Re: More observations
Your points are solid ones, and you know your history. Extra points for correctly identifying the "operated but not owned" status of stations like WBZ, WGY, KOA and KGO within the NBC network structure in the thirties and forties. It bears noting that Westinghouse and GE were separated from RCA fairly early in the game, and that the subsequent NBC operation of Westinghouse and GE stations was a purely contractual matter, with lease agreements that were virtually identical to a modern-day LMA. (CBS played that game, to a far smaller extent, by operating stations like WCCO in the thirties.)
You're correct, as well, in identifying the changed nature of the relationship between station groups and the networks with which they're co-owned these days.
It's important to note, though, that those changes have been in the works for decades in some networks. Look at the ABC radio stations as early as 1960, when WLS and WABC were set free from network management and quickly became profit centers in their own rights, answerable not to the ABC radio network but to the very top level of ABC management. WABC radio, in particular, was just about the only profitable part of the company for some years in the early sixties, which bought it a tremendous amount of autonomy. That was forty years ago. (Today, of course, the ABC radio stations are so autonomous that they're up for sale. That's another matter altogether.)
That sort of autonomy from the network structure has spread, as you correctly note, to the other networks. To an extent, that was inevitable. It was one thing for the network news operation to also run the New York local news operation in the days when the New York local news was 15 minutes long at 6:45 and 11. That would be impossible today, when each New York station alone puts out four or five hours of local news today, with as much or more being produced at each of 18 or 20 sister stations around the country. There's no way the old centralized management structure could handle today's local operations.
That said, though, there remains a distinct difference between the station groups that are co-owned with networks and the ones that aren't. I know. I was working at WBZ when it moved from Westinghouse to CBS in the mid-nineties.
Yes, the management structure at WBZ-TV doesn't report directly to the network in the way that WCBS-TV or WCAU-TV once did, but the network still exerts influence. WBZ was once one of the biggest pre-empters of NBC network programming. Under "CBS Broadcasting," or whatever name's on the license this week, WBZ can't pre-empt. I'm pretty sure WBZ's local management would prefer not to be "CBS4," either, or to do interminable "Survivor" and "CSI" tie-ins on the late news, but that's out of their hands as well.
Even on the radio side, which is more autonomous from the network than the TV stations are, there were certain non-negotiables. WBZ radio had been the big ABC Information affiliate in New England. It still clears some ABC inventory to get Paul Harvey, but the hourly newscasts overnight and the special reports and network audio during the day now come from CBS. The WSJ business reports became CBS Marketwatch. A 60 Minutes simulcast showed up Sunday nights. These were not local decisions, nor were they decisions an autonomous group owner would have made. They were dictated at the network level.
My point is this: the relationship between "O&O" stations and networks has changed, just as the rest of the business has changed. As the size of the station groups has grown, it's inevitable that the stations will carry more weight vis a vis the networks - after all, almost by definition in today's regulatory environment, those station groups are responsible for the most important 25% (or more) of the network's distribution. That said, they are not as autonomous as you'd make them out to be. No matter how strongly the management of WPVI might believe that the station's ratings or revenues might benefit by pre-empting a network offering, it won't happen. (Look, for instance, at the number of ABC affiliates in reasonably large markets that don't run Nightline at 11:35. They have sound economic reasons for doing that. WPVI probably would as well, but it's simply not an option.)
The NBC stations, in particular, are especially tightly bound to the network. WCAU was never operated, in a literal sense, from New York when CBS owned it. Today, its master control is quite literally at 30 Rock, in a room down the hall from NBC network master control on the second floor, right alongside WVIT, WNBC, WRC, WCMH and so on. And with Roger Ailes taking command of the Fox stations' local news operations, we're about to see a level of network control of local stations' news that hasn't been seen in decades - and this at a network that doesn't even really have a "network" news operation in the traditional sense of the term.
You may consider it to be misused in a historical context, but "O&O" is still the term of art in the TV industry for stations like WABC-TV - or WPVI. There is, in any event, no useful distinction that can be drawn between those two stations and their relationship to the ABC network. They are, for all practical purposes by 2005 standards, O&Os, anachronistic as the term may be.
If the term is disappearing anywhere, it's in radio. As it stands, there are only two "traditional" networks that have co-owned stations, and that will soon be down to one with the sale of the ABC Radio stations. CBS Radio is really just one programming arm of Westwood One these days, and there are only a handful of Infinity radio stations, under a common corporate umbrella, that behave anything like the old O&Os did. I would agree with you that within a few years, the concept of a radio O&O will be obsolete. I don't see it going anywhere in TV.<P ID="signature">______________
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