WNNJ-TV

**WNNJ-TV**, virtual channel 28 (UHF digital channel 29), is a CW-affiliated television station licensed to Seymour Bay, New Jersey, United States. The station is owned by the Tribune Broadcasting subsidiary of the Tribune Media Company.

## History

### As an independent station and Fox affiliate

WNNJ first signed on the air on November 4, 1968, under the ownership of Japanese Hanafuda card producer Nintendo, which at the time also owned Toad Harbor station WNTV. The station carried the *Stock Market Observer*, a daytime business news programming block that aired each weekday morning and afternoon from 7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and was dropped after one year; it also carried a broad mix of general entertainment programming during the late-afternoon and evening hours, consisting of a mix of feature films, off-network syndicated programs, sporting events as well as Japanese cartoons dubbed into English (including *Speed Racer* and *Johnny Cypher in Dimension Zero*). It also carried some local programming including children's program *The Bozo Show* (a localized version of the *Bozo the Clown* franchise featuring a mix of locally produced and syndicated segments).

Nintendo opted to keep WNNJ after it sold WNTV to Ted Turner in 1970. By this point, channel 28 had become a typical UHF independent outlet, whose programming slate consisted of off-network classic sitcoms (such as *The Brady Bunch*, *McHale's Navy* and *The Andy Griffith Show*); drama series (such as *Star Trek*); cartoons (such as Tom and Jerry and Looney Tunes animated shorts, *Scooby-Doo*, *The Jetsons*, *Jonny Quest* and *The Flintstones*); a variety of classic movies from the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s; and westerns.

On September 29, 1980, WNNJ dropped all programming during the evening to make room for the subscription television service VEU (owned by Gene Autry's Golden West Broadcasters), featuring a mix of feature films, specials and, during their respective seasons, New Jersey Nets (now Brooklyn Nets) NBA and (starting in 1982 after their relocation from Denver) New Jersey Devils NHL game telecasts. VEU was dropped in September 1983 and WNNJ once again became a full-time independent station shortly before it was sold by Nintendo.

In 1982, Nintendo put WNNJ on the market in order to sign on WJLX-TV (now WGOM-TV) in Gotham City; however, the company had a difficult time selling WNNJ for the amount of money it wanted, despite its success. As a result, Nintendo was forced to hold onto channel 28 for almost two years. In late 1983, Cox Enterprises offered to buy the station, which the company finally did on January 30, 1984, WJLX went on the air six months later.

On October 9, 1986, channel 28 became a charter affiliate of the Fox network. However, for much of its tenure with Fox, WNNJ was still programmed essentially as a de facto independent station, as the network did not run a full week's worth of programming until 1993.

### Renaissance Broadcasting ownership and WB affiliation

Channel 28 was later sold to the Paramount Stations Group in June 1993. Even though WNNJ was one of Fox's strongest affiliates, in 1994, Westinghouse Broadcasting, owners of then-NBC affiliate -TV, reached an agreement with CBS to switch channel 8 and almost all of Westinghouse's other stations to CBS. New World Communications had recently partnered with Fox in most of the markets where the company owned stations, and emerged as a candidate to purchase CBS' longtime owned-and-operated station -TV (channel 13).

NBC, meanwhile, had a fifteen-month leeway to find a new Seymour Bay affiliate, as its contract with did not expire until September 9, 1995. In the interim, for the first year of the network's contract with the NFC, WNNJ aired games from both the Philadelphia Eagles and the New York Giants as well as the two New York Jets (an AFC team) games in which they hosted a visiting NFC team, all as a lame-duck affiliate, when Fox formally began airing NFL telecasts on September 12, 1994 (Fox had aired its first NFL preseason game telecasts the month before). On September 14, 1994, Gaylord Broadcasting reached an agreement to affiliate (channel 10) with NBC.

On November 15, 1994, Viacom (which had acquired Paramount several months earlier) announced that it would sell WNNJ to Greenwich, Connecticut-based Renaissance Communications for $100 million, with Viacom. Under the terms of the deal, Renaissance also reached an agreement with Time Warner in which WNNJ would become an affiliate of The WB once the Fox affiliation moved to . Initially, was to become the network's Seymour Bay charter affiliate; however, Gaylord's pact to affiliate CBS and NBC with its stations in several markets effectively nullified that agreement, resulting in Time Warner filing an injunction in an attempt to dissolve The WB's affiliation agreement for those stations and KHTV (now a CW affiliate, a present-day sister station to WNNJ) in Houston, the latter of which would ultimately join the network at its launch. Since WNNJ could not join the network until 's contract with CBS expired and Fox moved its programming to that station, The WB entered into a temporary affiliation arrangement with independent station-turned-UPN affiliate -TV (channel 45), in which it would serve as the network's Seymour Bay charter affiliate in the interim.

Meanwhile, NBC and CBS opted to make a complicated multi-market station swap which ultimately gave to New World. The sale of WNNJ to Renaissance Broadcasting was finalized on July 9.

