WFXT


WFXT, virtual channel 25, is a Fox-affiliated television station licensed to Boston, Massachusetts, United States. The station is owned by Atlanta-based Cox Media Group. WFXT's studios are located on Fox Drive in Dedham, and its transmitter is located on Cabot Street in Needham. It is one of six Boston television stations that are available in Canada through satellite provider Bell TV and cable provider EastLink. WFXT is the largest Fox affiliate by market size that is not owned and operated by the network, although it was previously owned by Fox on two occasions.

History

Early years (1977 - 1986)

The station first signed on the air on October 10, 1977 as WXNE-TV ; originally operating as an independent station, it was founded by the then-Portsmouth, Virginia-based Christian Broadcasting Network. After being awarded a construction permit to build the station from the Federal Communications Commission in June 1972, CBN targeted the new channel 25 to begin operations within one year. However, various delays in obtaining both a studio and transmitter location resulted in a wait of over five years for the station to finally sign-on. WXNE-TV's early programming format was targeted at a family audience, consisting of older syndicated reruns and a decent amount of religious programming–including CBN's flagship show, The 700 Club, hosted by the ministry's founder Pat Robertson. Religious programs ran for about six hours a day during the week, and throughout the day on Sundays. The station also carried the daily and Sunday Mass from the Boston Catholic Television Center. Secular programming consisted of westerns, older movies, family-oriented drama series, old film shorts, and classic television series. For several years under CBN ownership, Tim Robertson served as the station's program director, appointed by his father, Pat Robertson.
The station began adding more cartoons, made-for-TV movies, and off-network sitcoms and family dramas during the early 1980s. Most notably, in 1980, WXNE took over production of the weekday bowling program Candlepins for Cash, which had just been canceled by CBS affiliate WNAC-TV after seven seasons. With new host Rico Petrocelli, the show moved production from WNAC-TV's studios, in bowling lanes that were built in the basement of the facility, to the now-defunct Wal-Lex Lanes in Waltham. After only a few months as host, Petrocelli was ousted in favor of the program's original host when it aired on WNAC-TV, Bob Gamere, who remained on Candlepins until it ended its run on channel 25 in 1983. During this time, the station rebranded itself as "Boston 25", as it converted into a true independent. While the station was carried only on cable providers in the Greater Boston market, WXNE-TV held a solid third place among the area's independent stations, behind the longer-established WSBK-TV and WLVI-TV, and sixth in the ratings among the market's commercial television stations.
In April 1986, WXNE and the other two CBN-owned stations — KXTX-TV in Dallas and WYAH-TV in Portsmouth — were put up for sale. That August, News Corporation announced that it would purchase channel 25, with plans to make it an owned-and-operated station of its Fox Broadcasting Company. Fox had been in preliminary negotiations to secure an affiliation with either WSBK or WLVI, but ended its pursuit of both outlets. Until the sale was completed, channel 25, upon the Fox network's startup on October 9, 1986, did not air the network's inaugural program and what was then its lone offering, The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers, a late-night talk show that aired opposite The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson on NBC. The outgoing CBN ownership believed that the program did not fit its strict content guidelines. Fox instead contracted Boston radio station WMRE to carry the audio portion of The Late Show in the interim.

As WFXT (1987 - present)

