WUVP-DT

WUVP-DT, virtual channel 65, is the Univisión owned and operated station licensed to Vineland, New Jersey. WUVP-DT offers a Spanish programming format featuring news, talk shows, dramas, movies and other first-rate Spanish programming.

History

The station signed on June 22, 1981 as WRBV. The station was owned by a local group called Renaissance Broadcasting of Vineland (not to be confused with the Renaissance Broadcasting Company, which was later sold to Tribune). Renaissance had hoped to operate the station as an ABC network affiliate; however, ABC decided not to add the station to its lineup, and when WRBV took to the air it was running syndicated shows by day, a half-hour local newscast at 7 p.m., and Wometco Home Theater subscription television evenings and late nights. The station's signal, broadcast from a tower 25 miles southeast of Philadelphia, put it at a disadvantage. The signal covered the city of Philadelphia, but only a few of the densely populated and affluent suburbs west of the city, leaving it with a smaller potential audience than its competitors. WSJT also ran into difficulty obtaining carriage by the cable television stations within its large coverage area. In defiance of FCC regulations of the time, NYT Cable, Sammons, Tri-County and other large systems refused to add the station to their offerings. Thus, the station ran into financial difficulties within months, unable to get a network affiliation, unable to garner audience, and unable to sell advertising to support its purchased programming and its extensive evening newscast.

In December 1981, Renaissance filed for bankruptcy protection, forcing the bankruptcy trustee Richard Milstead to lay off the entire newsroom staff and all but a skeleton crew of managers and technicians, as well as cancel the non-subscription broadcast schedule. The station continued to broadcast in bankruptcy for more than three years, running at an operating profit under an aggressive, young staff led by veteran station manager Carmen Colucci. The former schedule of syndicated shows was replaced by Financial News Network, public domain movies, and new syndicated series in 1982, when WWSG dropped FNN to run subscription television 24/7. When FNN went cable only in 1984, WRBV began carrying a music video channel called Odyssey during all but prime access hours. By 1985, Odyssey was broadcast during prime time as well, after Wometco Home Theater abruptly ceased operations. Management of the station under Milstead persuaded TV Guide and the Philadelphia Inquirer to begin carrying the stations listings. Then, assisted by Washington attorneys, the station won an order by the FCC to the region's cable television systems to begin carrying WRBV. Both actions were critical to making the station attractive to potential investors.

In June 1985 Press Broadcasting Company, a division of the Asbury Park Press, purchased the station for a mere $3.3 million and changed the call letters to WSJT, for South Jersey Television. Press Broadcasting executives planned to program the station with relatively recent reruns of syndicated programming, but found that the rights to virtually all current product were held by existing Philadelphia market stations, even though they were not then being broadcast. The Philadelphia stations declined to give up the rights, perhaps for competitive reasons. Consequently, Press Broadcasting adopted a strategy of televising old black-and-white series from the 1950s and 1960s, along with B-movies. In a notable success, previous to the sale to Press Broadcasting, the station obtained the rights to the basketball games of the newly-formed Big East Conference, as well as LSU Tigers football. When Villanova's men's basketball team reached top 10 rankings in winter 1985 and the Big East conference tournament came around, WSJT was the only station in the Philadelphia region with rights to carry the games, and thousands of area residents learned about the station for the first time.

Some of WSJT's shows included Ozzie & Harriet, The Danny Thomas Show, My Little Margie, Our Miss Brooks, December Bride, The Donna Reed Show, The Patty Duke Show, Petticoat Junction, Bachelor Father, Love That Bob, Gunsmoke, Naked City, Ironside, The Ann Sothern Show, and other vintage series not wanted by other Philadelphia-area stations. The station also resumed broadcasting news in the form of five-minute newsbreaks at the top of primetime hours, anchored by Brian Eckert, producer of the station's first news program in 1981. Unfortunately, ratings were dismal. In less than a year, the owners of the Asbury Park Press told Press Broadasting's management that the station would have to significantly improve ratings "or else."

In 1986, Silver King Broadcasting, the Home Shopping Network's television station group, bought WSJT from Press Broadcasting for an astonishing $27 million. In announcing the sale to the station staff, Press Broadcasting executives said they expected to buy WKBS (UHF channel 48), a Philadelphia-centered station. All of the now former WSJT staff would be rehired when that happened. It never did.

Under new call letters, WSJT -- now WHSP, for Home Shopping Philadelphia, began running HSN programming on the station full time starting on December 31 of that year. The station remained a Home Shopping Network station for the next 16 years. Silver King was acquired by USA Broadcasting in the late 1990s. There were plans to eventually convert WHSP to a general entertainment format with many 1960s and 70s sitcoms, drama shows, and cartoons sometime in 2002, as USA-owned stations in Miami, Florida, Atlanta, Georgia, Boston, and Dallas–Fort Worth, Texas had already converted to such formats. However, USA Broadcasting put their stations up for sale in the late part of 2000.

Disney almost bought the stations, but Univision wound up outbidding them for the broadcast group. Therefore, WHSP was sold in a group deal to Univisión in 2001; on January 14, 2002, it picked up the Univision affiliation and became WUVP.

WUVP replaced the repeater of New York City's Univisión station, WXTV, which aired on WXTV-LP channel 28. Following the switch, that station became the affiliate of Univisión's new Telefutura network, as WFPA-CA.

News operation

On March 10, 2008, the station began production of a local news program (Noticias 65), which airs Monday – Friday at 6 PM and 11 PM, anchored by Ilia Garcia. On weekends, the station rebroadcasts newscasts from its sister station, WLII in Puerto Rico.

References

External links

• WUVP-TV Website
• Query the FCC's TV station database for WUVP-DT
• BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on WUVP-DT