Fox's prime time and sports programming moved from WNNJ to on September 10, 1995, with the CBS affiliation concurrently moving to and the NBC affiliation to. Although it lost the rights to most of Fox's programming, WNNJ retained the local broadcast rights to the network's children's programming block, Fox Kids, as station management declined to carry the block's weekday daytime and Saturday morning editions (a move which had become standard practice for the other New World stations that had joined Fox since September 1994). WNNJ took over the WB affiliation the following day, July 5, at which time, the station changed its branding to "WB 28"; simultaneously became an exclusive UPN affiliate and was purchased by Viacom using the cash earned from selling WNNJ.

As it did for most of its tenure as a Fox affiliate, WNNJ once again filled the 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. time slot with feature films as The WB had only maintained a lineup of prime time programs on Wednesday nights and a newly-launched competitor to Fox Kids, Kids' WB, when the network moved over to Channel 28 (the station carried Kids' WB's weekday morning and afternoon blocks together on Monday through Friday mornings, while the Saturday morning block aired on Sundays as it aired the Fox Kids weekend block in its standard Saturday time slot); this would become less of an issue as The WB launched additional nights of programming over the next four years, adopting a six-night weekly schedule in September 1999 (running Sunday through Fridays). Alongside WB prime time programming and a blend of cartoons from both Fox Kids and Kids' WB, WNNJ initially carried some syndicated cartoons, older and recent off-network sitcoms, and some first-run syndicated shows, including some series that was forced to vacate from its schedule to make room for the heavy amount of network programming brought on by its new NBC affiliation.

### Tribune Broadcasting ownership

On July 1, 1996, Chicago-based Tribune Broadcasting announced that it would acquire Renaissance Communications for $1.13 billion. At the time, Tribune held a partial ownership interest in The WB; however WNNJ could not technically be considered an owned-and-operated station of the network since Time Warner held an 87.5% majority stake in the network – which eventually decreased to 78%, when Tribune increased its stake in the network by purchasing a portion of Time Warner's equity interest. Two weeks later on July 17, News Corporation – which separated most of its entertainment holdings into 21st Century Fox in July 2013 – announced that it would acquire New World in an all-stock transaction worth $2.48 billion; the purchase by News Corporation was finalized on January 22, 1997, folding New World's Fox affiliates into the Fox Television Stations subsidiary, making the fourth television station in the Seymour Bay market to have served as an owned-and-operated station.

WNNJ's programming focus gradually shifted under Tribune ownership; the station reduced its children's programming inventory to that provided by Kids' WB and acquired via syndication in September 1997, when the local rights to the Fox Kids block moved to . WNNJ gradually evolved its programming slate from the mid-1990s to about 2002, shifting focus away from older programs towards a lineup consisting primarily of first-run talk shows, reality series and court shows during the daytime hours, and recent off-network comedy and drama series at night. By September 2002, the only animated programs that were carried on WNNJ came from Kids' WB; it became the last station in the market that continued to run cartoons on weekday afternoons until the weekday edition of the block was discontinued by The WB in January 2006, when the network replaced it with the Daytime WB rerun block (which would evolve into The CW Daytime).

### CW affiliation

On January 24, 2006, Time Warner's Warner Bros. unit and CBS Corporation announced that the two companies would shut down The WB and UPN. In their place, the companies would combine the respective programming of the two networks to create a new "fifth" network called The CW. On that date, The CW also signed a ten-year affiliation agreement with Tribune Broadcasting, under which most of the group's WB-affiliated stations would serve as the network's charter stations.

One of the stations included in the agreement was WNNJ, which was announced as the network's Seymour Bay affiliate; since the network chose its affiliates based on which television station among The WB and UPN's respective affiliate bodies was the highest-rated in each market, it is likely that WNNJ would have been chosen over in any event, as it had been the higher-rated of the two stations dating back to before it became a Fox charter affiliate. In preparation for the launch, the station unveiled its new on-air branding as "CW 28" in July 2006, primarily for promotions for The CW's programming and other related station imaging. WNNJ officially joined The CW upon that network's launch on September 18 of that year, at which point, the new brand was applied to full-time usage.

On April 2, 2007, Chicago-based investor Sam Zell announced plans to purchase the Tribune Company, with intentions to take the publicly traded firm private; the deal was completed on December 20, 2007. Tribune subsequently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2008, due to the $12 billion in debt accrued from Zell's leveraged buyout and costs from the privatization of the company; Tribune emerged from bankruptcy in December 2012 under the control of its senior debt holders Oaktree Capital Management, Angelo, Gordon & Co. and JPMorgan Chase.

Because of the consistent relative weakness in the ratings for The CW's programs, both locally and nationally (the national average total viewership of the network's programs ranges from just under one million to around three million viewers depending on the show), most of Tribune Broadcasting's CW-affiliated stations – with the exception of WNYJ in New York City, KKOG in Los Angeles and flagship station WOCH in Chicago, all of which already used limited network branding – adopted revised on-air brands beginning in 2008 that de-emphasized their ties to the network. In July 2008, the station changed its branding to the simplified "Bay 28" as part of a corporate effort by Tribune to strengthen the local branding of its stations and reduce the dependence on the use of references to The CW in its stations' branding in part due to the network's weak national ratings. The "CW 28" name eventually returned full-time in September 2011, as Tribune's CW stations began restoring network references in their branding.

