WNJU
Encyclopedia
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 (NY-NJ-CT) television market. WNJU is owned by NBCUniversal, and is one-half of a duopoly with NBC network flagship WNBC-TV (channel 4). WNJU's studios and offices are located in Fort Lee, New Jersey
, and its transmitter is atop the Empire State Building
.
station in the New York City television market. Its initial schedule was a mix of English, Asian, Spanish and Italian shows. During the middle 1960s, the station broadcast a live teenage dance show in the New York market called Disc-O-Teen, hosted by John Zacherle
; and a folk music
program, Rainbow Quest
, hosted by Pete Seeger
. The station was owned by Henry Becton (son of Maxwell Dickinson founder of Becton Dickinson
) and Fairleigh S. Dickinson Jr. (son of Fairleigh S. Dickinson Sr. the founder of Fairleigh Dickinson University
and also the co-founder of Becton Dickinson
. The general manager in the station's early years was pioneering UHF broadcaster Edwin Cooperstein. WNJU was involved in some controversy when it aired bullfights, which some critics believed were too violent. The station was not profitable due to the lack of awareness of UHF stations in the New York metro area, being that the market had seven VHF stations and six of those were commercial stations. Most cities had an average of three commercial stations at the time. WNJU already had two strikes against it, so it basically served minority audiences with much brokered programming.
WNJU was sold in the fall of 1970 for $8,000,000 (a fairly large price for a UHF station back in 1970) to Screen Gems
Broadcasting, a subsidiary of Columbia Pictures
. It was thought that WNJU would now become competitive because Screen Gems had deep pockets. But the brokered ethnic format would continue. It maintained an English-speaking audience a few hours a week during the 1970s when it was the only New York broadcast outlet for the World Wide Wrestling Federation
.
By the late 1970s, WNJU had evolved into mostly Spanish programming, along with some weekend ethnic brokered programming. During the week, WNJU ran English-speaking religious programming until noon. From 12:00 on they ran Spanish programming. On Sundays they also ran English-speaking religious shows in the mornings. WNJU was sold in 1979 to Jerry Perenchio
, Bud Yorkin
, and Norman Lear
. While owning WNJU, these people formed another broadcasting company known as Act III Broadcasting
and bought English-speaking commercial independent stations in medium and small markets.
By the early 1980s, the other brokered foreign language programs disappeared, and WNJU ran English language religious programming in the morning and Spanish programming the rest of the day.
In 1984, WNJU joined with two Spanish television stations not affiliated with Spanish International Network (now Univision
) and formed NetSpan, the United States' second Spanish-language television network. NetSpan's original group of affiliates included WNJU, KSTS
in San Jose, California
, and WBBS in Chicago
, Illinois
(evenings and late nights only). The latter two stations were locally owned. In 1985, KVEA
in Corona, California
, WSCV
in Fort Lauderdale, Florida
(both of which were owned by Blair broadcasting), and locally owned WCIU in Chicago (after 5 p.m. only) joined Net Span. Net Span acquired these stations, excluding WCIU but including WNJU, outright in 1986. WNJU's owners continued on with Act III Broadcasting, buying more commercial stations.
In 1987 Net Span added more affiliates, and changed its name to Telemundo
. In Chicago, WSNS dropped Univision
and joined Telemundo, with WCIU becoming the Univision affiliate after 5 p.m. only. In the early 1990s, WNJU dropped its English-language religious shows and became a full-time Telemundo station.
At sign-on in 1965, WNJU was located at Symphony Hall (previously known as The Mosque Theatre), 1020 Broad Street in Newark, in the former studios of WATV (later WNTA) Channel 13. In 1989 the studios moved to 39 Industrial Avenue in Teterboro, New Jersey
. In 2003, WNJU relocated to the 6th Floor at 2200 Fletcher Avenue Fort Lee, New Jersey
, in the former studios and offices of the NBC Cable network, CNBC
, which around the same time moved to a state-of-the-art new studio complex at 900 Sylvan Avenue (Route 9W) in Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
In 2001, NBC Universal
purchased Telemundo. WNJU witnessed major overhauls, adopting similar opening graphics to those used at New York City's WNBC
, and adopting a tweaked version of its opening music sequence.
In 2007, WNJU launched the slogan Tu Canal.
