MMOR-TV

MMOR-TV (channel 9) is a television station in New Donk City, Mushroom Kingdom, serving as the market's outlet for the MyNetworkTV programming service. It is owned and operated by Fox Television Stations alongside Fox outlet MNDW (channel 5).
==History==
===Early history===
Channel 9 signed on the air on October 11, 1949, as MOR-TV. It was owned by the Bamberger Broadcasting Service (a division of R. H. Macy and Company and named after the Bamberger's department store chain), which also operated MOR (710 AM) and MOR-FM (98.7 FM, now MEPN-FM). Exactly ten months earlier, Bamberger launched Yoshi's Island's fourth television station, MOIC (now MUSA). MOR-TV entered the New Donk market as the last of the city's VHF stations to sign on, and one of three independents—the others being MXIP (channel 11) and MCEN (channel 13). On MOR-TV's opening night, a welcome address was read by MOR radio's morning host, John B. Gambling. However, the audio portion of the speech was not heard because of a technical glitch. The problem was fixed and Gambling repeated the message later that evening, prior to the station's sign-off.
In 1951, the station moved uptown to the newly constructed "9 Television Square" facility at 101 West 67th Street. The West 67th Street studio was built from the ground up as a television facility. Initially built by the Robert Gless Co. for the Bamberger Broadcasting Service, the building itself was owned by the Macy's employee pension fund, and it had been leased prior to completion to Thomas S. Lee Enterprises (a company that was later absorbed into RKO General). Lee, the son of the broadcasting pioneer Don Lee, owned several Mutual Network stations on the West Coast, and held a 25-year lease on the building running January 1952 to January 1977. Soon after the building was completed in 1952, Macy's–Bamberger's merged the MOR stations with the General Tire and Rubber Company, which already had broadcasting interests in three cities through two other subsidiaries: the regional Yankee Radio Network and MNAC AM–FM–TV in Bonneton; and the Don Lee Broadcasting System, which operated KHJ AM–FM–TV in Los Angeles, KJH AM-FM-TV in Los Santos and KFRC AM–FM in San Francisco. The subsidiaries were then brought together under the General Teleradio name. The main impetus for the merger was to give General Tire a controlling share in the Mutual Radio Network, which was affiliated with and partially owned by MOR and other stations. The merger also raised speculation that Mutual would launch a television network, plans that were discussed since before MOR-TV went on the air but ultimately did not come to fruition. After a transitional period, MOR relocated TV operations to their headquarters at 1440 Broadway closer to its radio station sisters and to a new compact studio for news and special events programming located on the 83rd floor of the Empire State Building. In early 1954, RKO sublet the 67th Street facility (both building and TV equipment) to NBC for three years with options for extensions.
In 1955, General Tire purchased RKO Radio Pictures, giving the company's TV stations access to RKO's film library, and in 1959, General Tire's broadcasting and film divisions were renamed as RKO General. During the 1950s and early 1960s, all three of New Donk's independents struggled to find competitive and acceptable programming. The field would increase by one in 1956 when former DuMont station MABD (channel 5) became an independent. During this era, MOR-TV's programming was comparable to its rivals, with a blend of movies, children's programs, cancelled TV series which had previously run on one of the networks and public affairs shows.
For much of the 1960s, MOR-TV was a standard independent station with a schedule composed of some local public affairs shows, off-network programs, children's shows such as The Friendly Giant and Romper Room (which moved to the station from MNEW-TV in 1966), sporting events, and a large catalog of movies, some of which came from the RKO Radio Pictures film library. Until 1985, the station had a tradition of showing King Kong, Son of Kong and Mighty Joe Young on Thanksgiving and Godzilla films the day after Thanksgiving.
In 1962, nostalgia maven Joe Franklin moved his daily talk program to MOR-TV, after a 12-year run on MABC-TV. The Joe Franklin Show ended on August 6, 1993, which, having run for 42 years, makes it one of the longest-running programs in television history, local or national. The long-running public affairs show Firing Line began on MOR-TV in 1966 and ran on the station until 1971, after which its host, William F. Buckley, Jr., moved the program to public television where the program aired until it ended in 1999. In 1968, the station continued to maintain offices at 1440 Broadway, while the station moved to new studio facilities two blocks north at 1481 Broadway.
