WROC-TV - History

History

WROC-TV is Rochester's oldest television station, signing on June 11, 1949 as WHAM-TV, an NBC affiliate on channel 6. It was owned originally by Stromberg-Carlson, a telephone equipment manufacturer, along with WHAM radio. The station was also affiliated with the now defunct DuMont Television Network.

WHAM-TV moved to channel 5 on July 24, 1954, as part of a revision of upstate New York's VHF allotments resulting from the Federal Communications Commission's Sixth Report and Order of 1952. However, WHAM on channel 5 dealt with interference issues from CBLT, a CBC Television station from Toronto, after that station moved from its original channel 9 allocation to channel 6 in 1956. CBLT was replaced on channel 9 by CFTO-TV in 1960, and that channel relocation would later play an indirect role in the station's second frequency shift, eight years later.

Stromberg-Carlson sold its broadcast holdings in 1956, with WHAM-TV going to Transcontinent Broadcasting, which owned WGR radio and WGR-TV in Buffalo. The new owners changed the call letters to the current WROC-TV. In 1961, Transcontinent sold the station to Veterans Broadcasting Company, which subsequently sold its half of what is today WHEC-TV (channel 10) to the Gannett Company, then based in Rochester. (The WHAM-TV callsign is now used on Rochester's ABC affiliate, channel 13, previously known as WOKR. Other than the shared callsign, that station is unrelated to the earlier WHAM-TV.)

Under Veterans' ownership, WROC-TV moved to channel 8 on September 8, 1962 as part of another channel allocation change, this one being a switch involving Rochester and Syracuse. The FCC moved WROC-TV's former channel 5 east to Syracuse, and it was taken by Meredith Corporation-owned WHEN-TV (now WTVH), which was previously on channel 8. The move also allowed a new station on channel 9 to enter the Syracuse market; it signed-on as WNYS-TV (later WIXT and now WSYR-TV) the following day.

Veterans Broadcasting merged with Rust Craft Broadcasting in 1964. Rust Craft became a subsidiary of Ziff Davis in 1979. Rust Craft then sold WROC-TV and sister stations in Saginaw, Michigan, Augusta, Georgia and Steubenville, Ohio to Television Station Partners LP in 1983. Television Station Partners sold WROC-TV, along with the Saginaw and Steubenville outlets, to Smith Broadcasting in 1996. Nexstar purchased WROC in 1999.

Under the stewardship of Television Station Partners, WROC-TV made another switch: On July 1, 1989, after 40 years with NBC, channel 8 swapped network affiliations with WHEC-TV and became a CBS station.

Since the 1970s, WROC's newscasts have struggled in the Nielsen ratings, usually placing a distant third behind WOKR/WHAM-TV and WHEC-TV. Even with the strong NBC prime-time line-up in the mid-to-late 1980s (the last few years of WROC's affiliation contract with NBC) and the strong CBS line-up during the 2000s (decade), WROC's newscasts remained in third place for the most part, although it slowly grew in market share over the course of the decade. In the November 2008 ratings period, however, WROC's 11 pm newscast finished ahead of the slumping WHEC for the first time in many years.

When the analog television shutdown and digital conversion took place on June 12, 2009, the station remained on its pre-transition digital channel 45 for post-transition operations. Its analog signal was officially turned-off at 11:35, following the late newscast. However, through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display WROC-TV's virtual channel as 8.

For many years, WROC was one of three Rochester area stations offered on cable in the Ottawa/Gatineau and Eastern Ontario regions. The Rochester area stations were replaced with Detroit stations when the microwave relay system that provided these signals was discontinued. Until January 2009, WROC was also available in many Central Ontario communities such as Belleville, Cobourg, and Lindsay.

On September 26, 2011 WROC-TV launched Bounce TV on sub-channel 8.2.

On July 9, 2012, WROC-TV replaced WLKY-TV Louisville on Time Warner Cable systems in that station's region, when WLKY's owners, Hearst Television, pulled its stations off Time Warner Cable's systems in a retransmission dispute. However, Nexstar complained that Time Warner Cable has used their signals outside their markets without permission, while Time Warner Cable was within its rights to use their signals as replacements until a deal with Hearst is reached. WROC, for its part, made the best of its predicament, naming the administrator of a Facebook group of tongue-in-cheek Louisvillean WROC fans its fan of the week and making a handful of other shout-outs to its emerging Louisville fanbase. The substitution of WROC in place of WLKY lasted until July 19, 2012, when a deal was reached between Hearst and Time Warner.