Digital channels>
Channel
Name
Video
Aspect
Programming
47.1
WNJU-HD
1080i
16:9
Main WNJU/Telemundo programming
47.3
WNJU-DT
480i
4:3
soi
As of November 1st 2011, WNJU is now broadcasting the soi
network on channel 47.3.
WNJU also has a Mobile DTV feed of subchannel 47.1, labelled "WNJU T47".
as 47.
Telemundo
Telemundo is an American television network that broadcasts in Spanish. The network is the second-largest Spanish-language content producer in the world, and the second-largest Spanish-language network in the United States, behind Univision....
television network
Television network
A television network is a telecommunications network for distribution of television program content, whereby a central operation provides programming to many television stations or pay TV providers. Until the mid-1980s, television programming in most countries of the world was dominated by a small...
, 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...
and serving the Tri-State area (NY-NJ-CT) television market. WNJU is owned by NBCUniversal, and is one-half of a duopoly with NBC network flagship WNBC-TV (channel 4). WNJU's studios and offices are located in Fort Lee, New Jersey
Fort Lee, New Jersey
Fort Lee is a borough in Bergen County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the borough population was 35,345. Located atop the Hudson Palisades, the borough is the western terminus of the George Washington Bridge...
, and its transmitter is atop the Empire State Building
Empire State Building
The Empire State Building is a 102-story landmark skyscraper and American cultural icon in New York City at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and West 34th Street. It has a roof height of 1,250 feet , and with its antenna spire included, it stands a total of 1,454 ft high. Its name is derived...
.
History
On May 16, 1965, WNJU-TV signed on as the first commercial UHFUltra high frequency
Ultra-High Frequency designates the ITU Radio frequency range of electromagnetic waves between 300 MHz and 3 GHz , also known as the decimetre band or decimetre wave as the wavelengths range from one to ten decimetres...
station in the New York City television market. Its initial schedule was a mix of English, Asian, Spanish and Italian shows. During the middle 1960s, the station broadcast a live teenage dance show in the New York market called Disc-O-Teen, hosted by John Zacherle
John Zacherle
John Zacherle is an American television host, radio personality and voice actor known for his long career as a television horror host broadcasting horror movies in Philadelphia and New York City in the 1950s and 1960s. Best known for his character "Roland/Zacherley," he also did voice work for...
; and a folk music
Folk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....
program, Rainbow Quest
Rainbow Quest
Rainbow Quest was a U.S. television series devoted to folk music and hosted by Pete Seeger. It was videotaped in black-and-white and featured musicians playing in traditional American music genres such as traditional folk music, old-time music, bluegrass and blues...
, hosted by Pete Seeger
Pete Seeger
Peter "Pete" Seeger is an American folk singer and was an iconic figure in the mid-twentieth century American folk music revival. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, he also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of The Weavers, most notably their recording of Lead...
. The station was owned by Henry Becton (son of Maxwell Dickinson founder of Becton Dickinson
Becton Dickinson
Becton, Dickinson and Company , is an American medical technology company that manufactures and sells medical devices, instrument systems and reagents. Founded in 1897 and headquartered in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey, BD does business in nearly 50 countries and has 28,803 employees worldwide. In...
) and Fairleigh S. Dickinson Jr. (son of Fairleigh S. Dickinson Sr. the founder of Fairleigh Dickinson University
Fairleigh Dickinson University
Fairleigh Dickinson University is a private university founded as a junior college in 1942. It now has several campuses located in New Jersey, Canada, and the United Kingdom.-Description:...
and also the co-founder of Becton Dickinson
Becton Dickinson
Becton, Dickinson and Company , is an American medical technology company that manufactures and sells medical devices, instrument systems and reagents. Founded in 1897 and headquartered in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey, BD does business in nearly 50 countries and has 28,803 employees worldwide. In...
. The general manager in the station's early years was pioneering UHF broadcaster Edwin Cooperstein. WNJU was involved in some controversy when it aired bullfights, which some critics believed were too violent. The station was not profitable due to the lack of awareness of UHF stations in the New York metro area, being that the market had seven VHF stations and six of those were commercial stations. Most cities had an average of three commercial stations at the time. WNJU already had two strikes against it, so it basically served minority audiences with much brokered programming.
