Network Affiliates That Are Too Close To Each Other

[kenrayc]

Only two such examples come to my mind at this late hour (Although one has long since been remedied).

1) KNTV 11 San Jose - Was an ABC affiliate until NBC Universal bought it from struggling Granite Broadcasting & turned it into an NBC O&O. As an ABC affiliate, it overlapped ABC O&O KGO 7 in San Francisco.

2) KERO 23 Bakersfield - An ABC affiliate owned by McGraw Hill. Because of its proximity to Los Angeles, it overlaps ABC O&O KABC 7 despite it being on UHF.

Then again, in the day & age of HDTV, does overlapping really matter all that much today? Just a thought.....

Cheers

Here In Fresno I get KBAK 29 and KBFX 58 from Bakersfield on all of my Antennas (one is just a simple bow tie 4 bay antenna just 10 ft. above ground) with a perfect signal they are located on Mt. Bekenridge at 7500 ft above sea level the signal strength is 80 percent, here the thing KMPH FOX 26 Fresno has there tower at 8000 ft at Sequoia National Park about 60 miles from KBFX 58,KMPH COL is Visalia so both FOX affiliates cover the same area 100 miles between Fresno and Bakersfield. KBAK 29 and KERO 23 has always covered Fresno even back in analog. it's nice for NFL because Fresno always carries the SF teams where KBAK CBS 29 and KBFX 58 runs alternative games, KERO 23 -DTV VHF 10 doesn't work even though my main antenna is a VHF/UHF combo, here in Fresno if they were to go back to UHF 23 they would come in as well, all other Bakersfield stations are one a much lower transmitter site.

 

[Tim-In-Houston]

Don't know if this would actually "count" but WSIL-TV 3 is licensed to Harrisburg, IL and for many years had their studios located there. Harrisburg is only about 65 miles from Evansville, Indiana. For most of southeast Illinois, including Harrisburg, the Evansville signals are very strong.

In the early 90s, the station built a new studio in the middle of a cornfield in Carterville, Illinois (no longer a cornfield, pretty developed in the area). The current tower is located southeast of Marion, near Creal Springs, Illinois...but I doubt that was the original tower location.

 

[KML0224]

Here in the Hartford/New Haven market, ABC and MY are licesned to New Haven, which is a good 40 miles south of Hartford down I-91. Springfield, MA (also along I-91), is actually closer to Hartford (30 miles at the most), but has always been a separate market from us, likely because they are a different state, the same reason Providence is separate from Boston/Worcester. Until the digital age, Springfield relied on Hartford for CBS and FOX. They now get "CBS 3", a digital subchannel of WFSB-DT from Hartford (3-2 over-the-air, cable channel 3 in Springfield) and "FOX 6", a digital subchannel of WGGB-DT from Springfield (40-2 over-the-air, cable channel 6 in Springfield). Here in southern Hartford County, CT, I get New Haven 95% of the time with WTNH (ABC) and nearly 100% of the time with WCTX (MY). I've never received any digital signals from Springfield.

 

[ShawnHill1]

Los Angeles and Palm Springs (all 3 networks)

The odd thing there is that Riverside County, where Palm Springs is located, is actually split into three markets. The western third (where the majority of Riverside County resides) belongs to Los Angeles, central Riverside County is Palm Springs, and the eastern third is in the Phoenix TV market (us enthusiasts are well-aware of the translators of the Phoenix stations throughout northern and central Arizona).

To the topic, and I know I bring this up quite a bit...but you have Madison, Wisconsin and Rockford, Illinois being about 55 miles apart, and of course, each have their own set of network affiliates, except no PBS in Rockford. Two companies own stations in each market...Gray owns WMTV (NBC) in Madison and WIFR (CBS) in Rockford; Quincy Newspapers owns WREX (NBC) in Rockford and WKOW (ABC) in Madison. Madison's CW affiliate WBUW, formerly an UPN affiliate initially serve both markets before its current ownership eventually shifted its focus (and transmitter location) to Madison, although its city of license is still Janesville (situated halfway between Madison and Rockford).

 

[vibe]

Is it a safe assumption to say that with digital, network affiliates can never be too close to one another IF the viewer is relying on OTA solely? There seems to be a lot of success and horror stories depending on where one lives. I am relying on discussions with others who still watch OTA television as well as a review of the TV fool coverage maps (how accurate ARE they?) for areas I've resided in.

 

[Tim from Springfield IL]

Kansas City and St. Joseph, MO--Two ABC affiliates (both formerly on VHF analog) within less than 50 miles of each other: KQTV-2 (St. Joe), KMBC-9 (KC). I'm surprised that when WDAF-4 in KC switched from NBC to Fox as a result of the New World deal back in 1994, with NBC going to KSHB-41, that KQTV didn't even consider (AFAIK) switching from ABC to NBC in response.

