The Outlet Company

The Outlet Company was a corporation based in Providence, Rhode Island, which owned holdings in both retail and broadcasting. The centerpieces of the group was its flagship Providence store (The Outlet) and WJAR radio and television, also in Providence.

Retail

The Outlet Company, Providence, Rhode Island, circa 1910

The Outlet Company was formed in 1891 when opened brothers Joseph and Leon Samuels opened a department store at 176 Weybosset Street in downtown Providence. Known as The Outlet, it quickly became a Providence landmark to the point of occupying an entire city block and attracting shoppers from all over southern New England. For decades, the store remained strong with its sole flagship location and dominated the field of retail in not only Providence, but Rhode Island as a whole.

With the changing field of retail in the mid-20th Century, the company diversified with opening suburban locations as well as buying some existing stores such as Philadelphia-based Phillipsborn and Bedya, the midwestern Hughes & Hatcher chain, and The Edw. Malley Co. department store chain in New Haven, Connecticut. However, the allure of building a broadcasting empire under the leadership of company president Bruce Sundlun led Outlet to leave the retail business in November 1980. In 1981, the Outlet Company sold the original downtown retail store (and other stores) to United Department Stores and the flagship Outlet location on Weybosset Street was shuttered in 1982. The building was destroyed by fire on October 16, 1986.^[1]

Broadcasting

As with many northeastern department stores in the 1920s, Outlet entered radio as a means of promoting their products to a wide audience. In 1922, Outlet entered broadcasting with the sign on of WJAR, which in 1923 became the first affiliated station of the NBC Red Network.^[2] In 1949, Outlet entered television broadcasting with the launch of WJAR-TV on channel 11; the station moved to channel 10 in 1953.

Along with retail, Outlet saw a mass expansion into broadcasting in the 1960s and beyond. After the sale of the retail divisions, the company went into a failed merger attempt with Columbia Pictures before it was sold in 1984 to members of the Rockefeller family. Two years later, the company was sold again^[3] to a combination of Outlet executives and venture capitalists who renamed the company to Outlet Communications and began a complete withdrawal from radio followed by a slimming down the number of their TV stations to three. In early 1996, Outlet and its three stations (plus control of two others) were sold to NBC; the name lived on as a license name of their former stations for a while afterward.

After ten years, all three stations were put up for sale by NBC on January 9, 2006, with Media General buying the stations on April 6, 2006 (the sale was finalized on June 26, 2006). ^[4] This virtually undid the NBC-Outlet merger of a decade earlier.

Former Outlet-owned stations

Note: Two boldface asterisks appearing following a station's call letters (**) indicate a station that was built and signed-on by the Outlet Company.

Television stations

DMA#	City of license/Market	Station	Channel TV (DT)	Years owned	Current status
8.	Atlanta, Georgia	WATL	36 / 25	1985–1989	MyNetworkTV affiliate owned by Gannett Company
19.	Orlando - Daytona Beach - Melbourne	WDBO-TV/WCPX-TV (now WKMG-TV)	6 / 26	1969–1987	CBS affiliate owned by Post-Newsweek Stations
20.	Stockton - Sacramento - Modesto	KOVR	13 / 25	1978–1986	CBS owned-and-operated (O&O)
26.	Indianapolis	WPDS-TV/WXIN	59 / 45	1984–1989	Fox affiliate owned by Tribune Broadcasting
28.	Goldsboro - Raleigh - Durham, N.C.	WYED-TV/WNCN	17 / 17	1993–1996	NBC affiliate owned by Media General
32.	Columbus, Ohio	WCMH-TV	4 / 14	1976–1996	NBC affiliate owned by Media General
37.	San Antonio	KSAT-TV	12 / 12	1974–1986	ABC affiliate owned by Post-Newsweek Stations
52.	Providence, R.I. - New Bedford, MA	WJAR-TV **	10 / 51	1949–1996	NBC affiliate owned by Media General
80.	Syracuse, New York	WNYS-TV (now WSYR-TV)	9 / 17	1962–1978	ABC affiliate owned by Newport Television

In 1994, Outlet bought a minority share into the startup company Fant Broadcasting, which in 1995 signed on two stations in Outlet markets which Outlet operated by local marketing agreements. Both of these stations were joint WB/UPN affiliates (primarily the former) under Outlet control.

• WLWC (channel 28), New Bedford, Massachusetts, operated by WJAR-TV
• WWHO (channel 53), Chillicothe, Ohio, operated by WCMH-TV

Following its purchase of the remaining three Outlet staitons, NBC kept involvement with the Fant stations until they orchestrated a three way deal in which Fant sold itself to the original Viacom's Paramount Stations Group and, in return, NBC acquired Viacom/Paramount's WVIT in New Britain, Connecticut in 1997. Both stations later changed their primary affiliation to UPN, retaining the WB network as a secondary affiliation. WLWC and WWHO both became affiliates of the CW Television Network, the result of a merger of UPN and WB, in the Fall of 2006.

Radio Stations

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AM Stations

FM Stations

DMA#	Market	Station	Years owned	Current ownership
2.	Los Angeles	KIQQ-100.3 (now KKBT)	1977-1986	owned by Radio One
7.	Philadelphia	WIOQ-102.1	1979–1989	owned by Clear Channel Communications
9.	Washington, D.C.	WTOP-1500 (now WFED) (WTOP now operates at 103.5 FM)	1978–1993	owned by Hubbard Broadcasting
	Bethesda, Maryland	WMMJ-102.3	1983–1986	owned by Radio One
11.	Detroit	WQRS-105.1 (now WMGC-FM)	1960s–1986	owned by Greater Media
39.	Providence - Warwick, R.I.	WJAR-920 ** (now WHJJ)	1922–1980	owned by Clear Channel Communications
		WJAR-FM-95.5 ** (now WBRU)	1950s–1965	owned by Brown University
	Taunton, Massachusetts	WSNE-93.3	1970s-86	owned by Clear Channel Communications
34.	Orlando	WDBO-580	1963–1982	owned by Cox Radio
		WDBO-FM-92.3 (now WWKA)	1963–1982	owned by Cox Radio

External links

• History of the Outlet Company
• History of WJAR
• Outlet Company Records at the Rhode Island Historical Society

Notes

1. ^ "The Outlet Company, Providence. by Michael Bell". quahog.org. http://www.quahog.org/factsfolklore/index.php?id=31. Retrieved 20 February 2011. 
2. ^ "David L. Stackhouse accounts of WJAR Early history (1970)". Southwest Museum of Engineering, Communications and Computation. http://www.smecc.org/david_l__stackhouse_-_wean_-_wjar_-_wean.htm. Retrieved 20 February 2011. 
3. ^ "Reverse LBO's Bring Riches By Leslie Wayne". New York Times, April 23, 1987. 23 April 1987. http://www.nytimes.com/1987/04/23/business/reverse-lbo-s-bring-riches.html. Retrieved 20 February 2011. 
4. ^ "Media General Completes Purchase of Four NBC Television Stations". Media General press release June 26, 2006. http://www.mediageneral.com/press/2006/june26_06.htm. Retrieved 20 February 2011.