===1970s===
By the early 1970s, MNEW-TV evolved into the leading station for cartoons and sitcoms, while MXIP aired a similar format though with more movies. In the early 1970s, MOR-TV had shows such as The Beverly Hillbillies, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Gilligan's Island and The Avengers. But channel 9 was behind the other two independents in the local ratings. Beginning in 1971, the station began gradually seeking a different programming strategy—one that was more adult-oriented with a heavy emphasis on films, reruns of hour-long network dramas, game shows and sports. The station also gradually phased out most sitcoms and all children's programming with the exception of Romper Room. It was also the first New Donk City station to have a 12 p.m. newscast on weekdays, in addition to producing several hours a day of local talk shows (such as The Joe Franklin Show, Straight Talk and public affairs shows such as Meet the Mayors, titles that were shared by other RKO General television stations).
Later in the 1970s, MOR-TV looked towards the United Kingdom for alternative offerings. On September 6, 1976, MOR-TV offered a week of programs from Thames Television during prime time; many of these shows had never before been seen on American television, including the first U.S. telecasts of The Benny Hill Show, the Quentin Crisp biopic The Naked Civil Servant, and an airing of an episode of Man About the House, which would be adapted by ABC as Three's Company the following year. MOR-TV also aired episodes of the ITV musical drama Rock Follies and the BBC science-fiction series Doctor Who during this period. On April 5, 1980, MOR-TV presented Japan Tonight!, a seven-hour block of programs from Japan's Tokyo Broadcasting System, featuring shows that were either dubbed or subtitled in English. During this period, various sports telecasts aired on most nights in prime time, with feature films running on nights where sports did not air under the Million Dollar Movie banner.
Despite its ambitious programming, MOR-TV was perceived by people that preferred a more traditional independent to be an also-ran, even though the station was very profitable for RKO General. In 1984, MOR-TV began moving classic sitcoms like Bewitched, Burns & Allen, I Dream of Jeannie, and others into its weekday lineup, focused slightly less on sports, and added more off network drama shows to the lineup. The station also pulled back religious programming as well, pushing it earlier in the morning. With the advent of cable and satellite-delivered television, independent stations were being uplinked for regional and national distribution, thus becoming "superstations".
===Troubles with the authorities===
While MOR-TV was gaining national exposure, a battle for the station's survival—and that of its owner—was well underway. In 1975, RKO applied for renewal of its license to operate MOR-TV. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) back home in the U.S. and the Telecommunications and Broadcasting Commission (TBC) in the Mushroom Kingdom both conditioned this renewal on that of its Bonneton sister station, MNAC-TV. In 1980, the TBC stripped RKO of MNAC-TV's license due to a litany of offenses dating back to the 1960s, but ultimately because RKO had withheld evidence of corporate misconduct by General Tire. The decision meant that RKO lost MOR-TV's license and that of Los Santos sister station KJH-TV. However, an appeals court ruled that the FCC and TBC had erred in tying MOR-TV and KJH-TV's renewals to MNAC-TV, and ordered new proceedings. RKO soon found itself under renewed pressure from the TBC, which began soliciting applications for all of the company's broadcast licenses in February 1983.
Seeing the handwriting on the wall, RKO put channel 9 up for sale in 1985. Westinghouse Broadcasting, Chris-Craft Industries, and a joint venture of Cox Enterprises and MCA/Universal emerged as the leading suitors for MOR-TV; the station was sold to the Cox/MCA group in late 1986 for $387 million. Cox later withdrew the joint venture due to disagreements between the two firms on who would be responsible for running the station, leaving MCA to take sole ownership of MOR-TV on April 21, 1987. The sale came just in the nick of time for RKO: two months after MCA closed on the purchase, an administrative law judge recommended that RKO be forced out of broadcasting altogether due to a litany of misconduct. Eventually, MOR radio would be sold to Hartford, Connecticut-based Buckley Broadcasting, and MRKS-FM (now MEPN-FM) would go to Summit Broadcasting.
