WUNI
Encyclopedia
WUNI, digital channel 29, is the Univision
television
affiliate for the Greater Boston
market. Licensed to Worcester, Massachusetts
, the station runs general Spanish entertainment programs as well as news and information programming. The call letters stand for "Univision Nueva Inglaterra", which is Spanish for New England
.
The station signed on January 2, 1970 as English-language WSMW-TV, and served Worcester with general entertainment programming that included old movies, cartoons, religious shows, a cooking show
(Cooking with Bernard), science fiction
shows (Gerry Anderson
's UFO
) and sitcoms. Reruns included The Jack Benny Show, The Phil Silvers Show
(Sgt. Bilko), Maverick
, and Abbott and Costello
. Religious shows included The Jacobs Brothers and The PTL Club
.
WSMW also broadcast sports; from its debut through the end of the 1971-1972 NBA season, the station was the television home of the Boston Celtics
. In 1970 and 1971, WSMW broadcast pre-season games of the New England Patriots
. WSMW also covered a lot of college basketball
throughout the 1970s, mostly games of the College of the Holy Cross
and Assumption College
, with some Boston College
, University of Massachusetts Amherst
, and Bentley College
games included on the schedule. The broadcast team of play-by-play man Bob Fouracre and analyst Bob Cousy worked these games. During the college football season, on Saturday nights at 10:30pm, the station carried a taped two-hour broadcast of a game from earlier in the day. These games were typically Holy Cross home games, and when Holy Cross was on the road, games from UMass. Fouracre worked these games, and the analyst most of the time was Gino Cappelletti. Finally, WSMW broadcast Bay State Bowling, a weekly candlepin bowling
program on Sunday evenings for most of the 1970s. Fouracre, who was seemingly everywhere, was also host of the bowling show.
Beginning in 1980, channel 27 began running a subscription TV service called Preview
at night. By 1982, the station was running Preview all day, with a couple hours in the morning devoted to religious and public affairs programming.
In the spring of 1985, WSMW cut Preview back to 7 p.m. to 3 a.m. on weekdays and after 3 p.m. on weekends., and brought back some general entertainment programs. Hill Broadcasting bought the station at the end of 1985, and renamed the station WHLL. At that time, WHLL ceased to broadcast Preview and reverted to being a general-entertainment independent television station.
Initially, WHLL's schedule consisted of B-grade movies, drama shows, cartoons and a few sitcoms, as well as religious shows. By 1987, the cartoons and sitcoms were gone, and the station began running preempted network programming
from NBC
, ABC
, and CBS
, which had previously aired on Boston's WQTV
. WHLL also began running a few first-run syndicated shows by 1988, as well as a good amount of religious programming.
By 1992, the station began to focus on Spanish-language programming with the addition of Telemundo
programming from 4 or 5 p.m.. By 1993, when the Jasas Corporation acquired WHLL from Hill Broadcasting, it ran Spanish shows after noon. The station eventually broadcast Univision programming and changed its call letters to WUNI. Entravision eventually bought the station in 2000.
fees" as a cash payment. As a result of a negotiations breakdown over this issue, WUNI is presently not carried by Full Channel. Instead, Univision's national network can be found on the cable company's digital tier.
Before the newscast went on the air, the station signed an agreement with regional cable television network NECN, in which NECN provided news footage. In addition, several commercial spots were featured on WUNI, as well as Telefutura
affiliate WUTF-TV
(which is owned by Univision but operated by Entravision), encouraging Hispanics to tune-in during the day to watch NECN. However, the agreement with NECN expired in mid 2005, and as a result WUNI signed a new agreement with WBZ-TV
. Instead of featuring commercial spots on WUNI and WUTF encouraging Hispanics to tune-in to channel 4, its newscast (WBZ News) is credited while the images are shown on the air, as well as at the end of the broadcast, right before the copyright graphic title.
In April 2007, the station launched Despierta Boston, a local morning news update segment during Univision's Despierta América
at 7:25, 8:25, and 9:25. The station used Despierta Americas logo, replacing "américa" with "boston", while using a version of the graphics and music package used on the 6 p.m. newscast. Despierta Boston was anchored by reporter Maria Gonzalez. While Despierta Boston saw some success, economic problems led to Entravision canceling it in early 2009. The station also laid off Eduardo Guerrero (once again resulting in Sara Suarez becoming the solo anchor) and 10 year veteran sports journalist Omar Cabrera.
On July 14, 2007, the station began broadcasting Las Noticias Univision Fin de Semana from WLII
, Univision's Puerto Rico
affiliate, on weekends; this was subsequently dropped.
