As WWOR-TV
MCA assumed control of WOR-TV on April 21, 1987. Initially, only the calls changed (simply by adding a W), becoming WWOR-TV with a new logo and programming stayed pretty much the same. That fall, WWOR-TV relaunched as a station perceived as different from a year prior. The station dropped most of its public affairs shows, Romper Room was cut back to 30 minutes and moved to 6:00 a.m., all religious shows except for the Sunday Mass were dropped, cartoons were added to the station's morning lineup, and stronger syndicated shows were mixed in the early evenings. The late mornings consisted of classic sitcoms held over from the later RKO days and afternoons continued to consist of game shows, drama shows and movies also held over from the RKO days. Later that fall, in primetime, the Million Dollar Movie was relegated to weekends in favor of the new, controversial Morton Downey Jr. talk show, while the 8:00 newscast was moved to 10:00 p.m., and expanded to an hour. The overhaul continued in 1988 and 1989, when it added evening sitcoms, including reruns of NBC's top-rated sitcom The Cosby Show, Who's The Boss, 227, and others. WWOR-TV also borrowed program formats used on the Westinghouse stations: a short-lived version of Evening Magazine aired in primetime, and a locally produced talk show called People Are Talking ran at 11 a.m. That show would later change its title to 9 Broadcast Plaza (named after the station's Secaucus studio location), and then to The Richard Bey Show for syndication.
In 1989, the FCC created the "Syndicated Exclusivity Rights" rule, otherwise known as "SyndEx." This rule stated that when a station in any market had the rights to air certain syndicated programs, the cable company had to block it out on out-of-town stations. Due to this rule, and to lighten the burden on cable companies, Eastern Microwave picked up broadcast rights to shows that were considered "SyndEx-proof" and could be inserted into WWOR's cable feed to replace programming that could not be aired nationally. Most of the programs came from the Universal and Quinn Martin libraries, along with some shows from the Christian Science Monitor's television service, as well as some holdovers from the pre-syndex era that had aired on the local New York feed before the law was passed. Eastern Microwave would eventually launch a separate feed for satellite and cable subscribers on January 1, 1990, known as the "WWOR EMI Service".
In the fall of 1990, WWOR-TV began using Universal 9 for its on-air branding, highlighting its association with the MCA/Universal entertainment empire. However, MCA's ambitious ownership of the station ended when it was bought by Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. of Osaka, Japan. Since the FCC does not allow foreign companies to own more than 25 percent of television stations, channel 9 would have to be sold once again. On January 1, 1991, MCA spun off the assets of WWOR-TV into a new company called Pinelands, Incorporated. However, the station continued to use Universal 9 as its on-air name until early 1992. In 1993 Pinelands was acquired by BHC Communications, a Chris-Craft Industries subsidiary, who had unsuccessfully bid for the station seven years earlier. In 1993, BHC aligned its unaffiliated stations with the Prime Time Entertainment Network.