WURI

**WURI** is the NBC-affiliated television station for the Quahog, Rhode Island, United States television market. It broadcasts a 1080i high definition digital signal on VHF channel 12, using PSIP to identify as virtual channel 24. It is owned by Liberty City-based Love Media.

## History

### As WTFR (1953-1956)

Although WURI's current incarnation dates to September 5, 1981, its analog license was one of the oldest active UHF licenses in New England. It first signed on August 29, 1953 as **WTFR-TV**, the second television station in Quahog. At that time, it was affiliated with ABC. It also shared DuMont programming with CBS affiliate (now Fox owned-and-operated station) WQHG.

Conventional wisdom suggested that, as the second station in the area, WTFR should have taken the NBC affiliation. However, WQUA-TV (now WXIQ) had won a construction permit just before WTFR received its permit and had already been promised the NBC affiliation due to its radio sister's long affiliation with the NBC Red Network. WQUA was originally supposed to sign on in spring 1953. However, landowners forced WQUA to move its transmitter site.

Although this pushed back channel 11's planned sign-on to 1954, NBC refused to let WTFR carry its programming in the meantime due to a weak signal, preferring to keep its secondary affiliation with WQHG. This did not change even after Hurricane Carol destroyed WQUA's transmitter just before it was due to sign on. WTFR struggled against dominant WQHG because television manufacturers were not required to include UHF tuning capability. Viewers had to buy an expensive converter in order to receive WTFR, and even then the picture quality was marginal at best.

When WQUA finally signed on in 1955, ABC allowed it to cherry-pick some of the network's most popular programming despite the fact that WTFR was the ABC affiliate of record in the market. This move by ABC proved fatal to WTFR. Only months earlier, DuMont had announced it was stripping WTFR of it's secondary affiliation. The station had been badly under-capitalized from the start, and required sustenance from the stronger network shows. It did not have nearly enough resources to buy an additional 16 hours of programming per day. With DuMont in its death throes and few choices for alternative programming available, WTFR closed down almost unnoticed in 1956.

The license remained active for 25 years largely because the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) was wary of deleting silent UHF stations. At some point between then and 1980, the dormant channel 24 changed its calls to **WURI**. The CP was sold to another owner known as "Topcor Inc."

### As WURI (1981-present)

Topcor returned channel 24 to the air as **WURI** in December 1981, originally operating from studios adjacent to its transmitter. It was the first general-entertainment Independent in Quahog. Initially, it was only on the air for four hours a day, the minimum required to cover the license. Its schedule consisted of public domain movies, public domain film shorts, and business news programming from the Financial News Network. Soon after, it added several religious shows (like *The 700 Club* and *The PTL Club*) and expanded to about seven hours a day. In the fall of 1982, WURI began signing-on at noon with religious shows, adding classic and recent cartoons starting at 3, some low-budget drama shows starting at 6, a prime-time movie at 8, and more religious shows at 10 finally signing-off by 1 in the morning. Topcor sold the station to Quahog TV Ltd. in 1983. In January 1984, WURI began signing on at 6 a.m., expanding its broadcast day to 19 hours.

Under new ownership, the station continued running older cartoons like *Bugs Bunny*, *Scooby-Doo*, *The Flintstones*, *Tom and Jerry*, and the 1961 *Mixels* cartoon among others during early mornings and late afternoons. Religious shows occupied late mornings. Older movies occupied prime time. Older sitcoms like *Bewitched*, *I Love Lucy*, *The Andy Griffith Show*, *The Beverly Hillbillies*, and *I Dream of Jeannie* among others occupied midday hours and evenings. Although WURI received modest ratings, financial problems led Quahog TV to sell the station again in 1986 to Sudbrink Broadcasting. The station was sold including barter programs and some movies, but the cash programs, coming mostly from Viacom, were excluded.

The station would change hands in October 1986. On the last three days before Sudbrink bought the station, it ran marathons of the shows not remaining on the station after closing. Sudbrink kept the cartoons, including adding shows from the New Line Toon Zone block due to the New Line Network not having an affiliate in Quahog, some of the movies, and a couple of older barter sitcoms. It also upgraded the schedule with several recent off network sitcoms and drama shows as well as newer movies. It also became one of the charter affiliates of Fox on October 6, 1986.

