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| City | Newark, New Jersey |
| Channels | |
| Branding | UniMás Nueva York |
| Programming | |
| Affiliations |
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| Ownership | |
| Owner |
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| History | |
First air date | September 29, 1974 |
Former call signs |
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Former channel number(s) |
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Call sign meaning | Telefutura (former name for UniMás) |
| Technical information[1] | |
Licensing authority | FCC |
| Facility ID | 60555 |
| ERP | 215 kW |
| HAAT | 397 m (1,302 ft) |
| Transmitter coordinates | 40°44′54″N 73°59′9″W / 40.74833°N 73.98583°W |
| Links | |
Public license information | |
| Website | www |
WFUT-DT (channel 68) is a television station licensed to Newark, New Jersey, United States, serving as the UniMás outlet for the New York City area. WFUT-DT is owned and operated by TelevisaUnivision alongside Paterson, New Jersey–licensed Univision station WXTV-DT (channel 41). The stations share studios on Frank W. Burr Boulevard in Teaneck, New Jersey, and transmitter facilities at the Empire State Building in Midtown Manhattan. The programming of both stations and True Crime Network is simulcast to Long Island and southern Connecticut from WFTY-DT (channel 67), broadcasting from Middle Island, New York.
Channel 68 was originally awarded to Walter Reade in 1970 as part of what had initially been an attempt to revive WRTV, a dead UHF station of the mid-1950s broadcasting from Asbury Park. The station was sold to Blonder-Tongue Laboratories and began broadcasting as WBTB-TV on September 29, 1974. It offered a limited amount of New Jersey–specific programming but ran out of money after just 90 days. The station returned on September 28, 1975, this time as a specialist outlet offering financial, foreign-language, and children's programs. The station was notable as the first broadcast outlet for The Uncle Floyd Show, a local children's program that gained a cult following in the New York metropolitan area.
After conglomerate Wometco Enterprises reached a deal to become channel 68's majority owner, on March 1, 1977, WBTB-TV became the first station in the U.S. at that time to broadcast subscription television programming to paying users. When Wometco closed on the transaction, the station changed its call sign to WTVG and then WWHT, and the subscription service took the name Wometco Home Theater (WHT). WHT provided first-run movies and New York sports programming to households in areas unserved by cable. Its reach was expanded in 1980 when WHT began appearing on channel 67, then WSNL-TV; Wometco acquired that station outright in 1981. At its peak, WHT served more than 111,000 subscribers and was the fourth-largest STV system in the nation.
The death of Wometco majority owner Mitchell Wolfson in 1983 triggered a leveraged buyout by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR). 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. U68 was a locally programmed competitor to MTV with a more eclectic mix of music. The stations were put on the market in December 1985 because KKR executed a second leveraged buyout, this time of Storer Communications, and chose to retain Storer's cable systems in northern New Jersey and Connecticut over WWHT and WSNL-TV. The two stations were sold to the Home Shopping Network (HSN) as part of its foray into broadcasting; renamed WHSE and WHSI, they broadcast home shopping programming for the next 15 years. While an attempt by company owner Barry Diller to convert the stations to general-entertainment independents was slated as late as 2000, Diller ultimately sold WHSE and WHSI and other USA Broadcasting stations to Univision in 2001. Many of these stations formed the backbone of Telefutura (now UniMás), which launched in January 2002.
- ^ "Facility Technical Data for WFUT-DT". Licensing and Management System. Federal Communications Commission.