When the sale to News Corporation was completed on December 31, 1986, WXNE-TV —renamed WFXT on January 19, 1987, became the seventh Fox-owned property and the first to be acquired separately from News Corporation's 1986 purchase of Metromedia's six television stations that served as the foundation for the new network. Besides adding The Late Show to the schedule, airings of The 700 Club were cut to once a day, and the daily broadcast of the Roman Catholic Mass was moved to an earlier timeslot. The station also began airing the syndicated, Fox-produced tabloid magazine A Current Affair on weeknights; WFXT was the second station, after producing station and Fox flagship WNYW in New York City, to air the program. WXNE staff announcer Chris Clausen had already been let go in late 1986 in favor of the services of Fox affiliate voiceover Beau Weaver, who would remain with both the station and Fox Television Stations for over a decade. The station's schedule, however, was largely unchanged at the outset, aside from the removal of several older sitcoms that soon resurfaced on WQTV. The Sunday evening religious program block was finally discontinued on April 5, 1987, when Fox launched its prime time lineup, which initially aired only on Sundays before expanding to Saturdays that July.
Over the next few years, WFXT, for the most part was unable to acquire the better syndicated programs and continued to only acquire shows that WSBK, WLVI, and the market's network affiliates passed on. In addition to Fox programming, most of the shows added to WFXT's schedule were low-budget, first-run syndicated programs and cartoons. However, in 1988, the station did manage to buy two popular weekday syndication shows away from WNEV—Hollywood Squares and Entertainment Tonight—when the CBS affiliate phased them off its schedule, due to other programming commitments. WFXT aired Squares through its 1989 cancellation; it carried ET weeknights at 7:00 p.m., as the lead-in to A Current Affair, until selling the show back to WHDH in 1990. WFXT has again aired ET since 2015.

Sale to the Boston Celtics

As the Federal Communications Commission prohibited the common ownership of a television station and a newspaper in the same market, in purchasing channel 25, News Corporation had to apply for and was granted a temporary waiver in order to retain WFXT and the newspaper it had also published, the Boston Herald. In 1989, Fox placed WFXT in a trust company; the following year, it sold the station to the Boston Celtics' ownership group, who promptly made WFXT the NBA team's flagship station. The station also gained a sister station on radio, as the Celtics also purchased WEEI at the same time.
The Celtics did not have the financial means to compete as a broadcaster. Nonetheless, under Celtics ownership, WFXT finally began to acquire stronger programming, becoming a serious competitor to WSBK and WLVI for the first time. In 1990, among securing the rights to several new, high-profile rerun syndication packages, WFXT managed to buy rights to The Cosby Show, reruns of which had been airing on WCVB-TV for the past two years. WCVB, which had lost a lot of money airing The Cosby Show in weekend blocks only, retained a small portion of the show's syndication rights for weekends and occasional airings in prime time. WFXT, meanwhile, began airing Cosby Show reruns on weekdays in the fall of 1990; aside from a couple of years off between 1994 and 1996, The Cosby Show would remain a staple of WFXT's schedule for well over a decade.

Return to Fox ownership

By 1992, WFXT was carried on many cable providers in areas of New England where there was no locally-based Fox affiliate station. Locally, however, the station was still rated in third place, behind WSBK and WLVI. Still, for a while under the Celtics' watch, WFXT was perceived to be in danger of losing its Fox affiliation. One of those instances was in the summer of 1994, when Westinghouse Broadcasting signed a deal to affiliate all of its stations with CBS, which caused WBZ-TV to drop its NBC affiliation and join CBS in January 1995. The outgoing CBS affiliate WHDH-TV, meanwhile, was deciding between affiliation offers from NBC and Fox, the latter of which its Miami sister station WSVN had been affiliated with since 1989. However, the Celtics soon began dropping hints about its intention to sell WFXT, including the shift of the team's over-the-air telecasts to WSBK in 1993 ; furthermore, that October, Fox obtained an option to repurchase the station as part of a larger deal. News Corporation sold the Boston Herald in February 1994, eliminating a potential regulatory conflict with reacquiring WFXT, while WHDH signed with NBC in August 1994. On October 5, 1994, Fox announced it would exercise the purchase option; it retook control of WFXT on July 7, 1995.
As the 1990s progressed, WFXT began phasing in more talk and reality programs. It continued running cartoons each weekday – later becoming the last station in the market that had run a morning children's program block – and sitcoms during the evening hours. WFXT served as the television flagship of the Boston Red Sox for three seasons from 2000 to 2002.
In the fall of 2001, WPXT disaffiliated from Fox due to a payment dispute between Pegasus Broadcasting and the network. This left Portland and the entire state of Maine without a Fox affiliate until then-Pax TV affiliate WMPX-TV switched to the network in April 2003; during this time, WFXT served as the default Fox affiliate for the New Hampshire side of the Portland market, while Foxnet provided the network's programming throughout Maine.
At one point in 2006, the station was "tentatively planning" to carry programming from News Corporation-owned MyNetworkTV on weekdays from 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. if the new network was unable to find an affiliate in the Boston market. On July 21, 2006, News Corporation announced that Derry, New Hampshire-based WZMY-TV would become the market's MyNetworkTV affiliate when the network began operations on September 5, 2006. Channel 50 ended its affiliation with MyNetworkTV in September 2011, shortly after changing call letters to WBIN-TV; WSBK took over the affiliation at that time. Before MyNetworkTV became a syndication package consisting solely of drama repeats, WFXT occasionally promoted that network's programming.
On October 12, 2007, Comcast began blacking out Fox prime time and sports programming from WFXT on its systems in Bristol County due to an invocation of the FCC's network non-duplication rule by Providence, Rhode Island Fox affiliate WNAC-TV, leaving only channel 25's syndicated programs and newscasts available in that area. On July 31, 2008, Charter Communications' system in Westport also became subject to the blackouts, this contributed to WFXT's eventual removal from that system on September 23, 2008.

