WLNY
Encyclopedia
WLNY-TV, channel 55, is an independent television station licensed to Riverhead, New York, with studios in Melville, New York
Melville, New York
Melville is a hamlet and census-designated place in the town of Huntington in Suffolk County on Long Island, New York, in the United States. As of the 2000 census, 14,533 people resided there.-Location:...

 and transmitter in Middle Island, New York
Middle Island, New York
Middle Island is a hamlet in Suffolk County, New York, United States. The population was 9,702 at the 2000 census. It is situated between the towns of Coram and Ridge, to the west and east, respectively, and Rocky Point and Yaphank to the north and south...

. WLNY's primary over-the-air signal serves most of Long Island
Long Island
Long Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...

, comprising Nassau
Nassau County, New York
Nassau County is a suburban county on Long Island, east of New York City in the U.S. state of New York, within the New York Metropolitan Area. As of the 2010 census, the population was 1,339,532...

 and Suffolk
Suffolk County, New York
Suffolk County is a county located in the U.S. state of New York on the eastern portion of Long Island. As of the 2010 census, the population was 1,493,350. It was named for the county of Suffolk in England, from which its earliest settlers came...

 counties. WLNY further extends its coverage in the New York City metropolitan area and Connecticut
Connecticut
Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...

 using low-power digital repeaters WLNY-CD (channel 45), in Mineola, New York
Mineola, New York
Mineola is a village in Nassau County, New York, USA. The population was 18,799 at the 2010 census. The name is derived from a Native American word meaning a "pleasant place"....

 and WLIG-LD, channel 17, in Morristown, New Jersey
Morristown, New Jersey
Morristown is a town in Morris County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the town population was 18,411. It is the county seat of Morris County. Morristown became characterized as "the military capital of the American Revolution" because of its strategic role in the...

, and low-power analog repeater W27CD in Stamford, Connecticut
Stamford, Connecticut
Stamford is a city in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. According to the 2010 census, the population of the city is 122,643, making it the fourth largest city in the state and the eighth largest city in New England...

.

The station has been carried on either channel 10 or channel 55 on most local cable TV systems for years, and in 2007 changed their on-air branding to WLNY TV 10/55 (read as TV 10 and 55) to reflect that.

Early years

Founded by Long Island businessman Michael Pascucci, the station went on the air April 28, 1985 as WLIG, with the on-air branding TV-55. It was the first Long Island-based independent television station since the demise of WSNL-TV (channel 67, now WFTY-TV
WFTY-TV
WFTY-DT is one of two TeleFutura network-Owned stations for the New York City market, along with WFUT-DT. Owned by the Univision Broadcast Group, the station is licenced to Smithtown, New York and serves Long Island.-History:...

), which was merged with Newark, New Jersey
Newark, New Jersey
Newark is the largest city in the American state of New Jersey, and the seat of Essex County. As of the 2010 United States Census, Newark had a population of 277,140, maintaining its status as the largest municipality in New Jersey. It is the 68th largest city in the U.S...

-based independent WWHT-TV (now WFUT-TV
WFUT-TV
WFUT-DT, virtual channel 68, is a Spanish-language television station licensed to Newark, New Jersey, which serves as an affiliate of the Telefutura network for the New York City market...

) several years earlier. During its first year of operations, WLIG employed a number of gimmicks to attract viewers, such as a Watch and Win Sweepstakes in which viewers were shown a "code word" on-screen during a particular show and had to send in a postcard with that word for the chance to win a prize, and offering 100,000 free loop antennas to non-cable viewers who couldn't receive the station clearly. The efforts paid off, as WLIG gradually became a solid ratings player.

By June 1987, WLIG was estimated to reach 200,000 viewers, and was carried on eight of nine cable television systems on Long Island. The lone exception was Cablevision, the largest system in Long Island, which claimed that TV-55 added nothing to the service they already offered, and so, refused to carry it. A cable subscriber advocacy group, New Yorkers for Fair Cable, claimed that the real reason was that WLIG competed with services that Cablevision owned and offered, specifically News 12 Long Island
News 12 Networks
News 12 Networks comprises seven regional cable news television channels in the New York metropolitan area. The channels offer local news 24-hours a day and reach approximately 3.8 million television households in the tri-state area...

. In October 1987, BQ Cable Company (now part of Time Warner Cable
Time Warner Cable
Time Warner Cable is an American cable television company that operates in 28 states and has 31 operating divisions...

) began offering WLIG to subscribers in Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...

 and Queens
Queens
Queens is the easternmost of the five boroughs of New York City. The largest borough in area and the second-largest in population, it is coextensive with Queens County, an administrative division of New York state, in the United States....

.