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...
television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
affiliate for the Greater Boston
Greater Boston
Greater Boston is the area of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts surrounding the city of Boston. Due to ambiguity in usage, the size of the area referred to can be anywhere between that of the metropolitan statistical area of Boston and that of the city's combined statistical area which includes...
market. Licensed to Worcester, Massachusetts
Worcester, Massachusetts
Worcester is a city and the county seat of Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. Named after Worcester, England, as of the 2010 Census the city's population is 181,045, making it the second largest city in New England after Boston....
, the station runs general Spanish entertainment programs as well as news and information programming. The call letters stand for "Univision Nueva Inglaterra", which is Spanish for New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
.
History
Cooking show
A TV cooking show is a television program that presents the preparation of food, in a kitchen on the studio set. The host of the show, often a celebrity chef, prepares one or more dishes over the course of the show, taking the viewing audience through the food's preparation showing all...
(Cooking with Bernard), science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
shows (Gerry Anderson
Gerry Anderson
Gerry Anderson MBE is a British publisher, producer, director and writer, famous for his futuristic television programmes, particularly those involving specially modified marionettes, a process called "Supermarionation"....
's UFO
UFO (TV series)
UFO is a 1970-1971 British television science fiction series about an alien invasion of Earth, created by Gerry Anderson and Sylvia Anderson with Reg Hill, and produced by the Andersons and Lew Grade's Century 21 Productions for Grade's ITC Entertainment company.UFO first aired in the UK and Canada...
) and sitcoms. Reruns included The Jack Benny Show, The Phil Silvers Show
The Phil Silvers Show
The Phil Silvers Show is a comedy television series which ran on CBS from 1955 to 1959 for 142 episodes, plus a 1959 special. The series starred Phil Silvers as Master Sergeant Ernest G...
(Sgt. Bilko), Maverick
Maverick (TV series)
Maverick is a western television series with comedic overtones created by Roy Huggins. The show ran from September 22, 1957 to July 8, 1962 on ABC and stars James Garner as Bret Maverick, a cagey, articulate cardsharp. Eight episodes into the first season, he was joined by Jack Kelly as his brother...
, and Abbott and Costello
Abbott and Costello
William "Bud" Abbott and Lou Costello performed together as Abbott and Costello, an American comedy duo whose work on stage, radio, film and television made them the most popular comedy team during the 1940s and 1950s...
. Religious shows included The Jacobs Brothers and The PTL Club
The PTL Club
The PTL Club , later called The Jim and Tammy Show, and in its last days PTL Today and Heritage Today, was a Christian television program first hosted by evangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, which ran from 1974 to 1989...
.
WSMW also broadcast sports; from its debut through the end of the 1971-1972 NBA season, the station was the television home of the Boston Celtics
Boston Celtics
The Boston Celtics are a National Basketball Association team based in Boston, Massachusetts. They play in the Atlantic Division of the Eastern Conference. Founded in 1946, the team is currently owned by Boston Basketball Partners LLC. The Celtics play their home games at the TD Garden, which...
. In 1970 and 1971, WSMW broadcast pre-season games of the New England Patriots
New England Patriots
The New England Patriots, commonly called the "Pats", are a professional football team based in the Greater Boston area, playing their home games in the town of Foxborough, Massachusetts at Gillette Stadium. The team is part of the East Division of the American Football Conference in the National...
. WSMW also covered a lot of college basketball
College basketball
College basketball most often refers to the USA basketball competitive governance structure established by the National Collegiate Athletic Association . Basketball in the NCAA is divided into three divisions: Division I, Division II and Division III....
throughout the 1970s, mostly games of the College of the Holy Cross
College of the Holy Cross
The College of the Holy Cross is an undergraduate Roman Catholic liberal arts college located in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA...
and Assumption College
Assumption College
Assumption College is a private, Roman Catholic, liberal arts college located on 185 acres in Worcester, Massachusetts. Assumption has an enrollment of about 2,117 undergraduates...
, with some Boston College
Boston College
Boston College is a private Jesuit research university located in the village of Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, USA. The main campus is bisected by the border between the cities of Boston and Newton. It has 9,200 full-time undergraduates and 4,000 graduate students. Its name reflects its early...
, University of Massachusetts Amherst
University of Massachusetts Amherst
The University of Massachusetts Amherst is a public research and land-grant university in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States and the flagship of the University of Massachusetts system...
