Wometco Home Theater

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The Wometco Home Theater (WHT) was an early pay television service in the New York City area. The signals were broadcast on Channel 68 beginning in August, 1977, WWHT-TV and later on WSNL-TV Channel 67 out of Smithtown, New York. The service had ended by 1986.

Subscribers paid $15 for a set-top descrambling box that allowed subscribers to view channel 68's scrambled television signals. The service was similar to Home Box Office, but a Wometco executive told the New York Times that WHT was more likely to select films with a particular interest to the New York City area. Wometco also targeted area that were not yet served by cable. Programming began at 8pm and consisted of 12 features a month including movies and entertainment specials. Each program was repeated five times during the month.^[1] During the daytime, WWHT was a small commercial television station that broadcast local public affairs programs, religious programs, stock market reports, and minority-interest and foreign language programs.

By 1984, Wometco Home Theater had stopped programming its own channel and began carrying the programming of California based Pay-TV service SelecTV and by 1986 after losing more and more subscribers and going deeper into debt WHT finally ceased operations. Channels 67 (WSNL) and Channel 68 (WWHT) had moved to an all-music format similar to MTV which lasted for about one year before both stations were purchased by an affiliate of the Home Shopping Network. The station is now an affiliate of the Telefutura Spanish-language television network.

An interesting side note, Wometco Home Theater and its parent company Wometco Enterprises were owned by the private investment firm of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. which two years after the shut-down of Wometco Home Theater would battle F. Ross Johnson for control of snack food and cigarette giant RJR Nabisco.

[edit] See also

SuperTV A pay-tv service similar to Wometco Home Theater located in Washington, D.C.
Prism (TV channel) a pay-tv service similar to Wometco Home Theater located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania