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Unusual Network Affiliates
- Thread starter OhioMediaWatch
- Start date
BRNout said:
But though it's not quite that large, you still have the same problem we have in Akron/Canton - proximity to the larger market...Boston in this case, Cleveland in our case.
Youngstown is a smaller market, but got stations very early on, and has natural terrain issues (it's in a Valley) and enough distance from Cleveland where Cleveland viewing is mostly secondary.
I don't know how well the Boston stations come in, in Manchester and Concord, but I suspect well enough that any new entry (see WNHT) has a rough hill to climb.
In the mid-1990s, the Raleigh-Durham TV market had two Fox affiliates. The main affiliate of that time was Raleigh's WLFL-TV 22. Our rather large market includes the city of Fayetteville to the south, and a station there, WFAY-TV 62, became a Fox affiliate around 1993 or 1994. While Fox 22's 5,000 kW signal could be seen in Fayetteville, Fox 62's 337 kW signal was non-existant in Raleigh and Durham, though it served Lumberton (in the next-door Florence-Myrtle Beach TV market). In 1997, Fox 62 became WFPX "Pax 62" (now Ion), along with Rocky Mojnt-NC-licensed WRPX-TV 47 serving the northern part of the market. A year later, Fox also left WLFL-TV for another Raleigh station, WRAZ-TV, channel 50.
Another unusual situation here in the Raleigh-Durham market is our NBC affiliate being on a UHF channel licensed to an outlying city on the market's eastern edge, WNCN-TV 17/Goldsboro. As regular visitors to this board have likely read, NBC has come up with the short straw in this market, which had only two successful commercial TV stations WRAL-TV 5 in Raleigh (ABC) and WTVD, channel 11 in Durham (CBS and NBC), until 1968 when WRDU-TV 28/Durham signed on. The station was NBC, but mostly the less-popular programs WTVD didn't air until the FCC stepped in. The Peacock Network stayed on channel 28 through two different owners, with nowhere to go on VHF (WTVD became an ABC O&O in 1985, with CBS going to WRAL, who had no interest in going NBC). By 1995, channel 28 was now known as WRDC with no news operation for the past four years and weaker ratings than the then-Fox affiliate WLFL. NBC bought independent station WNCN-TV and literally built a network affiliate from the ground up out of a station that, just a few years earlier was known as WYED-TV, a 1988 sign-on airing home shopping and weekend fishing shows. Media General owns the station now.
OhioMediaWatch said:
The difference here is that New Hampshire is a different state than Massachusetts. With that brings a different government and - to some extent - a bit of a different culture. Akron/Canton and Cleveland are still all in Ohio - same governor, same senators, same statewide political and economic issues. On the other hand, all of those political reports from Beacon Hill on Boston stations mean little to NH residents, unless they involve the income tax AND those viewers work in MA. That's the difference.
And no, Boston TV signals - especially in the digital age - do not come in well in Manchester and probably not at all (anymore) in Concord.
tripinva said:
You have an excellent memory Trip! Yes, the translators near Littleton and Berlin, NH were FOX affiliates that showed local (non network) programming from WMUR. I believe that the reason for this had to do with the presence of WMTW as the local ABC affiliate, broadcasting from the top of Mount Washington and supplying a local grade signal to the area. Once WMTW moved to their new transmitter site in Maine, WMUR's management was able to argue their way onto cable systems up north. Now they have statewide coverage, with the possible exception of one system in Pittsburg, NH (at the top of the state), which was too far away to get the feed. At least that was the case when I was there in '07.
That change happened several years ago.
BRNout said:
Southern NH and Windham County VT will never be its own market as long as it does not have more local Big 4 affiliates. And with CBS and FOX owning stations in Boston I don't see it happening in the near future. Heck when Southern NH had both a CBS and ABC affiliate the Boston stations were still being watched more than the Manchester/Concord/Derry stations. Channel 21 as a CBS affiliate was a dismal failure.
