WLNY-TV

WLNY-TV (channel 55), branded New York 55, is an independent television station licensed to Riverhead, New York, United States, serving the New York City television market. It is owned by the CBS News and Stations group alongside CBS flagship WCBS-TV (channel 2). The two stations share studios within the CBS Broadcast Center on West 57th Street in Midtown Manhattan; WLNY-TV's transmitter is located in Ridge, New York. The station's over-the-air broadcast covers most of Long Island, but WLNY-TV is available on cable and satellite systems throughout the New York City market.

Channel 55 went on air on April 28, 1985, as WLIG. For its first 26 years of existence, it was owned by Long Island businessman Michael Pascucci; it primarily offered older movies and syndicated shows, though it also featured a 10 p.m. newscast. It spent seven years fighting with Cablevision of Long Island for a channel on the cable system, a battle which sapped the station of potential viewers and was only resolved with the reinstatement of must-carry regulations. Those rules allowed WLNY to gain access to cable systems throughout the New York area, even while its location at some distance from New York City enabled it to carry popular syndicated shows also sold to the New York stations. In 1993, the station reinstated its local news department, which by 2011 was airing one Long Island–focused newscast each night.

CBS agreed to purchase WLNY in 2011 and took control in 2012, dissolving its existing news division for newscasts from the Broadcast Center which vary between WCBS newscast extensions and shows which air nationwide on fellow CBS-owned independents, but have no Long Island-specific focus.

Newscasts

After the acquisition by CBS, on July 2, 2012, the station debuted an hour-long 9 p.m. newscast and a two-hour morning show, Live from the Couch.[46] The morning show was hosted by Carolina Bermudez, who left New York City radio station Z100 after seven years co-hosting mornings with Elvis Duran.[47]

David Friend, the news director for WCBS-TV, believed a 9 p.m. newscast could attract a new audience, particularly among people who did not make it in home in time to watch the news at 6 pm.[48] The new news offering was criticized for not focusing on Long Island, instead providing area-wide news coverage. Claude Solnik, writing for Long Island Business News, highlighted the use of Manhattan as a background and the airing of just one to two Long Island–related stories in the news program. This drew criticism from the Long Island Fair Media Council, accusing the station of abandoning its focus on Long Island. CBS management defended the lack of coverage as related to ongoing work at the WLNY Long Island facility in Melville.[49] The facility, which was converted into a news bureau set up to cover Long Island news stories, was completed in July 2012;[50] it also housed a separate sales force.[51] On May 23, 2014, WLNY canceled Live from the Couch.[52]

On April 8, 2019, the newscast was replaced by CBSN New York on WLNY, a rebroadcast of a prime time newscast produced by WCBS's local version of CBSN.[53] In 2022, WLNY's newscast was replaced with CBS News New York Now, part of a series of new prime time newscasts on the company's The CW affiliates and independent stations. These programs combined local segments with national content produced at the CBS News and Innovation Lab in Fort Worth, Texas.[54] The station rebranded as New York 55 in September 2023, coinciding with the eight CBS-owned CW affiliates leaving the network and adopting similar brands.[55] The Now news format was discontinued and replaced with an 8 p.m. newscast airing on weeknights.[56] Later in 2023, the station began airing the 7 and 8 a.m. CBS News New York newscasts originally created for streaming.[57]

WLNY (1996–present)

The implications of must-carry and the consequent expansion of its reach continued to transform channel 55. In early 1996, the station opened news bureaus in Wayne, New Jersey, and Fairfield, Connecticut, and it obtained press credentials in New York City.[27] The station cemented its broader reach and sought to distinguish itself from the multiple stations using "LI" in their call sign when it changed its call letters to WLNY, representing Long Island and New York, on September 1, 1996.[1] The sale of Pascucci's auto leasing business, Pascucci Oxford Resources, in 1997 brought an additional cash infusion to the television station.

Despite its introduction to hundreds of thousands more cable homes as a result of must-carry, its location on the fringes of the New York City television market made cable television coverage of the station an ongoing concern. In 1997, the FCC allowed some cable providers in New Jersey to exclude WLNY from carriage. WLNY, along with WRNN-TV (channel 48) and WPXN-TV (channel 31), appealed, but the courts upheld the FCC decision.[28] In 2003, the station moved to channel 10 on all Cablevision systems on Long Island, though in the rest of the metropolitan area, it continued to be seen on a variety of other, higher numbers.[29] By 2008, the station was described as a "moneymaker" in a profile of Pascucci in The New York Times.[30] Employees noted its quirky but friendly office culture and fewer resources than its New York City counterparts. For instance, the station lacked remote trucks to broadcast stories live; reporters had to hurry back to Melville to get their stories to air.

