WHDH-TV
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WHDH-TV (7 NBC) is the NBC affiliate in the Boston, Massachusetts television market. WHDH's transmitter is located in Newton, Massachusetts while its studios are located near Government Center in downtown Boston. It is one of six local Boston TV stations seen in Canada on the Bell ExpressVu satellite provider.
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History
Channel 7 first went on the air on June 21, 1948, as WNAC-TV, the second television station in Boston. The station took its calls from WNAC-AM, the flagship station of the Yankee Network, a New England regional radio network. It was owned by General Teleradio, a subsidiary of General Tire, who purchased the Yankee Network in 1943. The company became RKO General in 1958 after the purchase of RKO Radio Pictures. Channel 7 first broadcasted from a studio on Brookline Avenue before moving to its current facilities near Government Center in the 1960s.
By 1965, RKO General faced numerous investigations into its business and financial practices. Though the FCC renewed the broadcast license for WNAC in 1969, RKO General lost the license in 1981 after General Tire admitted before the SEC that it had committed financial fraud over illegal political contributions and bribes. But in the FCC hearing, it had denied these same practices. In light of RKO's dishonesty, the FCC stripped RKO of the Boston license and the licenses for WOR-TV in New York and KHJ-TV in Los Angeles. The FCC had previously conditioned renewal of the latter two stations' licenses on WNAC's renewal. An appeals court partially reversed the ruling, finding that the FCC had erred in tying the latter two stations' renewals to WNAC's license. It upheld the WNAC revocation and ordered a rehearing on the other stations.
New England Television, a merger of the two original challengers to WNAC's renewal, took over the license for channel 7 on May 22, 1982. At that time, the station's call letters were changed to WNEV and a new Se7en logo was adopted. This logo would change to one of a number 7 made up of seven dots in the early 1990s before the current encircled 7.
WHDH came into its current incarnation in 1990 when WNEV-TV's owner bought WHDH Radio (AM 850) and renamed the TV station WHDH-TV. Those call letters had previously been used on Boston television by what is now WCVB-TV from 1957 to 1972. WHDH-TV stayed with CBS until January 2, 1995, when WBZ-TV claimed the CBS affiliation. After flirting with Fox WHDH chose to become the NBC affiliate.
- Station timeline
- 1948: WNAC-TV, Boston, begins airing CBS, ABC, and DuMont network programming.
- 1957: WNAC carries only CBS programming.
- 1961: WNAC carries the ABC network.
- 1972: WNAC carries the CBS network.
- 1981: FCC yanks all RKO broadcast licenses, including WNAC.
- 1982: WNAC reappears as WNEV-TV, New England Television.
- 1990: WNEV becomes WHDH-TV.
- 1995: WHDH carries the NBC network.
Newscasts
As WNAC-TV, the station had been among the first to use "Move Closer to Your World" in 1970. Two years later, the station's news director moved to WPVI-TV in Philadelphia, where the theme became famous. The station had been fairly competitive with WCVB-TV and WBZ, but the RKO fiasco caused a sharp drop in the ratings that lasted until Ed Ansin and his company, Sunbeam, bought the station in June 1993. The station's previous owners attempted to boost the station's newscast by hiring many prominent journalists in the Boston market. However, this action was met with little success.
That changed when Ansin introduced a faster paced news format that he helped develop at his Miami, Florida station WSVN. Though the format was toned down when compared to that of WSVN at the time, it was considered shocking by Boston standards. As such several of the station's prominent newscasters resigned.
Nevertheless, the station quickly became a ratings contender in Boston, especially after switching to NBC. Today, WHDH competes fiercely with the once perennial market leader, WCVB-TV. In 2002, WHDH was noted as having the best newscast in the U.S. in a study published by the Columbia Journalism Review (http://www.journalism.org/resources/research/reports/localTV/2002/chart.asp). In previous studies, the station was deemed as having one of the worst newscasts.
The station operates a Bell LongRanger 206L news helicopter entitled Sky 7.
Newscast Schedule
Weekdays
- 7 News Today in New England - 5:00 AM to 7:00 AM
- 7 News at Noon - 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM
- 7 News at 4 - 4:00 PM to 5:00 PM
- 7 News at 5 - 5:00 PM to 6:00 PM
- 7 News at 6 - 6:00 PM to 6:30 PM
- 7 News at 11 - 11:00 PM to 11:35 PM
Saturday
- 7 News Today in New England - 9:00 AM to 11:00 AM
- 7 News at 6 - 6:00 PM to 6:30 PM
- 7 News at 11 - 11:00 PM to 11:30 PM
Sunday
- 7 News Today in New England - 9:00 AM to 10:30 AM
- 7 News at 6 - 6:00 PM to 6:30 PM
- 7 News at 11 - 11:00 PM to 11:30 PM
References
- Gallant, Joseph. WNAC-TV/WNEV-TV/WHDH-TV: The Colorful History of Boston's Channel 7 (February 1998) (http://www.theprovidencechannel.com/whdh/history.htm). TheProvidenceChannel.com.
- LaBrecque, Ron. Can Glitz be Good? - Shaking up news in Boston (July/August 1996) (http://archives.cjr.org/year/96/4/glitz.asp). Columbia Journalism Review.
- WHDH-TV (3-27-2005). The Boston TV Dial (http://www.bostonradio.org/radio/whdh-tv.html).
External links
- Photos of WHDH's news set (http://www.setstudio.com/pages/whdh/)
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