Sunbeam Television
 |
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| Private | |
| Industry | Broadcast television |
| Founded | 1962 |
| Headquarters | Miami, Florida |
|
Area served
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United States |
|
Key people
|
Sydney Ansin, founder Edmund Ansin, co-founder/CEO |
| Products | Broadcast television |
Sunbeam Television Corporation is a privately held broadcasting company based in Miami, Florida that owns three television stations in the United States.
Sunbeam Television was founded in 1962 by Sydney Ansin, who inherited his family's shoemaking business in Massachusetts and later purchased South Florida real estate in the years after World War II, eventually settling in Miami Beach. Sydney's son, Edmund ("Ed") Ansin, joined his father when the elder Ansin prevailed in a lengthy quest to acquire Miami television station WCKT from the Cox and Knight publishing families. The Cox/Knight cooperative, Biscayne Television Corporation, had its license to operate the station revoked by the Federal Communications Commission due to improper contact with an FCC commissioner.
Ed Ansin was installed as WCKT's executive vice president upon Sunbeam's takeover of the station. He became the company's president and chief operating officer after Sydney's death in 1971. WCKT would change its call letters to WSVN in 1983, and would remain Sunbeam's lone property until 1993, when they acquired WHDH in Boston from New England Television.
On September 14, 2006, it was announced that Boston's WLVI would be acquired by Sunbeam from Tribune Broadcasting. The sale was approved in late November 2006, and Sunbeam took control of the station on December 18, 2006.
Sunbeam's flagship station, WCKT/WSVN in Miami, had been an NBC affiliate from the day it began operations in 1956. However, it suffered from poor viewership for its local news, and frequently pre-empted lower-rated network programming, much to NBC's chagrin. As NBC rose to ratings prominence during the middle 1980s, the network sought to upgrade its visibility in the growing Miami-Fort Lauderdale market.
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