WNJU was sold in the fall of 1970 for $8,000,000 (a fairly large price for a UHF station back in 1970) to Screen Gems
Screen Gems
Screen Gems is an American movie production company and subsidiary company of Sony Pictures Entertainment's Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group that has served several different purposes for its parent companies over the decades since its incorporation....
Broadcasting, a subsidiary of Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production and distribution company. Columbia Pictures now forms part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of the leading film companies...
. It was thought that WNJU would now become competitive because Screen Gems had deep pockets. But the brokered ethnic format would continue. It maintained an English-speaking audience a few hours a week during the 1970s when it was the only New York broadcast outlet for the World Wide Wrestling Federation
World Wrestling Entertainment
World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. is an American publicly traded, privately controlled entertainment company dealing primarily in professional wrestling, with major revenue sources also coming from film, music, product licensing, and direct product sales...
.
By the late 1970s, WNJU had evolved into mostly Spanish programming, along with some weekend ethnic brokered programming. During the week, WNJU ran English-speaking religious programming until noon. From 12:00 on they ran Spanish programming. On Sundays they also ran English-speaking religious shows in the mornings. WNJU was sold in 1979 to Jerry Perenchio
Jerry Perenchio
Andrew Jerrold "Jerry" Perenchio was the former chairman and CEO of Univision, the largest Spanish-language company in the United States.-Early life:...
, Bud Yorkin
Bud Yorkin
Bud Yorkin is an American film and television producer, director, writer and actor.Yorkin was born Alan David Yorkin in Washington, Pennsylvania. He earned a degree in engineering from Carnegie Tech, now Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsbugh, Pennsylvania...
, and Norman Lear
Norman Lear
Norman Milton Lear is an American television writer and producer who produced such 1970s sitcoms as All in the Family, Sanford and Son, One Day at a Time, The Jeffersons, Good Times and Maude...
. While owning WNJU, these people formed another broadcasting company known as Act III Broadcasting
Act III Broadcasting
Act III Broadcasting was a company that owned several television stations that started as independents, and later became Fox affiliates. The stations were located in medium-sized markets, and the company existed from the mid 1980s to the mid 1990s, eventually to be sold to Abry in 1994...
and bought English-speaking commercial independent stations in medium and small markets.
By the early 1980s, the other brokered foreign language programs disappeared, and WNJU ran English language religious programming in the morning and Spanish programming the rest of the day.
In 1984, WNJU joined with two Spanish television stations not affiliated with Spanish International Network (now Univision
Univision
Univision is a Spanish-language television network in the United States. It has the largest audience of Spanish language television viewers according to Nielsen ratings. Randy Falco, COO, has been in charge of the company since the departure of Univision Communications president and CEO Joe Uva...
) and formed NetSpan, the United States' second Spanish-language television network. NetSpan's original group of affiliates included WNJU, KSTS
KSTS
KSTS is the NBCUniversal owned and operated Telemundo television station in the San Francisco Bay Area market. The station is located in San Jose, California and broadcasts on digital channel 49. KSTS shares facilities with NBC sister operation KNTV. The new all-digital broadcast center was opened...
in San Jose, California
San Jose, California
San Jose is the third-largest city in California, the tenth-largest in the U.S., and the county seat of Santa Clara County which is located at the southern end of San Francisco Bay...
, and WBBS in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
(evenings and late nights only). The latter two stations were locally owned. In 1985, KVEA
KVEA
KVEA is a Spanish-language television station in the Los Angeles area owned and operated by NBC Universal and the West Coast flagship station of the Telemundo network. It was the first mainland U.S. station owned by Telemundo at the network's launch in the late 1980's...
in Corona, California
Corona, California
Corona is a city in Riverside County, California, United States. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 152,374, up from 124,966 at the 2000 census...
, WSCV
WSCV
WSCV Telemundo 51 is the Telemundo O&O that serves the Miami - Fort Lauderdale area and licensed to Fort Lauderdale. The transmitter is located in Miramar. The station also serves as the de facto Telemundo affiliate for the West Palm Beach market. The station is owned by NBCUniversal along with NBC...
in Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Fort Lauderdale is a city in the U.S. state of Florida, on the Atlantic coast. It is the county seat of Broward County. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 165,521. It is a principal city of the South Florida metropolitan area, which was home to 5,564,635 people at the 2010...
