...

channel that operated as a

superstation ''Superstation'' (alternatively rendered as "super station" or informally as "SuperStation") is a term in North American broadcasting that has several meanings. Commonly, a "superstation" is a form of distant signal, a broadcast television sign ...

feed of

Secaucus, New Jersey Secaucus ( ) is a town in Hudson County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States census, the town's population was 16,264,WWOR-TV WWOR-TV (channel 9) is a television station licensed to Secaucus, New Jersey, United States, serving the New York City area as the flagship of MyNetworkTV. It is owned and operated by Fox Television Stations alongside Fox flagship WNYW ...

(channel 9). The service was uplinked to satellite from

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by Eastern Microwave, Inc., which later sold the satellite distribution rights to the

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subsidiary of

Advance Publications Advance Publications, Inc., doing business as Advance, is an American media company owned by the descendants of S.I. Newhouse Sr., Donald Newhouse and S.I. Newhouse Jr. It owns a large number of subsidiary companies, including Condé Nast, a ...

, a Syracuse-based company that also owned various print, broadcast, and cable television properties. In the

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, the superstation feed was not carried on local cable providers, but was available to satellite subscribers. Two exceptions to this took place, once on February 26, 1993 after the

World Trade Center bombing The 1993 World Trade Center bombing was a terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York City, U.S., carried out on February 26, 1993, when a van bomb detonated below the North Tower of the complex. The urea nitrate–hydrogen gas en ...

, when the local WWOR's transmitter was knocked out for the day. Cable providers in the New York metro area used the superstation feed as a substitute until the transmitter returned to service. The other was on Long Beach Island in

Ocean County, New Jersey Ocean County is a county located along the Jersey Shore in the south-central portion of the U.S. state of New Jersey. It borders the Atlantic Ocean on the east. Its county seat is Toms River.Comcast Comcast Corporation (formerly known as American Cable Systems and Comcast Holdings),Before the AT&T merger in 2001, the parent company was Comcast Holdings Corporation. Comcast Holdings Corporation now refers to a subsidiary of Comcast Corpora ...

system serving that area carried WWOR EMI Service instead of the local feed, as they were unable to obtain a microwave link to be able to carry channel 9. Months after the end of the feed, that system began carrying the local feed, which by that point was uplinked to satellite.

History

1965 to January 1990

In 1965, Eastern Microwave began relaying the signal of WOR-TV (channel 9) in New York City via

microwave Microwave is a form of electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths ranging from about one meter to one millimeter corresponding to frequencies between 300 MHz and 300 GHz respectively. Different sources define different frequency ra ...

to cable providers located in

markets Market is a term used to describe concepts such as: *Market (economics), system in which parties engage in transactions according to supply and demand *Market economy *Marketplace, a physical marketplace or public market Geography *Märket, an ...

immediately surrounding the New York City metropolitan area, reaching as far west as

Buffalo, New York Buffalo is the second-largest city in the U.S. state of New York (behind only New York City) and the seat of Erie County. It is at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of the Niagara River, and is across the Canadian border from Sou ...

and as far south as

Delaware Delaware ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Maryland to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and New Jersey and the Atlantic Ocean to its east. The state takes its name from the adjacent ...

, as well as throughout

New England New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces ...

. In April 1979, Eastern began to uplink the signal for satellite and cable subscribers throughout the United States, joining

WGN-TV WGN-TV (channel 9) is an Independent station (North America), independent television station in Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States. Owned by Nexstar Media Group, it is sister station, sister to the company's sole radio property, talk ra ...

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

and WTBS (now

WPCH-TV WPCH-TV (channel 17), branded on-air as Peachtree TV, is an independent television station in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. It is owned by locally based Gray Television alongside CBS affiliate and company flagship WANF (channel 46), ...

) in

Atlanta Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,7 ...

as a national

. For the eleven years that followed, cable viewers throughout the United States saw the same exact signal that the New York City market saw.

Arrival of SyndEx

In 1989, the

Federal Communications Commission The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisdicti ...

(FCC) passed the " Syndication Exclusivity Rights rule" (or "SyndEx") into law. This law meant that whenever a local

television station A television station is a set of equipment managed by a business, organisation or other entity, such as an amateur television (ATV) operator, that transmits video content and audio content via radio waves directly from a transmitter on the ea ...

had the exclusive rights to broadcast a syndicated program, that particular program must be blacked out on any out-of-market stations that were carried by local cable providers. After the law was passed, EMI purchased the rights to programs that no stations had claimed exclusive rights to, and launched a special national feed for cable and satellite subscribers outside of the New York City market on January 1, 1990, called the "WWOR EMI Service". Most of the syndicated programs that WWOR-TV had the rights to show in the New York City market were covered up by the alternate programming shown on the national feed—with the exception of most sporting events, local newscasts and other WWOR-produced programming such as ''

Steampipe Alley ''Steampipe Alley'' is a children's television program that aired on Secaucus, New Jersey station WWOR-TV from February 7, 1988 to April 18, 1993. The program was hosted by comedian Mario Cantone, with announcing duties handled by longtime station ...

'', ''The

Joe Franklin Joe Franklin (March 9, 1926 – January 24, 2015), born Joseph Fortgang, was an American radio and television host personality, author and actor from New York City. Franklin is noted for having the first talk show and inventing the format. His te ...

Show'', the overnight ''

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'' program, the annual ''Weekend with the Stars Telethon'' for United Cerebral Palsy, the annual ''

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MDA Labor Day Telethon'' for the

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, and a select number of programs that were not claimed as exclusive to any market. Most of the programs came from the libraries of

Universal Television Universal Television LLC (abbreviated as UTV) is an American television production company that is a subsidiary of Universal Studio Group, a division of Comcast's NBCUniversal. It serves as the network television production arm of NBC; a prede ...

