WVIT (channel 30) is a
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 earth's s ...
licensed to
New Britain, Connecticut
New Britain is a city in Hartford County, Connecticut, Hartford County, Connecticut, United States. It is located approximately southwest of Hartford, Connecticut, Hartford. The city is part of the Capitol Planning Region, Connecticut, Capitol ...
, United States, serving the
Hartford
Hartford is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Connecticut. The city, located in Hartford County, Connecticut, Hartford County, had a population of 121,054 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 ce ...
–
New Haven
New Haven is a city of the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound. With a population of 135,081 as determined by the 2020 U.S. census, New Haven is the third largest city in Co ...
market
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
*Marketing, the act of sat ...
. It is
owned and operated
In the broadcasting industry, an owned-and-operated station (frequently abbreviated as an O&O) usually refers to a television or radio station owned by the network with which it is associated. This distinguishes such a station from an affiliate ...
by the
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast. It is one of NBCUniversal's ...
television network through its
NBC Owned Television Stations
NBC Owned Television Stations (formerly NBC Local Media and NBC Television Stations Division (TVSD)) is the division of NBCUniversal Media Group#NBCUniversal Owned Television Stations, NBCUniversal Owned TV Stations (NBCUniversal), a subsidiary o ...
division alongside
Class A Telemundo
Telemundo (; formerly NetSpan) is an American Spanish-language terrestrial television network owned by NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises, a division of NBCUniversal, which in turn is a wholly owned subsidiary of Comcast. It provides content ...
outlet
WRDM-CD (channel 19). The two stations share studios on New Britain Avenue in
West Hartford
West Hartford is a town in Hartford County, Connecticut, United States, west of downtown Hartford. The town is part of the Capitol Planning Region. The population was 64,083 at the 2020 census.
The town's popular downtown area is colloquiall ...
and transmitter facilities on
Rattlesnake Mountain in
Farmington, Connecticut
Farmington is a town in Hartford County, Connecticut, Hartford County in the Farmington Valley area of central Connecticut in the United States. The town is part of the Capitol Planning Region, Connecticut, Capitol Planning Region. The populati ...
.
History
Early years
WVIT signed on for the first time on February 13, 1953, as WKNB-TV, owned by the New Britain Broadcasting Company along with WKNB radio (840 AM, now
WRYM). The calls stood for
Kensington
Kensington is an area of London in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, around west of Central London.
The district's commercial heart is Kensington High Street, running on an east–west axis. The north-east is taken up by Kensingt ...
–New Britain. It is Connecticut's second-oldest television station and the first on the UHF band. The station has been with NBC since sign-on, though during its first two and a half years, it secondarily carried
CBS programming as one of two affiliates in Connecticut, along with WNHC-TV (now
WTNH
WTNH (channel 8) is a television station licensed to New Haven, Connecticut, United States, serving the Hartford–New Haven market as an affiliate of ABC. It is owned by Nexstar Media Group alongside MyNetworkTV affiliate WCTX (channel 59), ...
) in New Haven. At the time, Hartford and New Haven were recognized by the
Federal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, internet, wi-fi, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains j ...
(FCC) as separate television markets; the commission would merge them into one market in 1954.
In January 1955, NBC announced it would purchase the WKNB stations for just over $600,000. Though the network was acquiring both radio and television outlets, the key to the deal was channel 30–as one of the first UHF stations to be owned by a major network, the FCC encouraged the networks to expand their owned-and-operated holdings to include outlets in the new band to help ensure its viability. Indeed, NBC made plans to boost channel 30's signal to cover the entire market.
WKNB-TV began carrying the full NBC programming schedule in October 1955. The FCC approved the sale to NBC in December 1956, nearly two years after it was first announced. The network then renamed channel 30 WNBC (for New Britain, Connecticut) in January 1957. In its first stint as an NBC-owned station, channel 30 failed to gain much headway in the ratings, largely because television manufacturers were not required to include UHF tuning capability until 1964. Viewers had to buy an expensive converter to watch WNBC, and even with one the picture was barely viewable. In addition, plans to relocate the station's tower and to boost transmission power never moved forward.
In September 1957, the Hartford-based
Travelers Insurance Company signed on
independent station
An independent station is a broadcast station, usually a television station, not affiliated with a larger broadcast television network, network. As such, it only broadcasts broadcast syndication, syndicated programs it has purchased; brokered pr ...