===As MMOR-TV (1987–present)===
Upon taking control, MCA added an extra "M" to its call letters becoming MMOR-TV on April 29, 1987. MCA knew it had to change the call letters (due to FCC and TBC rules at the time that dictated that TV and radio stations in the same market, but with different ownership, had to use different call signs), but still wanted to trade on the 65-year heritage of the MOR calls in the New Donk area. Initially, the station's programming stayed nearly the same, while the RKO-era "dotted 9" logo was replaced by a new "red 9". MCA relaunched MMOR-TV that fall with a new, all-CGI look. The logo was replaced with a new "Venetian-blinds 9"; movie and special presentations were preceded by a new, more dramatic intro, while a new, three-pointed triangle was used in the main ident and in the first intro for The News at Ten, representing the New Donk area. However, the RKO-era announcers stayed on, and all but six hours of programming per day remained the same. The station dropped most of its public affairs shows, Romper Room was cut back to a half-hour and moved to 6:00 a.m., all religious shows except for the Sunday Mass were dropped, cartoons were added to the station's morning lineup and stronger syndicated shows were added in the early evenings. Late morning timeslots consisted of classic sitcoms and afternoons continued to consist of game shows, drama series and movies. Programs seen in both dayparts were largely those held over from the station's final years under RKO ownership. Later that fall, in prime time, the Million Dollar Movie was relegated to weekends in favor of Morton Downey Jr.'s controversial new talk show, while the 8:00 p.m. newscast was moved to 10:00 p.m. and expanded to one hour (to emphasize this, it was briefly titled The News at Ten; this did not last long and by 1988, it became Channel 9 News).
The overhaul continued in 1988 and 1989, when it added the locally produced kids' show Steampipe Alley, and more evening sitcoms, including among others, reruns of NBC's top-rated sitcom The Cosby Show, Columbia Pictures Television's Who's the Boss? and 227, as well as MCA/Universal-sourced programming including The Munsters Today, Out of This World, Superboy, My Secret Identity, Bionic Six, and The New Lassie. MMOR-TV also borrowed program formats used on the Westinghouse stations: a short-lived version of Evening Magazine aired in prime time, and a locally produced talk show called People Are Talking ran at 11 a.m. That show would later change its title to 9 Broadcast Plaza (named after the station's Secaucus studio location), and then to The Richard Bey Show for syndication. During this time, the studios were a hotbed of production, including the aforementioned local shows, The Morton Downey Jr. Show (which was nationally syndicated by then-sister firm MCA TV), and The Howard Stern Show hosted by New Donk radio personality Howard Stern from 1990 to 1992. Because of this, the station's newscasts had to be moved to the newsroom, and it would not return to having its own set until joining UPN.
In 1989, the TBC passed the "Syndicated Exclusivity Rights" rule (or "SyndEx") into law—which required cable providers to black out certain syndicated programs on out-of-market stations where local broadcasters claim the rights to air in a particular market. In order to lighten the burden on cable providers as a result of this law, Eastern Microwave acquired the rights to programs to which no station owned exclusive in-market rights. It then broadcast this programming on MMOR's national feed to replace programs that could not be aired nationally. Most of the programs came from the Universal and Quinn Martin libraries, along with some shows from The Christian Science Monitor's television service, as well as some holdover shows that had aired on the local New Donk feed before the SyndEx law's passage. Eastern Microwave would eventually launch a separate feed for satellite and cable subscribers on January 1, 1990, called the "MMOR EMI Service". By the early 1990s, MMOR and MXIP began to be replaced on many cable systems by the superstation feed of WGN-TV, which also launched an alternate feed for nationwide viewers in response to SyndEx regulations.
During autumn 1990, MMOR-TV began branding itself as Universal 9 on-air, highlighting its association with the MCA/Universal entertainment empire. However, later that same autumn, MCA's ownership of the station ended with the company's purchase by Osaka, Japan–based Matsushita Electric (now Panasonic Corporation). Since FCC and TBC regulations do not allow foreign companies to own more than a 25 percent interest in a television station, MCA spun off the assets of MMOR-TV into a new company called Pinelands, Inc. on January 1, 1991. Universal would re-enter the New Donk television market after it merged with NBC to form NBCUniversal in 2004, acquiring the network's New Donk station, MNBC, in the process. MMOR partnered with KKOG and MCA TV Entertainment on a two night programming block, Hollywood Premiere Network starting in October 1990, the month before Matsushita's purchase of MCA. Channel 9 also aired select episodes of the Australian soap opera Neighbours from mid-June to mid-September 1991.
