WUTF-TV (channel 27) is a television station licensed to Worcester, Massachusetts, United States, broadcasting the Spanish-language UniMás network to the Boston area. It is owned by Entravision Communications and operated alongside Univision station WUNI (channel 66). WUTF-TV's studios are located on 4th Avenue in Needham, and it is broadcast from Stiles Hill in Boylston, Massachusetts.
Channel 27 began broadcasting on January 2, 1970, as WSMW-TV, an English-language independent station established by the Worcester-based insurer State Mutual. In its early years, it was heavy on local programming, including two daily local newscasts covering Central Massachusetts news and telecasts of Boston Celtics basketball and local sporting events. Though the local shows and newscast length were reduced, the station followed much this format through its first decade and a 1977 sale to the Simon family of Indianapolis. In 1980, channel 27 began devoting evening and afternoon airtime to Preview, an over-the-air subscription television service that broadcast movies, special events, and sports to paying subscribers. At one point, Preview on WSMW-TV was the nation's 7th-largest STV service with 60,000 subscribers.
Central Massachusetts Television, a firm owned by Nolanda Hill, acquired WSMW-TV in 1983, and a related company acquired the Preview service. The station moved its studios to a converted school in Shrewsbury and discontinued its news department and other local programming in 1984. Preview lost subscribers to cable and cheap decoder boxes and ceased programming on December 31, 1985. The station reverted to an ad-supported, general-entertainment independent with a selection of local programs, though never a newscast. In 1992, the station began airing Spanish-language programming, first from Telemundo and later Univision. Hill's TV stations were foreclosed on by the Jasas Corporation in 1993; Jasas maintained the Univision affiliation, selling channel 27 to Entravision in 2000. The station debuted a local newscast in 2003.
Though Univision had come to own channel 66, which was programmed with the Telefutura network (now UniMás), Entravision operated channels 27 and 66 under a joint sales agreement. In 2017, Univision moved the network programming and WUNI call letters to its own transmitter on channel 66, with UniMás moving to channel 27.
As an English-language station WSMW-TV: Early years On April 11, 1968, the State Mutual Broadcasting Corporation applied to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for a construction permit to build a new TV station on ultra high frequency (UHF) channel 27 in Worcester, Massachusetts. State Mutual Broadcasting was a subsidiary of the Worcester-based State Mutual Life Assurance Corporation of America. The FCC voted to grant the permit by a 5–1 vote that December, overriding concerns from commissioner Nicholas Johnson about the participation of other Worcester broadcasters in the ownership of State Mutual. State Mutual was granted the call sign WSMW-TV, containing its initials, and construction of studios on land behind State Mutual's headquarters on Lincoln Street began in May 1969. State Mutual incorporated the America Group, a holding company, to serve as the direct corporate owner of WSMW-TV and other non-insurance subsidiaries. A tower was erected on Stiles Hill in Boylston to transmit the new station.
WSMW-TV began broadcasting on January 2, 1970, as an independent station. Its original program schedule included two daily hour-long newscasts, airing at 5:30 and 10 p.m. Beyond news, the station aired the children's program Ratherdo and the variety program etc., and Boston Celtics basketball games, with Cy Follmer serving as channel 27's sports director and commentator on Celtics games with Red Auerbach. Later that year, the station acquired the Bozo franchise previously held by Boston's WHDH-TV (channel 5) for more than a decade. Tom Matzell, a member of channel 27's production staff, became the youngest Bozo host in the nation. Other programming on the station included bowling and a telecast of the daily Catholic Mass.
Channel 27 offered two daily hour-long newscasts until September 1971, when it restructured to have half-hour 10 and 11 p.m. newscasts, one more regional and one counterprogramming the Boston stations with Worcester news. In 1973, it canceled Bozo and opted not to renew its deal to cover the Celtics, noting that ratings were falling for Bozo and it attracted more viewers at less expense by telecasting games from Assumption College or the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester. State Mutual held discussions with the Massachusetts state college system about selling channel 27 to become an instructional TV station, However, the Massachusetts Senate failed to set aside funds to acquire WSMW-TV, canceling the deal. In the meantime, the station developed a line of business in producing commercials for such national clients as Chrysler–Plymouth. Re-enactments of the Watergate tapes seen nationally on PBS were produced at WSMW-TV.
State Mutual put WSMW-TV up for sale in August 1976. It cited a desire to concentrate on its insurance lines of business. Melvin Simon and Herb Simon, brothers and real estate developers from Indianapolis, agreed to acquire channel 27. The $550,000 (equivalent to $ in dollars) sale was approved in April 1977, after the Simon brothers and their firm, Sibos, Inc., entered into an agreement with a citizens' group seeking to make the station more responsive to minority interests. Few changes were made by the new owners.