WTIC-TV (channel 3, now
WFSB), the state's second and last VHF station. Within a year of its debut (and despite its
radio sister having been an NBC radio affiliate for over thirty years) WTIC-TV became Connecticut's CBS affiliate, replacing its owned-and-operated station, WHCT-TV (channel 18, now
Univision
Univision () is an American Spanish-language terrestrial television, free-to-air television network owned by TelevisaUnivision. It is the United States' largest provider of Spanish-language content. The network's programming is aimed at the L ...
affiliate
WUVN). NBC then realized its UHF experiment was a lost cause (it had shut down
its other owned UHF station in
Buffalo, New York
Buffalo is a Administrative divisions of New York (state), city in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York and county seat of Erie County, New York, Erie County. It lies in Western New York at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of ...
, in October 1958), and in June 1959 sold WNBC and WKNB radio for $750,000 to Plains Television Inc., a joint venture of Transcontinental Properties and H & E Balaban Corporation (WKNB was spun off immediately afterward). As part of the deal,
Springfield Television, the owner of fellow NBC affiliate
WWLP
WWLP (channel 22) is a television station in Springfield, Massachusetts, United States, affiliated with NBC. Its second digital subchannel serves as an owned-and-operated station of The CW (via The CW Plus). Owned by Nexstar Media Group (majori ...
in
Springfield, Massachusetts
Springfield is the most populous city in Hampden County, Massachusetts, United States, and its county seat. Springfield sits on the eastern bank of the Connecticut River near its confluence with three rivers: the western Westfield River, the ea ...
, was to have held a one-third share in channel 30; it abandoned this stake before the deal's completion after concerns arose over WWLP and WNBC's overlapping coverage areas, but continued to hold an option to reacquire it for some time afterward pending FCC approval. In May 1960, channel 30's callsign changed again – this time to WHNB-TV (for Hartford-New Britain); NBC reclaimed the WNBC calls for its flagship radio and television combination (the former
WRCA-AM-
FM-
TV) in New York City.
In 1966, WHNB-TV became, once again, one of two NBC affiliates in Connecticut; the network signed with
Waterbury
Waterbury is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut. Waterbury had a population of 114,403 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 Census. The city is southwest of Hartford, Connecticut, Hartford and northeast of New York City. Waterbury i ...
-licensed WATR-TV (channel 20) to get its programming into New Haven on a strong signal. By this time, television manufacturers were now required to include all-channel tuning. Channel 30 itself made up for the shortfall in its market coverage by operating two low-power translators (starting in 1971): W79AI (channel 79) in
Torrington and W59AA (channel 59) in New Haven. They also operated W79AH in Waterbury in the 1960s.
Viacom and NBC ownership

In the summer of 1977, Plains Television announced it would sell WHNB-TV to
the original iteration of Viacom for $15 million. The former
CBS Inc. subsidiary was making its first foray into broadcast station ownership. Shortly after assuming control in the spring of 1978, channel 30's call letters were changed to the present WVIT on June 12 (for "Viacom International Television") to reflect its new ownership. Viacom immediately announced plans to boost WVIT's signal, and also made upgrades in the station's news department. In 1980, channel 30 signed on with a new transmitter that more than doubled its coverage area, giving it a clear signal to much of New Haven for the first time, though the channel 59 repeater was kept in service. WVIT became the sole Connecticut-based NBC affiliate in March 1982, when WATR-TV's affiliation contract with NBC ended and the station became independent WTXX (it is now
WCCT-TV). The Torrington translator was turned off in 1987, and the New Haven repeater was shut down in the mid-1990s to allow full-powered WTVU (now
WCTX
WCTX (channel 59) is a television station licensed to New Haven, Connecticut, United States, serving the Hartford–New Haven market as an affiliate of MyNetworkTV. It is owned by Nexstar Media Group alongside ABC affiliate WTNH (channel 8), a ...
) to begin operations. In 1993, WVIT and WTXX entered into a part-time
local marketing agreement
In North American broadcasting, a local marketing agreement (LMA), or local management agreement, is a contract in which one corporation, company agrees to operate a radio station, radio or television station owned by another party. In essence, it ...
after talks with
Fox affiliate
WTIC-TV (channel 61) failed.
Viacom purchased
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation, commonly known as Paramount Pictures or simply Paramount, is an American film production company, production and Distribution (marketing), distribution company and the flagship namesake subsidiary of Paramount ...
in 1994, placing its five-station group (WVIT;
KMOV
KMOV (channel 4) is a television station in St. Louis, Missouri, United States, affiliated with CBS and MyNetworkTV. It is owned by Gray Media alongside low-power station KDTL-LD (channel 4.6). The two stations share studios on Progress Park ...
in
St. Louis
St. Louis ( , sometimes referred to as St. Louis City, Saint Louis or STL) is an independent city in the U.S. state of Missouri. It lies near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a populatio ...