The station began broadcasting in digital in May 2002. Three years later, it struck a deal with Qualcomm to surrender its analog license and build out full digital television transmission facilities on channel 57, allowing Qualcomm to use the channel 55 frequency for its MediaFLO service. At the time, approximately 92% of Long Island's population received television service by cable or satellite, and the station had several repeaters that would remain in analog, so the FCC approved the request, and on December 31, 2005, WLNY shut down its analog signal and became a digital-only station.[31] On June 12, 2009, when all remaining full-service stations converted to digital, WLNY switched from channel 57 to channel 47, which until the switchover date had been occupied by the analog signal of WNJU.[32] Local programming remained in standard definition until April 9, 2012, when WLNY started broadcasting in high definition for the first time.

CBS ownership

On December 12, 2011, CBS Television Stations announced its intent to purchase WLNY-TV, creating a duopoly with the CBS network's flagship station, WCBS-TV. The terms of the purchase were originally not made public, though an FCC application for the purchase later revealed that CBS had purchased WLNY for $55 million.[33] The company announced that it would add additional on-air staff and expand WLNY's local news programming outside the 11 p.m. newscast that the station had at the time. The FCC approved the sale, and CBS took control of the station on June 29, 2012, giving the company its tenth television station duopoly—as well as its largest duopoly by market size.[34][35] The sale to CBS did not include repeaters WLNY-CD (channel 45) in Mineola, New York, WLIG-LD (channel 17) in Morristown, New Jersey, and W27CD in Stamford, Connecticut, which were sold separately to Local Media TV Holdings, LLC.[36][37]

Ahead of CBS assuming control of WLNY, the station discontinued its local newscasts in March 2012; about 30 of the station's 55 employees were to be retained by CBS.[38] Only one on-air personality, Richard Rose, remained with WLNY as it transitioned to CBS ownership.[39] After the acquisition, the station resumed airing local news programs, this time originating from the CBS Broadcast Center in Manhattan. Even though the station's local programs continued to originate from Manhattan, not Melville, CBS leased the facility from Pascucci for about eight years. WLNY continues to carry the Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve from St. Agnes Cathedral in Rockville Centre, New York.[40]

In early July 2018, WLNY-TV completed its move to UHF channel 27 under special temporary authority, allowing T-Mobile to deploy cellular service in the 600 MHz band sooner; T-Mobile had been reaching deals with other stations to accelerate its use of the spectrum it had obtained in the 2016 wireless spectrum auction.[41] The station then moved to UHF channel 29 in early August 2019 in phase 4 of the ensuing repack, which cleared the 600 MHz band nationally.

A January 2021 investigation by the Los Angeles Times based on complaints to the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission revealed that, as part of the 2011 transaction by which Pascucci sold WLNY-TV to CBS, Peter Dunn, the head of CBS Television Stations, gained the use of a CBS-paid membership to the exclusive Sebonack Golf Club in Southampton, which Pascucci built and owns. The membership allowed Dunn to make connections to billionaires such as fellow member Stephen Ross.[42] Dunn was revealed to have treated this membership as a personal perk of the sale; per the Los Angeles Times, a colleague, CBS Entertainment Group chief operating officer Bryon Rubin joked about the WLNY purchase as "the acquisition of our golf membership ... I mean TV station" on a private call in December 2020. The investigation, which also raised concerns about alleged racist, sexist and homophobic comments and the work environment at CBS-owned KYW-TV in Philadelphia, led to the network placing Dunn and Steve Friend, the senior vice president of news for the station group, on administrative leave and eventually to their termination.[43][44]

In 2025, WLNY began airing a limited amount of Brooklyn Nets games due to Yankees conflicts on YES Network.[45]

callsign	WLNY-TV
branding	New York 55; CBS News New York
digital	29 (UHF)
virtual	55
affiliations	55.1: Independent / CBS (alternate) for others, see
owner	CBS News and Stations
licensee	CBS LITV LLC
location	Riverhead, New York
country	United States
founded	November 9, 1982
airdate	April 28, 1985
sister stations	WCBS-TV
former callsigns	WLIG (1985–1996) WLNY (1996–2009)
former channel numbers	Analog: 55 (UHF, 1985–2005) Digital: 57 (UHF, 2002–2009), 47 (UHF, 2009–2018), 27 (UHF, 2018–2019)
erp	1,000 kW
haat	193.9 m
facility id	73206
coordinates	40.89731°N, -72.91506°W
callsign meaning	Long Island, New York‡R1R‡
licensing authority	FCC
website	https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/wlny/

History

WLIG (1985–1996)

Newscasts

Subchannels

External links

References

WLNY (1996–present)

CBS ownership