Trade to Cox Media Group

On June 24, 2014, Fox announced that it would trade WFXT and Memphis sister station WHBQ-TV to the Cox Media Group, in exchange for the San Francisco duopoly of Fox affiliate KTVU and independent station KICU-TV. The trade was completed on October 8, 2014. Following this deal, CBS-owned WBZ-TV briefly became the only network O&O in the Boston area, and also made WFXT the largest Fox affiliate not owned by the network. In November 2014, shortly after the closure of the sale, WFXT was briefly pulled from Verizon FiOS in the Boston area for a week due to a discrepancy in contract negotiations.
On October 27, 2015, WFXT dropped the Fox O&O-style branding and introduced a new logo and on-air appearance; the logo was criticized by some viewers for its simplified appearance – omitting the standard Fox network logo in favor of an italicized Helvetica logotype – and received national attention when Larry Potash, anchor of the Morning News on WGN-TV in Chicago, criticized the change as a move by station-hired consultants to help bring in viewers who defected from WFXT's newscasts following the departure of longtime evening anchor Maria Stephanos earlier that year. Prior to Super Bowl LI in February 2017, the station began downplaying the Fox name from its overall branding; this was reflected in a promo that aired prior to and during the game that referred to the news operation as "25 News".
On April 13, 2017, the station announced that it would rebrand its newscasts as Boston 25 News on April 24, 2017 from then on, the "Fox 25" branding was retained as a generalized identity restricted to WFXT's entertainment programming and station promotions. General manager Tom Raponi told The Boston Globe that the change was made to eliminate a perception that WFXT's newscasts leaned conservative, which the station attributed to an internal survey taken in 2015 in which 41% of Boston area news viewers that were polled associated its newscasts with the national Fox News Channel, rather than its sister broadcast network. In February 2018, the station dropped the "Fox 25" branding entirely and began referring to itself as "Boston 25" full time, including in promotions for syndicated and Fox network programming, making WFXT one of only a handful of Fox affiliates that does not use "Fox" in its branding.

Sale to Apollo Global Management

In February 2019, it was announced that Apollo Global Management would acquire Cox Media Group and Northwest Broadcasting's stations. Although the group planned to operate under the name Terrier Media, it was later announced in June 2019 that Apollo would also acquire Cox's radio and advertising businesses, and retain the Cox Media Group name. The sale was completed on December 17, 2019.