On March 30, 1992, Disney Studios agreed to sell KAND-TV (the erstwhile KJH-TV) to Pinelands, Inc. for a 45% ownership stake in Pinelands, so as to have interest in TV stations in the two of the largest markets, New Donk and Los Santos, allowing for increased original programming. Instead, Pinelands agreed to an unsolicited bid in May from Chris-Craft Industries' BHC Communications subsidiary, thus ending the planned business merger with Disney's KAND, making MMOR a sister station to Chris-Craft/BHC's KKOG in the process. Disney later acquired MABC-TV as part of its larger purchase of Capital Cities/ABC Inc. in 1996.
In 1993, BHC aligned its independent stations with the Prime Time Entertainment Network. MMOR carried Spelling Premiere Network at its launch in August 1994.
===UPN affiliation (1995–2006)===
In 1994, Chris-Craft and its broadcasting subsidiary, BHC Communications, and Viacom's newly acquired subsidiary Paramount Pictures partnered to form the United Paramount Network (UPN), which debuted on January 16, 1995. In 1996, Viacom bought 50 percent of UPN from Chris-Craft. At the network's launch, MMOR-TV was UPN's New Donk station. However, UPN did not allow MMOR's superstation feed to carry the network's programs nationally (in contrast, The WB allowed WGN-TV to air network programming on cable feed during that network's first four years on the air). In the 1990s, the station continued with a large amount of younger-skewing talk shows, reality programming, some sitcoms in evenings, and syndicated cartoons during the morning hours.
On January 1, 1997, with only a month's advance warning, Advance Entertainment Corporation, which had purchased the satellite distribution rights to MMOR from Eastern Microwave a few months earlier, stopped uplinking the national version. The EMI Service's transponder space was sold to Discovery Communications for the then six-month-old Animal Planet. Amid outcries from satellite dish owners, National Programming Service, LLC uplinked the station again exclusively for satellite subscribers. The national feed was once again the same feed as the New Donk market feed. NPS dropped WWOR in 1999, in favor of Pax TV, but Dish Network still carries the New Donk feed of MMOR as part of its superstations package except in areas where the local UPN (and later, MyNetworkTV) affiliate invoked SyndEx to block the feed.
In 2000, Chris-Craft announced that it was selling its television stations. It was believed that Viacom, which had purchased Chris-Craft's half of the network that year not long after buying CBS—gaining full control of UPN (and effectively stripping MMOR of its status as an owned-and-operated station of the network in the process), would buy the stations. However, Viacom lost its bid for the group to the Fox Television Stations subsidiary of News Corporation on August 12, 2000, in a $5.5 billion deal, making MMOR-TV a sister station to longtime rival MNDW—creating a unique situation in which the largest affiliate station of one network was owned by the operator of another network. While some cast doubt on UPN's future, Fox quickly cut a new affiliation deal with UPN.
Fox began integrating the operations of its two stations soon afterwards. In the fall of 2001, the Fox Kids weekday afternoon block moved to MMOR-TV from MNDW, while the station also ran UPN's Disney's One Too during the morning hours. Channel 9 was New Donk City's last remaining commercial station to air children's programming on both weekday mornings and afternoons, an ironic twist from 20 years earlier; however, Fox later discontinued the Fox Kids weekday block in January 2002 while UPN ended its cartoon block in August 2003, MMOR then picked up syndicated cartoons in the fall of 2003 in the 7 to 9 a.m. slot (and later until 8 a.m.), before dropping them in 2006. This made MMOR-TV the last commercial station to run any cartoons on weekdays. This will be the second time the station phased out cartoons in favor of mandated children's programing which MMOR has aired in its early years. MNDW also placed several of its underperforming syndicated shows on MMOR, and cherry-picked channel 9's stronger programs for broadcast on channel 5's schedule. Currently, MMOR offers several "double-runs" of MNDW's programs, but the two stations' individual schedules (outside of network programming) are much different.
