WJAR - History

History

WJAR-TV signed on for the first time on July 10, 1949, broadcasting on channel 11. It was Rhode Island's first television station and the fourth in New England. It was owned by The Outlet Company, a department store chain headquartered in Providence, along with WJAR radio (AM 920, now WHJJ; and FM 95.5, now occupied by WBRU). It moved to channel 10 in 1953. WJAR initially carried programming from all four networks of the time (NBC, ABC, DuMont, and CBS), but has always been a primary NBC affiliate due to WJAR radio's long affiliation with NBC Radio.

In 1952, after hearing about repeated instances of interference in Connecticut between WJAR and WPIX New York, the FCC changed the TV allocations for Providence, which mandated that WJAR move to Channel 10, which it did in the spring of 1953. After that date, WJAR was able to enjoy a much larger coverage area, since the interference with WPIX had ended.

Despite being a primary NBC affiliate, WJAR only carried a little more than half of NBC's program schedule during its early years on the air; WJAR also broadcast about half of the CBS network schedule and a couple of shows each from ABC and DuMont every week.

It lost ABC in 1953 when WNET-TV signed on, and lost CBS in 1955 when WPRO-TV (now WPRI-TV) launched. When WNET-TV went dark in 1956, WJAR shared ABC programming with WPRO-TV until WTEV (now WLNE-TV) signed on in 1963. During the late 1950s, WJAR-TV was also briefly affiliated with the NTA Film Network. In 1954, WJAR-TV received national attention for its coverage of Hurricane Carol; newsreel films shot by WJAR cameramen of the storm and its aftermath not only appeared on the station, but also fed to CBS and NBC for use on their evening news programs.

For many years in the 1970s, WJAR broadcast men's basketball games of Providence College and the University of Rhode Island, with the late and beloved Chris Clark calling play-by-play. In the early 1970s, when PC was one of the top teams in the country (and the top college basketball team in New England), their home games at the newly-opened Providence Civic Center were often sellouts, despite the fact that WJAR televised many of these home games live.

In November 1980, the Outlet Company left the department store business to concentrate on broadcasting. A year earlier, the station moved its studios from the Outlet Building to a three-story modern production facility next door. The department store remained standing until 1986, when it burned to the ground in a spectacular fire. WJAR cameras perched on the neighboring rooftop captured the most dramatic footage. In 1996, Outlet Communications merged with NBC. It was around this time that the station's studios were moved to their current location in an industrial area of Cranston just south of Providence.

In April 1997, WJAR began to operate primary WB and secondary UPN affiliate WLWC (which was owned by Fant Broadcasting) under a local marketing agreement (LMA). Even by the time that station signed on, the future of the LMA was in doubt given the fact that NBC, which inherited the arrangement from Outlet, did not want to run stations outside their core owned-and-operated outlets. The network, during this time, pushed Fant to sell WLWC. In September 1997, NBC came up with a three-way swap in which Fant exchanged WLWC and sister station WWHO in Columbus, Ohio to Paramount / Viacom for that group's NBC affiliate in Hartford, Connecticut, WVIT.

WJAR was one of four NBC O&Os in smaller markets that were put up for sale on January 9, 2006, along with stations in Columbus, Birmingham, Alabama, and Raleigh, North Carolina. Except for the Birmingham station, these were also once owned by Outlet. On April 6, 2006, NBC Universal and Media General announced that Media General would purchase WJAR as part of a $600 million dollar four station deal between the two companies. The deal was approved by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on June 26. As a result, WJAR became Media General's first television station in New England. For all intents and purposes, this undid the NBC-Outlet merger a decade earlier.

During the April 2007 Nor'easter, WJAR's over-the-air digital transmitter was damaged. Both digital signals, WJAR-HD and WJAR-DT2, were knocked off the air. The outage did not affect digital cable or satellite services, as they do not get the signal from the digital transmitter.

In its earliest days, WJAR's logo included a Rhode Island Red rooster, the state bird of Rhode Island. Prior to WJAR's purchase by NBC, it had included various versions of a different stylized "10" above the WJAR call letters. This had been in effect for the previous twenty years. The stylized "10" was initially retained after the purchase, but with the NBC peacock attached to the right-hand side and the call letters removed. This was dropped in 2002 in favor of its current logo, which was first used on former sister station WCAU in Philadelphia. A modified version, used on newscasts since 2007, is designed and arranged similarly to other Media General station logos.