RadioDaze said:
NBC was so stupid for selling WNCN because the Raleigh-Durham-Fayetteville market is now larger than Hartford (where O&O WVIT resides) and San Diego (where virtual O&O KNSD resides) nowadays. They basically gave Media General a station to screw up (which they have since it's now flat in ratings) when they should have just sold the overlapping stations in Hartford and San Diego, which aren't considered rapidly growing markets. Raleigh-Durham will likely be in the top 20 in market size in the next 10 years, but NBC will still wonder why they didn't hold on to this property.
kilamanjero said:
Three words: Location, location, location, and Raleigh/Durham ain't the right location.
Since when has NBC given a rodent's hiney about anything but the northeast and west coast? Hartford and San Diego are in their "core" territories and fit their desired demos. North Carolina (as well as their former O&O cities of Columbus and Birmingham) does not.
Outside of #3 Chicago and #5 Dallas/Ft. Worth, NBC has no interest in Flyover Country. Miami is sometimes called "the 6th borough of New York City" so NBC's presence there isn't surprising. I'm surprised they didn't keep WJAR-TV Providence since they can't get into Boston.
Don't know if they're related, but it was Outlet Broadcasting that originally bought the former WYED-TV 17/Goldsboro from Beasley Broadcast Group (that's right- WYED was the radio conglomerate's first and only TV station) in 1994. Outlet owned NBC affiliates WJAR/Providence and WCMH/Columbus at the time and won the Raleigh-Durham market NBC affiliation for their newly acquired channel 17 (which they renamed WNCN). NBC bought Outlet in 1995. All three stations were spun to Media General in 2008.
Despite WNCN's being an NBC O&O, from 1995-2008, it was, as it is now even moreso under MG, never a serious contender in this market, and NBC didn't really seem to put a lot of resources into trying to do so. Really the only signs NBC 17 was an O&O were the graphics packages and the copyright at the end of their newscasts. There was definitely a noticeable difference when compared to our market's ABC O&O, WTVD. Under Media General, the station went HD and has a new news set. MG did bring in their standard graphics package, but didn't outfit WNCN with one of their standard wide-number, crescent-style logos, they retained their somewhat hard-to-see logo from the NBC ownership days (likely due to the MG stations, with the standardized logo--now sans-crescent--in neighboring Roanoke/Lynchburg (WSLS), Greenville/New Bern/Jacksonville (WNCT) and Florence/Myrtle Beach (WBTW) markets).
Despite WNCN's being an NBC O&O, from 1995-2008, it was, as it is now even moreso under MG, never a serious contender in this market, and NBC didn't really seem to put a lot of resources into trying to do so. Really the only signs NBC 17 was an O&O were the graphics packages and the copyright at the end of their newscasts. There was definitely a noticeable difference when compared to our market's ABC O&O, WTVD. Under Media General, the station went HD and has a new news set. MG did bring in their standard graphics package, but didn't outfit WNCN with one of their standard wide-number, crescent-style logos, they retained their somewhat hard-to-see logo from the NBC ownership days (likely due to the MG stations, with the standardized logo--now sans-crescent--in neighboring Roanoke/Lynchburg (WSLS), Greenville/New Bern/Jacksonville (WNCT) and Florence/Myrtle Beach (WBTW) markets).
jsu5381m said:
Let me see if I remember this from my Research in Broadcasting class.
Television markets are defined by viewership. In most cases the rating services take a county (or if the county is large or part of a county has different viewing patterns than another part of a county) and determines which area is most of the over-the-air viewership belongs to. In fact when Arbitron was rating local television markets they were called ADI's (Areas of Dominant Influence).
New Hampshire has a couple of things going against it which I think will prevent it from becoming it's own television market. First of all there is only one station (WMUR) affiliated with the 'Big 4' networks. The remaining commercial stations are affiliated with Ion (a satellite of Boston's Ion O&O), Telemundo (owned by NBC but operated by ZGS - owners of the low power Telemundo station in Boston), and MyNetwork TV. Even when Southern NH had two affiliates (Ch 21 in Concord was a CBS affiliate in the late 1980's - while I was away at college) viewers still were watching the Boston stations more than NH. While WMUR is widely watched in the Granite State and was even back then... the Boston stations as a total were much more watched than the NH stations. And the chance of stations in NH affiliating with CBS and Fox are close to nil since CBS and Fox own stations in Boston. I am not even sure that NBC would want to make their station in Merrimack, NH an NBC O&O.
