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| - The station first signed-on February 28, 1970 as the second television station in the Utica market. Owned by Roy H. Park Communications at the outset, the channel originally sought to affiliate with CBS but was stopped by WHEN-TV (now WTVH) in Syracuse which claimed the Utica area in its market area. Although WHEN cited potential revenue losses as reasoning for its actions, a rivalry between the Syracuse-based Park and then-WHEN owner Meredith Corporation also may have played a factor. As a result, WUTR signed-on with ABC marking the only affiliate of that network owned by Park. For the next couple of decades, it stayed a distant but strong second behind dominant NBC affiliate WKTV. Until the 1980s, WUTR was also the default ABC affiliate for much of the Watertown market (also in the mid-1
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| abstract
| - The station first signed-on February 28, 1970 as the second television station in the Utica market. Owned by Roy H. Park Communications at the outset, the channel originally sought to affiliate with CBS but was stopped by WHEN-TV (now WTVH) in Syracuse which claimed the Utica area in its market area. Although WHEN cited potential revenue losses as reasoning for its actions, a rivalry between the Syracuse-based Park and then-WHEN owner Meredith Corporation also may have played a factor. As a result, WUTR signed-on with ABC marking the only affiliate of that network owned by Park. For the next couple of decades, it stayed a distant but strong second behind dominant NBC affiliate WKTV. Until the 1980s, WUTR was also the default ABC affiliate for much of the Watertown market (also in the mid-1980s in Alexandria Bay via Castle Cable) and operated translators both there and in Massena. The translators were shut down after WFYF (now WWTI which later spent several years as a sister station to WUTR) began operations. After Roy Park died in 1993, the future of the group was put into doubt as Park's estate sold much of the group to corporate investor Gary Knapp who in turn sold the remnants of the Park group to Media General in 1996. With WUTR being one of the smallest of Park's stations and the sole channel the group had in the Northeast, Media General spun WUTR off in mid-1997 to The Ackerley Group (then-owners of Syracuse ABC affiliate WIXT today's WSYR-TV). With that purchase, Ackerley began to build a regional strategy called the "Central New York Station Group" (CNYSG) which eventually covered most of Upstate New York and almost stations in markets they did not enter. In October 2001, Clear Channel Communications announced its buyout of Ackerley closing on its purchase in 2002. Though initially no changes took place, market concentration concerns with Clear Channel's radio cluster in the Utica market put WUTR's future under Clear Channel in doubt. Given the option between potentially selling WUTR or the four-station "Sports Stars" sports radio simulcast, Clear Channel decided to hack away at WUTR by cutting budgets and redistributing resources to other stations in the CNYSG. This was followed four months later with the announcement that WUTR would be sold to Mission Broadcasting. The sale was completed on April 1, 2004. At that time, the Nexstar Broadcasting Group (owner of WFXV and [[WPNY) took over operations of WUTR under a joint sales agreement and the three stations were eventually consolidated into one facility.
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