WWOR-TV Branding

WOR-TV first signed on the air in 1948 with it’s sister radio stations WOR-AM & WBAM-FM (Now WRKS-FM) which started in 1922 were originally owned by the Bamberger’s Broadcasting Corporation which was the broadcasting arm of the now defunct department store chain L. Bamberger’s and Co. (R.H. Macy’s bought Bamberger’s in the 1980’s) it was then purchased by General Teleradio which eventually became RKO General. Unfortunately, RKO General came under fire in the 1970s for illegal accounting practices – something serious enough that the FCC began a campaign to strip RKO of all of its television and radio stations. RKO bravely fought the FCC, but eventually lost every one of its stations. In 1987, WOR-TV was sold to MCA/Universal. Since it couldn’t keep its calls, an extra W was added and the station became WWOR-TV. It then went to three other owners over the next few years – Pinelands, Inc. (formed after MCA was sold to Matsushita of Japan – foreign companies cannot own US TV stations, which is why Rupert Murdoch became a US citizen!), Chris-Craft Broadcasting, finally ending up in the hands of Fox. It’s now co-owned with WNYW, with plans to move in with that station.

In the early 1980s, RKO found a loophole that it wanted to exploit. The FCC was looking to establish a major commercial TV station in New Jersey – and any station who would voluntarily move there would get an automatic license renewal. Under fire, RKO jumped at this and was able to move WOR’s city of license from New York City to Secaucus, New Jersey. The move took effect in early 1983. However, they still basically remained a New York station. The gambit didn’t work for long, and RKO ended up having to sell to MCA in 1987. WWOR remains in Secaucus but is basically managed by WNYW, which is in New York. Rampant rumors of a consolidation between the two stations also mean that it is likely that WWOR will someday move back to New York…

1987

The inevitable finally happened in 1987 when RKO sold WOR to MCA/Universal. The call letters changed to WWOR (they simply added an extra “W”) and MCA began to craft its own identity for the station. Gone were the endless repeats of obscure movies, replaced with an aggressive slate of syndicated network repeats and confrontational talk shows like Morton Downey Jr. For a time the station even branded itself as “Universal 9”. The difference even extended to the news. The passive, quaint news operation that was WOR became the aggressive and sometimes informal news operation of WWOR. The news was moved to 10pm and eventually was fronted by veteran WCBS anchor Rolland Smith, shwoing that MCA was really serious.

1995

MCA’s ambitious ownership of the station did not last. MCA was acquired by Mastitushita Electronics of Japan and per FCC rules, had to divest WWOR. The WWOR operation was spun off into a separate company, Pinelands Inc., in 1990, effectively making the station independently owned. It didn’t last this way for long, as Pinelands was acquired by Chris-Craft Broadcasting in 1993, who began to dismantle the aggressiveness of the station. WWOR became “UPN 9” in 1995 when the UPN network launched, introducing a new logo that has a bit of a nod to the RKO “dotted nine”. By this time, WWOR was owned by Fox and was now sister station to WNYW. The news got a little bit flashier but nowhere near as flashy as WNYW Fox 5, sinc WWOR was still competing with WNYW at 10pm! In 2002, UPN ditched its original logo and went with an odd “circular” logo with hints of the ups logo. Since many UPN stations used network branding, this meant that nearly every affiliate had to change their logo to reflect the new one. Fox, which had by this time owned many of the UPN stations formerly owned by Chris-Craft, put their stamp on the station – a generic logo not unlike their Fox stations.

2001

By this time, WWOR was owned by Fox and was now sister station to WNYW. The news got a little bit flashier but nowhere near as flashy as WNYW Fox 5, sinc WWOR was still competing with WNYW at 10pm! In 2002, UPN ditched its original logo and went with an odd “circular” logo with hints of the ups logo. Since many UPN stations used network branding, this meant that nearly every affiliate had to change their logo to reflect the new one. Fox, which had by this time owned many of the UPN stations formerly owned by Chris-Craft, put their stamp on the station – a generic logo not unlike their Fox stations.