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TV Station Owners When 7 was the Limit

Markxxx

Markxxx

I was just wondering. Back "in the day" as they say, when TV was first developing, the FCC limited the number of station any one owner could own to seven station. And only five of those seven could be VHF.

I was just wondering if any knows of owners or ownership groups that owned at least five or maybe seven station.

Obviously ABC, NBC and CBS owned five (and I believe they tried a few UHF, which didn't work) and Metromedia owned five, as did Kaiser.

Others? Thanks
 
Group W/Westinghouse, of course. Hearst after 1981. SIN/Univision. Tribune. Pretty sure Taft would have been on the list. Walter Annenberg's Triangle group.
 
Storer after 1974 (the year they acquired KCST--now KNSD--in San Diego).
 
Cox after 1963. Meredith. Time-Life, at points. TBN. Post-Newsweek only qualified briefly in the mid-1970s. Pacific & Southern/Gannett. Corinthian, which was the backbone for later expansions by LIN and Belo.
 
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Did this 5/7 station rule apply to non-commercial stations too? I believe several statewide educational (now PBS) networks had more than 7 stations.
 
No, non-commercial stations (both FM and TV) were specifically exempted.

Non-commercial TV duopolies existed at least as early as 1963. (WMVS-10/WMVT-36, Milwaukee. I think that was the first TV duopoly but could be mistaken - maybe Pittsburgh was first?)
 
It was - WQEX went on the air in 1959. WGBX didn't come on in Boston until 1967. KQEC in San Francisco and the short-lived WXXW in Chicago happened somewhere in that timeframe, too. So did KTCI in St. Paul.
 
Pretty sure Gilmore Broadcasting had 7 stations in Michigan, Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky. Probably also Bakahiel?
 
fybush said:
It was - WQEX went on the air in 1959. WGBX didn't come on in Boston until 1967. KQEC in San Francisco and the short-lived WXXW in Chicago happened somewhere in that timeframe, too. So did KTCI in St. Paul.
Click to expand...

So did WCVW in Richmond VA.

- Trip
 
The ones I can think of off the top of the dome were:

Groups maxed at five Vs at the time the rules changed in 1984:
ABC (NYC, LA, Chicago, Detroit, San Francisco)
CBS (NYC, LA, Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis)
NBC (NYC, LA, Chicago, Cleveland, Washington)
Cox (Atlanta, Oakland, Dayton, Pittsburgh, Charlotte)
Westinghouse (Philadelphia, Boston, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, Baltimore)
Capital Cities (Philadelphia, Houston, New Haven, Buffalo, Durham)
Taft (Cincinnati, Columbus, Kansas City, Birmingham, Buffalo/Miami)
Scripps-Howard (Cleveland, Cincinnati, Memphis, Tulsa, West Palm Beach)

Groups who were at the 7-station cap at one time (no more than 5 Vs):
Metromedia: they reached the cap in '78 with KRIV in Houston
Kaiser/Field: reached the limit when Kaiser became controlling owner of WFLD-TV Chicago in '72; stayed there until WKBF-TV Cleveland was turned off in '75
Storer: reached the cap in '73 with KCST-TV in San Diego
Gaylord: reached the cap in '77 with buys in New Orleans (a VHF) and Cleveland (a UHF)
Cox: reached the limit with UHF buys in St. Louis (in '81) and Detroit (in '83)
Taft: reached the limit in '79 with WDCA-TV in Washington
Trinity: reached the limit in '84 when KTBW-TV Tacoma signed on
 
I'm having a time tracking down exact dates, but Roy H. Park Broadcasting may have well had the maximum number of VHFs, and one source says it was the first company to max out at 7 TV, 7 AM, and 7 FM stations. They owned a UHF in Utica, NY and another elsewhere, but the VHF markets were:

Greenville-New Bern-Washington, NC (WNCT)
Chattanooga (WDEF)
Bristol-Kingsport-Johnson City/Tri-Cities, TN/VA (WJHL)
Roanoke-Lynchburg (WSLS)
Richmond (WTVR)

All save for Chattanooga I'm pretty sure were pre-1984. All of these went to Media General in 1997 save for WTVR (Media General owned the Richmond Times-Dispatch) when Park was sold after owner Roy H. Park's death.
 
Roy H. Park or as we called him "Uncle Roy" did indeed have the full allowment of 7, 7, 7, the second UHF was WBMG, Birmingham. I dont have the list of radio stations but here are some: KRSI AM/FM , WEBC, WNAX, KWJJ , and WHEN & WRRB!I
 
Fox had just six in 1986 as they were inherited from Metromedia. It was just NYC, LA, Chicago, DC, Dallas and Houston (their only heritage Fox O&O not based in an NFC market). It then picked up Boston in 1987 which bumps it to seven. It was that way until 1990, and from there Fox utilized news and NFC football as financial leverage since.
 
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