WWOR-TV (channel 9) is a television station licensed to Secaucus, New Jersey, United States, serving the New York metropolitan area as the flagship of the MyNetworkTV programming service.

For a short time, the station's transmitter operated from WOR TV Tower in North Bergen, New Jersey, and was later moved to the Empire State Building.

[6] Later that year, WOIC was sold to a joint venture of The Washington Post and CBS, who would change that station's call sign to WTOP-TV.

Initially built by the Robert Gless Co. for the Bamberger Broadcasting Service, the building itself was owned by the Macy's employee pension fund, and it had been leased prior to completion to Thomas S. Lee Enterprises (a company that was later absorbed into RKO General).

[8][9] The main impetus for the merger was to give General Tire a controlling share in the Mutual Radio Network, which was affiliated with and partially owned by WOR and other stations.

After a transitional period, WOR relocated TV operations to their headquarters at 1440 Broadway closer to its radio station sisters and to a new compact studio for news and special events programming located on the 83rd floor of the Empire State Building.

For much of the 1960s, WOR-TV was a standard independent station with a schedule composed of some local public affairs shows, off-network programs, children's shows such as The Friendly Giant (which later moved to WNDT) and Romper Room (which moved to the station from WNEW-TV in 1966), sporting events, and a large catalog of movies, some of which came from the RKO Radio Pictures film library.

The Joe Franklin Show ended on August 6, 1993, which, having run for 42 years, makes it one of the longest-running programs in television history, local or national.

Beginning in 1971, the station began gradually seeking a different programming strategy—one that was more adult-oriented with a heavy emphasis on films, reruns of hour-long network dramas, game shows and sports.

WOR-TV also aired Spanish-language telenovelas on weekdays in the early 1970s, such as the Argentinian-Peruvian co-production Nino, las cosas simples de la vida.

In April 1979, Syracuse, New York-based Eastern Microwave, Inc. began distributing WOR-TV to cable and C-band satellite subscribers across the United States, joining WTBS (now WPCH-TV) in Atlanta and WGN-TV in Chicago as national superstations.

Westinghouse Broadcasting,[23] Chris-Craft Industries,[24] and a joint venture of Cox Enterprises and MCA/Universal emerged as the leading suitors for WOR-TV; the station was sold to the Cox/MCA group in late 1986 for $387 million.

[25] Cox later withdrew the joint venture due to disagreements between the two firms on who would be responsible for running the station, leaving MCA to take sole ownership of WOR-TV on April 21, 1987.

Eastern Microwave would eventually launch a separate feed for satellite and cable subscribers on January 1, 1990, called the "WWOR EMI Service".

Universal would re-enter the New York television market after it merged with NBC to form NBCUniversal in 2004, acquiring the network's flagship station, WNBC, in the process.

[29] Instead, Pinelands agreed to an unsolicited bid in May from Chris-Craft Industries' BHC Communications subsidiary, thus ending the planned business merger with Disney's KCAL,[30] making WWOR a sister station to Chris-Craft/BHC's KCOP in the process.

In the 1990s, the station continued with a large amount of younger-skewing talk shows, reality programming, some sitcoms in evenings, and syndicated cartoons during the morning hours.

In the fall of 2001, the Fox Kids weekday afternoon block moved to WWOR-TV from WNYW, while the station also ran UPN's Disney's One Too during the morning hours.

Channel 9 was New York City's last remaining commercial station to air children's programming on both weekday mornings and afternoons, an ironic twist from 20 years earlier; however, Fox later discontinued the Fox Kids weekday block in January 2002 while UPN ended its cartoon block in August 2003, WWOR then picked up syndicated cartoons in the fall of 2003 in the 7 to 9 a.m. slot (and later until 8 am), before dropping them in 2006.

While some office functions were merged, plans for a full move to Manhattan were scuttled later that year due to pressure from New Jersey Congressman Steve Rothman (whose congressional district included Secaucus) and Senator Frank Lautenberg.

[50] On January 7, 2014, WWOR applied for a digital fill-in translator on channel 34 from the Armstrong Tower and licensed to Alpine, New Jersey, that will serve the northern viewing area.

Senator Frank Lautenberg and media observers, who filed a complaint with the FCC in November 2009, WWOR-TV's performance was "clearly inadequate to meet its public interest obligations" and he questioned the truthfulness of its application.

[60] In December 2012, Lautenberg called for an investigation into the potential relaxing of FCC rules regarding ownership consolidation within media markets stating that News Corporation's co-ownership of WNYW and the New York Post "has not served New Jersey well".

[64] In March 2014, New Jersey's senior United States senator, Bob Menendez, wrote to the FCC asking for swift action to determine if the station had been fulfilling its licensing requirements.

[69] Since that point, WWOR's operations have been consolidated with WNYW in Manhattan, and the building, which remains standing as of 2024, has had all WWOR-related television equipment removed.

[76] In 2023, two New York Liberty games also aired on the station, including one broadcast nationally on ABC due to WABC-TV televising the NYC Pride March.

Dunn opted to leave WWOR that summer, with his last newscast for channel 9 airing on June 19; he was replaced as lead anchor by Van Hackett, formerly of KTRK-TV in Houston.

WWOR's newscasts also focused a larger proportion of their stories on New Jersey issues, a condition the station had adhered to since its license was transferred from New York City to Secaucus.

[85] On June 27, 2011, WWOR-TV returned the newscast to its previous 10 p.m. timeslot and retitled it The Ten O'Clock News; it remained a half-hour in length and continued to air on weeknights only.

With the end of WWOR's newscast, Brenda Blackmon was reassigned to produce and host news specials for the station (although she would leave for WPIX in 2016,[88] while other members of the on-air staff were offered new roles (including at WNYW).