;
WHEC-TV
WHEC-TV (channel 10) is a television station in Rochester, New York, United States, affiliated with NBC. Owned by Hubbard Broadcasting, the station maintains studios on East Avenue in Downtown Rochester and a transmitter on Pinnacle Hill in ...
in
Rochester, New York
Rochester is a city in and the county seat, seat of government of Monroe County, New York, United States. It is the List of municipalities in New York, fourth-most populous city and 10th most-populated municipality in New York, with a populati ...
;
WNYT in
Albany, New York
Albany ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. It is located on the west bank of the Hudson River, about south of its confluence with the Mohawk River. Albany is the oldes ...
; and
KSLA-TV
KSLA (channel 12) is a television station in Shreveport, Louisiana, United States, affiliated with CBS. It is owned by Gray Media alongside low-power broadcasting#Television, low-power, Class A television service, Class A Telemundo affiliate KTS ...
in
Shreveport, Louisiana
Shreveport ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Louisiana. It is the List of municipalities in Louisiana, third-most populous city in Louisiana after New Orleans and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Baton Rouge. The bulk of Shreveport is in Caddo Parish, Lo ...
) under common ownership with the
Paramount Stations Group
Paramount Stations Group, Inc. (sometimes abbreviated as PSG) was a company that controlled a group of American broadcast television stations. The company existed from 1991 until 2001.
History
Paramount Communications, the then-parent company ...
; the two groups were formally consolidated in December 1995.
The merged company decided to divest itself of all of its major network affiliates to focus on stations that carried its then-upstart United Paramount Network (
UPN). WVIT, the first television outlet Viacom purchased was the last station to be sold, as Viacom agreed to trade channel 30 to former owner NBC in return for future purchase rights to
WWHO in
Chillicothe, Ohio
Chillicothe ( ) is a city in Ross County, Ohio, United States, and its county seat. The population was 22,059 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Located along the Scioto River 45 miles (72 km) south of Columbus, Ohio, Columbus, ...
, and
WLWC in
New Bedford, Massachusetts
New Bedford is a city in Bristol County, Massachusetts, United States. It is located on the Acushnet River in what is known as the South Coast region. At the 2020 census, New Bedford had a population of 101,079, making it the state's ninth-l ...
, two UPN-affiliated stations NBC was operating by way of local marketing agreements. The sale closed on December 8, 1997, making WVIT an NBC O&O for the second time in its history. It also ended its part-time LMA with WTXX, and the LMA deal was transferred to WTIC-TV.
On December 4, 2017, NBCUniversal announced that it would buy
Telemundo
Telemundo (; formerly NetSpan) is an American Spanish-language terrestrial television network owned by NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises, a division of NBCUniversal, which in turn is a wholly owned subsidiary of Comcast. It provides content ...
affiliate
WRDM-CD and its Springfield
satellite station WDMR-LP from
ZGS Communications, as with several other NBC O&Os, WRDM would become a sister station to WVIT, creating the third
duopoly
A duopoly (from Greek , ; and , ) is a type of oligopoly where two firms have dominant or exclusive control over a market, and most (if not all) of the competition within that market occurs directly between them.
Duopoly is the most commonly ...
in the Hartford–New Haven television market, following the duopolies of
Nexstar Media Group
Nexstar Media Group, Inc. is an American publicly traded media company with headquarters in Irving, Texas, Midtown Manhattan, and Chicago. The company is the largest television station owner in the United States, owning 197 television station ...
's WTNH/WCTX and
Tegna
Tegna Inc. (stylized in all caps as TEGNA) is an American publicly traded broadcast, digital media and marketing services company headquartered in Tysons, Virginia. It was created on June 29, 2015, when the Gannett Company split into two publi ...
's
WTIC-TV/
WCCT-TV (though as a low-power station, WRDM is exempt from FCC ownership caps, including the duopoly rule).
ZGS had sold WRDM's spectrum in the FCC's
incentive auction for $10,574,516 and indicated that the station would enter into a post-auction
channel sharing agreement, which occurred with WVIT at the start of the year.
The sale was officially completed on February 1, 2018.
Programming
On June 16, 2017, WVIT announced that it would not air that week's edition of ''
Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly'', which featured an interview with radio host
Alex Jones
Alexander Emerick Jones (born February 11, 1974) is an American Far-right politics, far-right radio host, radio show host and prominent conspiracy theorist. He hosts ''The Alex Jones Show'' from Austin, Texas. ''The Alex Jones Show'' is the lo ...
. The station cited viewer, advertiser and management sensitivities to the views of Jones, as he had previously expressed a
denial
Denial, in colloquial English usage, has at least three meanings:
* the assertion that any particular statement or allegation, whose truth is uncertain, is not true;
* the refusal of a request; and
* the assertion that a true statement is fal ...
of the
Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings. Otherwise, the station clears the entire NBC lineup.
