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WPRI-TV, channel 12, is a CBS-affiliated television station located in Providence, Rhode Island, USA. WPRI-TV is owned by Media General, and also operates Fox affiliate WNAC-TV (channel 64), owned by Super Towers, Inc., through a local marketing agreement (LMA). The two stations share studio/office facilities located on Catamore Boulevard in East Providence, and WPRI's transmitter is located in Rehoboth, Massachusetts. == History == The station debuted on March 27, 1955 known as WPRO-TV (for PROvidence). It was Rhode Island's third television station and was owned-and-operated by retailer Cherry & Webb along with WPRO radio (630 AM and 92.3 FM). WPRO-TV was originally supposed to go on-the-air in 1953 but ran into several delays. It originally planned to build a transmitter in Rehoboth but legal disputes with town officials forced Cherry & Webb to find a site in Johnston, Rhode Island. The station then planned to sign-on in 1954 but Hurricane Carol destroyed the Johnston transmitter. The legal disputes in Rehoboth were finally settled in late-1954 and WPRO got the go-ahead to begin construction there. The channel was due to join CBS because of WPRO radio's long affiliation with CBS radio. Even when it became apparent that WPRO-TV would miss its target air date, CBS opted to continue its secondary affiliation with NBC station WJAR-TV rather than move its programming to ABC affiliate WNET-TV. When WPRO-TV finally got on-the-air, ABC gave it right of first refusal for its more popular shows. Within less than a year, WNET had gone dark. This station continued to share ABC with WJAR until WTEV-TV (now WLNE-TV) signed-on in 1963. Channel 12's studios were originally located on the top floor of 24 Mason Street in Downtown Providence with its radio sisters. The three stations' news facilities were completely integrated. On-air personalities from radio and TV created newscasts together. In fact, some reporters recorded conservative-sounding FM news broadcasts prior to pulling a switch to deliver live, punchy "colorful color radio PRO" on-air news for the AM station on the hour, with headlines on the half hour. And some radio news reporters headed into the field with photographers to cover stories simultaneously for radio and TV. Legendary Providence radio personality Salty Brine had a daily children's show on WPRO-TV. News personalities included Mort Blender and Walter Cryan while the beloved Hank Bouchard did a multitude of on-air duties. That included announcing, hosting programs, and giving the weather report. Cherry & Webb sold WPRO-AM-FM-TV to Albany, New York-based Capital Cities Television Corporation, predecessor of Capital Cities Communications, in 1959. WPRO-TV was then sold to Poole Broadcasting (owners of WJRT-TV in Flint, Michigan) on June 16, 1967; that sale was necessary because CapCities' purchase of KTRK-TV in Houston left it one VHF station over the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ownership limit of the time. Poole Broadcasting then changed WPRO-TV's call letters to the present WPRI-TV. It wanted to trade on the well-known WPRO calls and also realized that "PRI" could stand for Providence, Rhode Island. Capital Cities retained ownership of the WPRO radio stations until 1993 with the last seven being ABC-owned stations airing ABC Radio. However, the three stations continued to share the Mason Street studio until 1974, when they moved to separate facilities in East Providence. Poole retained ownership of channel 12 until 1977 when it sold its three television stations (WPRI, WJRT, and WTEN in Albany, New York) to Knight-Ridder Broadcasting. WPRI swapped affiliations with WTEV and became an ABC affiliate after this sale as a result of a corporate affiliation deal between ABC and Knight-Ridder. In 1989, Knight-Ridder left the broadcasting business selling WPRI and WTKR in Norfolk, Virginia to Narragansett Television LP, a locally based firm. Narragansett Television sold WPRI to CBS in 1995 making it a network owned-and-operated station (and one of the last such acquisitions prior to the Westinghouse Electric Corporation's purchase of the network). At midnight on September 10, 1995, WPRI reversed the 1977 swap with WLNE and officially rejoined CBS. It aired a vigorous promotion called "Survive the Switch" so television viewers in Providence would be prepared for this changeover. In August 1995, Westinghouse bought CBS for approximately $6 billion. The merger was finalized that November 24. Westinghouse already owned WBZ-TV in Boston. WPRI's city-grade signal, like most of the other major Rhode Island stations, decently covers most of the Boston area. Meanwhile, WBZ-TV provides city-grade coverage to Providence itself, as well as New Bedford and Fall River, and at least grade B coverage to the rest of Rhode Island. At the time, the FCC normally did not allow common ownership of multiple stations with overlapping coverage areas and would not even consider granting a waiver if the overlap was between city-grade signals. As a result, CBS opted to keep WBZ-TV and sell WPRI to Clear Channel Communications on July 1, 1996 after less than ten months of ownership. Just months after the sale was announced, the FCC eliminated the requirement of a waiver for common ownership of television stations in adjacent markets with substantial grade B signal overlap. It began to permit common ownership of stations whose city-grade signals overlap when duopolies began to be permitted in 2000. In 2000, Clear Channel was forced to sell WPRI as a condition of being allowed to buy additional radio stations in the Providence market. Sunrise Television acquired WPRI in early-2001 for $50 million. Sunrise merged with LIN TV in May 2002. In November 2006, WPRI renewed its broadcasting license with the FCC. On May 18, 2007, LIN TV announced that it was exploring strategic alternatives that could have resulted in the sale of the company. In October 2008, WPRI and sister station WALA-TV in Mobile, Alabama relaunched websites through News Corporation's Fox Interactive Media (since spun off as the independent company known as EndPlay, which in turn was acquired by the Nexstar Broadcasting Group in 2014 and merged with its two other CMS providers, Inergize Digital and Internet Broadcasting to form a new CMS unit, Lakana) as a result of a new partnership between LIN TV and NewsCorp. The other LIN TV-owned stations (irrespective of network affiliations) followed suit within two months ending the company's long partnership with WorldNow. The new sites are in a format which is similar to those of the Fox O&O-style web addresses used by many Fox affiliates (and which the LIN TV-owned or controlled Fox affiliates such as WNAC-TV had used) except the flashy myFox look. The myFox sites themselves were eventually redesigned to a look similar to those of the LIN TV sites. After Nexstar's acquisition of EndPlay was completed, the LIN station Web sites switched to the WordPress.com VIP CMS platform, which most of the Web sites of the television stations Media General acquired since the announced merger with Young Broadcasting have since adopted. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「WPRI-TV」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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