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The Most Distant TV Station COL from the Station's DMA

A

Apollo7979

I was thinking about this the other day. What station in the US has the greastest distance between the station's city of license and the market its catering to?

A couple come to mind...

Indianapolis market

WNDY (My Network TV) is licensed to Marion which is about 70 miles away from Indianapolis.

Chicago market

WWTO (TBN) is licesned to LaSalle, 100 miles away from Chicago.

Are there any others?
 
e-dawg said:
How about KUNP-TV CH. 16 LaGrande serving the Portland TV market. 261 miles/421km
Click to expand...

I was going to say KMOH-TV 6.x Kingman AZ, which is in the Phoenix TV market. Phoenix is about 180 miles away. KUNP beats it out - in fact, I can't think of any station further away from it's main city, not including translators.
 
Apollo7979 said:
I was thinking about this the other day. What station in the US has the greastest distance between the station's city of license and the market its catering to?

A couple come to mind...

Indianapolis market

WNDY (My Network TV) is licensed to Marion which is about 70 miles away from Indianapolis.
Click to expand...

Though the station has a transmitter about halfway between Marion and Indy, in the Strawtown area in Hamilton County, covering both cities, though still too far north to cover the market's southern reaches, like Bloomington.

Apollo7979 said:
Chicago market

WWTO (TBN) is licesned to LaSalle, 100 miles away from Chicago.
Click to expand...

That station tried with futility to get on cable in the immediate Chicago area, without success. Also because of its location and transmitter power, the station was not even mentioned on Nielsen surveys for the Chicago market, other than in Will County.

Its digital signal today is more likely to be received in Peoria and Bloomington than in Chicago, which is as close to the outer limits of its range as the Quad Cities are:

http://maps.google.com/?q=http://ww...TV&freq=0.0&contour=36&city=LA_SALLE&state=IL

WWTO's case practically set the precedent that even though a station's based in a particular market, must-carry is not guaranteed in the main city of that market, or that main city's metro area, if it's not receivable there -- such a thing that was attempted a few times before, with failure (most recently, KMOH in Kingman, Arizona, which, despite its great distance from Phoenix, tried to muscle their way on cable systems there).

e-dawg said:
How about KUNP-TV CH. 16 LaGrande serving the Portland TV market. 261 miles/421km
Click to expand...

Its signals are receptable in the immediate Portland area via LPTV translators, stemming back from when the station was owned by Equity as an RTV affiliate. Don't know if that method was a way to get on cable in Metro Portland as well, as KUNP's main signal certainly does not reach Portland.
 
A C Nielsen has set up some very large DMAs in the west, due to sparse population, so that's where you'll find the most striking examples.

[*]KMOH Kingman AZ (Tr3s), in the Phoenix DMA, is located about 170 miles away by air. A co-owned LPTV station, KEJR-LD, rebroadcasts KMOH's signal in Phoenix.
[*]KVNV Ely NV (MyFamily TV), in the Salt Lake City UT DMA, is located about 185 miles away by air. Its signal is not available in SLC.
[*]KMYU St. George UT (My Network TV), also in the Salt Lake City DMA, is located about 270 miles away by air. It serves as the My Network TV affiliate for the market and airs in SLC as a subchannel of co-owned KUTV.
 
azumanga said:
That station tried with futility to get on cable in the immediate Chicago area, without success. Also because of its location and transmitter power, the station was not even mentioned on Nielsen surveys for the Chicago market, other than in Will County.
Click to expand...

The original analog 35 allocation for LaSalle, the COL of WWTO, was originally used as a repeater of Peoria NBC affiliate WEEK-25 (which originally broadcast at channel 43 from 1953-64) from 1957 until about 1973-74 IIRC. At one time all Big 3 Peoria stations (WMBD-31 CBS and the current WHOI-19 ABC in addition to WEEK) had translators or repeaters in the LaSalle/Peru area--even though LaSalle County was and is part of the Chicago DMA. WMBD's translator (at channel 71) may have even survived into about 1980. But there has never been a LaSalle-Peru translator of Peoria PBS station WTVP-47 (or any other PBS station for that matter).

