WVNY (ABC)Home > TV Stations > WVNY
| Channel Info: | WVNY |
| Cable (West Montreal) | 22 |
| Cable (Central and East Montreal) | 22 |
| Cable (Digital Montreal) | 51 |
| Look TV | 84 |
| Bell ExpressVu | N/A |
| Star Choice | N/A |
| Cable (Burlington) | 4 |
| Cable (Plattsburgh) | 4 |
Fox 44's parent corporation, Smith Media, LLC, has sort-of purchased WVNY (ABC 22). TV Hat has been told that Smith Media has fully integrate the two stations and staff at WFFF.
Since it's not actually legal, under the FCC, for two of the four stations in Burlington to be controlled by the same owner. ABC 22 has actually been sold to a company called Lambert Broadcasting of Burlington, controlled by Michael Lambert of Beverly Hills. However Lambert is entering a joint sales agreement with Smith Media, WFFF-TV's parent corporation. In other words Lambert owns the station on paper while Smith Media will have most of the control in reality. I can't help but wonder if the CRTC would let somebody get away with that in Canada.
There were reports that the station was for sale back when WVNY-TV stopped all its news broadcasts in September 2003 due to financial problems. This is not the first time TV-22 has been without a newscast. In the mid-1990s Newscenter 22 was replaced by syndicated reruns, such as Roseanne. In 1999, WVNY tried again by launching its third and latest newscast.
Info/link regarding ABC 22 News Sign-Off from Fybush.com
Known as WEZF-TV until November 14th, 1978 when the call letters were changed back to WVNY (its original call sign) simply because the radio station named WEZF was no longer owned by the same people which owned the TV station. This station used to be a lot better than it is today. In the eighties, this station dared to be different from other ABC affiliates. It dumped General Hospital in favor of afternoon cartoons and, in the late eighties to early nineties, they even carried a Red Sox Baseball package on Friday nights, imported from WSBK. And, why not: for most viewers, both General Hospital and ABC's Friday Night line-up were available on other channels anyway. WVNY had experimented with its Friday night line-up before, in 1987, when it dumped ABC's I Married Dora (Fri. 8:30 pm) in favor of Sea Hunt. Okay, that was not exactly the best programming decision in the world. The experiment didn't last the entire season. Also, at one point (I'm not sure which year), WVNY tried to make use of its huge audience north of the border, by airing CFL football games. That experiment didn't last very long either.
At left, a WVNY-TV station ID/promo of the same era.
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Above: 1990 WVNY promos with the "Everyone is Watching TV 22" slogan, a localized version of "America's Watching ABC". Notice that you can still see a purple shadow of the word "America" behind the word "Everyone."
From an old TV Guide. Courtesy: Mike Elliott |
In the early nineties, the station eventually stopped carrying Red Sox baseball and began dumping network programs just so that it could air more infomercials. Into The Night Starring Rick Dees was never seen in Montreal because of this. However later, in the late nineties, WVNY did air the entire ABC schedule, including Politically Incorrect (same time slot as Rick Dees). But today, WVNY has returned to their old ways as they have decided to replace Jimmy Kimmel Live with paid-programming. To make matters worse, CHUM owns the Canadian Rights to Kimmel and CHUM doesn't run any television stations in Quebec. So only those who subscribe to digital or satellite services get to see his show. But the situation wasn't much better last season when they carried only the first half of the hour-long talk show, as many irate viewers often learned the hard way.
A creepy channel 22 logo from 1977. |
The VNY stands for Vermont, New York.
According to fybush.com, WVNY (ABC 22) has been granted a change of DTV channel: 13 instead of 16. The new channel may be good for Vermonters, but if you live in Montreal, don't expect to pick it up over the air easily like the analogue signal, as interference from CFCF 12 seems inevitable (Not that channel 16 would have been any better right next to CIVM). Bear in mind that with DTV, either the signal comes in perfectly clear or it doesn't come in at all. The latter seems more likely. (Please note that this shouldn't have any impact on cable viewers)
Old WVNY logo from TV Guide, 1987. WVNY & ABC logos & jingles belong to Straight Line Communications and Disney respectively. This page not affiliated with WVNY or ABC.
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