WRDM-CD (channel 19) is a Class A television station licensed to Hartford, Connecticut, United States, serving as the Hartford–New Haven market's outlet for the Spanish-language network Telemundo. It is owned and operated by NBCUniversal's Telemundo Station Group alongside NBC outlet WVIT (channel 30).[4] The two stations share studios on New Britain Avenue in West Hartford and transmitter facilities on Rattlesnake Mountain in Farmington, Connecticut. Despite WRDM-CD legally holding a low-power Class A license, it transmits using WVIT's full-power spectrum. This ensures complete reception across the Hartford–New Haven market.
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| City | Hartford, Connecticut |
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| Ownership | |
| Owner |
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| WVIT | |
| History | |
| Founded | 1985 |
First air date | June 14, 1986 |
Former call signs |
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Former channel number(s) |
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Call sign meaning | Ruzzier, D'Agostino, Minniti[1] (former owners) |
| Technical information[2] | |
Licensing authority | FCC |
| Facility ID | 10153 |
| ERP | 374 kW |
| HAAT | 450 m (1,476 ft) |
| Transmitter coordinates | 41°42′2″N 72°49′55″W |
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Public license information | |
| Website | Connecticut section on WNEU's website |
| Translator | |
| WDMR-LD | |
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| History | |
| Founded | 1988 |
First air date | June 13, 1991 |
Former call signs |
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Former channel number(s) |
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Call sign meaning | anagram of WRDM-CD |
| Technical information[3] | |
| Facility ID | 10154 |
| Class | LD |
| ERP | 15 kW |
| HAAT | 146 m (479 ft) |
| Transmitter coordinates | 42°5′7.3″N 72°42′10.3″W |
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Public license information | LMS |
WDMR-LD (channel 14) in Springfield, Massachusetts, operates as a translator of WRDM, serving the Pioneer Valley. This station's transmitter is located on Provin Mountain in the Feeding Hills section of Agawam, Massachusetts.
History
WRDM-CD signed on June 14, 1986; it claims to be the first Spanish-language television station in New England.[5] The station initially operated on channel 13 under the call letters W13BF.[1] On June 13, 1991,[6] the station added a simulcast in Springfield, W65BX (channel 65).[1] Initially, in addition to Telemundo programming, W13BF and W65BX aired programming in Italian from public broadcaster Radiotelevisione Italiana (RAI)'s international service,[1] with additional programming in Greek and Polish.[7] The television stations were joined by radio station WRDM (1550 AM, now WSDK) in 1993;[1] on September 1, 1995, W13BF changed its call letters to WRDM-LP,[8] and W65BX became WDMR-LP.[9] WRDM radio was sold off in 1998.[10] During the late 1990s, WDMR-LP's schedule also included English-language Boston Red Sox telecasts produced by Boston's WABU (now Ion Television owned-and-operated station WBPX-TV).[11] By 1997, WRDM-LP's programming was simulcast in New Haven on W10BQ (channel 10, now defunct) and in Hartford on W11BJ (channel 11, now WFXQ-CD channel 28 in Springfield).[12]
Original owner Channel 13 Television sold WRDM-LP and WDMR-LP to ZGS Communications on March 27, 2001.[13][14] In January 2006, WRDM-LP moved to channel 50;[15] WDMR-LP moved to channel 51 that November.[16] WRDM became a class A station as WRDM-CA on May 7, 2008.[8] On November 15, 2012, WDMR flash cut from analog to digital as WDMR-LD;[9] on January 7, 2013, WRDM followed suit and became WRDM-CD.[8] WDMR-LD now serves as a complete simulcast of WRDM-CD.[17]
On December 4, 2017, NBCUniversal's Telemundo Station Group announced its purchase of ZGS' 13 television stations, including WRDM-CD and WDMR-LD. The sale was completed on February 1, 2018.[4] The deal made WRDM a sister station to NBC owned-and-operated station WVIT (channel 30), along with WNBC (channel 4) and WNJU (channel 47) to the southwest in New York City, and WBTS-LD (channel 8), WYCN-CD (channel 15) and WNEU (channel 60) to the northeast in Boston. WVIT began operating WRDM under a local marketing agreement on January 1, 2018 from WVIT's studios in West Hartford; WRDM later entered into a channel sharing agreement with WVIT.[18] ZGS had sold WRDM's spectrum in the FCC's incentive auction for $10,574,516 and indicated that the station would enter into a post-auction channel sharing agreement.[19] One immediate effect of the sale was the end of a brokered programming arrangement to carry English language Jewelry TV programming in overnights for Telemundo's regular overnight schedule, along with the addition of a Connecticut-specific part of the website for WNEU in place of the former WRDM website.
Newscasts
WRDM-LP began producing a newscast in April 1998; at the outset, Noticiero 13 primarily featured reports from Puerto Rico and Latin America, with local news coverage being added in June 1999.[20] The station's news operation was discontinued in the early 2000s; WRDM then began carrying Telenoticias Puerto Rico from WKAQ-TV in San Juan.
On December 15, 2017, NBCUniversal announced that, following its acquisition of WRDM-CD, the station (along with WDMR-LD) would begin simulcasting the newscasts of Boston sister station WNEU; the newscasts will include news from Connecticut and western Massachusetts from a reporter based at WRDM's facilities at the WVIT studios in West Hartford.[18]
Technical information
The stations' signals are multiplexed:
WRDM-CD subchannels
WDMR-LD subchannels
WDMR-LD also broadcasts the national services NBC LX Home and Oxygen, which are carried by WVIT as subchannels 30.3 and 30.4.
Spectrum auction repack
On August 2, 2019, WVIT and WRDM-CD were switched from RF 35 to RF 31.
References
External links
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