WOUB-TV in Athens, Ohio, tries to make sense of their conundrum with Nielsen and the satellite companies...
(Athens County is currently in the Charleston-Huntington DMA, and WOUB, licensed to
ATHENS, is now going to be carried in the
COLUMBUS DMA)
http://woub.org/2015/01/12/why-woub’s-satellite-distribution-moved-columbus
Because Athens County has bounced back and forth between both markets in the last decade (since it's on the fringes of either market), viewers who actually LIVE in Athens County are denied the right to view their hometown station, which actually has a student-run newscast put on by university students at Ohio University.
In addition, WOUB's coverage area includes large portions of Washington County (part of Parkersburg) and Muskingum County (the Zanesville DMA), as well as satellite station WOUC based out of Cambridge (Guernsey County; part of Columbus) whose coverage makes it the only full-powered PBS station for the Steubenville-Wheeling market.
Are there actually cases of satellite companies putting
significantly viewed out-of-market stations on their systems? Up until DirecTV uplinked the Charleston-Huntington stations (the first time), Athens County actually qualified as a NRTC area, which was eligible to receive feeds from New York and Los Angeles stations.
Cable has always carried both sets of the Big 3 stations from Columbus and Charleston/Huntington, with the FOX and CW stations being swapped out depending on what market Athens County is assigned to.
