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| |
|---|---|
| City | Pittsfield, Massachusetts |
| Channels | |
| Branding | My4 Albany |
| Programming | |
| Affiliations |
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| Ownership | |
| Owner |
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| WNYT | |
| History | |
| Founded | February 3, 2003 |
First air date | September 1, 2003 (22 years ago) (2003-09-01) |
Former channel numbers |
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| UPN (2003–2006) | |
Call sign meaning | New York Television Alternate (for sister station WNYT as abackronym), or Albany |
| Technical information[1] | |
Licensing authority | FCC |
| Facility ID | 136751 |
| ERP | 23 kW |
| HAAT | 437.2 m (1,434.4 ft) |
| Transmitter coordinates | 42°37′31.3″N74°0′36.7″W / 42.625361°N 74.010194°W /42.625361; -74.010194 |
| Links | |
Public license information | |
| Website | wnyt |
WNYA (channel 51, cable channel 4) is atelevision station licensed toPittsfield, Massachusetts, United States, servingNew York'sCapital District as an affiliate ofMyNetworkTV. It is owned byHubbard Broadcasting alongsideAlbany-licensedNBC affiliateWNYT (channel 13). Both stations share studios on North Pearl Street inMenands (with an Albanypostal address), while WNYA's transmitter is located on theHelderberg Escarpment west ofNew Salem.
The station uses its maincable channel position of 4 onCharter Spectrum andVerizon Fios for marketing purposes asMy 4 Albany, only mentioning their actual channel number on-air during maintenancesign-off disclosures. Despite Pittsfield being WNYA'scity of license, the station maintains no physical presence there.
What today is WNYA can indirectly trace its history to WVUW, an un-built station on channel 51 in Pittsfield. WVUW was granted aconstruction permit in 1984,[2] but was deleted by theFederal Communications Commission (FCC) in 1990.[3] In October 1996,Pappas Telecasting applied for a new permit for this allocation;[4] however, in 2001, the FCC placed the channel up for auction.[5] In addition to Pappas, which by then planned to use the station as anAzteca América affiliate, bidders included Hubbard Broadcasting,Equity Broadcasting, theTrinity Broadcasting Network, and Venture Technologies Group.[5] When the auction took place in February 2002, Venture Technologies ended up with the winning bid for $1.3 million.[6] The FCC granted the construction permit[7] and the WNYA call sign to Venture a year later.[8] To accommodate the new WNYA, WNYT moved itsAdams translator, which had broadcast on channel 51 since 1984,[9] to channel 38.[10]
In February 2003, Venture Technologies signed ajoint sales agreement (JSA) withFreedom Communications, then-owner ofCBS affiliateWRGB (channel 6); this allowed WNYA to operate from WRGB's studios inNiskayuna. Soon afterward, WNYA secured an affiliation withUPN, replacing "WEDG-TV", a cable-only station operated as a partnership ofWXXA-TV (channel 23) andTime Warner Cable.[11]
On May 22, 2003, Venture purchased WVBX-LP (channel 39) inEaston from Vision 3 Broadcasting,[12] a station that a year earlier had been granted a construction permit to upgrade toclass A service and move to channel 15 from a transmitter in the Helderberg Mountains in New Scotland, in effect moving WVBX to Albany.[13] Venture took channel 39 off-the-air that June,[14] built the channel 15 facility, gave it the call letters WNYA-CA on June 30, 2003,[15] and announced that the station would serve as a WNYA repeater;[16] this created the unusual circumstance of a repeater station older than its parent station, as WVBX had signed on in 1997 as part of a network of low-power stations based atWVBG-LP (channel 25) in Albany,[17] which itself served as the Capital District's UPN affiliate from 1998 until the launch of "WEDG-TV" in 2000.[18][19]
On September 1, 2003, WNYA launched using the branding "UPN Capital Region."[16] The main signal, WNYA, had an analog transmitter northwest of Pittsfield onBerry Mountain. It became the first full-powered, over-the-air UPN affiliate in the Capital District. In addition to UPN programming, WNYA occasionally carried CBS programming preempted by WRGB, includingUS Open telecasts that conflicted with WRGB's broadcast of theJerry LewisMDA Labor Day Telethon.[16]
From its sign-on, WNYA took the cable channel position of "WEDG-TV" on Time Warner,[16]Charter (inRensselaer andColumbia counties), and independent Mid-Hudson Cablevision (inGreene County).Adelphia would replaceWSBK-TV fromBoston with WNYA at the start of 2004, with other providers includingDirecTV andDish Network adding the station later that year.
