| Callsign: | WMBC-TV |
| City: | Newton, New Jersey |
| Branding: | WMBC TV 63 |
| Digital: | 18 (UHF) |
| Virtual: | 63 |
| Owner: | Mountain Broadcasting Corporation |
| Country: | United States |
| Founded: | August 1987 |
| Callsign Meaning: | Mountain Broadcasting Corporation |
| Erp: | 250 kW |
| Haat: | 5200NaN0 |
| Facility Id: | 43952 |
| Coordinates: | 40.713°N -74.0131°W |
| Licensing Authority: | FCC |
WMBC-TV (channel 63) is a television station licensed to Newton, New Jersey, United States, serving the New York metropolitan area as an affiliate of Merit Street Media. The station is owned by the Mountain Broadcasting Corporation, and maintains studios on Clinton Road in West Caldwell, New Jersey; it transmits from atop One World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan.
Mountain Broadcasting was founded in 1985 by a group of Korean Americans, led by the Reverend Sun Young Joo of Wayne, New Jersey. The group secured a construction permit from the FCC to build channel 63 in 1987,[1] and the station began operations on April 26, 1993, with a Christian religious format, running mostly programs from FamilyNet. Later in 1993, the station also began running public domain movies and film shorts from Main Street TV, along with FamilyNet programs.
In 1996, when New York City-owned WNYC-TV (channel 31, now Ion Television owned-and-operated station WPXN-TV) dropped its ethnic, foreign-language television programming following its sale to private interests, many of these programs were picked up by WMBC-TV. WMBC also dropped FamilyNet and Main Street TV programming and began to air more infomercials and religious shows directly from ministries. By 1997, it ran a blend of religion and infomercials during the day and ethnic shows at night and on Saturdays. It was also running several hours a week of educational kids' shows, and began producing a local newscast.
In the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the station temporarily broadcast NBC's flagship station WNBC (channel 4).[2]
WMBC had an extremely weak over-the-air signal in New York City, but with a new antenna atop One World Trade Center, it can be seen more clearly. The station is also carried on most of the cable providers in that market, including Charter Spectrum and Optimum. Its signal was dropped from DirecTV's New York City local stations package on December 31, 2005; however, DirecTV resumed carriage of WMBC in early 2009.
Prior to the switch to Merit Street Media, WMBC-TV's lineup consisted of brokered ethnic and religious programs, a half-hour weekday newscast, infomercials and children's programs to satisfy the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)'s "educational/informational" requirements.[3]
The station's signal is multiplexed:
| Res. | Aspect | Short name | Programming | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 63.1 | MeritSt | Merit Street Media | ||
| 63.2 | SCRIPPS | Scripps News | ||
| 63.4 | SinoVSN | SinoVision | ||
| 63.5 | 4:3 | NTDTV | ||
| 63.6 | 16:9 | ShopHQ | ShopHQ | |
| 63.7 | 4:3 | ALIENTO | Aliento Vision | |
| 63.8 | Audio only | WDNJ | WDNJ 88.1 FM (Spanish Christian) | |
| 63.9 | KCBN | Korean Christian Broadcasting Network | ||
WMBC-TV discontinued regular programming on its analog signal, over UHF channel 63, on February 17, 2009, to conclude the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television.[4] The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 18,[5] using virtual channel 63.