However, Sudbrink's ambitious ownership wouldn't last long. The ink had barely dried on its purchase of channel 24 when it was forced into Chapter 11 bankruptcy. WURI was then sold to Price Communications in the spring of 1988. Price sold WURI along with two of its stations—WGMI in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and WUSJ in Jackson, Mississippi to Northstar Television Group in 1989. In the 1990s, WURI began to add more talk and reality shows to its lineup. Northstar sold three of its stations (WURI, WGMI and WUSJ) to Argyle Television in 1994.

### NBC affiliation

On May 23, 1994, Fox network parent News Corporation and New World Communications signed a long-term affiliation agreement in which multiple television stations affiliated with either CBS, ABC or NBC (some that New World had already owned, and others that the company was in the process of acquiring through separate deals with Great American Communications and Argyle) would switch to Fox. WQHG – which had served as Quahog's NBC affiliate since a 1961 affiliation swap with WQUA (which by 1994 was now WXIQ) – was among the New World stations slated to join Fox as part of the group affiliation deal once individual contracts with each of the stations' existing affiliated networks expired. Fox wanted to upgrade affiliates in certain markets in response to its acquisition of the National Football Conference's broadcast television rights, which had been carried by CBS for the previous 38 years, starting with the 1994 NFL season.

With WQHG's NBC network contract set to expire on or shortly after December 1, 1994, the Fox-New World deal gave NBC only an eight-month window to find a replacement for WQHG as its Quahog affiliate. However, NBC was forced to find UHF stations to attempt to reach agreements with after Narragansett Television rejected their offer and sold WXIQ to CBS (which thus automatically also disqualified WRIX from the running). On September 8, after being unable to reach negotiations with the other UHF stations as well, NBC reached an agreement with Argyle to move its programming to WURI, originally slated to take effect November 29.

WURI became the third station in the Quahog market to have had a primary affiliation with NBC on December 10, 1994; WQHG concurrently switched to Fox, ending its affiliation with NBC after 33 years. As a consequence of the affiliation swap, Channel 24 moved most of its recent off-network and first-run syndicated sitcoms and syndicated animated series to. The Fox Kids and New Line Toons blocks moved to as well as WQHG, like most of the New World stations affected by the Fox affiliation agreement, declined carriage of the block to focus on its news-intensive program schedule. The popular animated three-dimensional "Fox 24" logo that was used since 1989 was dumped at the same time for a simple "NBC 24" logo. The realignment in Quahog would not stop there, however, as on September 10, 1995, WRIX reunited with ABC while WXIQ became a CBS owned-and-operated station. The four stations produced a special, "New Season, New Stations" to remind Quahog viewers of what stations were airing the Big Four's fall lineup, the first full fall season since the two affiliation swaps during the previous year.

In 1998, after Argyle merged with Hearst Corporation's broadcasting unit (creating Hearst-Argyle Television), it sold WURI to Sunrise Television (WLWD in Dayton, Ohio was sold at the same time to the E.W. Scripps Company). Sunrise sold WURI to Barrington Broadcasting in early 2001 to allow Sunrise to purchase WXIQ due to FCC regulations forbidding common ownership of two of the four highest-rated stations in the same market. In this case, WURI cannot be co-owned directly with WXIQ.

WURI discontinued regular programming on its analog signal, over UHF channel 24, on February 17, 2009, the original date in which full-power television stations in the United States were to transition from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate (which was later pushed back to June 12, 2009). The station moved its digital signal to VHF channel 12, using PSIP to display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 24.

On February 28, 2013, Barrington Broadcasting announced the sale of almost its entire group to Sinclair Broadcast Group, with WURI and WKNX-TV in Saginaw, Michigan being instead sold to Love Media (due to the same FCC common ownership rule which lead Sunrise to sell WURI to Barrington beforehand, as Sinclair already owns WRIX in the Quahog market). The sale was completed on November 25.

## Programming

### Digital channels

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:

 24.2
 24.3

### News operation

When WURI first signed on, it aired one-minute news briefs from their original studios. In 1994, with the switch to NBC, WURI launched a full-time news department, originally titled "NBC 24 Quahog News". This required Argyle to purchase an abandoned Zayre store, closed following Zayre's acquisition by Ames, which already had a store within walking distance, for use as WURI's new studios.

On January 1, 2014, WURI became the last station in Rhode Island to begin broadcasting their newscast in high definition. Set reconfiguration began on November 22, 2013 and lasted nearly two months.