WRDM-CD (channel 19) is a

television station A television station is a set of equipment managed by a business, organisation or other entity, such as an amateur television (ATV) operator, that transmits video content and audio content via radio waves directly from a transmitter on the earth ...

licensed to

Hartford, Connecticut Hartford is the capital city of the U.S. state of Connecticut. It was the seat of Hartford County until Connecticut disbanded county government in 1960. It is the core city in the Greater Hartford metropolitan area. Census estimates since the ...

, United States, broadcasting the Spanish-language

Telemundo Telemundo (; formerly NetSpan) is an American Spanish-language Terrestrial television, terrestrial television network owned by NBCUniversal Television and Streaming#NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises, NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises, a divi ...

network to the Hartford–

New Haven New Haven is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound in New Haven County, Connecticut and is part of the New York City metropolitan area. With a population of 134,02 ...

television market A media market, broadcast market, media region, designated market area (DMA), television market area, or simply market is a region where the population can receive the same (or similar) television and radio station offerings, and may also incl ...

. It is

owned and operated In the broadcasting industry, an owned-and-operated station (frequently abbreviated as an O&O) usually refers to a television or radio station owned by the network with which it is associated. This distinguishes such a station from an affiliate ...

NBCUniversal NBCUniversal Media, LLC is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate corporation owned by Comcast and headquartered at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, United States. NBCUniversal is primari ...

Telemundo Station Group Telemundo Station Group is the division of NBCUniversal Owned TV Stations (NBCUniversal), a subsidiary of Comcast that oversees their Telemundo owned-and-operated television stations and the TeleXitos network. The NBC owned-and-operated stations ...

alongside

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an Television in the United States, American English-language Commercial broadcasting, commercial television network, broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Enterta ...

outlet

WVIT WVIT (channel 30) is a television station licensed to New Britain, Connecticut, United States, broadcasting NBC programming to the Hartford–New Haven market. It is owned and operated by the network's NBC Owned Television Stations division alo ...

(channel 30). Both stations share studios on New Britain Avenue in

West Hartford West Hartford is a town in Hartford County, Connecticut, United States, west of downtown Hartford. The population was 64,083 at the 2020 census. The town's popular downtown area is colloquially known as "West Hartford Center," or simply "The C ...

and transmitter facilities on Rattlesnake Mountain in

Farmington, Connecticut Farmington is a town in Hartford County in the Farmington Valley area of central Connecticut in the United States. The population was 26,712 at the 2020 census. It sits 10 miles west of Hartford at the hub of major I-84 interchanges, 20 miles s ...

. 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 Springfield is a city in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, United States, and the seat of Hampden County. Springfield sits on the eastern bank of the Connecticut River near its confluence with three rivers: the western Westfield River, the ...

, operates as a

translator Translation is the communication of the Meaning (linguistic), meaning of a #Source and target languages, source-language text by means of an Dynamic and formal equivalence, equivalent #Source and target languages, target-language text. The ...

of WRDM, serving the

Pioneer Valley The Pioneer Valley is the colloquial and promotional name for the portion of the Connecticut River Valley that is in Massachusetts in the United States. It is generally taken to comprise the three counties of Hampden, Hampshire, and Frankli ...

. This station's transmitter is located on

Provin Mountain Provin Mountain is a very narrow traprock mountain ridge located in the Connecticut River Valley of Massachusetts. It is part of the Metacomet Ridge which extends from Long Island Sound near New Haven, Connecticut, north through the Connecticut R ...

in the

Feeding Hills Feeding Hills is a section of the city of Agawam with its own ZIP Code (01030) and post office. Line Street in Agawam is generally accepted by residents as being the unofficial border. In the early to mid-19th century, a ditch was dug here to se ...

section of

Agawam, Massachusetts Agawam is a city in Hampden County, Massachusetts, Hampden County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 28,692 at the 2020 census. Agawam sits on the western side of the Connecticut River, directly across from Springfield, Massachusetts ...