, and Bentley College
Bentley College
Bentley University is a private co-educational university in Waltham, Massachusetts, west of Boston. Founded in 1917 as a school of accounting and finance in Boston's Back Bay neighborhood, Bentley moved to Waltham in 1968...
games included on the schedule. The broadcast team of play-by-play man Bob Fouracre and analyst Bob Cousy worked these games. During the college football season, on Saturday nights at 10:30pm, the station carried a taped two-hour broadcast of a game from earlier in the day. These games were typically Holy Cross home games, and when Holy Cross was on the road, games from UMass. Fouracre worked these games, and the analyst most of the time was Gino Cappelletti. Finally, WSMW broadcast Bay State Bowling, a weekly candlepin bowling
Candlepin bowling
Candlepin bowling is a variation of Bowling that is played primarily in the Canadian Maritime provinces, Ontario, Quebec, and the New England states of Maine, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, where it is more common than ten-pin bowling....
program on Sunday evenings for most of the 1970s. Fouracre, who was seemingly everywhere, was also host of the bowling show.
Beginning in 1980, channel 27 began running a subscription TV service called Preview
Preview (TV channel)
Preview was a subscription television service, started in 1980, similar to ON-TV and SelecTV. Like ON-TV and SelecTV, Preview was a scrambled UHF Subscription channel requiring a special set-top box to decode....
at night. By 1982, the station was running Preview all day, with a couple hours in the morning devoted to religious and public affairs programming.
In the spring of 1985, WSMW cut Preview back to 7 p.m. to 3 a.m. on weekdays and after 3 p.m. on weekends., and brought back some general entertainment programs. Hill Broadcasting bought the station at the end of 1985, and renamed the station WHLL. At that time, WHLL ceased to broadcast Preview and reverted to being a general-entertainment independent television station.
Initially, WHLL's schedule consisted of B-grade movies, drama shows, cartoons and a few sitcoms, as well as religious shows. By 1987, the cartoons and sitcoms were gone, and the station began running preempted network programming
Network programming
Network programming may refer to one of several things:* Network programming, * Network programming,...
from NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
, ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
, and CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
, which had previously aired on Boston's WQTV
WBPX
WBPX-TV, digital channel 32, is the Ion Television station owned by ION Media Networks , serving the Boston market. The station primarily broadcasts infomercials before 6 p.m. daily, along with a daily Catholic Mass and other religious programming, with Ion network programming beginning at 6 p.m....
. WHLL also began running a few first-run syndicated shows by 1988, as well as a good amount of religious programming.
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....
programming from 4 or 5 p.m.. By 1993, when the Jasas Corporation acquired WHLL from Hill Broadcasting, it ran Spanish shows after noon. The station eventually broadcast Univision programming and changed its call letters to WUNI. Entravision eventually bought the station in 2000.
Retransmission disputes
On February 18, 2011 Full Channel TV, Inc., a cable provider in Rhode Island, announced that Entravision had made a demand for "a 33% increase in retransmissionRetransmission consent
Retransmission consent is an option granted to US television stations as part of the law that granted such stations the option to elect must-carry rights. Under retransmission consent, a full-power US television station may elect to negotiate with a cable system operator for carriage of its...
fees" as a cash payment. As a result of a negotiations breakdown over this issue, WUNI is presently not carried by Full Channel. Instead, Univision's national network can be found on the cable company's digital tier.
Newscast
On April 1, 2003, WUNI launched its first and only live local newscast, Noticias Univision Nueva Inglaterra (Univision News New England), at 6 p.m. Sara Suarez was brought from KCEC, Univision's affiliate in Colorado, to serve as anchorwoman and news director. Angel Salcedo, who hosted Enfoque Latino (a local public affairs program on WUNI) for years, was chosen as the anchorman. However, Salcedo left the station shortly afterwards, leaving Suarez as the sole anchor until Carlos Ruben Zapata was hired to replace Salcedo. In early-to-mid 2005, Zapata left the station and Suarez anchored the news by herself once again. In late 2005, the station hired a new anchorman, Eduardo Guerrero.Before the newscast went on the air, the station signed an agreement with regional cable television network NECN, in which NECN provided news footage. In addition, several commercial spots were featured on WUNI, as well as Telefutura
TeleFutura
TeleFutura is a U.S. Spanish-language broadcast television network owned by Univision with headquarters in Miami, Florida.-Overview:TeleFutura Is America’s #2 Spanish-Language Network in prime time...
affiliate WUTF-TV
WUTF-TV
WUTF-DT is a television station in the Boston market. Owned by the Univision Broadcast Group and managed locally by Entravision, the station is an affiliate of the Telefutura network...
