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| City | Worcester, Massachusetts |
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| Channels | |
| Branding | UniMás Boston |
| Programming | |
| Affiliations |
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| Ownership | |
| Owner |
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| WUNI | |
| History | |
First air date | January 1, 1970; 55 years ago (1970-01-01) |
Former call signs |
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Former channel number(s) |
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Call sign meaning | Univision Telefutura (UniMás was formerly named Telefutura) |
| Technical information[1] | |
Licensing authority | FCC |
| Facility ID | 30577 |
| ERP |
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| HAAT |
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| Transmitter coordinates | |
| Links | |
Public license information | |
| Website | www |
WUTF-TV (channel 27) is atelevision station licensed toWorcester, Massachusetts, United States, broadcasting the Spanish-languageUniMás network to theBoston area. It is owned byEntravision Communications, which provides certain services toUnivision-owned stationWUNI (channel 66) under ajoint sales agreement (JSA) withTelevisaUnivision. WUTF-TV's studios are located on 4th Avenue, and its transmitter is located on Cedar Street, both inNeedham.
The station first signed on the air on January 1, 1970, as WSMW-TV, anindependent station based in Worcester that featuredEnglish-language general entertainment programs including oldmovies (including the entire series ofAbbott and Costello movies and theBowery Boys/Dead-End Kids movies starringHuntz Hall),cartoons,religious shows (including the Jacob Brothers andThe PTL Club), acooking show (Cooking with Bernard),science fiction shows (such asUFO),dramas (includingMaverick andThriller), as well as sitcoms (includingThe Phil Silvers Show andPetticoat Junction). Though WSMW-TV was within the Boston market, it was far enough from Boston itself that the station was able to air some of the same shows as the Boston stations, in a similar situation toWMUR-TV (channel 9), theABC affiliate inManchester, New Hampshire. The station's call letters stood for State Mutual (Insurance Co.) in Worcester, the corporate owner of the station.
WSMW also broadcast sports programs; from its debut through the end of the1971–72 NBA season, the station was the television home of theBoston Celtics. In 1970 and 1971, WSMW broadcast (same-weekendtape-delayed coverage of)New England Patriots preseason games. WSMW also offered extensive coverage ofcollege basketball throughout the 1970s, mostly games of theCollege of the Holy Cross andAssumption College, with someBoston College,University of Massachusetts Amherst, andBentley College games included on the schedule. The broadcast team of play-by-play manBob Fouracre and analystBob Cousy worked these games. During the college football season, the station carried a taped two-hour broadcast of a game from earlier in the day on Saturday nights at 10:30 pm. These games were typically Holy Cross home games, and when Holy Cross was on the road, games from UMass. Fouracre worked these games, and the analyst most of the time wasGino Cappelletti. WSMW also broadcastBay State Bowling, a weeklycandlepin bowling program on Sunday evenings for most of the 1970s, which was hosted by Fouracre.
In 1970, shortly after the cancellation of the long-runningBozo's Circus onWHDH-TV, WSMW-TV debuted their own version of theBozo the Clown series franchise,Bozo's Big Top. Tom Matzell played Bozo, alongside Gene Sanocki as Bozo's sidekick Professor Tweetyfoofer. Local children were featured on the program daily, with many waiting up to one year or more for their chance to be on the show. This version aired until 1974.
In the fall of 1980, channel 27 began running thesubscription television servicePreview at night after 7 pm. In February 1983, the station expanded Preview to begin weekday programming at 5 p.m. and 2 p.m. weekends. Then on July 1, 1983, the station dropped all of its entertainment programs and began running Preview 21 hours a day, with the remaining hours from 6 to 9 a.m. devoted to religious andpublic affairs programming. In the spring of 1985, WSMW cut Preview's broadcast hours down to 7 p.m. to 3 a.m. on weekdays and after 3 p.m. on weekends; it also brought back some general entertainment programs. Hill Broadcasting bought the station in late 1985, and changed the station's call letters to WHLL. At that time, WHLL dropped Preview and reverted to being a general-entertainment independent full-time.
Initially, WHLL's schedule consisted ofB-grade movies, drama series, public domain cartoons and a few sitcoms, as well as religious programs. While the station again initially shared some of its programming with Boston stations, by the fall of 1986 the duplication had largely been eliminated, and WHLL began to market itself as a Boston station. When cartoons and sitcoms were gone around 1987, the station began running preemptednetwork programming fromNBC, ABC, andCBS (that were declined byWBZ-TV channel 4;WCVB-TV channel 5; and WNEV-TV channel 7, nowWHDH), which had previously aired on Boston's WQTV (channel 68, nowWBPX-TV) and started airing shows from theBBC and Australia'sNine Network as well as new cartoons. WHLL also began running some first-run syndicated shows by 1988, as well as a good amount of religious programming. During the station's tenure as WHLL, it employedWMJX radio personality David Allan Boucher as itsbooth announcer.
