WMFP (channel 62) is a television station licensed to Foxborough, Massachusetts, United States, serving the Boston area and primarily airing paid programming from OnTV4U. It is owned by WRNN-TV Associates alongside Norwell-licensed ShopHQ affiliate WWDP (channel 46). Through a channel sharing agreement, the two stations transmit using WWDP's spectrum from a tower off Pleasant Street in West Bridgewater. WMFP's studios are located on Lakeland Park Drive in Peabody.
History
1987–1995
The station first signed on the air on October 16, 1987, on UHF channel 62, originally licensed to Lawrence, Massachusetts. Initially, the station broadcast approximately eight hours per day of programming, operating its transmitter from a hill behind the Baldpate Hospital in Georgetown, Massachusetts. The early programming was primarily home shopping. WMFP was originally owned by MFP, Inc.; the company's largest shareholder was Boston-area political commentator Avi Nelson, who owned 35% of the station and also served as its president, treasurer, and secretary.
In September 1992, a new broadcast antenna was mounted, via a Sikorsky sky-crane helicopter, on top of One Beacon Street in Boston. WMFP installed its new transmitter on an upper floor of the building, and started broadcasting from Boston in November 1992. In addition to Avi Nelson, Bill Mockbee, well known in Boston radio and television broadcasting, was the general manager; composer/conductor/actor David Morrow was the operations manager; and Jim Capillo served as production manager, producing several local programs for the station. WMFP also expanded to a 24-hour schedule, with programming including syndicated talk shows, game shows, low budget movies, and drama shows. In early 1993, the station picked up several NBC programs that were not cleared by then-affiliate WBZ-TV (channel 4), including Later.
In May 1994, Nelson agreed to sell WMFP to the Shop at Home Network for $7 million. Shop at Home announced—even before an affiliation swap moved the NBC affiliation to WHDH-TV—that it would not retain the secondary NBC affiliation. The sale closed in 1995.
2006–2015
On May 16, 2006, Shop at Home's parent, the E. W. Scripps Company, announced that the network would suspend operations, effective June 22. However, Shop at Home temporarily ceased operations one day early than said target date on June 21, WMFP then switched to Jewelry Television (and, on June 23, to a mixture of both networks). On September 26, 2006, Scripps announced that it would sell its Shop at Home stations, including WMFP, to New York City-based Multicultural Television for $170 million. The sale of WMFP was finalized on April 24, 2007. Before the sale announcement, the station entered into discussions to affiliate with MyNetworkTV (a broadcast network created by News Corporation as a competitor to The CW, both of which launched in September 2006). MyNetworkTV instead chose to affiliate with WZMY-TV (channel 50, now WWJE-DT).
In May 2007, Multicultural took over WMFP, and switched the station to a mix of infomercials and home shopping network Gems TV; the Gems TV affiliation was dropped a year later. On May 12, 2009, it was announced that WMFP would affiliate with Retro Television Network (RTN). RTN programming was added to the station's second digital subchannel on May 20, though with its station identification showing the channel as 18.1. The next day, WMFP began showing RTN content on the main channel as well (RTN was subsequently rebranded as RTV).
After Multicultural ran into financial problems and defaulted on its loans, WMFP was placed into a trust; in 2011, the station, along with KCNS in San Francisco, was sold to NRJ TV (a company unrelated to European broadcaster NRJ Radio). The sale was consummated on May 13, 2011. NRJ TV affiliated the station with MeTV on December 15, 2011, moving RTV to the second subchannel exclusively.
On October 1, 2012, WMFP switched its primary channel affiliation to lifestyle network Plum TV; WCVB-TV (channel 5) assumed the MeTV affiliation for the Boston market on that date as part of a group affiliation deal with that station's owner Hearst Television. On or around May 13, 2013, WMFP became affiliated with Cozi TV on its main channel. In June 2013, the station briefly added a secondary feed of Cozi TV on digital subchannel 62.3 (which airs Cozi TV programming without the infomercial preemptions seen on digital channel 62.1, but presented in a horizontally compressed picture format).