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Stations that don't serve their city of license

N

Nertz!

Guest
How many TV stations out there ignore their city of license and focus on a bigger neighbor?

Here is one:
WHYY, a PBS station licensed to Wilmington, Delaware is a prime example of this.
It has its studios, offices and transmitter in Philadelphia and the majority of local programming it produces focuses on Philadelphia.
It does produce a "newscast" which is basically an interview show about Delaware, but little else.

Any more out there?
 
WJYS, licensed to Hammond, IN, really does not serve ANYBODY. Its transmitter is located in Tinley Park, IL, about 15 miles away. Its schedule is basically an open sewer of car dealer infomercials and religious hucksters, most of which are located on Chicago's south side and near south suburbs. This is particularly a problem as northwest Indiana tends to be somewhat underserved by the Chicago media in the first place.
 
Nertz! said:
How many TV stations out there ignore their city of license and focus on a bigger neighbor?
Click to expand...

Many of the "i"/Ion Media O&O's, including WPXA 14, licensed to Rome (70 miles northwest of Atlanta), which services the Atlanta DMA

Same with Univision's WUVG 34 and PBS WGTV 8 (Part of statewid GPB network), both licensed to Athens (80 miles east-northeast of Atlanta). Although WUVG-DT has a modified license to Atlanta, and WGTV transmits from Stone Mountain Park. TBN's WHSG 63 is licensed to Monroe, which is 35 miles east of Atlanta.

Like with radio in major markets, TV stations moving in are not that uncommon.
 
All-time champion is KMVD-TV, 29 Palms, Calif.

It convinced the FCC that it should be allowed to turn off its NTSC transmitter it its City Of License because no one, not one person, was served by the analog broadcast signal.

The owners put the station on the air way out in the desert, and got an FCC ruling that it was a part of the Los Angeles DMA, even though it is 140 miles away and even though KTLA-DT is also assigned channel 31.

After getting cable and satellite carriage in LA, worth millions, the station installed its DT transmitter halfway to LA on channel 23.

KMVD then successfully petitioned to cease analog transmissions on channel 31 because the signal, transmitted from within the city limits of 29 Palms, was visible in zero households.

Now, KMVD is worth millions, the signal is available to 15 million people, and 29 Palms' TV station has studios on Olympic Blvd in west Los Angeles.

Sweet.
 
WGSR/39 Reidsville, NC, part of the Greensboro/
Winston-Salem/High Point market, isn't even
carried on cable in the Triad. More people across
the line in Virginia see this channel than do people
in North Carolina.

WSKY/4 Manteo, NC, part of the Norfolk market,
isn't carried on all cable systems in Hampton Roads;
I believe Newport News doesn't get this channel
on cable.
 
WGSR/39 Reidsville, NC, part of the Greensboro/Winston-Salem/High Point market, isn't even carried on cable in the Triad. More people across the line in Virginia see this channel than do people in North Carolina.
Click to expand...

Au CONTRERE!

Our COL is Reidsville, North Carolina. Our studios and transmitter is in the center of Reidsville, North Carolina, a city well within the Greensboro/Winston-Salem/High Point market. We are on cable throughout Rockingham and Caswell Counties, BOTH of which are in that market's DMA.

We are on three cable systems in Virginia...Henry County, Pittsylvania County and Chatmoss, which is between the two. We do not have "must-carry" status in those areas. We continue to be on those systems because we consistently show up as a well-viewed channel.

We are not on cable in Greensboro/Winston-Salem/High Point because the manager of the Time-Warner cable franchises there has ignored numerous petitions from his subscribers to add us. He thinks that if we want on there bad enough we will pay an estimated $1.2 million annually for a lease-time channel, plus the cost of microwave or fiber line to get our signal to them.

We have commitments from two non-TWC systems in the market to add us when we can get a signal to them, and we ARE working toward that goal.

In the meantime, if you ever watch our station, you will see that our programming, about 1/3 of which is locally-originated, is geared toward the places where our viewers live. A large portion of those are right here in the Piedmont Triad. When you're an LPTV, you take your viewers where you can find them.
 
Every K-Love station with a satellite dish and a twig antenna
Click to expand...

K-Love doing Television??? My...that IS news!
 
FREDERICKSBURG,TX WHICH IS IN THE AUSTIN,TX METRO AREA CHOSEN SAN ANTONIO AREA AND HAVE BASICALLY ALL SAN ANTONIO COMMERICIALS ON IT. FREDERICKSBURG FROM SAN ANTONIO IS ABOUT 72 MILES AWAY. HAVE NEVER SHOWN ANY COMMERICIALS FROM FREDERICKSBURG, LLANO, MASON, MARBLE FALLS OR ANY OTHER TOWNS CLOSE TO FREDERICKSBURG. IN THE BEGINNING IT DID HAVE A MIX OF AUSTIN AND SAN ANTONIO COMMERICIALS MAYBE A COMPANY IN THE HILL COUNTRY ADVERTISING ON THE STATION AND HAD A DIFFERENT NETWORK THAN AUSTIN. IT NOW HAS A NETWORK THAT IS ALSO AVAILABLE IN AUSTIN,TX AND SHOULD BE MOVED TO A TOWN CLOSER TO SAN ANTONIO. 2 KCWX. THE STATION IS CARRIED NOT ALL THE TIME ON CABLE IN AUSTIN,TX ANYMORE
 
I'd say it's typical of most rim shot stations not to serve their city but rather that of the larger city. In Chicago, WPWR (50) is licensed to Gary IN and Channel 60 is licensed to Aurora but they do almost nothing with those cities, and the transmitters are in Chicago.

