WRDM-CD


WRDM-CD, virtual channel 19, is a Class A Telemundo owned-and-operated television station licensed to Hartford, Connecticut, United States. Owned by the Telemundo Station Group subsidiary of NBCUniversal, it is sister to New Britain-licensed NBC owned-and-operated station WVIT. The two stations share studios on New Britain Avenue in West Hartford and transmitter facilities on Rattlesnake Mountain in Farmington, Connecticut. 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 television market.
WRDM is available on Comcast Xfinity channel 13, Cox channel 20 and MetroCast Cablevision channel 18, but currently not on any satellite providers.
WDMR-LD in Springfield, Massachusetts, operates as a translator of WRDM, serving the Pioneer Valley. This station's transmitter is located on Provin Mountain in the Feeding Hills section of Agawam, Massachusetts.

History

WRDM-CD signed on June 14, 1986; it claims to be the first Spanish-language television station in New England. The station initially operated on channel 13 under the call letters W13BF. On June 13, 1991, the station added a simulcast in Springfield, W65BX. Initially, in addition to Telemundo programming, W13BF and W65BX aired programming in Italian from public broadcaster Radiotelevisione Italiana 's international service, with additional programming in Greek and Polish. The television stations were joined by radio station WRDM 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 Boston Red Sox telecasts produced by Boston's WABU. By 1997, WRDM-LP's programming was simulcast in New Haven on W10BQ and in Hartford on W11BJ.
Original owner Channel 13 Television sold WRDM-LP and WDMR-LP to ZGS Communications 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 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.
On December 4, 2017, NBCUniversal's Telemundo Station Group 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 NBC owned-and-operated station WVIT, along with WNBC and WNJU to the southwest in New York City, and WBTS-LD, WYCN-CD and WNEU to the northeast in Boston. WVIT began operating WRDM under a local marketing agreement on January 1, 2018 from WVIT's studios in West Hartford; WRDM later entered into a channel sharing agreement with WVIT. ZGS had sold WRDM's spectrum in the FCC's incentive auction 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 arrangement to carry English language Jewelry TV 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.

Digital television

Digital channels

The stations' digital signals are multiplexed:
ChannelVideoAspectPSIP Short
Name		Programming
19.1
14.1		1080iWRDM-CD
WDMR-LD		Main WRDM-CD/WDMR-LD programming / Telemundo
19.2
14.2		480iT-XitosTeleXitos
14.3480iNBCLXLXTV

Spectrum auction repack

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

Newscasts

WRDM-LP began producing a newscast in April 1998; at the outset, Noticiero 13 primarily featured reports from Puerto Rico and Latin America, 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 in San Juan.
On December 15, 2017, NBCUniversal announced that, following its acquisition of WRDM-CD, the station would begin simulcasting the newscasts of Boston sister station WNEU; the newscasts will include news from central Connecticut and western Massachusetts from a reporter based at WRDM's facilities at the WVIT studios in West Hartford.