In 1992, the station added Spanish programming as a part-time affiliate ofTelemundo, with the network's programming running from 4 or 5 p.m. until about 1 am. By 1993, when the Jasas Corporation acquired the Hill Broadcasting stations, WHLL ran Spanish-language programs after noon; much of the remaining English-language programming consisted of preempted network shows and religious programs. That year, the station became anUnivision affiliate and changed itscall letters to WUNI. In 1995, the station began carrying Spanish language programming full-time. The station was purchased byEntravision Communications in 2000.
On February 18, 2011,Rhode Island cable provider Full Channel TV, Inc. (now known as i3 Broadband) dropped WUNI from its systems and replaced the station with Univision's national feed on itsdigital cable tier; the impetus for the removal was a breakdown in negotiations over claims that Entravision demanded "a 33% increase inretransmission fees" as a cash payment to renew its carriage deal with WUNI.[3]
On December 4, 2017, as part of a multi-market realignment, the programming and call signs of WUNI and sister station WUTF were swapped: WUNI and its Univision programming moved to the Univision-owned facility using digital channel 27 and virtual channel 66, while Entravision's digital channel 29 and virtual channel 27 facility became the new home of UniMás affiliate WUTF.[4]
As WSMW, the station produced a nightly 6 p.m. newscast. This program was anchored byDoug White;Walter Cryan ofWPRI-TV inProvidence, Rhode Island, liked White's work on the newscast and hired him away from WSMW-TV; White subsequently became a longtime news anchor at another Providence station,WJAR.
On April 1, 2003, WUNI launched a half-hour local newscast,Noticias Univision Nueva Inglaterra (Univision News New England), at 6 pm. Sara Suarez was brought from Univision'sDenverowned-and-operated stationKCEC to serve as anchor andnews director. Angel Salcedo, who hosted WUNI's public affairs programEnfoque Latino for several years, was chosen as Suarez's co-anchor. However, Salcedo left the station shortly afterwards, leaving Suarez as the sole anchor until Carlos Ruben Zapata was hired as Salcedo's replacement. In 2005, Zapata left the station and eventually hired Eduardo Guerrero as co-anchor late that year. Before the newscast debuted, the station signed a news share agreement withNew England Cable News, in which the regional cable news channel provided news footage. In addition, several commercial spots for NECN aired on WUNI and WUTF-TV, targeted at both stations' Hispanic audience.
The agreement with NECN expired in mid-2005, WUNI then signed a content sharing agreement withCBS owned-and-operated stationWBZ-TV (channel 4). WBZ is acknowledged with an on-air credit when news footage supplied by the station appears on WUNI's newscasts, as well as at the end of the broadcast, before the copyright tag.
In April 2007, WUNI began producing news updates under the titleDespierta Boston (which was anchored by Maria Gonzalez), during Univision's morning news/talk programDespierta América at :25 minutes past the hour from 7 to 9 am. The station used a modified version of theDespierta America logo branding, while using an alteration of the graphics and music package used on the 6 p.m. newscast. WhileDespierta Boston was relatively successful, economic problems led to Entravision discontinuing the morning updates in early 2009. The station also laid off Eduardo Guerrero (once again resulting in Sara Suarez anchoring solo) and 10-year veteran sports journalist Omar Cabrera.
The station's signal ismultiplexed:
| Channel | Res. | Aspect | Short name | Programming |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 27.1 | 1080i | 16:9 | WUTF-TV | UniMás |
| 27.2 | 480i | LATV | LATV | |
| 27.3 | TheNest | The Nest | ||
| 27.4 | JTV | Jewelry TV |
WUTF (as WUNI) shut down its analog signal, overUHF channel 27, 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's digital signal continued to broadcast on its pre-transition UHF channel 29, usingvirtual channel 27.[6]
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| Location | Boylston, Massachusetts |
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| Tower height | 400 m (1,312 ft) |
| Coordinates | 42°20′9″N71°42′55″W / 42.33583°N 71.71528°W /42.33583; -71.71528 |
| Built | 1969 |
TheEntravision tower is a former televisionbroadcast tower located inBoylston, Massachusetts. It is the tallest broadcast tower in Massachusetts, standing 400 meters (1,312 ft) above ground level, and 613 meters (2,011 ft) above mean sea level.[7] The tower is owned by Entravision Communications and formerly broadcast WUNI (Now WUTF) until its move to Needham.[8]