The other thing NH has going against them is the majority of people moving into the state come from Massachusetts. Their viewing patters are closer to the Boston stations. That and what Southern NH has for stations right now really make it hard to make that area a market. When you get outside of Hillsborough and Rockingham counties... there is not another full power commercial station licensed in the state. WMUR has some translators in the North Country and there are some low power stations which Bill Binnie is putting together to create a statewide network (with the flagship being at WZMY in Derry). That is why two counties (Sullivan and Grafton) are part of the Burlington-Plattsburgh market and two other counties (Carrol and Coos) are in the Portland market.)
KeithE4 said:
It seemed to me NBC Universal just wanted a lump of cash when they sold 4 lower DMA ranked stations to Media General in 2006. I think they would have sold the Hartford and San Diego stations as well, neither in the top 10 status, to the right buyer interested in buying, and geography didn't matter. Notice Providence NBC 10 was sold even though it's in the Northeast. They pretty much were fine selling what they could and probably only cared about itsbig 10 markets and the cable assets.
Now, with Comcast owning NBC, they likely would be open for buyers to buy their stations even stations in markets 4-20. Perhaps, the only ones they would keep coupled together would be WNBC KNBC and WMAQ. And even those, if they could be sold for the right price, they would be sold. Not that would happen, but, Tribune owns WPIX, KTLA and WGN, while not owning the network.
In general, broadcast stations aren't as hot commodities as in the past, or as essential piece in the distribution.
taylorjsdad said:
Two points of correction/clarification that I'd like to point out:
1) "Most" New Hampshire residents are NOT from Massachusetts. The majority are still natives and, although a solid percentage come from MA, the majority do not. Many of the transplants have come from other states such as CT, NY, NJ, PA and even ME. That comment is too rash of a generalization. Yes, sometimes it seems that way if you're from Salem or Nashua - but its not the case.
As an aside, many say that NH has become more politically liberal thanks to the people moving in from MA. That's a myth; over half who've moved in from MA tend to vote more conservatively. NH is where Massachusetts' Republicans have gone. Now, the transplants from the Mid Atlantic region are overwhelmingly liberal. The comment is based on some research that the Nashua Telegraph did back in 2004.
2) I've seen a couple of citations about WNHT-21 as if that's proof positive that another network affiliate cannot exist in NH. Sorry, but that's absolute nonsense. The station was hobbled with a poor signal that didn't even cover Manchester well and could not be received clearly anywhere in southern NH. The owners didn't have nearly the funds to ride things out long enough for viewing habits to change - which can take some time. They lasted, what, 8 months? You have to have more start up $$$ than that! And (this is important), that was 1989! The state has 400,000 more residents now. Most now have cable. Viewing habits are totally different. There's must-carry and negotiated channel positioning now (which did not exist then). No, I'm sorry but the WNHT thing means nothing. Had it been properly bankrolled and executed, it could have worked. It was neither.
Look, if Springfield, MA (a much smaller and less affluent market) can support 4 commercial network outlets now, even with bigger Hartford and Boston market signals available on the market periphery, so can the southern half of New Hampshire. For decades, viewers in Springfield watched channel 3 from Hartford as their CBS. No more, now that Meredith's low powered WSHM supplanted it from cable. Talk about a bitter way to break a viewership habit!!
A NH market would have a population of between 850,000 and 1,000,000 - depending on how it is divvied out. It is absolutely viable - and could immediately support a FOX affiliate. WFXT hardly comes in anywhere in NH anymore. With digital signals, most Boston stations' OTA signals have a harder time penetrating NH anyway. The whole thing makes sense.
Springfield, MA also has their "FOX 6" service, referring to the analog cable channel number on most systems. It's actually WGGB-TV 40-2, a subchannel of their ABC affiliate. As far as I know, WTIC-TV (FOX) channel 61 of Hartford is still available with Comcast of Springfield, just on an upper channel somewhere.
Does WMUR-TV (ABC) channel 9 have any subchannels?
Does WMUR-TV (ABC) channel 9 have any subchannels?
kilamanjero said:
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