WNJU

WNJU, channel 47, is an owned-and-operated station of the Spanish language Telemundo television network, licensed to Linden, New Jersey, USA and serving the New York City television market. WNJU is owned by the NBCUniversal Owned Television Stations subsidiary of NBCUniversal, as part of a duopoly with NBC's flagship station WNBC (channel 4). WNJU maintains studios and offices in Fort Lee, New Jersey, and transmitter located atop the Empire State Building.

History

WNJU-TV Channel 47 signed on the air on May 16, 1965 as the first commercial UHF station in the New York City/New Jersey television market; it was originally based from studios at The Mosque Theater (now Symphony Hall) at 1020 Broad Street in Newark, in the former studios of WATV (channel 13; later WNTA, now WNET). The station was owned by Henry Becton (son of Maxwell Becton, co-founder of Becton Dickinson) and Fairleigh S. Dickinson Jr. (son of Fairleigh S. Dickinson Sr. the founder of Fairleigh Dickinson University and also the co-founder of Becton Dickinson. The general manager during WNJU's early years was pioneering UHF broadcaster Edwin Cooperstein. The station's initial schedule featured a mix of English, Asian, Spanish and Italian shows. During the mid-1960s, the station broadcast a live and locally produced teenage dance show called Disc-O-Teen, hosted by John Zacherle; and a folk music program, Rainbow Quest, hosted by Pete Seeger. WNJU was involved in some controversy when it aired bullfights, which some critics believed were too violent. The station was not profitable due to the lack of awareness of UHF stations in the New York metropolitan area, being that the market had seven VHF stations and six of those were commercial stations. Most cities had an average of three commercial stations at the time. WNJU already had two strikes against it, so it basically served minority audiences with mostly brokered programming.