History

WRDM-CD signed on June 14, 1986; it claims to be the first

Spanish-language Spanish ( or , Castilian) is a Romance languages, Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from colloquial Latin spoken on the Iberian peninsula. Today, it is a world language, global language with more than 500 millio ...

television station in

New England New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces ...

. The station initially operated on channel 13 under the call letters W13BF. On June 13, 1991, the station added a simulcast in Springfield, W65BX (channel 65). Initially, in addition to Telemundo programming, W13BF and W65BX aired programming in

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...

from public broadcaster Radiotelevisione Italiana (

RAI RAI – Radiotelevisione italiana (; commercially styled as Rai since 2000; known until 1954 as Radio Audizioni Italiane) is the national public broadcasting company of Italy, owned by the Ministry of Economy and Finance. RAI operates many ter ...

)'s international service, with additional programming in

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

and

Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Poles, people from Poland or of Polish descent * Polish chicken *Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin screenwr ...

. The television stations were joined by radio station WRDM (1550 AM, now

WSDK WSDK (1550 kHz) is a commercial AM radio station licensed to Bloomfield, Connecticut, and serving the Hartford metropolitan area. It is owned by Blount Communications and broadcasts a Christian talk and teaching radio format. National reli ...

) in 1993; on September 1, 1995, W13BF changed its call letters to WRDM-LP, and W65BX became WDMR-LP. WRDM radio was sold off in 1998. During the late 1990s, WDMR-LP's schedule also included

English-language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the is ...

Boston Red Sox The Boston Red Sox are an American professional baseball team based in Boston. The Red Sox compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) East division. Founded in as one of the American League's eight ...

telecasts produced by

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

's WABU (now

Ion Television Ion Television is an American broadcast television network owned by the Katz Broadcasting subsidiary of the E. W. Scripps Company. The network first began broadcasting on August 31, 1998, as Pax TV, focusing primarily on family-oriented enter ...

owned-and-operated station

WBPX-TV WBPX-TV (channel 68) is a television station in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, airing programming from the Ion Television network. It is owned by the Ion Media subsidiary of the E. W. Scripps Company, which also owns Woburn-licensed ...

). 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 WFXQ-CD (channel 28) is a low-power, Class A television station in Springfield, Massachusetts, United States. It is a translator of dual NBC/ CW+ affiliate WWLP (channel 22), owned by Nexstar Media Group, allowing viewers in the core of the ...

channel 28 in Springfield). Original owner Channel 13 Television sold WRDM-LP and WDMR-LP to

ZGS Communications ZGS Communications, also referred to as the ZGS Group or ZGS Broadcasting, was a television and radio station operator in the United States, based in Arlington, Virginia. The company operated 11 stations: 10 television stations and one radio statio ...

on March 27, 2001. In January 2006, WRDM-LP moved to channel 50; WDMR-LP moved to channel 51 that November. WRDM became a class A station as WRDM-CA on May 7, 2008. On November 15, 2012, WDMR

flash cut A flash cut, also called a flash cutover, is an immediate change in a complex system, with no phase-in period. In the United States, some telephone area codes were split or overlaid immediately, rather than being phased in with a permissive dia ...

from analog to digital as WDMR-LD; on January 7, 2013, WRDM followed suit and became WRDM-CD. WDMR-LD now serves as a complete simulcast of WRDM-CD.RabbitEars TV Query for WDMR-LD
/ref> On December 4, 2017,

announced its purchase of ZGS' 13 television stations, including WRDM-CD and WDMR-LD. The sale was completed on February 1, 2018. The deal made WRDM a sister station to

owned-and-operated station In the broadcasting industry, an owned-and-operated station (frequently abbreviated as an O&O) usually refers to a television or radio station owned by the network with which it is associated. This distinguishes such a station from an affiliate ...

(channel 30), along with

WNBC WNBC (channel 4) is a television station in New York City, serving as the flagship of the NBC network. It is owned and operated by the network's NBC Owned Television Stations division alongside Linden, New Jersey–licensed Telemundo station WN ...

