In 1989, the
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) passed the "
Syndication Exclusivity Rights rule" (or "SyndEx") into law. This law meant that whenever a local
television station had the exclusive rights to broadcast a syndicated program, that particular program must be blacked out on any out-of-market stations that were carried by local cable providers. After the law was passed, EMI purchased the rights to programs that no stations had claimed exclusive rights to, and launched a special national feed for cable and satellite subscribers outside of the New York City market on January 1, 1990, called the "WWOR EMI Service". Most of the syndicated programs that WWOR-TV had the rights to show in the New York City market were covered up by the alternate programming shown on the national feed—with the exception of most sporting events, local newscasts and other WWOR-produced programming such as
Steampipe Alley,
The Joe Franklin Show, the overnight
Shop at Home program, the annual
Weekend with the Stars Telethon for
United Cerebral Palsy, the annual
Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon for the
Muscular Dystrophy Association, and a select number of programs that were not claimed as exclusive to any market. Most of the programs came from the libraries of
Universal Television (whose parent company,
MCA Inc., owned WWOR-TV at the time of the EMI Service's founding),
MGM Television and
Quinn Martin, along with some shows from the
Christian Science Monitors
television service, as well as some holdover shows that had aired on the local New York feed before the SyndEx law's passage. In mid-1996, EMI sold the satellite distribution rights to WWOR and
Boston's
WSBK-TV to Advance Entertainment Corporation. On December 31, 1996, AEC discontinued the feed, selling WWOR's former satellite transponder slot to
Discovery Communications for the then six-month-old
Animal Planet, which Advance still presently owns in part. ==See also==