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City | Hartford, Connecticut |
Channels | |
Branding | Telemundo Connecticut Noticiero Telemundo Nueva Inglaterra (newscasts) |
Programming | |
Affiliations | 19.1: Telemundo 19.2: TeleXitos |
Ownership | |
Owner |
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WVIT (Hartford–New Haven) WNEU & WBTS-CD (Merrimack/Nashua, NH/Boston) WYCN-LD & WRIW-CD (Providence, RI) | |
History | |
Founded | 1985 |
First air date | June 14, 1986 |
Former call signs | W13BF (1985–1995) WRDM-LP (1995–2008) WRDM-CA (2008–2013) |
Former channel number(s) | Analog: 13 (VHF, 1986–2006) 50 (UHF, 2006–2013) Digital: 19 (UHF, 2013–2018) 50 (PSIP, 2013–2018) 35 (UHF, 2018–2019) |
All secondary: Rai Internazionale Americas (1986–2001) TVP Polonia (per program, 1993–2001) Jewelry Television (overnights, ≈2001–2018) | |
Call sign meaning | Ruzzier, D'Agostino, Minniti[1] (former owners) |
Technical information | |
Licensing authority | FCC |
Facility ID | 10153 |
ERP | 374 kW |
HAAT | 450 m (1,476 ft) |
Transmitter coordinates | 41°42′2″N 72°49′55″W / 41.70056°N 72.83194°W |
Links | |
Public license information | |
Website | Connecticut section on WNEU's website |
Translator | |
WDMR-LD | |
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Channels | |
Branding | see WRDM-CD infobox |
Programming | |
Affiliations | 14.1: Telemundo 14.2: TeleXitos 14.3: Lx 14.4: Oxygen |
Ownership | |
Owner |
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see WRDM-CD infobox | |
History | |
Founded | 1988 |
First air date | June 13, 1991 |
Former call signs | W65BX (1988–1995) WDMR-LP (1995–2012) |
Former channel number(s) | Analog: 65 (UHF, 1991–2006) 51 (UHF, 2006–2012) Digital: 51 (UHF, 2012–2019) |
All secondary: Rai Internazionale Americas (1991–2001) TVP Polonia (per program, 1993–2001) Jewelry Television (overnights, ≈2001–2018) | |
Call sign meaning | anagram of WRDM-CD |
Technical information | |
Facility ID | 10154 |
ERP | 15 kW |
HAAT | 146 m (479 ft) |
Transmitter coordinates | 42°5′7.3″N 72°42′10.3″W / 42.085361°N 72.702861°W |
Links | |
Public license information | LMS |
WRDM-CD (channel 19) is a television station licensed to Hartford, Connecticut, United States, serving as the Hartford–New Haven market's outlet for the Spanish-language network Telemundo. It is owned and operated by NBCUniversal's Telemundo Station Group alongside NBC outlet WVIT (channel 30).[2] Both stations share studios on New Britain Avenue in West Hartford and transmitter facilities on Rattlesnake Mountain in Farmington, Connecticut. Despite WRDM-CD legally holding a low-power Class A license, it transmits using WVIT's full-power spectrum. This ensures complete reception across the Hartford–New Haven market.
WDMR-LD (channel 14) in Springfield, Massachusetts, operates as a translator of WRDM, serving the Pioneer Valley. This station's transmitter is located on Provin Mountain in the Feeding Hills section of Agawam, Massachusetts.
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-language Boston 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 NBC owned-and-operated station WVIT (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.
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]
The stations' digital signals are multiplexed:
Channel | Res. | Aspect | Short name | Programming |
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19.1 | 1080i | 16:9 | TLMD | Main WRDM-CD programming / Telemundo |
19.2 | 480i | EXITOS | TeleXitos |
WDMR-LD also broadcasts the NBC national services Lx and Oxygen, which are carried by WVIT as subchannels 30.3 and 30.4.
Channel | Res. | Aspect | Short name | Programming |
---|---|---|---|---|
14.1 | 1080i | 16:9 | WDMR-LD | Main WDMR-LD programming / Telemundo |
14.2 | 480i | XITOS S | TeleXitos | |
14.3 | LocalX | Lx | ||
14.4 | Oxygen | Oxygen |
On August 2, 2019, WVIT and WRDM-CD were switched from RF 35 to RF 31.