(channel 4) and

WNJU WNJU (channel 47) is a television station licensed to Linden, New Jersey, United States, broadcasting Telemundo programming to the New York City area. It is one of two flagship stations of the Spanish-language network (the other being WSCV i ...

(channel 47) to the southwest in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, and WBTS-LD (channel 8), WYCN-CD (channel 15) and

WNEU WNEU (channel 60) is a television station licensed to Merrimack, New Hampshire, United States, broadcasting the Spanish-language Telemundo network to the Boston area. It is owned and operated by NBCUniversal's Telemundo Station Group alongside ...

(channel 60) to the northeast in Boston. WVIT began operating WRDM under a

local marketing agreement In North American broadcasting, a local marketing agreement (LMA), or local management agreement, is a contract in which one company agrees to operate a radio or television station owned by another party. In essence, it is a sort of lease or tim ...

January 1 January 1 or 1 January is the first day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. There are 364 days remaining until the end of the year (365 in leap years). This day is also known as New Year's Day since the day marks the beginning of the yea ...

, 2018 from WVIT's studios in

; WRDM later entered into a

channel sharing In telecommunication, frequency sharing or channel sharing is the assignment to or use of the same radio frequency by two or more stations that are separated geographically or that use the frequency at different times. It reduces the potential for ...

agreement with WVIT. ZGS had sold WRDM's spectrum in the FCC's

incentive auction The 2016 United States wireless spectrum auction, officially known as Auction 1001, allocated approximately 100 MHz of the United States Ultra High Frequency (UHF) spectrum formerly allocated to UHF television in the 600 MHz band. The spe ...

for $10,574,516 and indicated that the station would enter into a post-auction channel sharing agreement. One immediate effect of the sale was the end of a

brokered programming Brokered programming (also known as time-buy and blocktime) is a form of broadcast content in which the show's producer pays a radio or television station for air time, rather than exchanging programming for pay or the opportunity to play spot comm ...

arrangement to carry English language

Jewelry TV Jewelry Television is an American television network specializing in the sale of jewelry for both men and women. On-air and online, the network is mainly branded by its jtv initials in lower-case letters. It has an estimated reach of more than ...

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 Puerto Rico (; abbreviated PR; tnq, Boriken, ''Borinquen''), officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico ( es, link=yes, Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, lit=Free Associated State of Puerto Rico), is a Caribbean island and Unincorporated ...

and

Latin America Latin America or * french: Amérique Latine, link=no * ht, Amerik Latin, link=no * pt, América Latina, link=no, name=a, sometimes referred to as LatAm is a large cultural region in the Americas where Romance languages — languages derived f ...

, with local news coverage being added in June 1999. The station's news operation was discontinued in the early 2000s; WRDM then began carrying ''Telenoticias Puerto Rico'' from

WKAQ-TV WKAQ-TV (channel 2) is a television station in San Juan, Puerto Rico, airing programming from the Telemundo and NBC networks. It is Owned-and-operated station, owned and operated by the Telemundo Station Group subsidiary of NBCUniversal. WKAQ-T ...

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.

Technical information

Subchannels

The stations' digital signals are

multiplexed In telecommunications and computer networking, multiplexing (sometimes contracted to muxing) is a method by which multiple analog or digital signals are combined into one signal over a shared medium. The aim is to share a scarce resource - a ...

: WDMR-LD also broadcasts the NBC national services Lx and

Oxygen Oxygen is the chemical element with the symbol O and atomic number 8. It is a member of the chalcogen group in the periodic table, a highly reactive nonmetal, and an oxidizing agent that readily forms oxides with most elements as wel ...

, which are carried by WVIT as subchannels 30.3 and 30.4.

Spectrum auction repack

On August 2, 2019, WVIT and WRDM-CD were switched from RF 35 to RF 31.

References

External links

* {{Major U.S. TV O-O Stations Telemundo Station Group RDM-CD Low-power television stations in the United States Television channels and stations established in 1986 1986 establishments in Connecticut TeleXitos affiliates