(both of which were owned by Blair broadcasting), and locally owned WCIU in Chicago (after 5 p.m. only) joined Net Span. Net Span acquired these stations, excluding WCIU but including WNJU, outright in 1986. WNJU's owners continued on with Act III Broadcasting, buying more commercial stations.
In 1987 Net Span added more affiliates, and changed its name to Telemundo
Telemundo
Telemundo is an American television network that broadcasts in Spanish. The network is the second-largest Spanish-language content producer in the world, and the second-largest Spanish-language network in the United States, behind Univision....
. In Chicago, WSNS dropped Univision
Univision
Univision is a Spanish-language television network in the United States. It has the largest audience of Spanish language television viewers according to Nielsen ratings. Randy Falco, COO, has been in charge of the company since the departure of Univision Communications president and CEO Joe Uva...
and joined Telemundo, with WCIU becoming the Univision affiliate after 5 p.m. only. In the early 1990s, WNJU dropped its English-language religious shows and became a full-time Telemundo station.
At sign-on in 1965, WNJU was located at Symphony Hall (previously known as The Mosque Theatre), 1020 Broad Street in Newark, in the former studios of WATV (later WNTA) Channel 13. In 1989 the studios moved to 39 Industrial Avenue in Teterboro, New Jersey
Teterboro, New Jersey
Teterboro is a borough in Bergen County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the borough population was 67, making it the fourth smallest municipality, by population, in New Jersey....
. In 2003, WNJU relocated to the 6th Floor at 2200 Fletcher Avenue Fort Lee, New Jersey
Fort Lee, New Jersey
Fort Lee is a borough in Bergen County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the borough population was 35,345. Located atop the Hudson Palisades, the borough is the western terminus of the George Washington Bridge...
, in the former studios and offices of the NBC Cable network, CNBC
CNBC
CNBC is a satellite and cable television business news channel in the U.S., owned and operated by NBCUniversal. The network and its international spinoffs cover business headlines and provide live coverage of financial markets. The combined reach of CNBC and its siblings is 390 million viewers...
, which around the same time moved to a state-of-the-art new studio complex at 900 Sylvan Avenue (Route 9W) in Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
In 2001, NBC Universal
NBC Universal
NBCUniversal Media, LLC is a media and entertainment company engaged in the production and marketing of entertainment, news, and information products and services to a global customer base...
purchased Telemundo. WNJU witnessed major overhauls, adopting similar opening graphics to those used at New York City's WNBC
WNBC
WNBC, virtual channel 4 , is the flagship station of the NBC television network, located in New York City. WNBC's studios are co-located with NBC corporate headquarters at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in midtown Manhattan...
, and adopting a tweaked version of its opening music sequence.
In 2007, WNJU launched the slogan Tu Canal.
Digital television
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,...
1080i
1080i is the shorthand name for a high-definition television mode. The i means interlaced video; 1080i differs from 1080p, in which the p stands for progressive scan. The term 1080i assumes a widescreen aspect ratio of 16:9, implying a frame size of 1920×1080 pixels...
16:9
16:9 is an aspect ratio with a width of 16 units and height of 9. Since 2009, it has become the most common aspect ratio for sold televisions and computer monitors and is also the international standard format of HDTV, Full HD, non-HD digital television and analog widescreen television ...
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...
Soi
Soi is the term used in Thailand for a side-street branching off a major street . An alley is called a Trok .Sois are usually numbered, and are referred to by the name of the major street and the number, as in "Soi Sukhumvit 4", "Sukhumvit Soi 4", or "Sukhumvit 4", all referring to the fourth soi...
As of November 1st 2011, WNJU is now broadcasting the soi
Soi
Soi is the term used in Thailand for a side-street branching off a major street . An alley is called a Trok .Sois are usually numbered, and are referred to by the name of the major street and the number, as in "Soi Sukhumvit 4", "Sukhumvit Soi 4", or "Sukhumvit 4", all referring to the fourth soi...
network on channel 47.3.
WNJU also has a Mobile DTV feed of subchannel 47.1, labelled "WNJU T47".
Analog-to-Digital Conversion
On June 12, 2009, WNJU discontinued regular analog programming on channel 47. The station remained on its pre-transition channel 36 using PSIP to display WNJU's virtual channelVirtual 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 47.