Digital television

Digital channels

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:
ChannelVideoAspectPSIP Short NameProgramming
25.1720pWFXTMain WFXT programming / Fox
25.2480iESCAPECourt TV Mystery
25.3480iLAFFLaff

Analog-to-digital conversion

WFXT's analog signal began malfunctioning on November 1, 2008 as a result of a failing transmission line, forcing the station to reduce its power. By December 9, 2008, the transmission line had deteriorated to the point that the station's effective radiated power was reduced to levels where viewers could then only receive the station via cable, satellite or its digital signal in most areas. The station then began to state that the possibility existed that its analog signal might have to be shut down ahead of the analog-to-digital transition deadline for full-power stations, which at that time was scheduled for February 17, 2009. In the end, the station's analog signal remained on the air even after that date. However, due to the continued failure of the transmission line, WFXT shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 25, on February 27, 2009, becoming the second English-language major network station in Boston to exclusively transmit a digital signal and the only Fox-owned station to shut down its analog signal prior to the new June 12 transition date. The station's digital signal continued to broadcast on its pre-transition UHF channel 31. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 25.
Many Boston area residents complained about poor reception from WFXT's digital signal compared to the market's other major television stations. This was due to the fact that the transmitter previously operated at a reduced power output of 78 kilowatts from an antenna mounted below one of the tines of the Candelabra tower in Needham. WFXT's vice president of engineering Bill Holbrook stated publicly that the digital signal would not reach full power until August 2009, when installation of a new antenna and transmitter was expected to be completed. However, the signal upgrades were completed in April 2009, giving WFXT a signal considered to be on par with the Boston market's other full-power stations. The new antenna and transmission feedline had been replaced two weeks earlier. The license to cover was filed on April 23, 2009.

Programming

In addition to the Fox network schedule, syndicated programs broadcast by WFXT include The Dr. Oz Show, The Wendy Williams Show, Entertainment Tonight, Right This Minute, and TMZ on TV.

Sports programming

Through the NFL on Fox, WFXT typically airs two New England Patriots games a year, usually when the team plays host to an NFC team at Gillette Stadium. However, the institution of the NFL's new 'cross-flex' rules in 2014, along with Fox's broadcasting rights to Thursday Night Football starting in 2018, has given the station more opportunities to air regular season Patriots games. The station has aired five of the team's Super Bowl appearances.
The station also airs any Boston Red Sox games that are part of Fox's Major League Baseball telecasts. Owing to Fox's exclusive coverage of the World Series since 2000, WFXT has carried every Red Sox championship in the television era. It also served as the team's primary over-the-air broadcaster for three seasons from 2000 to 2002. WFXT also carried a package of weekday afternoon Red Sox spring training games, produced by NESN, in 2018 and 2019. As mentioned above, it carried Celtics games under the team's ownership in the early 1990s.
When Fox held the NHL's U.S. over-the-air broadcast contract from 1995 to 1999, any games involving the Boston Bruins that were selected to air on the NHL on Fox were aired on WFXT.