And WWTO used to have analog translators all over most of northern and north-central Illinois (Elgin, Arlington Heights, Rockford, Peoria, Bloomington, Galesburg, Sterling/Rock Falls and even as far south as Champaign and Decatur). And had it not been for KQIN-36 Davenport, IA (now part of Iowa Public Television) there would have most likely been a WWTO repeater in the immediate Quad Cities area (but they may have had a different TBN repeater off the bird at one time IIRC).
 
WWTO did manage to get on to cable systems in the city of Chicago. I believe they don't get their signals from the station but either directly from a satellite or one of the areas low power translators.

Are the Key West stations available in Miami and Broward County? That's a pretty far hike
 
azumanga said:
Apollo7979 said:
I was thinking about this the other day. What station in the US has the greastest distance between the station's city of license and the market its catering to?

A couple come to mind...

Indianapolis market

WNDY (My Network TV) is licensed to Marion which is about 70 miles away from Indianapolis.
Click to expand...

Though the station has a transmitter about halfway between Marion and Indy, in the Strawtown area in Hamilton County, covering both cities, though still too far north to cover the market's southern reaches, like Bloomington.
Click to expand...

What's interesting with WNDY is that the station never fully "served" Marion. When the station came on the air back in 1987 as WMCC, it catered to Indianapolis as Indy's second independent (WXIN had become a Fox affiliate by that time, IIRC).

You'd think the original owners would have applied for the old vacant allotment on Channel 67 in Anderson. They may have been able to put themselves on the tower farm in northwest Indianapolis had that been the case.
 
Columbia/Jefferson City and Springfield,MO stations are available at the Lake of the Ozarks,KMOS is in Warrensburg and no PBS from Columbia/Jefferson City,MO.
Orlando gets some Stations from like Daytona Beach or Ocala.
 
dhett said:
[*]KMYU St. George UT (My Network TV), also in the Salt Lake City DMA, is located about 270 miles away by air. It serves as the My Network TV affiliate for the market and airs in SLC as a subchannel of co-owned KUTV.
Click to expand...

Well, shoot. I thought I had a better example, but KMYU beats them by 11 miles.

(KBSL-TV Goodland, Kansas, in the Wichita market. Their tower is 259 miles from Wikipedia's coordinates for the city of Wichita. Of course, KBSL is not viewed in Wichita -- it's a satellite of much closer station KWCH-TV.)
 
Mark said:
Are the Key West stations available in Miami and Broward County? That's a pretty far hike
Click to expand...

Yes -- WGEN ch.8 and WSBS ch.22 -- both Spanish and both serve Miami via translators.

mgsports said:
Orlando gets some Stations from like Daytona Beach or Ocala.
Click to expand...

Ocala has only one full-powered station -- Fox O&O WOGX, which repeats WOFL but with local ads and some programming variances. However, WOGX is focused on Ocala and nearby Gainesville, which is in its own market.

Gainesville stations WUFT (PBS) and WCJB (ABC) also include Ocala as part of their viewing area, even though Ocala is part of the Orlando market. Cox Cable in Ocala carries these channels plus most Orlando stations (including WFTV, the home-market ABC affiliate).
 
w9wi said:
dhett said:
[*]KMYU St. George UT (My Network TV), also in the Salt Lake City DMA, is located about 270 miles away by air. It serves as the My Network TV affiliate for the market and airs in SLC as a subchannel of co-owned KUTV.
Click to expand...

Well, shoot. I thought I had a better example, but KMYU beats them by 11 miles.

(KBSL-TV Goodland, Kansas, in the Wichita market. Their tower is 259 miles from Wikipedia's coordinates for the city of Wichita. Of course, KBSL is not viewed in Wichita -- it's a satellite of much closer station KWCH-TV.)
Click to expand...

That's because KBSL-TV is on Channel 10, and Wichita has KAKE-TV on 10.
 
w9wi said:
dhett said:
[*]KMYU St. George UT (My Network TV), also in the Salt Lake City DMA, is located about 270 miles away by air. It serves as the My Network TV affiliate for the market and airs in SLC as a subchannel of co-owned KUTV.
Click to expand...