During its early years, WLIG relied heavily on old movies and reruns of classic television shows, and positioned itself as a station offering family-friendly entertainment consistent with the philosophy of its owner, who is a devout Roman Catholic. It featured a daily newscast at 10 PM, and other local programming, such as a political talk show called Focus on Long Island. Sports programming and some first-run syndicated
Television syndication
In broadcasting, syndication is the sale of the right to broadcast radio shows and television shows by multiple radio stations and television stations, without going through a broadcast network, though the process of syndication may conjure up structures like those of a network itself, by its very...

 programming rounded out the broadcast day. By the late 1980s, WLIG had dropped its local news broadcasts, except for a 5-minute newscast that continued to air until a new full-fledged, hour-long 10 PM newscast debuted in 1993. The station also aired several half-hour feeds of CNN Headline News
CNN Headline News
HLN, formerly known as CNN Headline News and CNN2, is a cable television news channel based in the United States and a spinoff of the cable news television channel, CNN. Initially airing tightly-formatted 30-minute newscasts around the clock, since 2005, the channel has increasingly aired long-form...

 until the mid-1990s, providing its only broadcast outlet for Long Island residents without cable. In the meantime, the station gradually began adding newer films and stronger syndicated programming to its lineup, eventually scoring a major victory in early 1991 when they landed Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy!
Jeopardy!
Griffin's first conception of the game used a board comprising ten categories with ten clues each, but after finding that this board could not be shown on camera easily, he reduced it to two rounds of thirty clues each, with five clues in each of six categories...

and The Oprah Winfrey Show
The Oprah Winfrey Show
The Oprah Winfrey Show is an American syndicated talk show hosted and produced by its namesake Oprah Winfrey. It ran nationally for 25 seasons beginning in 1986, before concluding in 2011. It is the highest-rated talk show in American television history....

, which at that time were the top three syndicated programs on television.

Recent years

On September 1, 1996, WLIG changed its call letters to WLNY (We Love New York) and rebranded itself as NY 55. Still, its location on the fringes of the New York City television market made cable television coverage of the station an ongoing concern. Although the FCC imposed "must carry" rules on cable companies in 1992, in 1997, they allowed some cable systems in New Jersey to exclude WLNY from carriage. WLNY, along with WRNN-TV
WRNN-TV
WRNN-TV is an American independent television station licensed to Kingtson, New York.Broadcasting on digital channel 48, WRNN broadcasts a schedule of mainly infomercials and home-shopping programming. The station's studios are located in Rye Brook, New York, and its transmitter is based on Beacon...

 and WPXN-TV
WPXN-TV
WPXN-TV, which broadcasts on channel 31 in New York City, is the flagship station of the Ion Television network, formerly known as Pax TV and i.-Municipal ownership:...

, appealed, but the courts upheld the FCC decision. In spite of these difficulties, WLNY still receives cable coverage from Northern New Jersey to Southern Connecticut, and on satellite television.

In 1997, WLNY was assigned UHF channel 57 for its digital television operations, making it one of 18 full-service television stations in the country to have neither analog nor digital assignments within the new core television station spectrum, channels 2 through 51. The station began broadcasting in digital in 2002, with a low-power signal under Special Temporary Authority, then made news in 2005 when it struck a deal with Qualcomm
Qualcomm
Qualcomm is an American global telecommunication corporation that designs, manufactures and markets digital wireless telecommunications products and services based on its code division multiple access technology and other technologies. Headquartered in San Diego, CA, USA...

 to surrender its analog license and build full DTV facilities on channel 57, allowing Qualcomm to use the channel 55 frequency for its MediaFLO
MediaFLO
MediaFLO is a technology developed by Qualcomm for transmitting audio, video and data to portable devices such as mobile phones and personal televisions, used for mobile television...

 service. At the time, approximately 92 percent of Long Island's population receives television service by cable or satellite, so the FCC approved the request, and on December 31, 2005, WLNY shut down its analog signal and became a digital-only station. The FCC has since changed the station's callsign to WLNY-DT. The FCC later announced it would remove the -DT suffix from call signs after the analog shutoff unless a station applied to keep it; the station elected to change its callsign to WLNY-TV, adding the -TV suffix the station did not use prior to 2006, and the change took effect on June 19, 2009.

WLNY-DT requested channel 47 as its final, in-core broadcast channel after the end of the 2009 DTV conversion
DTV transition in the United States
The DTV transition in the United States was the switchover from analog to exclusively digital broadcasting of free over-the-air television programming...

, but the FCC
Federal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, created, Congressional statute , and with the majority of its commissioners appointed by the current President. The FCC works towards six goals in the areas of broadband, competition, the spectrum, the...

 initially ruled the election in conflict with another station -- WNJU
WNJU
WNJU, channel 47, is the flagship station of the Spanish-language Telemundo television network, licensed to Linden, New Jersey and serving the Tri-State area television market. WNJU is owned by NBCUniversal, and is one-half of a duopoly with NBC network flagship WNBC-TV...

