NBC announces it will end affiliation with Boston TV station

Owned Television Stations president Valari Staab told staffers today that the division is launching NBC Boston on January 1, 2017, ending any speculation that current NBC affiliate Sunbeam-owned WHDH would lose its affiliation.

The owner of WHDH Boston will challenge at the FCC NBC’s plan to let its affiliation with WHDH expire at the end of this year and replace it with an O&O, according to a WHDH release.

Boston, along with necn and Telemundo Boston, will be the first broadcast triopoly in the USA and will serve English and Spanish speaking viewers throughout all of New England.

A network memo says it will build a local news team in Boston, and already has a head start with operations of New England Cable News and Telemundo there.

“We intend to contest NBC’s plans”, said Ansin. In 2009, he threatened to air local news at 10 p.m. rather than a five-nights-a-week primetime talk show featuring Jay Leno – a signal station owners around the nation were nervous about airing Leno every weeknight as a lead-in to their late-night newscasts, which help them snare a good portion of their annual advertising revenue.

Ansin says among his concerns are whether it’s in the public interest for NBC to move programming to a station in Merrimack, New Hampshire, that reaches half as many people as WHDH, and doesn’t reach large areas of the South Shore, Southeastern Massachusetts and parts of Cape Cod.

There’s a big media shake-up happening in Boston.

Ansin has actually been through this fight before when NBC pulled its affiliation from his Miami station WSVN 25 years ago. “That’s their privilege”, Ansin said.

All NBC programming will continue to air here on this station until at least the end of this year.

We are excited by the possibilities.