WNHT (TV)

WNHT (channel 21) was a television station in Concord, New Hampshire, United States. Owned for most of its existence by The Flatley Company, the organization of real estate developer Thomas Flatley, it broadcast from 1984 to 1989, first as an independent station and in its final year as a CBS affiliate with a full news department. The station's failure to attract New Hampshire news and CBS viewers, combined with a weakening advertising market, led to its closure on March 31, 1989; the station would not be reactivated until 1995 when it reemerged as WNBU, a satellite of Boston's WABU.

In 1980, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) received two applications to build a new television station in Concord. One was made by Leon Crosby, who owned KEMO-TV in San Francisco and had filed for three other stations across the country; his lawyer, Lauren Colby, described the proposal as for a "relatively low-powered, relatively modest community-oriented operation". The other came from NH Channel 21 Limited Partnership, which consisted of five New Hampshire businessmen, four of them with no major broadcast holdings. However, it made up for that in political power: one of the five partners was Hugh Gregg, a former governor of New Hampshire, who had been thinking about filing for a station for some time but was spurred into action by the Crosby application, wanting to see the new outlet owned by local interests.

Somebody is going to spend $3 million or $4 million for a new station and go bust. I don't intend for it to be us.

The FCC granted the NH Channel 21 application on April 15, 1981, after Crosby opted to pull out, and the company announced work would start on building the transmitter on Fort Mountain near Epsom. However, by 1983, the Gregg consortium had abandoned its plans and sold the construction permit to NHTV 21 Inc., owned by Bob and Frances Shaine and John S. Gikas, in a deal filed with the FCC the next year. Frances Shaine published a magazine, New Hampshire Profiles, and owned a manufacturing company in Holyoke, Massachusetts. After opposition dissuaded the station from setting up shop in the city's South End, a site on Hall Street was identified and approved to construct a studio. However, delays in obtaining equipment prevented NHTV 21 from meeting its goal to be on the air in time for the New Hampshire presidential primary.

Channel 21 began broadcasting on April 16, 1984; it was the fourth commercial television station established in New Hampshire. The station's sign-on came amidst a "television boom" in the state, long dominated by WMUR-TV in Manchester. In a short span, WNDS channel 50 in Derry signed on while WNHT and WGOT channel 60 in Merrimack all received construction permits, generating concerns as to whether the state could support them all. An article in the Concord Monitor asked, "Is New Hampshire Large Enough For Three New Stations?" Even though there were relatively few stations in New Hampshire, any new station in the state would have to compete more broadly in the Boston television market for programs, viewers, and advertisers. Launch programs included a nightly 5:30 p.m. newscast, a daily talk show titled New Hampshire Today, and a weekend public affairs program hosted by the editor of New Hampshire Profiles.

Less than four months after channel 21 began broadcasting, NHTV 21 sold the station to Thomas Flatley, a real estate developer, for $5 million. This sale was precipitated by disagreements between the Shaines and Gikas. The transaction closed in December of that year; one of Flatley's first actions was to trim WNHT's news staff from seven to four employees and fire the general manager. A month later, the station axed its local news service altogether pending the hiring of a new general manager. By 1986, this had been restored in a reduced form: channel 21 aired five 90-second news breaks each evening and a six-minute program inserted into a half-hour of CNN Headline News, all produced by a three-person team.

Channel 21 programs included the Financial News Network (which had been dropped by Boston's WQTV), local news and public affairs programs, and other syndicated shows. The station's studios hosted the drawings for Tri-State Megabucks, the first game offered by the Tri-State Lottery—formed by Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont—when it began in 1985. In 1986, Flatley was awarded a permit to build a second television station, channel 68 in Syracuse, New York, and channel 21 strengthened its sports portfolio the next year when it became the first-ever TV home of New Hampshire Wildcats athletic events.

Flatley, however, also sought to raise WNHT's statewide profile, which led to a transformation in programming philosophy and orientation. In late 1987, the station applied for an affiliation with CBS. It commissioned a study that found that, in the Concord area, CBS was a poor third-place finisher and that an affiliation with channel 21 would make $2 million a year in profit for the network and increase its audience. CBS gave channel 21 the green light in January, after six months and nearly $50,000 spent on lobbying the network, and on February 2, 1988, WNHT became a CBS affiliate, the second New Hampshire-based network affiliate in the region alongside WMUR-TV. Further, the station invested $2 million to build out a full-sized news department to deliver nightly newscasts beginning May 31. Flatley and general manager Ron Pulera sensed that there was room in the growing state for a second network-affiliated station; further, Flatley believed that southern New Hampshire could become its own market within several years. Of the more than 2 million households in the Boston area of dominant influence in 1988, 311,100 came from the six included counties in southern New Hampshire; on its own, this would have been the 80th-ranked ADI, ahead of Chattanooga, Tennessee.