 

[Markxxx]

A lot, if not most are historical oddities.

For instance, the population out west was small and the states were huge at the time the channel allocations were assigned.

For instance in 1955 San Jose only had 95,000 people, not the population of San Jose is estimated to be at 1,000,000. San Jose is big enough now to have it's own market, at the time the channels were allocated it wasn't. So KNTV served as the ABC station for Salinas / Monterray. Today that market lacks an ABC affiliate and must import San Francisco's ABC to get service.

Back in the 40s no one knew how many networks in TV would make it. It was assumed two (CBS and NBC) but who really knew? So every city and the Senetors and Represntatives of those states, wanted a TV station. The Congressman got their way but there weren't enough affiliates or in some cases there were too many station.

So you had places like Zanesville, OH and St Joseph, MO and Bowling Green, KY wind up with one (or two) stations so they talked networks into giving them an affiliation, though they were too small to have all three networks, and couldn't survive without any affiliation

For political reasons Washington wanted a complete set of channels, although Baltimore was bigger in population (citywise not urban area-wise). Same goes for Providence / Boston. Two state capitals each wanting their own channels.

Though I can see why it occured looking back many places would've been better off had the FCC not did what they did with allocations. For instance, Kansas City might have easily developed another independent VHF had they had Channel 2 from St Joesph or taken one of the VHFs from Topeka and made those cities all UHF markets. But the Kansas City independents had to go UHF and couldn't compete.

 

[azumanga]

Kansas City might have easily developed another independent VHF had they had Channel 2 from St Joesph or taken one of the VHFs from Topeka and made those cities all UHF markets. But the Kansas City independents had to go UHF and couldn't compete.

One of the first was KCIT channel 50, which barely lasted two years:

http://www.wtv-zone.com/dpjohnson/kcit50/index.html

 

[hintomedia]

Bellingham WA had a CBS station only 75 miles away from Seattle, although KVOS used to function more like CBS's Vancouver WA (sic - should be BC) affiliate, running Canadian commercials and only carrying some CBS programs.

There was more to the situation in Western Washington. The market's first CBS affiliate was KING/5, which held the affiliation from 1948 until 1953. The CBS affiliation then went to Tacoma's KTNT/11 (now KSTW) when it signed on in March 1953. Bellingham's KVOS/12 then signed on 3 months later, though it apparently affiliated with DuMont at first and didn't take on CBS until 1955. So now you had a CBS affiliate in south Puget Sound, and another one towards the Canadian border.

Note that Bellingham and Tacoma are about 120 miles apart. I'm not sure exactly where KTNT transmitted from or how its signal propogated at that point, but I imagine coverage would've been spotty towards Whatcom and Skagit counties, in which case it would've made sense to have KVOS fill in this gap. It's not like Bellingham had another CBS affiliate to pull in. (And KVOS actually precedes all the Vancouver and Victoria stations too: CBUT, BC's first station, didn't sign on until December 1953.)

KIRO/7 didn't enter into the picture until its launch in 1958. It got the CBS affiliation, but KTNT and KVOS also managed to hold on to theirs. So for the following 3 years, there were actually 3 CBS affiliates in Western Washington, until KTNT finally lost the affiliation in 1961 and became an indy. KVOS remained a nominal CBS affil until 1987, but as mentioned it actually carried few CBS programs, and really through all those years it functioned more as Vancouver's indy than its CBS affiliate. In any case, KIRO (left as the sole CBS affil) and the other major Seattle/Tacoma stations were (and are) readily available on basic cable in Vancouver.

 

[Horns]

Another note on the Tampa/St. Petersburg --- Sarasota ABC situation. Tampa's current ABC affiliate WFTS has always suffered from ratings problems since they became an ABC affiliate 13 years ago. I recently saw the numbers for the big 3 evening network newscasts and it is amazing how poorly ABC World News does there in WFTS. Why? The nearby ABC affiliate in Sarasota. They pull the ABC audience for Sarasota/Manatee Counties and Tampa's WFTS does nothing in these counties. The other Tampa affiliates are seen and pull decent numbers, even for news, in the Sarasota/Bradenton area, these numbers count for their newscast. One local TV GM told me it doesn't matter what WFTS does, they will always be in last place for news because they get zero views in two counties with their own ABC affiliate.

 

[azumanga]

I recently saw the numbers for the big 3 evening network newscasts and it is amazing how poorly ABC World News does there in WFTS. Why? The nearby ABC affiliate in Sarasota. They pull the ABC audience for Sarasota/Manatee Counties and Tampa's WFTS does nothing in these counties.

WWSB's market-wide carriage on Verizon Fios doesn't help much, either.

