WHDH (channel 7) is an independent television station in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. It is owned by Sunbeam Television alongside Cambridge-licensed CW affiliate WLVI (channel 56). WHDH and WLVI share studios at Bulfinch Place (near Government Center) in downtown Boston; through a channel sharing agreement, the two stations transmit using WHDH's spectrum from the WHDH-TV tower in Newton, Massachusetts. From 1982 to 1995, WHDH was Boston's CBS affiliate, inheriting the affiliation from its predecessor on channel 7, WNAC-TV. On January 2, 1995, WHDH switched to NBC, after CBS moved to WBZ-TV (channel 4) by virtue of a group-wide affiliation deal with its owner, Westinghouse Broadcasting (CBS and Westinghouse merged that November, making WBZ-TV a CBS owned-and-operated station). On January 1, 2017, after losing NBC's affiliation to a newly formed owned-and-operated station, WBTS-LD (channel 8, now Telemundo O&O WYCN-LD in Providence, Rhode Island), WHDH became a news-intensive independent station. History WNAC-TV's fight for survival and transition (1948–1982) The original occupant of the channel 7 allocation in Boston was WNAC-TV, which commenced operations on June 21, 1948, as Boston's first CBS affiliate. The station switched to ABC in 1961, but rejoined CBS in 1972. By 1965, WNAC-TV's owner, RKO General, faced numerous investigations into its business and financial practices. Though the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) renewed WNAC-TV's license in 1969, RKO General lost the license in 1981 after its parent company, General Tire, admitted to a litany of corporate misconduct—which among other things, included the admission that General Tire had committed financial fraud over illegal political contributions and bribes—as part of a settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. However, in the FCC hearings, RKO General had withheld evidence of General Tire's misconduct, and had also failed to disclose evidence of accounting errors on its own part. In light of RKO's dishonesty, the FCC stripped RKO of the Boston license and the licenses for KHJ-TV (now KCAL-TV) in Los Angeles and WOR-TV in New York City (now WWOR-TV in Secaucus, New Jersey). The FCC had previously conditioned renewal of the latter two stations' licenses on WNAC-TV's renewal. An appeals court partially reversed the ruling, finding that RKO's dishonesty alone merited having the WNAC-TV license removed. However, it held that the FCC had overreached in tying the other two license renewals to WNAC-TV's renewal, and ordered new hearings. Though RKO continued to appeal the decision, in late February 1982 the FCC granted