News operation

WFXT presently broadcasts 64½ hours of locally produced newscasts each week ; in regards to the number of hours devoted to locally produced newscasts, it was the largest newscast output of any station in the Boston market and in New England until January 1, 2017, when WHDH-TV lost their NBC affiliation and became a news-intensive independent outlet by increasing their weekly news output to over 70 hours. During weather segments, the station utilizes live National Weather Service radar data originating from a radar site at the NWS Weather Forecast Office in Taunton.
One of the few productive moves that WFXT made under the ownership of the Boston Celtics was entering into a news share agreement with regional cable news channel New England Cable News to produce a prime time newscast at 10:00 p.m., which debuted on September 7, 1993. The half-hour Fox 25 News at 10 was initially anchored by Heather Kahn, with Tim Kelley on weather. Kahn lasted a year in this role before she was hired by ABC affiliate WCVB-TV ; Lila Orbach replaced her as anchor. In September 1994, NECN began to produce a half-hour midday newscast at 12:30 p.m. for channel 25, which was subsequently canceled.
WFXT opted not to renew its contract with NECN in September 1995, with the final broadcast airing on October 1; the next day, NECN moved the newscast to WSBK. For the next year, the only news programming on WFXT consisted primarily of national updates supplied by Fox News that aired during the day. During this time, Fox Television Stations created an in-house news department for the station, culminating in the September 9, 1996 launch of a new 10:00 p.m. broadcast, initially branded as Fox News Boston before reviving the Fox 25 News title the following year. The 10:00 p.m. newscast has aired as an hour-long program since its inception, originally airing in the format on Monday through Saturday nights, while the Sunday edition aired for a half-hour in order to accommodate a sports highlight program, Sports Sunday on Fox; Sports Sunday ended its run on May 16, 2004, with the Sunday edition of the 10:00 p.m. newscast expanding to an hour the following week.
in Boston.
Over the next decade, channel 25 gradually expanded its news operation. On June 4, 2001, WFXT added a 4:30 p.m. newscast that was anchored by Jodi Applegate and was targeted at a female audience. By September 2002, the program had moved to 5:00 p.m., and on September 22, 2003, it was expanded to an hour and began using the same anchors and a similar format as the 10:00 p.m. broadcast, as Applegate became co-anchor, along with former WHDH-TV sports director Gene Lavanchy, of a three-hour weekday morning newscast from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. that launched the same day. One year later, Applegate left WFXT to become co-anchor of Good Day New York on then-sister station WNYW and was replaced by former WHDH and WBZ-TV anchor Kim Carrigan. Concurrent with the debut of the morning newscast, WFXT unveiled a newsroom similar to that of WHDH, which also serves as the station's news set; it remains in use to this day. Channel 25 also opened a news bureau on Beacon Hill near the State House in downtown Boston, which serves as an interview location for Massachusetts lawmakers as well as a home base for weekday morning commentator Doug "V.B." Goudie.
The station debuted an hour-long Sunday morning newscast at 9:00 a.m. on September 12, 2004; the program was cancelled in July 2009. On May 19, 2009, WFXT and the CBS-owned duopoly of WBZ-TV/WSBK-TV entered into a Local News Service agreement, which allows the stations to share local news footage, along with a helicopter for traffic reports and breaking news. The helicopter originally used as part of the sharing agreement was involved in a crash that killed two people in Seattle on March 18, 2014, while on loan by Helicopters, Inc. for use by KOMO-TV during technical upgrades to that station's own helicopter. On June 14, 2009, starting with its 10:00 p.m. newscast, WFXT became the last station in the Boston market at the time to begin broadcasting its newscasts in high definition.
WFXT launched a Sunday through Friday 11:00 p.m. newscast on November 5, 2007; the weekday morning newscast has also expanded since its launch, and has aired from 4:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. since July 9, 2012. The 5:00 p.m. newscast, which consistently placed fourth in its timeslot, was discontinued in favor of a half-hour 6:00 p.m. newscast on September 14, 2009. That program was expanded to one hour with the launch of an additional half-hour newscast at 6:30 p.m. on March 14, 2011, which competes against the national network newscasts airing in the timeslot on WBZ, WHDH and WCVB. On July 7, 2012, WFXT expanded the 6:00 p.m. newscast to Saturday and Sunday evenings; as is common with Fox stations that carry early evening newscasts on weekends, the newscast may be subject to delay or preemption due to network sports telecasts overrunning into the timeslot. On October 7, 2013, WFXT relaunched its 5:00 p.m. newscast after a four-year hiatus.
Under Cox ownership, a number of significant changes began to occur within WFXT's news department. On November 13, 2014, Doug Goudie, who was well known for his commentary segments during the station's morning show, was released from the station; he stated that his presence did not align with Cox's "philosophy", since they "aren't big on opinions." The removal of "V.B." came as part of a retooling of the Morning News into a conventional newscast, rather than a morning show emphasizing light talk and interview segments. The station restored the weekend morning newscasts in September 2015.
WFXT airs half-hour In Depth news specials at 10:30 p.m. on Fridays. These are compilations of special reports sometimes unified by a single theme.

On-air staff

Notable current on-air staff