WFTY-DT (channel 67) is a television station licensed to Smithtown, New York, United States, serving Long Island and owned by TelevisaUnivision.
Channel 67 was originally assigned to Patchogue, New York, where television producer Theodore Granik obtained the construction permit for a new TV station in September 1968.
Granik envisioned a group of ultra high frequency (UHF) stations carrying public affairs programming, but he died in 1970 with channel 67 unbuilt.
The permit was acquired by the Suburban Broadcasting Corporation, which believed it could fill a void in providing news, sports, and entertainment programming from and for Long Island.
The station struggled to build a viewer and advertiser base owing to reception difficulties—lampooned so frequently by Newsday writer Marvin Kitman that he was sued—and economic troubles.
As subscriptions declined due to rising cable penetration, Wometco sold off the WHT business but kept channels 68 and 67, which began broadcasting a music video service known as U68 on June 1, 1985.
[2] Granik, who had produced the long-running The American Forum of the Air on radio and television, envisioned the Patchogue channel as one of seven stations nationwide specializing in public affairs programming.
The quality of the station's local programming and many viewers' trouble tuning it in became regular fodder for Marvin Kitman, the television critic and satirist for Long Island's daily Newsday.
In April, Kitman wrote,[23] The morning of March 6, a large crane went to the site of a leading cultural landmark on Long Island, the Ch.
"[26] In response, Suburban Broadcasting filed a $15 million lawsuit in New York Supreme Court against Kitman and Newsday in November 1974, claiming a "willful and malicious effort to mortally injure" WSNL-TV's chances as a "viable advertising medium".
[32] In addition to filing suit against Kitman, Suburban sued equipment manufacturer RCA and tower fabricator Stainless Inc. for improper initial installation of the antenna.
[33] In one last miscue, the station gave up its rights to telecast New York Cosmos soccer just two weeks before Pelé signed with the team.
The station left the air on June 20, 1975, while signing a deal with a company to use the Central Islip studios for commercial and film production.
[36] Wometco closed on the purchase in January 1981,[48] and in June, it bought out Canwest's interest in the joint venture and became the sole owner of WSNL while sharing ownership of WWHT with Blonder-Tongue Laboratories.
[51] This year was the peak for subscription operation as the early 1980s recession deepened and cable systems continued building out in areas served by STV.
[52] In addition, beginning in 1981, Wometco Home Theater was also seen on WRBV-TV (channel 65) in southern New Jersey and the Philadelphia area,[53] where it had as many as 20,000 subscribers before closing in November 1984.
[54] WWHT and WSNL began broadcasting WHT programming 20 hours a day on March 1, 1983, and discontinued all ad-supported telecasting, including FNN and Uncle Floyd.
[55][56] They were able to do so because the FCC had abolished the so-called "28-hour rule"—which required stations to provide a minimum of, on average, four hours a day of non-subscription programming—in June 1982.
[62] After approving several measures in a shareholders meeting designed to prevent a hostile takeover,[62] the Wolfson family and Wometco board sold the company to merchant banker Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (KKR) on September 21, 1983, in a $1 billion leveraged buyout,[63] the largest in history at the time.
[69] That company renamed itself Cooper Wireless Cable and began broadcasting from the channel 60 translator, though in doing so it lost subscribers who could not receive the low-power signal from the World Trade Center.
[71] In April 1985, KKR executed another leveraged buyout, this one of Storer Communications, then facing a shareholder revolt[72] and a hostile takeover attempt by Comcast.
[73] The deal was completed in December 1985; however, approval by the FCC was contingent on KKR divesting either Storer's cable systems in northern New Jersey and Connecticut, serving 195,000 subscribers, or WWHT–WSNL within 18 months to satisfy cross-ownership rules.
While Storer and Wometco remained nominally separate companies, the FCC recognized KKR as the primary owner of both and forced it to make a number of station or system divestitures.
[75] U68 touted its format as specifically programmed for the New York market in contrast to the national cable service of MTV; it carved out time to air videos by local acts.
The stations would carry the newly established Home Shopping Network 2 service, which offered a more upscale assortment of products than the existing HSN.
[92] As late as 2000, Diller promised to bring the CityVision general-entertainment independent format that USA Broadcasting was slowly rolling out in its portfolio to New York and Los Angeles.
USA Station Group Partnership of New Jersey, the licensee of WHSE, registered a trademark on WORX as a future call sign in October 2000.
[93] After discussions for a joint venture with ABC fell apart, the USA Broadcasting stations were sold to Univision for $1.1 billion in a deal announced in December 2000.
[103] In 2017, Univision reached a deal with the Justice Network, a diginet focusing on true crime and law enforcement programming, and provided it carriage in 11 markets, including New York City.