WRDM logo when the station broadcast on channel 13
Previous logo; used until nationwide Telemundo rebrand on December 8, 2012.
WRDM-CD signed on June 14, 1986; it claims to be the first Spanish-language television station in New England.[3] The station initially operated on channel 13 under the call letters W13BF.[1] On June 13, 1991,[4] the station added a simulcast in Springfield, W65BX (channel 65).[1] Initially, in addition to Telemundo programming, W13BF and W65BX aired programming in Italian from public broadcaster Radiotelevisione Italiana (RAI)'s international service,[1] with additional programming in Greek and Polish.[5] The television stations were joined by radio station WRDM (1550 AM, now WSDK) in 1993;[1] on September 1, 1995, W13BF changed its call letters to WRDM-LP,[6] and W65BX became WDMR-LP.[7] WRDM radio was sold off in 1998.[8] During the late 1990s, WDMR-LP's schedule also included English-languageBoston Red Sox telecasts produced by Boston's WABU (now Ion Television owned-and-operated station WBPX-TV).[9] By 1997, WRDM-LP's programming was simulcast in New Haven on W10BQ (channel 10, now defunct) and in Hartford on W11BJ (channel 11, now WFXQ-CD channel 28 in Springfield).[10]
Original owner Channel 13 Television sold WRDM-LP and WDMR-LP to ZGS Communications on March 27, 2001.[11][12] In January 2006, WRDM-LP moved to channel 50;[13] WDMR-LP moved to channel 51 that November.[14] WRDM became a class A station as WRDM-CA on May 7, 2008.[6] On November 15, 2012, WDMR flash cut from analog to digital as WDMR-LD;[7] on January 7, 2013, WRDM followed suit and became WRDM-CD.[6] WDMR-LD now serves as a complete simulcast of WRDM-CD.[15]
On December 4, 2017, NBCUniversal's Telemundo Station Group announced its purchase of ZGS' 13 television stations, including WRDM-CD and WDMR-LD. The sale was completed on February 1, 2018.[2] The deal made WRDM a sister station to NBCowned-and-operated stationWVIT (channel 30), along with WNBC (channel 4) and WNJU (channel 47) to the southwest in New York City, and WBTS-LD (channel 8), WYCN-CD (channel 15) and WNEU (channel 60) to the northeast in Boston. WVIT began operating WRDM under a local marketing agreement on January 1, 2018 from WVIT's studios in West Hartford; WRDM later entered into a channel sharing agreement with WVIT.[16] ZGS had sold WRDM's spectrum in the FCC's incentive auction for $10,574,516 and indicated that the station would enter into a post-auction channel sharing agreement.[17] One immediate effect of the sale was the end of a brokered programming arrangement to carry English language Jewelry TV programming in overnights for Telemundo's regular overnight schedule, along with the addition of a Connecticut-specific part of the website for WNEU in place of the former WRDM website.
Newscasts
WRDM-LP began producing a newscast in April 1998; at the outset, Noticiero 13 primarily featured reports from Puerto Rico and Latin America, with local news coverage being added in June 1999.[18] The station's news operation was discontinued in the early 2000s; WRDM then began carrying Telenoticias Puerto Rico from WKAQ-TV in San Juan.
On December 15, 2017, NBCUniversal announced that, following its acquisition of WRDM-CD, the station (along with WDMR-LD) would begin simulcasting the newscasts of Boston sister station WNEU; the newscasts will include news from Connecticut and western Massachusetts from a reporter based at WRDM's facilities at the WVIT studios in West Hartford.[16]
1These stations are owned by Mission Broadcasting but operated by Nexstar under an LMA. 2These stations are owned by Vaughan Media but operated by Nexstar under an LMA. 3TelevisaUnivision USA owns the licenses to these stations but the stations themselves are operated by Entravision Communications under an LMA.
