The Outlet Company

The Outlet Company, Providence, Rhode Island, c. 1910

The Outlet Company was formed in 1891 when brothers Joseph and Leon Samuels opened a department store at 176 Weybosset Street in downtown Providence. Known as The Outlet, it quickly became a Providence landmark to the point of occupying an entire city block and attracting shoppers from all over southern New England. For decades, the store remained strong with its sole flagship location and dominated the field of retail in not only Providence, but Rhode Island as a whole.

With the changing field of retail in the mid-20th Century, the company diversified with opening suburban locations as well as buying some existing stores such as Philadelphia-based Phillipsborn and Bedya, the midwestern Hughes & Hatcher chain, and The Edw. Malley Co. department store chain in New Haven, Connecticut. However, the allure of building a broadcasting empire under the leadership of company president Bruce Sundlun led Outlet to leave the retail business in November 1980. In 1981, the Outlet Company sold the original downtown retail store (and other stores) to United Department Stores and the flagship Outlet location on Weybosset Street was shuttered in 1982. The building was destroyed by fire on October 16, 1986.[1]

As with many northeastern department stores in the 1920s, Outlet entered radio as a means of promoting their products to a wide audience. In 1922, Outlet entered broadcasting with the sign on of WJAR, which in 1926 became the first affiliated station of the NBC Red Network.[2] In 1949, Outlet entered television broadcasting with the launch of WJAR-TV on channel 11; the station moved to channel 10 in 1953.

Along with retail, Outlet saw a mass expansion into broadcasting in the 1960s and beyond. After the sale of the retail divisions, the company went into a failed merger attempt with Columbia Pictures before it was sold in 1984 to members of the Rockefeller family. Two years later, the company was sold again[3] to a combination of Outlet executives and venture capitalists who renamed the company to Outlet Communications and began a complete withdrawal from radio followed by a slimming down the number of their TV stations to three. In early 1996, Outlet and its three stations (plus control of two others) were sold to NBC; the name lived on as a license name of their former stations for a while afterward.

After ten years, all three stations were put up for sale by NBC on January 9, 2006, with Media General buying the stations on April 6, 2006 (the sale was finalized on June 26, 2006).[4] This virtually undid the NBC-Outlet merger of a decade earlier.

Note: Two boldface asterisks appearing following a station's call letters (**) indicate a station that was built and signed-on by the Outlet Company.

Radio Stations

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Market	Station	Years owned	Current ownership
Los Angeles	KIQQ 100.3	1977-1986	KKLQ, owned by Educational Media Foundation
Washington, D.C.	WTOP 1500	1978–1993	WFED, owned by Hubbard Broadcasting (WTOP now operates at 103.5 FM)
Bethesda, Maryland	WMMJ 102.3	1983–1986	owned by Radio One
Orlando	WDBO 580	1963–1982	owned by Cox Radio
	WDBO-FM 92.3	1963–1982	WWKA, owned by Cox Radio
Detroit	WQRS 105.1	1960s–1986	WMGC-FM, owned by Beasley Broadcast Group
Philadelphia	WIOQ 102.1	1979–1989	owned by iHeartMedia
Providence - Warwick, RI	WJAR 920 **	1922–1980	WHJJ, owned by iHeartMedia
	WJAR-FM 95.5 **	1948–1953	defunct, went silent in 1953 frequency now used by WLVO
Taunton, Massachusetts	WSNE 93.3	1980–1986	owned by iHeartMedia

AM Stations

FM Stations

• History of the Outlet Company
• History of WJAR
• Outlet Company Records at the Rhode Island Historical Society