News operation
On June 13, 2016, WVIT became the second station in Connecticut to debut a 4 p.m. newscast. On the same day, WVIT began using Artworks' new "Look N" standardized graphics that were first adopted by sister station
WNBC
WNBC (channel 4) is a television station in New York City that serves as the flagship (broadcasting), flagship of the NBC network. It is owned and operated by the network's NBC Owned Television Stations division alongside Linden, New Jersey� ...
, while its music changed to 615 Music's "The Tower", which was first adopted in 2000 by sister stations
WMAQ-TV
WMAQ-TV (channel 5) is a television station in Chicago, Illinois, United States, serving as the market's NBC outlet. It is owned and operated by the network's NBC Owned Television Stations division alongside Telemundo station WSNS-TV (chann ...
and
KNBC
KNBC (channel 4) is a television station in Los Angeles, California, United States, serving as the West Coast of the United States, West Coast flagship (broadcasting), flagship station of the NBC network. It is owned and operated by the network ...
.
On June 7, 2021, WVIT debuted its 7 p.m. newscast, becoming the first and only station in Connecticut to have a prime time newscast.
Notable former on-air staff
*
Chris Berman
*
Van Hackett
*
Brian Kilmeade
*
Rob Marciano
Robert Mark Marciano (born June 25, 1968) is an American journalist and meteorologist with CBS News. He was employed by ABC News from 2014 until 2024. Marciano provided forecasts for the weekend editions of ''Good Morning America'', a position ...
*
Natalie Morales
*
Rob Morrison
*
Beasley Reece
*
Brian Shactman
*
Chris Wragge
Christian P. Wragge ( ; born June 19, 1970) is an American news anchor. He is the co-anchor for New York's CBS2's ''News This Morning'' and CBS2's ''News at Noon'', alongside Mary Calvi. He was previously on WCBS's 5 p.m. and 11 p. ...
Technical information
Subchannels
Digital subchannel 30.2 carried
NBC Weather Plus; national network operations for that service ended in December 2008.
NBC Plus then aired on that subchannel. This channel used the same graphics as Weather Plus, with a new 'NBC Plus' logo, and without the on-camera meteorologist segments. On December 20, 2012, WVIT replaced NBC Plus with
Cozi TV
Cozi TV (stylized on-air as COZI TV) is an American free-to-air television network owned by the NBC Owned Television Stations division of NBCUniversal. The network airs classic television series from the 1950s to the 2000s.
The network originat ...
; WVIT was the last NBC-owned station to carry NBC Plus. Digital subchannel 30.3 carried
Universal Sports until its transition into a cable- and
satellite
A satellite or an artificial satellite is an object, typically a spacecraft, placed into orbit around a celestial body. They have a variety of uses, including communication relay, weather forecasting, navigation ( GPS), broadcasting, scient ...
-exclusive service on January 1, 2012, and eventually Universal Sports shut down altogether on November 16, 2015. The 30.3 subchannel was reactivated in 2015, when WVIT added the
Spanish-language
Spanish () or Castilian () is a Romance languages, Romance language of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family that evolved from the Vulgar Latin spoken on the Iberian Peninsula of Europe. Today, it is a world language, gl ...
digital network
TeleXitos
TeleXitos is an American Spanish language digital multicast television network owned by NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises, a subsidiary of the NBCUniversal Filmed and Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, itself a division of Comcast. Aimed a ...
, normally only carried on Telemundo stations; TeleXitos moved to a subchannel of
WRDM-CD after its acquisition by NBCUniversal in February 2018. WVIT again reactivated the 30.3 subchannel in 2020, coinciding with the launch of
LX.
Analog-to-digital conversion

WVIT shut down its analog signal, over
UHF
Ultra high frequency (UHF) is the ITU designation for radio frequencies in the range between 300 megahertz (MHz) and 3 gigahertz (GHz), also known as the decimetre band as the wavelengths range from one meter to one tenth of a meter ...
channel 30, on June 12, 2009, as part of the
federally mandated transition from analog to digital television.
List of Digital Full-Power Stations
/ref> The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 35, using virtual channel
In most telecommunications organizations, a virtual channel is a method of remapping the ''program number'' as used in H.222 Program Association Tables and Program Mapping Tables to a channel number that can be entered as digits on a receiver's ...
30. With the transition, the height of the station's transmitter tower was increased to .
Spectrum auction repack
On August 2, 2019, WVIT was moved from channel 35 to channel 31.
References
External links
*
UHF Morgue: W79AI, former WVIT translator
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wvit
1953 establishments in Connecticut
Cozi TV affiliates
NBC Owned Television Stations
Paramount Global
Paramount Stations Group
Television channels and stations established in 1953
VIT