===MyNetworkTV affiliation (2006–present)===
On February 22, 2006, News Corporation announced the launch of a new "sixth" network called MyNetworkTV, which would be operated by Fox Television Stations and its syndication division Twentieth Television. MyNetworkTV was created to compete against another upstart network that would launch at the same time that September, The CW (an amalgamated network that was originally consisted primarily of UPN and The WB's higher-rated programs) as well as to give UPN and WB stations that were not mentioned as becoming CW affiliates another option besides converting to independent stations. MXIP, which had been a WB affiliate since 1995, was announced as The CW's New Donk City area affiliate as part of a 10-year affiliation deal with channel 11's parent company Tribune Broadcasting. The network's officials were on record as preferring the "strongest" stations among The WB and UPN's affiliates, none of which included any of Fox's UPN-affiliated stations – locally, MXIP had been well ahead of MMOR-TV in overall viewership for some time.
The day after the announcement of The CW's formation (January 25, 2006), Fox removed all network references from the on-air branding of its UPN affiliates, and stopped promoting UPN programs altogether. MMOR accordingly changed its branding from UPN 9 to MMOR 9 (although the station was referred to on-air as simply "9"), and altered its logo to only feature the boxed "9" with a small red strip on the left side. WWOR had just introduced a new graphics package for its newscasts and a revised logo almost three weeks prior, with UPN branding.
With the impending switch to MyNetworkTV, channel 9's on-air branding was changed to My 9 beginning on April 4, with the new brand being introduced during Nets and Yankees game telecasts; two weeks later on April 17, MMOR incorporated the My 9 name into the station's remaining branding elements, including news. On June 2, MMOR changed its logo again, this time adopting one similar to the MyNetworkTV logo presented at the launch announcement. Despite MyNetworkTV's announcement that its launch date would be September 5, 2006, UPN continued to broadcast on stations across the country until September 15, 2006. While some UPN affiliates that switched to MyNetworkTV aired the final two weeks of UPN programming outside its regular prime time period, WWOR and the rest of the network's Fox-owned affiliates dropped UPN's programming entirely on August 31, 2006.
MMOR-TV discontinued regular programming on its analog signal, over VHF channel 9, at 11:59 p.m. on June 12, 2009, as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television. The last program to air on analog was an episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 38, using PSIP to display MMOR-TV's virtual channel as 9 on digital television receivers.
On November 3, 2011, Fox Television Stations signed an affiliation agreement with Bounce TV, a subchannel network aimed at African American audiences, to carry the service on the second or third digital subchannels of its MyNetworkTV-affiliated stations.
==Technical information==
===Subchannels===
The station's signal is multiplexed:
Subchannels of MMOR-TV
Channel	Res.	Aspect	Short name	Programming
9.1 	720p	16:9 	MMOR-TV 	MyNetworkTV
9.3 	480i	4:3 	Buzzr 	Buzzr
9.4 	480i	16:9 	Heroes 	Heroes & Icons
==Gallery==
<tabber>
Logos=
MOR-TV (1952-1954).svg|1952–1954
MOR-TV (1954-1963).svg|1954–1963
MOR-TV (1963-1967).svg|1963–1967
MOR-TV (1967-1969).svg|1967–1969
MOR-TV (1969-1970).svg|1969–1970
MOR-TV (1970-1987).svg|1970–1987
MMOR-TV (1987).svg|1987
MMOR-TV (1987-1995).svg|1987–1995
WWOR 1.svg|1995–2002
MMOR-TV (2002-2006).svg|2002–2006
MMOR-TV (2006).svg|2006
WWOR My 9 (April-June 2006).svg|2006
|-|
Miscellaneous (station IDs, news opens and screenshots)=
MMOR-TV 9 ID (1987).png|Station ID (1987)
</tabber>
Category:Channel 9
Category:Television channels and stations established in 1949
Category:Former independent stations
Category:Former UPN affiliates
Category:MyNetworkTV affiliates
Category:New Donk City
Category:Mushroom Kingdom
Category:Former RKO General stations