WLNE-TV

The two stations share studios on Kenney Drive in Cranston, Rhode Island, and transmitter facilities in Rehoboth, Massachusetts. The station began broadcasting as an ABC affiliate on January 1, 1963, as WTEV from studios on 430 County Street in New Bedford. The station's inaugural broadcast actually began at 11:58 p.m. on December 31, 1962, with the playing of "Auld Lang Syne" by Mitch Miller, followed by greetings from local political and religious leaders. WTEV's transmitter was located in Little Compton, Rhode Island, with the antenna mounted on a 500-foot (150 m) tower; a few years later, WTEV moved to a 950-foot (290 m) tower in Tiverton. The Tiverton transmitter was still 20 miles (32 km) away from the transmitter sites in Rehoboth used by the existing stations in the Providence market, WJAR-TV (channel 10) and WPRO-TV (channel 12, now WPRI-TV). However, WTEV could not build a tower in Rehoboth due to the risk of interference with WRGB in Schenectady, New York, WCSH-TV in Portland, Maine, and WFIL-TV in Philadelphia, which all broadcast on channel 6 in the analog era. Before cable arrived in Rhode Island in the early 1970s, this resulted in viewers experiencing reception problems with WTEV because of its signal being sent from a different direction than WJAR-TV and WPRO-TV/WPRI-TV. This forced viewers to mount their outdoor antennas on rotators to get a passable signal from the station.