(whose parent company, MCA Inc., owned WWOR-TV at the time of the EMI Service's founding),

MGM Television MGM Television Worldwide Group and Digital (alternatively Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Television Group and Digital, commonly known as MGM Television and then-known as MGM/UA Television; common metonym: Lion) is an American television production/Bro ...

and

Quinn Martin Quinn Martin (born Irwin Martin Cohn; May 22, 1922 – September 5, 1987) was an American television producer. He had at least one television series running in prime time every year for 21 straight years (from 1959 to 1980). Martin is a mem ...

, along with some shows from the ''

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''s television service, as well as some holdover shows that had aired on the local New York feed before the SyndEx law's passage. This caused confusion among WWOR's cable viewers outside of the New York metropolitan area, as promotions during time periods in which the national feed was simulcasting WWOR's New York signal were left unaltered, leaving in promos for shows that were not airing on the national feed due to the SyndEx law. When channel 9 became a UPN affiliate in 1995, the WWOR EMI Service also covered up the network's shows, due to Paramount (although the network's sole owner-turned-half owner Chris-Craft owned the station) using syndication exclusivity to keep UPN's shows off the national WWOR feed—in contrast, rival superstation WGN carried programming from

The WB Television Network The WB Television Network (for Warner Bros., or the "Frog Network", for its former mascot, Michigan J. Frog) was an American television network launched on broadcast television on January 11, 1995, as a joint venture between the Warner Bros. ...

on its national feed until nationwide coverage (by terrestrial and local cable means) was deemed sufficient to discontinue its carriage over the national WGN feed in October 1999. As a result of the syndication exclusivity claims by UPN, if New York City viewers of WWOR saw '' Star Trek: Voyager'', cable viewers throughout the rest of the country saw ''

Hazel The hazel (''Corylus'') is a genus of deciduous trees and large shrubs native to the temperate Northern Hemisphere. The genus is usually placed in the birch family Betulaceae,Germplasmgobills Information Network''Corylus''Rushforth, K. (1999). ...

'' reruns in the same timeslot. In mid-1996, EMI sold the satellite distribution rights to WWOR and

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

WSBK-TV WSBK-TV (channel 38) is an independent television station in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. It is owned by the CBS News and Stations group alongside CBS owned-and-operated station WBZ-TV (channel 4). Both stations share studios on So ...

to Advance Entertainment Corporation. On January 1, 1997, AEC discontinued the feed, selling WWOR's former satellite transponder slot to

Discovery Communications Discovery, Inc. was an American multinational mass media factual television conglomerate based in New York City. Established in 1985, the company operated a group of factual and lifestyle television brands, such as the namesake Discovery Chan ...

for the then six-month-old

Animal Planet Animal Planet (stylized in all lowercase since 2018) is an American multinational pay television channel owned by the Warner Bros. Discovery Networks unit of Warner Bros. Discovery. First established on June 1, 1996, the network is primarily ...

,Paikert, Charles. "Discovery dogs WWOR; Animal Planet gets leg up on Open Slots"
''

Multichannel News ''Multichannel News'' is a magazine and website published by Future US that covers multichannel television and communications providers, such as cable operators, satellite television firms and telephone companies, as well as emerging Internet ...

'', January 6, 1997. Retrieved February 24, 2011 from HighBeam Research. which Advance still presently owns in part.

Reversion to New York feed

Due to outcry from satellite dish owners who missed WWOR, the station was uplinked to satellite once again on a different transponder by National Programming Service, LLC less than a week after AEC's discontinuation of the WWOR national feed. The national feed was once again the same feed that New York City area viewers saw, with all of the syndicated and UPN programs intact, due to the station now only being distributed outside of New York to satellite dish owners. Occasionally local cable providers picked up this feed to relay UPN to customers in markets where the network was unavailable, or in the case of several

Sinclair Broadcast Group Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc. (SBG) is a publicly traded American telecommunications conglomerate that is controlled by the descendants of company founder Julian Sinclair Smith. Headquartered in the Baltimore suburb of Cockeysville, Maryland, ...

stations, was dropped and replaced with The WB. This feed was discontinued in 1999 in favor of distributing the national feed of

Pax TV Ion Television is an American broadcast television network owned by the Katz Broadcasting subsidiary of the E. W. Scripps Company. The network first began broadcasting on August 31, 1998, as Pax TV, focusing primarily on family-oriented ente ...

, but

Dish Network DISH Network Corporation (DISH, an acronym for DIgital Sky Highway) is an American television provider and the owner of the direct-broadcast satellite provider Dish, commonly known as Dish Network, and the over-the-top IPTV service, Sling ...

(who previously carried the EMI feed from the provider's launch in mid-1996, until the feed was shut down at the end of that year) still carries the New York feed of WWOR on both the provider's local station package in the New York market and its superstation package across the rest of the country, except in markets where a local

MyNetworkTV MyNetworkTV (unofficially abbreviated MyTV, MyNet, MNT or MNTV, and sometimes referred to as My Network) is an American commercial broadcast television syndication service and former television network owned by Fox Corporation, operated by its ...

affiliate uses the SyndEx law to black out WWOR's programming from being available within the market.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wwor Emi Service 1979 establishments in New York (state) 1997 disestablishments in New York (state) Defunct television networks in the United States Superstations in the United States Television channels and stations established in 1979 Television channels and stations disestablished in 1997 English-language television stations in the United States Advance Publications Television stations in New Jersey Defunct companies based in Syracuse, New York

History

1965 to January 1990

Arrival of SyndEx

Reversion to New York feed

See also

References