(which is owned by Univision but operated by Entravision), encouraging Hispanics to tune-in during the day to watch NECN. However, the agreement with NECN expired in mid 2005, and as a result WUNI signed a new agreement with WBZ-TV
WBZ-TV
WBZ-TV, virtual channel 4, is a CBS owned-and-operated television station, located in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. WBZ-TV's studios and office facilities, shared with sister station WSBK-TV , are located in the Allston-Brighton section of Boston, and its transmitter is located in Needham,...
. Instead of featuring commercial spots on WUNI and WUTF encouraging Hispanics to tune-in to channel 4, its newscast (WBZ News) is credited while the images are shown on the air, as well as at the end of the broadcast, right before the copyright graphic title.
In April 2007, the station launched Despierta Boston, a local morning news update segment during Univision's Despierta América
Despierta América
¡Despierta América! is a popular Spanish language morning show which has aired on the Univision television network since 1997. It is broadcast from the network's studios in Miami, Florida, and is hosted by Chiquinquirá Delgado, Poncho de Anda, Raúl González, and Karla Martínez. Satcha Pretto and...
at 7:25, 8:25, and 9:25. The station used Despierta Americas logo, replacing "américa" with "boston", while using a version of the graphics and music package used on the 6 p.m. newscast. Despierta Boston was anchored by reporter Maria Gonzalez. While Despierta Boston saw some success, economic problems led to Entravision canceling it in early 2009. The station also laid off Eduardo Guerrero (once again resulting in Sara Suarez becoming the solo anchor) and 10 year veteran sports journalist Omar Cabrera.
On July 14, 2007, the station began broadcasting Las Noticias Univision Fin de Semana from WLII
WLII
WLII-DT is a full-power television station licensed to Caguas, Puerto Rico. Transmitting its analog signal on channel 11 and digital signal on channel 56, the station is owned and operated by Univision and is branded as Univision Puerto Rico...
, Univision's Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...
affiliate, on weekends; this was subsequently dropped.
News team
- Sara Suarez, Anchorwoman and News Director
- Maria Gonzalez, Reporter, Anchor for Despierta Boston
- Fernando Pizarro, Washington D.C. reporter (featured on several Univision stations with local newscasts)
Notable former on-air staff
- Upton BellUpton BellUpton Bell is a former American football executive. Upton is currently a talk show host and commentator at WCRN Talk AM 830 in Worcester, Massachusetts...
- college football color commentator (1978–1982) - Doug BrownDoug Brown (sportscaster)Doug Brown is an American sportscaster who has worked for ESPN Radio since 1993. He is currently the host of SportsCenterNightly.Brown has previously worked for WSAR , WHLL , WNDS, WBZ Radio , WEEI , WSBK-TV , WABU...
- sports anchor (1982–1983) - Gino CappellettiGino CappellettiGino Cappelletti is a former American collegiate and Professional Football player. He played at the University of Minnesota, and was a star in the American Football League for the Boston Patriots...
- college football color commentator - Bob CousyBob CousyRobert Joseph "Bob" Cousy is a retired American professional basketball player. The 6'1" , 175-pound Cousy played point guard with the National Basketball Association's Boston Celtics from 1951 to 1963 and briefly with the Cincinnati Royals in the 1969–70 season...
- college basketball color commentator - Bob FouracreBob FouracreRobert E. "Bob" Fouracre is an American sportscaster who currently calls football and basketball for the College of the Holy Cross. He is a 1956 graduate of Northboro High School, a 1958 graduate of the Cushing Academy and a 1962 graduate of the Cambridge School of Broadcasting....
- sports anchor, Bay State Bowling host, Boston Celtics play-by-play announcer, college football and basketball play-by-play announcer (1971–1982) - Stephen GuptillStephen GuptillStephen Guptill is a former American journalist and elderly advocate who resigned as Massachusetts Secretary of Elder Affairs after less then one week on the job when it was revealed that he falsely claimed to have had graduated from two foreign colleges....
- elderly affairs reporter, The Elder American host (1971–1975) - Togo PalazziTogo PalazziTogo Anthony Palazzi is a retired American basketball player.A 6'4" forward/guard, Palazzi played at the College of the Holy Cross in the 1950s. He was captain of the Crusaders team that won the 1954 NIT Championship and was named MVP of the tournament.Palazzi was selected by the Boston Celtics...
- college basketball color commentator - Doug WhiteDoug White (news anchor)Doug White was an American news anchor.A native of Boston and an alumnus of Bates College, White's first work in television was at WGBH-TV while at Boston University on a work fellowship. White worked at WPRI-TV, located in Providence, Rhode Island for six years...
- news anchor (1970–1972)