Fox 5

WNYW (channel 5) is a television station in New York City, serving as the flagship of the Fox network. It is owned and operated by the network's Fox Television Stations division alongside Secaucus, New Jersey–licensed MyNetworkTV flagship WWOR-TV (channel 9). Both stations share studios at the Fox Television Center on East 67th Street in Manhattan's Lenox Hill neighborhood, while WNYW's transmitter is located at One World Trade Center. History DuMont origins (1944–1956) The station traces its history to 1938, when television set and equipment manufacturer Allen B. DuMont founded experimental station W2XVT in Passaic, New Jersey. That station's call sign was changed to W2XWV when it moved to Manhattan in 1940. On May 2, 1944, the station received its commercial license, the third in New York City. It began broadcasting on VHF channel 4 as WABD with its call sign made up of DuMont's initials. It was one of the few television stations that continued to broadcast during World War II, making it the fourth-oldest continuously broadcasting commercial station in the United States. The station originally had its studios in the DuMont Building at 515 Madison Avenue, with its transmitter tower atop the same building. (The original tower, long abandoned by the station, still remains.) On December 17, 1945, WABD moved to channel 5. WNBT (now WNBC) took over channel 4 the following spring, moving from channel 1, which the FCC was de-allocating from the VHF TV broadcast band. Soon after channel 5 received its commercial license, DuMont Laboratories began a series of experimental coaxial cable hookups between WABD and W3XWT, a DuMont-owned experimental station in Washington, D.C. (now WTTG). These hookups were the beginning of the DuMont Television Network, the world's first licensed commercial television network. (However, NBC was feeding a few programs and special events from its New York station WNBT to outlets in Philadelphia and Schenectady as early as 1940.) DuMont began regular network service in 1946 with WABD as the flagship station. On June 14, 1954, WABD and DuMont moved into the $5 million DuMont Tele-Centre at 205 East 67th Street in Manhattan's Lenox Hill neighborhood, inside the shell of the space formerly occupied by Jacob Ruppert's Central Opera House. Channel 5 is still headquartered in the same building, which was later renamed the Metromedia TeleCenter, and is now known as the Fox Television Center.