WSAH

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Revision as of 00:30, 30 December 2010

WSAH is a television station licensed to Bridgeport, Connecticut in the New York City television market, operating a digital signal on UHF channel 42. It is owned by Multicultural Television Broadcasting, LLC (a division of Multicultural Broadcasting (Under Local Marketing Agreement with Taylor Media Stations Group). Except for FCC-required E/I programming from Kids Box TV, WSAH shows solely anime programming from Anime 100.

History

Channel 43 first appeared in March 1953, when WICC-TV (meaning "Industrial Center of Connecticut", referring to Bridgeport[1]) signed on with programming from ABC and DuMont, a month after Connecticut's first UHF station, WKNB-TV, signed on. The station was named after WICC radio (600 AM). Considering that UHF was rather new at the time and required an expensive converter, the station was not seen by many. In addition, ABC network programming was easily seen in much of WICC's viewing area through WABC-TV from New York City.

One attempt at locally-generated programming on the station was Newsvision, created by station owner Ken Cooper, in which a station camera was pointed at a teletype machine, with music being played on the audio channel. The FCC disallowed this because they ruled the video and audio channels must work in sync, rather than be separate sources.

None of WICC's attempts to gain viewers succeeded -- one of these included a stunt where Bob Crane (who later became the star of Hogan's Heroes) offered $100 to the first caller who calls the station. Amazingly, no one called -- a likely sign that no one was watching WICC.

WICC-TV went off the air in December 1960. Most of the station's programming inventory was destroyed by fire a few months later.

A group of women, under the name of Bridgeways Communications Corporation[2], received a construction permit for a new channel 43 on November 20, 1980[3], and on September 28, 1987, the station signed on as WBCT-TV, airing home shopping programming.[2] Initially, the station planned to become a locally-focused independent station, with WBCT's management concerned that Bridgeport was only being served by New York City stations[2]; a year later, however, the station had changed its plans and planned to implement cultural programming aimed at the Jewish community in the New York City market as a whole.[4] In the meantime, the station changed its call letters to WHAI-TV in 1990. However, the station was sold in 1994 to ValueVision[5], which in turn sold WHAI to Paxson Communications in 1996.[6] By then, the station had also added infomercials to the schedule.

Original plans called for the station to pick up the Pax TV network[7][8] (as WIPX[8][9]) when it launched in 1998, but those plans were scrapped (mainly due to duopoly concerns resulting from Paxson's acquisition of WPXN-TV, as both stations' signals overlap[10] and are considered part of the New York City DMA; at that time the FCC did not allow common ownership of such stations) and the call letters were again changed, this time to WBPT[11]. After an attempt to sell the station to Cuchifritos Communications (which planned to make the station the flagship of a Spanish language home shopping service[10][12]) fell through[13], the station was sold in 1999 to the Shop at Home Network[13], which installed their programming and the WSAH call letters.[14]

Azteca América nearly bought the station late in 2000 to serve as their New York City affiliate.[15] The deal quickly collapsed[16] (the network later affiliated with WNYN-LP), and the station continued to run Shop at Home, with a brief interruption in 2006 when the network temporarily closed.

On September 26, 2006, The E. W. Scripps Company (the then-owner of the former Shop at Home owned-and-operated stations) announced that it was selling WSAH along with four other stations (KCNS San Francisco, California, WMFP Boston, Massachusetts, WOAC Canton, Ohio and WRAY-TV Wilson-Raleigh, North Carolina) to Multicultural Television for $170 million.[17] Multicultural assumed control of KCNS, WOAC and WRAY on December 20, 2006 and flipped their format to an all-infomercial format; it did not take control of WSAH and WMFP immediately due the stations' pending license renewal. The licenses were renewed in early April 2007, and on April 24, 2007, Multicultural took control of these stations.

WSAH signed on its digital signal on channel 42 on December 16, 2006.

In May 2007, WSAH changed shopping networks, from Shop at Home to Gems TV, a shopping network that specialises in jewelry. In addition, infomercials once again became a part of the schedule. The Gems TV affiliation has since been discontinued.

On July 4, 2008, WSAH's analog channel 43 signal was taken off the air, following a lightning strike at the transmitter. Since the cost of repairing the transmitter would be uneconomical, due to the coming analog shutdown, the station's owners sought permission from the FCC to keep the analog transmitter silent. This did not affect WSAH's availability on cable and digital broadcast. [18]

On July 1, 2009, WSAH affiliated with the Retro Television Network, becoming one of only a few affiliates to carry RTV on its main channel.[19] Initially, RTV programming was seen from 6 p.m. to midnight, with infomercials continuing during the remainder of the broadcast day.

In September 2009, WSAH cut RTV programming back to end at 11 p.m. on weekdays, and 10 p.m. on weekends. Shorly afterwards, the station announced that it would drop RTV completely and affiliate Anime National at the end of the month.[20] The next month, WSAH added a subchannel, airing the Japanese Television Network from sister station WRNN.[21]

After Multicultural ran into financial problems and defaulted on its loans, WSAH was placed into a management under Taylor Media; the station is currently for acquisition. However, Taylor Media cannot own more than two stations in the same DMA.