 

[bpatrick]

Another note on the Tampa/St. Petersburg --- Sarasota ABC situation. Tampa's current ABC affiliate WFTS has always suffered from ratings problems since they became an ABC affiliate 13 years ago. I recently saw the numbers for the big 3 evening network newscasts and it is amazing how poorly ABC World News does there in WFTS. Why? The nearby ABC affiliate in Sarasota. They pull the ABC audience for Sarasota/Manatee Counties and Tampa's WFTS does nothing in these counties. The other Tampa affiliates are seen and pull decent numbers, even for news, in the Sarasota/Bradenton area, these numbers count for their newscast. One local TV GM told me it doesn't matter what WFTS does, they will always be in last place for news because they get zero views in two counties with their own ABC affiliate.

ABC News never did well on WTSP either; when my parents
lived in the Bay Area in the '70s they did their local news at
5:30 and network news at 6. The dominant station for news
was WTVT, both for local at 6 and Cronkite at 7. I would suspect
that WTSP does better with CBS News because the CBS habit
was ingrained long ago.

Note about WBKO: it started as an independent but got the ABC
affiliation largely because Nashville's ABC affiliate (still on Ch. 8)
didn't put a quality signal, unlike NBC (Ch. 4) and CBS (Ch. 5),
into Bowling Green. Even after ABC began airing on Ch. 2 it had
little or no impact on Bowling Green; Ch. 13 was established as
an ABC affiliate, plus a lot of people never bothered to adjust
their antennas (and maybe their thinking) to accommodate Ch. 2.

 

[mjlarochelle]

Toledo and Detroit are quite close to each other, and receive each other's stations over-the-air. At one time WDHO/24 in Toledo, as an ABC affiliate, suffered while local viewers tuned to WXYZ/7 from Detroit, also an ABC affiliate.

Flint and Lansing are close enough to each other than WJRT/12, Flint's ABC affiliate, also served as Lansing's ABC affiliate until it got its own ABC affiliate in the early 1990s. Flint also gets Detroit stations over-the-air.

 

[FreddyE1977]

in the Analog days the Pittsburgh NBC Affiliate (WIIC/WPXI 11) and the Steubenville, Ohio NBC affiliate (WSTV/WTOV 9) were only 35 miles apart. Both were full-power upper VHF signals, and their coverage areas likely overlapped by at least 80%. (I have lived in parts of Pittsburgh where WTOV's over the air signal came in better than most if not all of the locals. When WSTV was still a CBS affiliate we watched it a lot because there was less ghosting on the picture than on KDKA 2)

In an added twist, in latter years both were owned by the same ownership group (along with Johnstown's WJAC 6, the next NBC affiliate sixty miles to the east)

Today the digital signals are even closer together. WTOV has moved their digital tower into Pennsylvania. Not sure how many people are watching over the air these days though.

 

[firepoint525]

Note about WBKO: it started as an independent but got the ABC
affiliation largely because Nashville's ABC affiliate (still on Ch. 8 )
didn't put a quality signal, unlike NBC (Ch. 4) and CBS (Ch. 5),
into Bowling Green. Even after ABC began airing on Ch. 2 it had
little or no impact on Bowling Green; Ch. 13 was established as
an ABC affiliate, plus a lot of people never bothered to adjust
their antennas (and maybe their thinking) to accommodate Ch. 2.

Just clarifying the above statement, so that a number shows up there, instead of a smiley! 8)

 

[tripinva]

WTOV has moved their digital tower into Pennsylvania

Really? The map I have from the FCC site shows it as being in Ohio.

- Trip

 

[upstate29651]

So now the question is this: In this economy & in this world where cable, satellite & the internet continue to make OTA network tv more & more irrelevant, why don't neighboring markets team up, combine markets & have the big 4 cover the entirety of these new markets? There would be squabbling at first over deciding who would stay & who would go, but this could be one way for some broadcasters to remain in business.

G

 

[mleach]

So now the question is this: In this economy & in this world where cable, satellite & the internet continue to make OTA network tv more & more irrelevant, why don't neighboring markets team up, combine markets & have the big 4 cover the entirety of these new markets? There would be squabbling at first over deciding who would stay & who would go, but this could be one way for some broadcasters to remain in business.

G

Squabbling? I think "WAR" may be a better word here. If Nelisen/FCC were to consider the idea of to combine some markets and such, we could be talking full scale drama between politics, slamming between the stations & markets, lots of lawsuits, concerns such as "who is the better area?" or "who won't be served?",... etc.

And chances are a lot of this drama would be among markets who SHOULD be combined in the first place.

 

[gr8oldies]

Cinncinati and Dayton 50 miles apart but even with the south Dayton burbs meeting the north Cincy burbs, I don't see them becoming one media market

 

[only1moore]

I'm surprised that no bought up the Grand Rapids-Kalamazoo-Battle Creek TV market, where there's already 2 ABC affils, WZZM in Grand Rapids and WOTV in Battle Creek.