, a Spanish-language station licensed to Linden, New Jersey
Linden, New Jersey
- Local government :, the Mayor of Linden is . The former longtime Mayor of Linden is 82-year-old John T. Gregorio, who served as mayor of Linden for 30, nonconsecutive years and was repeatedly tagged with scandal during his mayoral career, including one felony conviction, later pardoned, which...

 which broadcast its analog signal on channel 47. Eventually the issues were worked through and WLNY gained FCC approval for its move to digital channel 47, which it began broadcasting from on June 13, 2009.

At some point since 1996, WLNY dropped its NY 55 branding in favor of the old TV-55, but on October 22, 2007, WLNY once again changed its branding, this time from TV-55 to TV 10/55 to reflect its most frequent cable and satellite assignments. The station also debuted a new set and graphics for their 11pm newscast, replacing the old set which dated back to the early 1990s.

WLNY can currently be viewed from as far north as Connecticut, and as far south as Delaware over its digital broadcast.

Digital television

The station's digital channel is multiplexed:
Channel Video Aspect
Aspect ratio
The aspect ratio of a shape is the ratio of its longer dimension to its shorter dimension. It may be applied to two characteristic dimensions of a three-dimensional shape, such as the ratio of the longest and shortest axis, or for symmetrical objects that are described by just two measurements,...

Programming
55.1 480i
480i
480i is the shorthand name for a video mode, namely the US NTSC television system or digital television systems with the same characteristics. The i, which is sometimes uppercase, stands for interlaced, the 480 for a vertical frame resolution of 480 lines containing picture information; while NTSC...

 
4:3  WLNY-TV 10/55


WLNY-TV also has two Mobile DTV feeds, one of of subchannel 55.1, labelled "WLNY MH1", and a blank feed of 55.2, labelled "WLNY MH2", broadcasting at 3.67 Mbit/s. This is the highest bitrate of any New York City television station mobile feed.

Analog-to-Digital Conversion

On June 12, 2009, WLNY-TV discontinued regular analog programming on channel 55. The station switched to its post-transition channel of 47, using PSIP to display the station's virtual channel
Virtual channel
In telecommunications, a logical channel number , also known as virtual channel, is a channel designation which differs from that of the actual radio channel on which the signal travels....

 as 55.

Programming

WLNY carries a typical independent schedule of movies and syndicated shows, plus religious programming and infomercials. WLNY offers "second-chance" viewing of programs such as Jeopardy!, Wheel of Fortune, The Oprah Winfrey Show, Dr. Phil
Dr. Phil (TV series)
Dr. Phil is a reality/talk television show hosted by Phil McGraw. After McGraw's success with his segments on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Dr. Phil debuted on September 16, 2002...

and The Ellen DeGeneres Show
The Ellen DeGeneres Show
The Ellen DeGeneres Show, often shortened to Ellen, is an American television talk show hosted by comedian/actress Ellen DeGeneres. Debuting on September 8, 2003, it is produced by Telepictures and airs in syndication, including stations owned by NBC Universal. For its first five seasons, the show...

, as WLNY airs these shows in the late afternoon and evening, compared to earlier broadcasts on the main New York City stations. Often, most of WLNY's movie airings are also carried by another local station within a day or so.

The station enjoys widespread coverage on cable in New York City as well as other parts of lower New York state, Connecticut
Connecticut
Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...

, and New Jersey. While many of those areas see a separate feed due to SyndEx
Syndication exclusivity
Syndication exclusivity is a federal law in the United States designed to protect a local television station's rights to syndicated television programs by granting exclusive rights to the station for that program in the local market, usually defined by a station's Nielsen DMA...

 laws (similar to the old WOR EMI Service and WGN America), Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune are the only two programs preempted on the SyndEx feed. Subscribers in the New York City market who receive the station on DirecTV
DirecTV
DirecTV is an American direct broadcast satellite service provider and broadcaster based in El Segundo, California. Its satellite service, launched on June 17, 1994, transmits digital satellite television and audio to households in the United States, Latin America, and the Anglophone Caribbean. ...

 and Dish Network
Dish Network
Dish Network Corporation is the second largest pay TV provider in the United States, providing direct broadcast satellite service—including satellite television, audio programming, and interactive television services—to 14.337 million commercial and residential customers in the United States. Dish...

 view the station's clean over-the-air feed.

