WSTM-TV (channel 3) is a television station in Syracuse, New York, United States, affiliated with NBC and The CW. It is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, which provides certain services to CBS affiliate WTVH (channel 5) through a local marketing agreement with Granite Broadcasting. Both stations share studios on James Street/NY 290 in the Near Northeast section of Syracuse, while WSTM-TV's transmitter is located in the town of Onondaga, New York. History The station began operations on February 15, 1950 with the call sign WSYR-TV. It was owned by Advance Publications (the Newhouse family's company) along with the Syracuse Post-Standard, Syracuse Herald-Journal, and WSYR radio (AM 570 and FM 94.5, now WYYY). It was Syracuse's second television station, signing on a year and three months after WHEN-TV (now WTVH). It originally had facilities at the Kemper Building in Downtown Syracuse. In 1958, WSYR-AM-FM-TV moved to new studios on James Street. Unlike most NBC affiliates in two station markets, WSYR-TV did not take a secondary ABC or DuMont affiliation. WSYR-TV doubled as the NBC affiliate for Binghamton until WINR-TV (now WICZ-TV) signed-on in 1957. The station also operated a satellite station in Elmira until 1980; that station, first known as WSYE-TV and now WETM-TV, is now owned by Nexstar Broadcasting Group and fed via centralcasting facilities of a Syracuse cross-town rival, which ironically now holds the WSYR-TV call letters. It remains affiliated with NBC. The Newhouse family largely exited broadcasting in 1980. The WSYR cluster had been grandfathered after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) banned common ownership of newspaper and broadcasting outlets, but lost this protection when Advance dismantled its broadcasting division. Channel 3 was sold to the Times Mirror Company, who—so as to comply with an FCC rule in effect at the time that prohibited TV and radio stations in the same market, but with different owners from sharing the same callsigns—changed the television station's calls to WSTM-TV (for "Syracuse Times Mirror") on March 28 and kept the James Street studios. Under Times Mirror ownership, WSTM-TV was sister to fellow NBC affiliate WVTM-TV in Birmingham, Alabama (which later became network owned-and-operated and is now owned by Hearst Television) as well as later Fox O&O's KTVI in St. Louis, KDFW in Dallas–Fort Worth, and KTBC in Austin, Texas (KTVI is now owned by Nexstar and sister station to the present-day WSYR-TV). In 1986, Times Mirror sold WSTM-TV to SJL Broadcast Management,