Well, shoot. I thought I had a better example, but KMYU beats them by 11 miles.

(KBSL-TV Goodland, Kansas, in the Wichita market. Their tower is 259 miles from Wikipedia's coordinates for the city of Wichita. Of course, KBSL is not viewed in Wichita -- it's a satellite of much closer station KWCH-TV.)
Click to expand...

I wasn't even counting satellites; otherwise, KUED SLC satellite KUEW St. George joins KMYU at the top of the list.

Using the criteria of distance of transmitter location from DMA city coordinates from Wikipedia, here are 10 furthest full-power stations:
1. KMYU and KUEW, both licensed to St. George UT, co-located stations 270 miles from Salt Lake City,
3. KUPT Hobbs NM, 260 miles from Albuquerque,
4. KBSL Goodland KS, 259 miles from Wichita,
5. KWKS Colby KS, 243 miles from Wichita,
6. KLBY Colby KS, 242 miles from Wichita,
7. KUNP and KTVR, both licensed to LaGrande OR, co-located stations 240 miles from Portland,
9. KTEL Carlsbad NM, 231 miles from Albuquerque,
10. KCSG Cedar City UT, 223 miles from Salt Lake City
 
dhett said:
e-dawg said:
How about KUNP-TV CH. 16 LaGrande serving the Portland TV market. 261 miles/421km
Click to expand...

By highway. 224 miles by air.
Click to expand...

dhett, is there a website out there that calculates distance "as the crow flies" the same way, say, MapQuest calculates driving distance?

ixnay
 
Boy, you have me beat with some of those examples.

I have to figure out where its tower is with respect to Pittsburgh, but it seems to me what now is WPCW-19 ("Pittsburgh's CW") had its COL moved from Johnstown to Jeannette in order to get into the Pittsburgh market, and Jeannette itself is more than 20 miles away from central-city Pittsburgh, not to mention the KDKA-2 studios where CBS programs that station as well as now-co-owned WPCW.

I often have trouble pulling WPCW in off-air, though it is on my cable.

Pittsburgh market also extends into Morgantown, W.Va., 56 miles S of Pittsburgh, and Oakland, Md., 78 miles SE. West Virginia public station WNPB-24 in Morgantown and Maryland public station WGPT-36 in Oakland both are regarded as Pittsburgh market stations but neither are seen on cable in Allegheny County (Pittsburgh and its closest suburbs).
 
The Raleigh-Durham-Fayetteville DMA NBC affiliate (and formerly NBC O&O), WNCN, is licensed to Goldsboro, North Carolina, which is 55 miles from Raleigh, 70 miles from Durham, and about 60 from Fayetteville. The original station owners, Outlet Broadcasting, targeted the DMA (moving its tower to Clayton, NC) as a NBC affiliate after the network got sick of WRDC and its consistently low ratings and lack of news product. NBC soon after purchased the station and moved its studios to Northeast Raleigh in 1995. In 2000, the tower moved to Auburn, North Carolina, allowing a city grade signal in both Raleigh and Goldsboro. A very odd situation for a spatially dispersed market.
 
Anyone know of any stations that managed to locate their transmitters in the DMA's tower farm but in return do not provide an over the air signal to their city of license?

And what about stations with a city of license in one DMA yet they ignore their home market and target a different DMA? (i.e. Valdosta, GA (Tallahassee, FL DMA) has a CBS affiliate that targets the neighboring Albany, GA DMA.)
 
dhett said:
Using the criteria of distance of transmitter location from DMA city coordinates from Wikipedia, here are 10 furthest full-power stations:
3. KUPT Hobbs NM, 260 miles from Albuquerque,
Click to expand...

Which focuses on Lubbock, Texas as that city's MNTV affiliate. Lubbock receives this station via translator. Also, to complicate things, Hobbs is actually in the Odessa / Midland market, which the eastern half of Lea County (which includes Hobbs) falls under, with the western half in Albuquerque.
 
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