One interesting change over the decades within a DMA is in Arkansas where there one-time Fort Smith market is now the Fort Smith-Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers market. The network affiliates were originally all based in Fort Smith. Now they all have their primary studios and main news operations in the Fayetteville/Northwest Arkansas area. With Walmart's epic growth and the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville and the other NWA cities have long passed the Fort Smith metro in size. As a result, the stations have all relocated -- essentially, the old NWA satellite TV stations are operating as the primary outlets (KFSM 5 excluded since it was the lone commercial analog VHF that could cover both markets with its signal and never had a NWA relay; though, it too has moved its primary studio from Fort Smith).
I don't know why I thought those were two separate markets. Were they at one time?
This sounds
very similar to what happened with the Florence-Myrtle Beach market in South Carolina. At one time, there was only one station in Florence, WBTW-13, and it was primary CBS with some ABC (and maybe NBC if you go back far enough), and two stations in Wilmington, WWAY-3 and WECT-6 (ABC and NBC respectively, with the odd CBS show on WECT). Horry County (MB) was in the Wilmington market until 1983 when it flipped to Florence (about the time WPDE-15, ABC, went on the air, WWAY threw a fit and even filed a complaint with the FCC) and has been there ever since. However, with the explosive growth in the Myrtle Beach area in the years following, the center of gravity shifted, MB gained Fox and later NBC affiliates, and the Florence stations, for all practical purposes, moved to the MB area. They are still licensed to Florence, and the sticks for WBTW, WPDE, and WWMB (UPN and later CW affiliate) are at Hamer SC, near South of the Border (for those who don't know, it's a wildly popular, or at least it used to be,
faux-Mexican mini-theme park with a motor hotel, camping, restaurants, and so on), which makes for the curious situation of Myrtle Beach-based stations having their towers some 50 miles inland, and, yes, that does create reception issues sometimes.
OTA reception of most Wilmington (as well as Charleston) stations is possible with a decent outdoor antenna in MB (actually easier to get than Hamer), but Wilmington might as well be on another planet, their world ends at the NC/SC line. Only PBS NC is carried on cable. Oddly enough, just a few miles down the coast from MB, Georgetown County, the Charleston market begins. Georgetown is a very long county and IMO should be split, with "Georgetown North" being Florence-Myrtle Beach, and "Georgetown South" being Charleston, but that hasn't happened and may never. WPDE, though curiously not WBTW, shows up as significantly viewed in a couple of resort towns and Georgetown city on the 2016 SV list, and WFXB (Fox affiliate licensed to MB, one of the Bahakel stations) shows up as SV for the whole county. Go figure. I'm assuming the satellite providers furnish only Charleston locals for the entire county, which means that for local news in places such as Murrells Inlet, I guess folks have to go out and buy an antenna. Again, the county really needs to be split for DMA purposes.
I lived in Myrtle Beach in 1996 and 1997 and watched stations from all three cities, though for local news, we always preferred WPDE. (Gordon Barnes was at the place where I took my ham radio license test.) At that time, WPDE was more "the Myrtle Beach station" and WBTW was "the Florence station", but they, too, have moved their main studios to the MB area.
