

Despite WOR-TV's and WPIX's eventual statuses as national superstations, WNEW-TV was the highest-rated independent in New York.

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The station also carried movies, cartoons, off-network sitcoms and drama series and a primetime newscast at 10 p.m.īy the 1970s, channel 5 was one of the strongest independent stations in the country. In the 1970s, local programming also included a weekly public affairs show hosted by Gabe Pressman, and Midday Live, a daily talk/information show hosted by Lee Leonard, and later by Bill Boggs. WNEW-TV also originated The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon in 1966, and broadcast the program annually until 1986, when it moved to WWOR-TV, where it aired through 2012. Bob McAllister took over hosting Wonderama in 1967 and by 1970, Wonderama was syndicated to the other Metromedia stations. In the early 1960s, WNEW-TV produced children's shows such as Romper Room (until 1966, when it moved to WOR-TV), The Sandy Becker Show and The Sonny Fox Show, which was later known as Wonderama.
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However, the Metropolitan Broadcasting name was retained for Metromedia's TV and radio station properties until 1967. Metropolitan Broadcasting began expanding its holdings across the United States, and would change its corporate name to Metromedia in 1961. Four months later, on September 7, 1958, WABD's call letters were changed to WNEW-TV to match its radio sisters. The final major corporate transaction involving the station during 1958 occurred in December, when Washington-based investor John Kluge acquired Paramount Pictures' controlling interest in Metropolitan Broadcasting and appointed himself as the company's chairman. In May 1958, DuMont Broadcasting changed its name to the Metropolitan Broadcasting Corporation in an effort to distinguish itself from its former corporate parent. Channel 5 gained sister stations in 1957, when DuMont purchased WNEW (1130 AM) in April of that year, and the construction permit for WHFI, which went on the air as WNEW-FM (102.7 FM) when it began operations in August 1958. After DuMont wound down network operations in August 1955, DuMont Laboratories spun off WABD and WTTG into a new firm, the DuMont Broadcasting Corporation. WABD thus became the New York market's fourth independent station, alongside WOR-TV (channel 9), WPIX (channel 11) and Newark-licensed WATV (channel 13). station WTTG (also operating on channel 5) as independent stations, having previously sold WDTV in Pittsburgh to the locally-based Westinghouse Electric Corporation the Westinghouse sale, arguably, hastened DuMont's demise. On June 14, 1954, WABD and DuMont moved into the $5 million DuMont Tele-Centre at 205 East 67th Street in Manhattan's Lenox Hill neighborhood, inside the shell of the space formerly occupied by Jacob Ruppert's Central Opera House channel 5 is still headquartered in the same building as of 2018, which was later renamed the Metromedia TeleCenter, and is now known as the Fox Television Center.īy February 1955, DuMont realized it could not continue in network television, and decided to shut down the network's operations and operate WABD and its Washington, D.C. DuMont began regular network service in 1946 with WABD as the flagship station. These hookups were the beginning of the DuMont Television Network, the world's first licensed commercial television network (although NBC was feeding a few programs and special events from their New York station WNBT to outlets in Philadelphia and Schenectady as early as 1940). Soon after channel 5 received its commercial license, DuMont Laboratories began a series of experimental coaxial cable hookups between WABD and W3XWT, a DuMont-owned experimental station in Washington, D.C. WNBT took over Channel 4, moving from Channel 1, which the FCC was deallocating from the VHF TV broadcast band. On December 17, 1945, WABD moved to channel 5. The station originally broadcast from the DuMont Building at 515 Madison Avenue with a transmission tower atop the building (the original tower, long abandoned by the station, still remains). It was one of the few television stations that continued to broadcast during World War II, making it the fourth-oldest continuously broadcasting commercial station in the United States.
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On May 2, 1944, the station received its commercial license – the third in New York City – on VHF channel 4 as WABD, its callsign named after DuMont's initials.

DuMont founded experimental station W2XVT in Passaic, New Jersey (whose callsign was later changed to W2XWV when it moved to Manhattan in 1940). The station traces its history to 1938, when television set and equipment manufacturer Allen B.