Subscription television Under State Mutual, WSMW-TV signed an agreement in late 1975 with American Subscription Television of Massachusetts for the broadcasting of over-the-air subscription television (STV) over channel 27. The station hoped to draw more viewers in prime time, where it was not competitive in the ratings against the network affiliates. The Milwaukee-based firm intended to begin STV broadcasting as early as 1977, but in the intervening years, the service was changed to be provided by Preview, a division of Time Inc.'s American Television and Communications.
On September 8, 1980, WSMW began broadcasting Preview in prime time to paying subscribers. The 10 p.m. newscast was moved to 6:30 p.m.; taped college football continued, while live college basketball coverage was dropped entirely. Preview competed with cable as well as WQTV (channel 68) in Boston, which broadcast subscription programming. Preview provided movies, sports programs, specials, and late-night adult films. Preview rapidly signed up 10,000 customers by November 1980 and 17,000 by January 1981 for its programming, which began at 7 p.m. on weeknights and 3 p.m on weekends. Subscribers came from points as distant as Providence, Rhode Island; Manchester, New Hampshire; and York, Maine. Preview initially charged subscribers $45 (equivalent to $ in dollars) for installation of the necessary decoder and $17.50 (equivalent to $ in dollars) a month, but the monthly fee rose to $22.50 (equivalent to $ in dollars) in September 1982, when Preview began programming all-night content.
By June 1982, WSMW had the seventh-most subscribers of any STV system in America, with 60,000. Its principal competitor, Star on WQTV, had 52,000. The industry began to decline not long after, and WQTV's program provider, Satellite Television & Associated Resources, was among the earliest to fail. At the end of January 1983, Star's 23,000 remaining subscribers received Preview program guides for February; on February 12, WQTV's subscription service was foreclosed on and sold. Preview bought the subscriber list and temporarily simulcast most of its programming on both channels 68 and 27 until it could switch Star's subscribers to Preview equipment.
After the merger, Preview expanded in February to a 5 p.m. start and, on July 1, 1983, to 9 a.m. on weekdays and all day on weekends. WSMW-TV's English-language newscast moved first to 4:30 p.m. and then to early mornings to accommodate the increasing airtime devoted to subscription service, airing as two 15-minute segments at 7 and 7:45 a.m. A Spanish-language segment in the newscast, which had aired for 11 years, was discontinued with the new arrangement.
During this era, WSMW began to make preparations to leave its existing studios, which were leased from State Mutual and not included in the 1977 sale. Citing space issues—with State Mutual occupying part of the building—and a rent increase, the station announced its intention to move by 1983. The station moved to the former North Shore School in Shrewsbury, which was being reconditioned by the city to support a municipally owned cable television system. No site in Worcester was available that provided the line of sight necessary to the Stiles Hill tower. The news was presented from behind desks once used by teachers in a classroom.
Sale to Nolanda Hill In September 1983, Sibos announced that it had sold WSMW-TV to Central Massachusetts Television Inc., owned by Nolanda Hill of Dallas. Management initially expressed hope that, under the new owners, WSMW-TV could increase local program output, though that was dependent on their contract with Preview. Even though Central Massachusetts Television wanted to reduce STV airtime to add financial news and Spanish-language local programming, Preview's contract allowed the company to buy the airtime it wanted. During the sale process, Preview was also sold to Independent American Satellite Television, a subsidiary of the Independent American Group of Dallas, which earlier that year had bought the VEU service on Dallas's KNBN-TV, the station Hill had helped to found there. A representative of Time Inc. indicated that Hill was an investor in Independent American Satellite Television. Time exited the STV business by selling the operation, which at the time had 40,000 subscribers.
Despite Hill's promises to rejuvenate the station by bolstering the news department, the commissioning of theme music for the newscast, orders for new equipment, advertisements seeking production staff, and even the taping of a pilot for a locally produced Spanish-language magazine program in early June 1984, the hoped-for local programming expansion never materialized. Instead, on June 8, 1984, WSMW-TV discontinued local programming and laid off 20 employees. Hill cited the inability to relocate in Worcester, poor programming quality, and the station's financial condition. The move came after an attempt by employees to unionize and following a decision by Shrewsbury against WSMW's plans to build a temporary annex at the North Shore School site. The station soon began investigating another move, meeting with selectmen in Boylston about a potential studio building at Stiles Hill.
Preview programming was cut back to start at 7 p.m. by 1985. At the start of December, Preview informed its subscribers that it would cease service at year's end. It cited competition from sales of decoders, a threat to a business model that relied on monthly subscriptions, and historic lows in subscriptions, which had fallen back to 15,000 by July and 10,000 by December. A Preview executive noted that the closures of other STV operations left a surplus of decoder equipment which could be modified to work on WSMW's service. SelecTV provided Preview's programming in its last months on air.
WHLL With the end of Preview, channel 27 once more had to compete for prime time viewers in a marketplace that was more crowded than it was five years prior. On January 1, 1986, WSMW-TV changed call signs to WHLL and adopted a format featuring five films each weekday as well as children's and syndicated programs. The station had less than a month's notice to put together the new schedule.