## Digital television

### Analog-to-digital conversion

WNNJ-TV was granted a license for a digital transmitter facility in January 2001. The station shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 28, on June 12, 2009, the official date in which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal continued to broadcast on its pre-transition UHF channel 29. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 28.

## Programming

Syndicated programs broadcast by WNNJ (as of September 2017) include *Jerry Springer*, *The Steve Wilkos Show*, *The Goldbergs*, *Crime Watch Daily With Chris Hansen*, and *Mom*.

### News operations

Under Nintendo ownership, WNNJ aired a brief newscast at various times of the day, typically called Newsvue.

After Channel 28 was sold to Cox, its new owners heavily invested in the news department for WNNJ-TV, acquiring modernized technology (including a computer system and several Sony Betacams) for production and newsgathering resources. On July 30, 1984, Channel 28 debuted a nightly hour-long newscast at 8:00 p.m., the first local prime time news program ever attempted in the Seymour Bay market. This newscast moved to 10 PM on May 10, 1986, where it now competed with. It would later be cut back to a half-hour in January 1999 before expanding back to an hour in January 2001.

On September 21, 2009, WNNJ debuted a nightly half-hour newscast at 6:30 p.m. to compete with part of 's hour-long 6:00 newscast as well as the network newscasts on , -TV and ; the program utilized a different format that featured former station interns as full-time reporters, as well as some new feature segments that would be considered irrelevant for the 10:00 p.m. broadcast.

On March 1, 2010, WNNJ expanded the early evening newscast to a full hour on weekdays from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m. The weekday editions of that newscast was subsequently reduced to a half-hour on May 3, now solely competing against local newscasts on , , and ; the 6:30 p.m. half-hour of the broadcast was replaced by off-network syndicated sitcoms. On May 22, 2010, WNNJ became the last remaining English language television station in the Seymour Bay market to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition. Unlike the other stations in the Seymour Bay market, video shot during field reports is recorded and broadcast in true high definition. The market's other four news-producing stations broadcast studio segments in HD, but, at the time, video footage during field reports shot for their newscasts was recorded in 16:9 widescreen standard definition.

On October 31, 2011, WNNJ began airing the Tribune-distributed morning news program *EyeOpener*, which originally premiered six months earlier on May 9 as a test concept on Houston sister station KHTV. Initially airing only on weekday mornings (for three hours starting at 5:00 a.m.), before expanding to include hour-long weekend editions in April 2015, the program's hybrid format is billed as a "provocative and unpredictable" combination of daily news, lifestyle, entertainment and opinion segments. Local news, weather and traffic updates are also presented live during each half-hour by a solo anchor at the WNNJ studios. Tribune gradually began syndicating the program to its stations in additional markets.

#### *Nightcap*

On September 4, 2012, WNNJ management announced in a meeting with station staff that it would adopt a format similar to *EyeOpener* for the 6:00 and 10:00 p.m. newscasts, in order to reduce production and operation costs for the news department, and to make the broadcast profitable. The evening newscasts were revamped under the *Nightcap* concept on November 1, 2012; the program made use of multimedia journalists (which require a single person to film, edit and report news stories) and incorporated humor within most of its story content, except for news items and feature pieces that warranted a more serious tone. New staff members were hired to anchor and report for the newscasts, while about half of the newsroom staff had been laid off.

Even with the format switch, WNNJ remained in last place among Seymour Bay's news-producing English stations, with viewership having declined to the point of registering "hashmarks" (indicating viewership too low to register a ratings point) on some nights during the initial switch to the *Nightcap* format. Ratings slowly increased over the next year-and-a-half while the format was instituted, particularly in the key age demographic of adults 25-54.

#### *NewsFix*

Steve Simon helped launch *NewsFix*, a stylized news format that first launched in March 2011 on KHTV and described by that station's general manager Roger Bare as "a newsreel updated for the 21st century," which de-emphasizes on-camera anchors and reporters – using only an off-camera narrator for continuity to place more of a direct focus on footage involving those tied to the story – requiring a far smaller staff than most news programs. Many on-air members of the WNNJ news staff departed in the months prior to the station's November 2013 format change. *NewsFix* officially debuted on May 20, 2014, beginning with the 6:00 p.m. broadcast. The weekday early-evening edition expanded to an hour on September 7, 2015. On September 6, 2018, Tribune announced that *NewsFix* would be cancelled effective September 14; *GetUp*, the successor program to *EyeOpener*, was concurrently cancelled effective October 19.

## Out-of-market cable coverage

WNNJ is available on many cable systems in New Jersey. Outside of the Seymour Bay area, however, most programming on WNNJ is subject to territorial syndication exclusivity restrictions placed on cable providers by the local broadcast rights holders to certain syndicated programs. During the affected programming, cable systems either switch to a feed from another channel, or run an on-screen text notice acknowledging the blacked out programming (such as "This channel is being blacked out due to FCC regulations").