On January 24, 2006,The WB and UPN announced that they would end broadcasting and merge to form a new network,The CW; the new network immediately named WEWB-TV (channel 45, nowWCWN) its Capital District affiliate after then-ownerTribune Broadcasting signed a ten-year affiliation deal with the new network on most of its WB stations.[20] On February 22,News Corporation announced that it would start up another new broadcast television network called MyNetworkTV; on March 9, it was announced that WNYA would join this network.[21] After having not branded with a channel number during its UPN affiliation, the station chose to call itself "My TV 4 Albany" after its channel position on Time Warner Cable systems. Ironically, nowhere inBerkshire County, Massachusetts is WNYA currently on channel 4; inNorth Adams, that channel is the spot where Boston's CBS affiliateWBZ-TV is located. After MyNetworkTV's launch on September 5, 2006, WNYA aired the last two weeks of UPN programming from 1 to 3 a.m. from Tuesday to Saturday.
A few months after the affiliation change, on December 5, 2006, Freedom Communications purchased WCWN from Tribune, in effect giving it control over three stations in the Capital District.[22] In February 2007, the joint sales agreement with WRGB was terminated,[23] and WNYA moved to a facility inRotterdam that formerly housedWMHT-FM-TV.[24]
In December 2007, WNYA reached an agreement to carry theNew York Yankees' over-the-air television package, which had previously been carried on WXXA-TV.[25] The station hired Dan Murphy, a formerWTEN (channel 10) sports anchor andWOFX (980 AM) host, to host a local pregame show for Yankee telecasts and other local sports broadcasts.[24] Yankee broadcasts remained on WNYA through the 2012 season, after which they migrated to WCWN and WRGB.[26]
On April 18, 2008, WNYA launched its high definition channel on Time Warner Cable in Albany, even though it was not able to transmit its digital signal over the air until 2009. This coincided with the first Yankee baseball broadcast it had the rights to. WNYA switched to digital broadcasting as part of the transition on June 12, 2009. The Albany repeater, WNYA-CA, had a construction permit to perform a "flash-cut" to a low-power digital signal; due to its Class A status, it was not mandated to make the transition until 2015. Around April 20, 2011, WNYA launched its firstdigital subchannel in the form of Tribune Broadcasting'sAntenna TV over Channel 51.2. The new subchannel also began to be simulcast on WNYA-CA in place of WNYA's main programming.[27]
On February 25, 2013,Hubbard Broadcasting announced that it would purchase WNYA to form a duopoly with its local NBC affiliateWNYT, for $2.3 million, pending FCC approval. As the Capital Region does not have enough full-power stations to legally permit a duopoly, Hubbard sought a failed station waiver to acquire the station;[28][29] an avenue that rival CBS affiliate WRGB had used in purchasing CW affiliate WCWN in 2006.[30] Venture had put WNYA up for sale in 2009, but no other potential buyers came forward.[31] The sale did not include class-A station WNYA-CA, which remained with Venture Technologies.[32] Under a clause of the sale of WNYA that required WNYA-CA to use a new call sign that does not feature the letters "N" or "Y",[29] that station becameWEPT-CA on March 8, 2013.[15] On May 29, 2013, the FCC approved the sale of WNYA to Hubbard, with Venture retaining ownership of WEPT-CA.[33][34] The sale was consummated on July 15.[35] WEPT-CA dropped its simulcast of WNYA-DT2 and switched to AMGTV in September 2013, ending its association with WNYA.[36] On December 31, 2015, WNYA addedDecades on subchannel 51.3. On November 1, 2017, WNYA replaced Antenna TV withLight TV on subchannel 51.2.[citation needed]
On April 17, 2006, WRGB began producing an hour-long 7 a.m. newscast on WNYA.[37] The newscast moved to WCWN shortly after Freedom's purchase of that station.[22]
With Hubbard's acquisition of WNYA, the company indicated that it would eventually produce newscasts on the station with an increased emphasis on news for theBerkshires.[31] WNYT once operated a Berkshire County bureau in Pittsfield but closed it after theGreat Recession.[38] The newscast premiered September 16, 2013, with the titleNewsChannel 13 Live at 10 on My 4 Albany.[39] The show airs weeknights for a half hour in a fast-paced format and includes a "Berkshire Moment" segment featuring westernMassachusetts-specific stories with the assistance ofThe Berkshire Eagle.[40] It competes with the firmly established hour long broadcast seen every night on WXXA (produced by WTEN) and another sixty-minute news show on WCWN (a weeknight-only production by WRGB).
The station's signal ismultiplexed:
| Channel | Res. | Aspect | Short name | Programming |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 51.1 | 1080i | 16:9 | WNYA-HD | MyNetworkTV |
| 51.2 | 480i | Movies | Movies! | |
| 51.3 | CatchyC | Catchy Comedy | ||
| 51.4 | H&I | Heroes & Icons |
WNYA shut down its analog signal, overUHF channel 51, on June 12, 2009, the official date on which full-power television stations in the United Statestransitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station "flash-cut" its digital signal into operation onVHF channel 13, usingvirtual channel 51.[42]
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