In June 2009, WLNY completely revamped its weeknight primetime schedule, replacing the movie with all of its syndicated programming. These offerings now air for five consecutive hours from 5:00 to 10:00 PM, followed by a double-run of Judge Judy
Judge Judy
Judge Judy is an American court show featuring former family court judge Judith Sheindlin arbitrating over small claims cases in small claims court...

as the lead-in to the 11:00 newscast. To replace the primetime movie WLNY recently reintroduced an afternoon movie to its schedule. It still airs a late night movie, or a rerun of Matlock
Matlock (TV series)
Matlock is an American television legal drama, starring Andy Griffith in the title role of attorney Ben Matlock. The show originally aired from September 23, 1986 to May 8, 1992 on NBC, where it replaced The A-Team, then from November 5, 1992 until May 7, 1995 on ABC.The show's format was similar...

or one of the NBC Mystery Movie
NBC Mystery Movie
The NBC Mystery Movie is the general name of an American television series, produced by Universal Studios, that was broadcast by NBC from 1971-77...

 series WLNY has rights to -- Banacek
Banacek
Banacek is a short-lived, light-hearted detective TV series starring George Peppard on NBC from 1972 to 1974. It alternated in its timeslot with several other shows but was the only one to last beyond its first season...

, McCloud, and McMillan & Wife.

Over the years, WLIG/WLNY also broadcast professional and collegiate sports. WLNY carried Big East Conference
Big East Conference
The Big East Conference is a collegiate athletics conference consisting of sixteen universities in the eastern half of the United States. The conference's 17 members participate in 24 NCAA sports...

 college basketball for many years until that conference moved its games exclusively to cable in the New York City market. For a number of years, WLNY also carried New York Islanders
New York Islanders
The New York Islanders are a professional ice hockey team based in Uniondale, New York. They are members of the Atlantic Division of the Eastern Conference of the National Hockey League...

 hockey games and New Jersey Nets
New Jersey Nets
The New Jersey Nets are a professional basketball team based in Newark, New Jersey. They are members of the Atlantic Division of the Eastern Conference in the National Basketball Association...

 basketball games as overrun when they could not be broadcast on regional sports networks due to conflicts with other games. WLNY has occasionally picked up CBS Sports events that WCBS-TV
WCBS-TV
WCBS-TV, channel 2, is the flagship station of the CBS television network, located in New York City. The station's studios are located within the CBS Broadcast Center and its transmitter is atop the Empire State Building, both in Midtown Manhattan....

 can't carry due to news pre-emptions, such as airing The NFL Today on September 11, 2011 while WCBS aired the day's tribute ceremonies.

Newscasts

WLNY produces a weekday local news program which airs at 11 PM and is rebroadcast Tuesday through Saturday at 5 AM. WLNY also produces a weekly public affairs show, tv10/55 Focus. The news and public affairs shows focus mostly on Long Island issues, aside from weather and sports coverage, which serve most of the New York City market.

tv10/55 News at Eleven (Weeknights 11 to 11:35 P.M.)
  • Anchor: Richard Rose (also news director and moderator of tv10/55 Focus)
  • Weather: David Weiss
  • Sports: Kurt Semder
  • Reporters: Oriana D'Agostino, Audrey Hampton, Christina Regnault

Coverage

WLNY-TV is carried on the following cable television
Cable television
Cable television is a system of providing television programs to consumers via radio frequency signals transmitted to televisions through coaxial cables or digital light pulses through fixed optical fibers located on the subscriber's property, much like the over-the-air method used in traditional...

 systems:
Cablevision Comcast
Comcast
Comcast Corporation is the largest cable operator, home Internet service provider, and fourth largest home telephone service provider in the United States, providing cable television, broadband Internet, and telephone service to both residential and commercial customers in 39 states and the...

DirecTV
DirecTV
DirecTV is an American direct broadcast satellite service provider and broadcaster based in El Segundo, California. Its satellite service, launched on June 17, 1994, transmits digital satellite television and audio to households in the United States, Latin America, and the Anglophone Caribbean. ...

Dish Network
Dish Network
Dish Network Corporation is the second largest pay TV provider in the United States, providing direct broadcast satellite service—including satellite television, audio programming, and interactive television services—to 14.337 million commercial and residential customers in the United States. Dish...

RCN
RCN Corporation
RCN Corporation, founded in 1993 and based in Herndon, Virginia, is the first American facilities-based competitive provider of bundled telephone, cable television and high-speed internet service delivered over its own fiber-optic local network to consumers in the Boston, New York, Eastern...

Verizon FiOS
Verizon FiOS
Verizon FiOS is a bundled Internet access, telephone, and television service which operates over a fiber-optic communications network. It is offered in some areas of the United States by Verizon Communications. Verizon was one of the first major U.S...

Time Warner Cable
Time Warner Cable
Time Warner Cable is an American cable television company that operates in 28 states and has 31 operating divisions...

10* 10** 55/893 55/8107 14 10 55

  • * Not Carried in Monmouth,Ocean or Mercer County, NJ.
  • ** Not carried by all Comcast systems in New York DMA
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