Indeed, there are many such "only for TV DMA purposes" markets around the country, including the particular artificial weirdness of "Lincoln- Hastings-Kearney-Grand Island" in Nebraska, where for many years viewers in Lincoln actually got two of the big three networks from Omaha instead of more distant Hastings and Kearney.
There's almost always some historic quirk from the 1950s or early 60s behind those markets, in this case its origin as a one-station market launched out of Lincoln's KOLN and its satellite in Grand Island, KGIN.
Even now with DTV subchannels and the Omaha signals gone from Lincoln cable, viewers in Lincoln still have their own separate ABC affiliate from Kearney/Hastings/GI.
Indeed, when the FCC first started doling out TV channel allocations in the late 1940s and early- to mid-1950s, I'm not so sure they had network affiliations, and the idea of clustering together stations into discrete markets, in mind. Many (probably most) stations were affiliates of multiple networks, and tended to cherry-pick the most popular programs (or in the case of weaker stations, take what was left over after the "big guys" had their pick) from several networks. The FCC, if they thought about it at all, may have envisioned many small cities and towns having their own stations that would be the default choice for viewing in and near those communities, and providing the programs that the community wanted to see, both local and network. I
don't think they envisioned, for instance, a Charlotte mega-market corralling stations that, theoretically, were supposed to cover Hickory, Belmont, Kannapolis, and Rock Hill into one huge market with a single network per channel (at least in analog days) and the COL being a mere formality. The kind of homely, homespun programming that a station such as WHKY (back before the Jimmy Swaggart ministry bought it) in Hickory provided, with a focus on the "Unifour" (the four counties that make up greater Hickory), was probably more like it. Camden (30 miles from Columbia) once had a channel 14 allocation (hey, same as Hickory!) and they were trying to get it off the ground but failed; Camden is distinct enough from Columbia to be its own community with its own interests, but if the allocation still existed and a station were to fire up, it'd be just another Columbia-market station. The same thing happened with what is now WKTC, licensed to Sumter, but that is just on paper.
At least it makes some sense for the stations above to be in the same market. Your example of the Lincoln-plus market, as well as Waco-plus and the two examples I cited and many others (WOAY was second to none in providing hyper-local programming that just
screamed Oak Hill-Beckley!), are better instances of creating a single market because there needs to be a single market.