Of course I'm excluding cities with multiple big cities like San Fran, San Jose and Oakland.

That is an interesting market. How well does Channel 2 KTVU serve Oakland, or how well does KNTV serve San Jose.

You could ask that of markets like Minneapolis / St Paul or Dallas /Fort Worth with two or more large cites.
 
KMPX-TV Channel 29 in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. It's licensed to Decatur, Texas - about 40 miles north of Fort Worth. The analog signal comes from a short stick in Irving. The digital transmitter is at Cedar Hill with all the other DFW stations. The station has never done anything for Decatur at all. It was a religious station for years before it was sold to Lieberman and turned into a spanish language station for the DFW area. It is unlikely the analog or digital transmitters put better than a B grade signal over Decatur.
 
Plenty of stations like this in the NYC area.

WWOR Channel 9 is licensed to Secaucus, NJ, but is flat-out a NYC operation. In fact, its news studios are located in the same place as co-owned WNYW (Fox 5) in Manhattan. While they retain, I believe, a token presence in New Jersey, the station doesn't come close to serving NJ.

WNEW Channel 13 is NYC's PBS station, licensed to Newark, NJ. In fact, it is a commercial allocation that has been run as a non-comm since the 1960's. Other than a rebroadcast of the New Jersey Network news (if they even do that still), no programming here of any relevance to NJ. One can argue however that NJ is well served by its own PBS network, NJN.

WMBC Channel 63 Eatontown, NJ - Received its licensed on the premise that it would serve the viewers of northern NJ. Other than a token "newscast" at 5 pm which is amateurish at best and is mostly filler downloaded from the satellite, the rest of the day is infomercials and ethnic programming which actually finds a greater appeal in New York City.

WLNY Channel 55 Riverhead, NY - They shut off their analog signal a few months ago even though they were the only english language commercial terrestrial TV station on Long Island. Now it's cable and HDTV-only, in addition to a couple of low-powered translators remaining from its analog days, mostly in areas where the main signal was weak. Those translators helped the station get must-carry status in parts of NJ and CT, many many miles away fand in a different state from Riverhead.
 
Channel 13 is WNET-TV. WNEW were the call letters to channel 5 until the mid-1980s. As for the New York City market as a whole, don't forget WSAH-TV channel 43 in Bridgeport, CT.
 
I think I misunderstood the title of this thread, since
I was thinking of DMAs. In that case, scratch WGSR
and WSKY, but I'd question whether WUVC/40 Fayetteville,
NC, serves Fayetteville. It's the Univision affiliate for the
Raleigh/Durham DMA, and I suspect it's like WUVG, a
station licensed to Athens, GA but is Atlanta's Univision
outlet (as someone mentioned, and they're sister stations).
 
neo11 said:
Plenty of stations like this in the NYC area.

WWOR Channel 9 is licensed to Secaucus, NJ, but is flat-out a NYC operation. In fact, its news studios are located in the same place as co-owned WNYW (Fox 5) in Manhattan. While they retain, I believe, a token presence in New Jersey, the station doesn't come close to serving NJ.
Click to expand...

True.

neo11 said:
WNEW Channel 13 is NYC's PBS station, licensed to Newark, NJ. In fact, it is a commercial allocation that has been run as a non-comm since the 1960's. Other than a rebroadcast of the New Jersey Network news (if they even do that still), no programming here of any relevance to NJ. One can argue however that NJ is well served by its own PBS network, NJN.
Click to expand...

Actually it is WNET, which was never WNEW. They do have the NJN News, which they air before it airs on NJN along with several New Jersey public affairs shows and have actually produced other New Jersey focused programs.

neo11 said:
WMBC Channel 63 Eatontown, NJ - Received its licensed on the premise that it would serve the viewers of northern NJ. Other than a token "newscast" at 5 pm which is amateurish at best and is mostly filler downloaded from the satellite, the rest of the day is infomercials and ethnic programming which actually finds a greater appeal in New York City.
Click to expand...

This station is a joke, and their newscast appears if it is done by teenagers with home video cameras.

neo11 said:
WLNY Channel 55 Riverhead, NY - They shut off their analog signal a few months ago even though they were the only english language commercial terrestrial TV station on Long Island. Now it's cable and HDTV-only, in addition to a couple of low-powered translators remaining from its analog days, mostly in areas where the main signal was weak. Those translators helped the station get must-carry status in parts of NJ and CT, many many miles away fand in a different state from Riverhead.
Click to expand...

The cable coverage in many areas outside of Long Island is an alternate feed, which features shows like Matlock instead of Oprah (which is actually an improvement). They do have a pretty good weekday 11PM newscast which does focus on Long Island stories the NYC stations miss. So if you use the definition of having programs that serve the community, I think their newscast does this.
 
Re: WMBC Channel 63 Eatontown, NJ

Does anyone have or can they make.. a "aircheck" of their newscast? I wanna see just how bad it really is.

walkerbroadcasting(at)gmail(dot)com
 
I agree with the poster who said it's pretty common for TV stations to be targetted at somewhere other than their cities of license. Another classic case is KMCI TV 38, which is licensed to Lawrence, KS. However, if you saw it, you'd swear it was smack dab in the middle of 23rd and Benton in Kansas City.
 
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