You are comparing apples to coconuts. Zanesville is its own DMA. Hagerstown is in the DC DMA and Wildwood is in the Philly DMA. The NBC's in those markets are owned by Comcast/NBC so all they had to do to WMGM and WHAG is what they did. "Hey when the contract is coming up we are not going to allow you to renew it"
True, I see what you are saying, also, while KSL is not owned by NBC, KENV was in their market, so they evidently had the clout to make it happen. Interesting question you raise, could a network affiliate (whether O&O or not) seek to wipe out an adjacent "infill" DMA by demanding that the network pull the affiliation of a station in that DMA, thus allowing the larger market to absorb the county or counties comprising that DMA? IOW, could WCMH tell NBC "we don't want competition from WHIZ anymore, we want to absorb Muskingum County into the Columbus DMA, do to them what you did to KENV when KSL raised a stink"? In theory, a WHIZ with only a diginet affiliation (Cozi, for instance) could be the core of an infill DMA, but it would be no more viable than KENV is right now, and that DMA would almost certainly cease to exist.
possibly. But as someone who lives in a small market (#199 Mankato, MN) in the shadow of a large market (#15 Minneapolis) even the local news may not help. While I do watch KEYC nightly (Mankato) mainly for the weather the fact that I have access to the Minneapolis stations I will still watch NBC KARE 11 because they cover more than KEYC does. If I want to know about a new business opening up or expanding or something truly local to Mankato yeah KEYC is the way to go. But Minneapolis stations cover more topics (although they omit Mankato unless its a big story or when the MN Vikings had training camp here). I will give KEYC credit now that KTTC NBC in Rochester, MN (DMA in Southeastern MN) is owned by Gray (same as KEYC) they share stories.
There's a lot of sharing between Gray stations WSAZ, WKYT, and WYMT in eastern Kentucky, along those same lines.
One other note...WHIZ was locally owned. The owners are in the process of selling WHIZ and its AM/FM cluster to Marqee Broadcasting, who owns network stations in Maryland (WMDT ABC Salisbury), Kentucky (WNKY NBC/CBS), and Georgia (WSWG CBS Albany) along with a couple stations that have just diginets on them. Since Zanesville is its own DMA, Marquee can add network stations if they do desire and Columbus stations cant do diddly squat. Would they? Possibly. More advertising $$'s coming in.
I hadn't thought of the possibility of WHIZ adding networks on subchannels, if that is what you are referring to. That is what Gray station WTAP did in nearby Parkersburg WV, cobbling together LPTVs, getting them network affiliations, and then simulcasting them on WTAP. Gray station WHSV in Harrisonburg VA did something similar. There's no reason WHIZ couldn't do that, and would not even to have to jump through all those hoops of acquiring LPTVs. WHSV now has ABC/NBC/CBS/FOX and WTAP only lacks ABC.
There was a fantasy proposal of sorts, may have been on this forum, may have been somewhere else, of folding Zanesville and Parkersburg into a single market and presumably rearranging the network affiliations to eliminate redundancy. I'm not sure how much Zanesville and Parkersburg-Marietta have in common other than reasonably close proximity, but then again Greenville, Spartanburg, and Asheville comprise a single behemoth market in the Carolinas, and Asheville is very different from either of the other two cities (Asheville is "very different" from pretty much
anyplace!) and they are distinct economic entities as well, due both to distance and terrain.
Wheeling is approx 65 miles from Zanesville so in the analog days I'm sure it could get picked up
Got to wonder if the same holds true in the digital era.
