Stations that have had a primary affiliation with all of the "Big Three"

[ShawnHill1]

Re: Stations that have had a primary affiliation with all of the "Big Three"

About how of the Big Four...

WBRC Channel 6 in Birmingham: NBC (1949-54), CBS (1954-61), ABC (1961-96), Fox (1996-present). Plus, they had secondary stints with ABC and Dumont during the '50s.

Don't know your source for knowing this, but that was one of the neater things I found browsing Birmingham Rewound. (The rest of the site is pretty good, too.)

Birmingham Rewound and Wikipedia was where I got my info from--in fact, the Birmingham TV Wiki pages got a lot of its info from BR.

 

[bpatrick]

Re: Stations that have had a primary affiliation with all of the "Big Three"

WBRC may be the only station in the country that has had four
different primary affiliations.

Because this thread has to do with stations that have had primarily
affiliations with each of the "big three" (ABC, CBS, NBC) I deliberately
left out another station which has had three different affiliations, one
of them with Fox: WLUK/11 Green Bay (ABC, NBC, Fox) but WFRV/5
in the same market has been with NBC, ABC, and--currently--CBS.

WNYT/13 Albany/Schenectady/Troy, NY has also had three, starting
with ABC, then CBS (after WTEN went to ABC), and now NBC (since
1981, when WRGB switched to CBS).

 

[Charles1]

Re: Stations that have had a primary affiliation with all of the "Big Three"

About how of the Big Four...

WBRC Channel 6 in Birmingham: NBC (1949-54), CBS (1954-61), ABC (1961-96), Fox (1996-present). Plus, they had secondary stints with ABC and Dumont during the '50s.

Don't know your source for knowing this, but that was one of the neater things I found browsing Birmingham Rewound. (The rest of the site is pretty good, too.)

Having lived in Birmingham all of my life and hearing my folks talk about it... (I'm 52)....

 

[dhett]

Re: Stations that have had a primary affiliation with all of the "Big Three"

Because this thread has to do with stations that have had primarily
affiliations with each of the "big three" (ABC, CBS, NBC) I deliberately
left out another station which has had three different affiliations, one
of them with Fox: WLUK/11 Green Bay (ABC, NBC, Fox)

Likewise KECY-TV El Centro CA/Yuma AZ (ABC, CBS, ABC, CBS, Fox)

 

[DToTheJ]

Re: Stations that have had a primary affiliation with all of the "Big Three"

WBRC may be the only station in the country that has had four different primary affiliations.

Channel 35 in San Antonio (KRRT and now KMYS) has had the distinction of being an affiliate of Fox, UPN, WB, CW and MNT at one time (don't let the callsign fool you; they're currently a CW station).

 

[Nate Wesley]

Re: Stations that have had a primary affiliation with all of the "Big Three"

WBRC may be the only station in the country that has had four different primary affiliations.

Channel 35 in San Antonio (KRRT and now KMYS) has had the distinction of being an affiliate of Fox, UPN, WB, CW and MNT at one time (don't let the callsign fool you; they're currently a CW station).

If only they could have spent five minutes as an affiliate of Pax or Ion...

 

[bpatrick]

Re: Stations that have had a primary affiliation with all of the "Big Three"

Because this thread has to do with stations that have had primarily
affiliations with each of the "big three" (ABC, CBS, NBC) I deliberately
left out another station which has had three different affiliations, one
of them with Fox: WLUK/11 Green Bay (ABC, NBC, Fox)

Likewise KECY-TV El Centro CA/Yuma AZ (ABC, CBS, ABC, CBS, Fox)

Which would be worth a thread if we haven't already done it: stations that
switched affiliations, then switched back. WSAV Savannah comes up a lot
in that regard; likewise:

WDTN Dayton, OH (NBC/ABC/NBC) and WKEF going the other way
WTLV Jacksonville, FL (NBC/ABC/NBC) and what used to be WJKS going the other way
WJHG Panama City, FL (NBC/ABC/NBC)
WBAL Baltimore (NBC/CBS/NBC)
WTVD Raleigh/Durham (NBC/ABC/CBS/ABC)
WCPO Cincinnati (ABC/CBS/ABC) and WKRC (CBS/ABC/CBS)
KTVE Monroe, LA/El Dorado, AR (NBC/ABC/NBC) (KARD has had ABC/NBC/ABC/Fox)
WGXA Macon, GA (ABC/Fox, then Fox on 24.1 and ABC on 24.2)
WCBI Columbus/Tupelo, MS (CBS/ABC/CBS)
WAAY Huntsville, AL (ABC/NBC/ABC)
KCEN Waco/Temple, TX (NBC/ABC/NBC) and KWTX (same market: CBS/ABC/CBS)
WKYT Lexington, KY (CBS/ABC/CBS)

 

[fybush]

Re: Stations that have had a primary affiliation with all of the "Big Three"

WNAC-TV Boston (CBS/ABC/CBS, and then NBC later on; as a result, channel 5 went ABC/CBS/ABC, but that last CBS-to-ABC transition was the one in which WHDH-TV 5 shut down and WCVB-TV 5 came on as a new station)

WPRO-TV/WPRI-TV Providence (CBS/ABC/CBS), and WTEV/WLNE New Bedford-Providence (ABC/CBS/ABC)

 

[Ultimajock]

Re: Stations that have had a primary affiliation with all of the "Big Three"

Here are a couple more two-station affiliate switches that were later reversed:

Green Bay -- WFRV and WLUK circa 1959-1960 (ABC went to WLUK; NBC to WFRV); switch reversed in 1983

(Ultimajock can help add details about the original switch--especially since I'm fuzzy on the details about the stations' predecessors.)

Milwaukee -- WITI and WISN in 1961 (ABC went to WITI; CBS to WISN); switch reversed in 1977

...in the '50s, NBC didn't like that they were on an affiliate associated with the less-populous northern part of the Green Bay market (WLUK started out as WMBV/11, COL Marinette, from the assets of the failed NBC affiliate WOSH-TV/48 Oshkosh), while ABC was on an affiliate associated with the more-populous Fox River Valley (WFRV had started out as WNAM-TV/42, COL Neenah). NBC made the move to switch in 1959 to WFRV; somewhat ironically, WLUK/11 became one of ABC's strongest medium market affiliates, to the point where the station's General Manager, Bill Fyffe, was hired away by the network to take the same position with WABC-TV/7 New York (which, in turn, was how former WLUK news anchorman Stanley Siegel came to WABC-TV to do that morning talk show in the late '70s that eventually morphed into what is today Live with Kelly)...

 

[KeithE4]

Re: Stations that have had a primary affiliation with all of the "Big Three"

...in the '50s, NBC didn't like that they were on an affiliate associated with the less-populous northern part of the Green Bay market (WLUK started out as WMBV/11, COL Marinette, from the assets of the failed NBC affiliate WOSH-TV/48 Oshkosh), while ABC was on an affiliate associated with the more-populous Fox River Valley (WFRV had started out as WNAM-TV/42, COL Neenah).

Sounds like what happened in Indianapolis, where NBC made WTTV/4 its primary affiliate in 1954 (licensed to Bloomington, but most of the station's operations had moved to Indy by this time, and the transmitter had been moved to Cloverdale). Because WTTV had to provide city-grade coverage of Bloomington and not the more-populated and more-affluent northern half of the Indy market, they dumped WTTV and swapped affiliations with ABC and WFBM-TV/6, which had recently been forced to accept ABC after CBS defected to WISH-TV/8, in 1956. ABC wasn't too keen about being on a rimshot either, and moved to WLWI/13 when that station started up in late '57.