WWNY-TV

WWNY-TV (channel 7) is a television station licensed to Carthage, New York, United States, serving as the CBS affiliate for the Watertown area. It is owned by Gray Media alongside low-power, Class A Fox affiliate WNYF-CD (channel 28). The two stations share studios on Arcade Street in downtown Watertown; WWNY-TV and WNYF-CD's transmitters are located on the same tower along NY 126/State Street on Champion Hill.

WWNY-CD (channel 28) is a Class A station licensed to Massena, New York, which operates as a translator of WWNY-TV. This station's transmitter is located at WNPI-DT's site southeast of South Colton along NY 56.

WCNY-TV was granted a special temporary authority (STA) to begin broadcasting on October 14, 1954. It was locally owned by the Watertown Daily Times, which also owned WWNY radio (AM 790, now WTNY) in Watertown. The station carried programming from two networks at the time (CBS, ABC then added NBC by the program) but has always been a primary CBS affiliate. During the late-1950s, WCNY was also briefly affiliated with the NTA Film Network. By the mid-1960s, the station benefited from the ratings-dominant CBS programming lineup and established a large viewership base, including much of eastern Ontario, Canada. After the FCC allowed television and radio stations to share the same base call sign even when they were licensed to different cities, channel 7 changed call letters to WWNY-TV to match its radio sisters in July 1965. The WCNY-TV calls now reside on a PBS member station in nearby Syracuse.

The station was a major beneficiary of a quirk in the FCC's plan for allocating stations. In the early days of broadcast television, there were twelve VHF channels available and 69 UHF channels (later reduced to 55 in 1983). The VHF bands were more desirable because they carried longer distances. Since there were only twelve VHF channels available, there were limitations as to how closely the stations could be spaced.

After the FCC's Sixth Report and Order ended the license freeze and opened the UHF band in 1952, it devised a plan for allocating VHF licenses. Under this plan, almost all of the country would be able to receive two commercial VHF channels plus one noncommercial channel. Most of the rest of the country ("1/2") would be able to receive a third VHF channel. Other areas would be designated as "UHF islands" since they were too close to larger cities for VHF service. The "2" networks became CBS and NBC, "+1" represented non-commercial educational stations, and "1/2" became ABC (which was the weakest network usually winding up with the UHF allocation where no VHF was available).

However, Watertown was sandwiched between Syracuse (channels 3, 8, later 5, and 9) to the south, Rochester (channels 6, later 8, 10, and 13) to the west, Utica (channel 13, later 2) and Albany (channel 4, later 6, later joined by 10 and 13) to the southeast, Burlington–Plattsburgh (channels 3 and 5) to the east, Kingston (channel 11) to the northwest, Ottawa (channels 4 and 9, later joined by 13) to the north, and Montreal (channels 2, 6, 10, and 12) to the northeast. This created a large "doughnut" where there could only be one VHF license. WWNY was fortunate to gain that license, and as a result was the only television station based in the Watertown market until the early 1970s.

From 1958 until 1971, WCNY/WWNY also aired educational programming through National Educational Television (NET, becoming PBS in 1970) provided by the St. Lawrence Valley Educational Television Council. When the council established its own PBS member station, WNPE-TV (now WPBS-TV) in 1971, WWNY donated its original studios to the new station as it had moved to its current location near the Watertown Daily Times offices on Arcade Street in Downtown Watertown in mid-February 1970. The Johnson family sold WWNY to United Communications Corporation in 1981 for $8.2 million after an unsuccessful struggle against the FCC and its directive for newspapers to divest themselves of television stations held within the same market.

Until WFYF (now WWTI) signed-on in 1988 replacing a small WUTR repeater on analog UHF channel 50 and taking the ABC affiliation, WWNY was Watertown's only commercial station. As a primary CBS affiliate, WWNY carried the network's full prime time schedule and news programs while cherry-picking the most popular ABC and NBC shows aired at other hours. The station also aired some Fox programming starting in 1987 while Sunday Fox Sports National Football League games aired on WWTI. When cable arrived in the region in the 1970s, viewers could watch the full network schedules via NBC affiliate WSTM-TV and ABC affiliate WIXT (now WSYR-TV) in Syracuse or NBC affiliate WPTZ in Plattsburgh.