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WPIX and WSBK Microwave Networks

S

Stanislav

WPIX (channel 11, New York) and WSBK (channel 38, Boston) were two pre-satellite "Superstations," being distributed extensively to cable systems via microwave throughout the Northeast back in the day.

How widespread was their distribution? What were roughly the geographic limits of coverage? (I know WPIX was carried by systems in Vermont, and I've heard WSBK made it onto some Canadian systems.) How much of an overlap was there (a lot of cable systems carried both)? And who actually owned/operated/paid for these private (non-AT&T) networks?

(And I assume the reason these two stations, in particular, were popular, was due to the fact that the Yankees were carried on WPIX, and the Red Sox on WSBK?) ;)
 
WSBK briefly made it as far west as Rochester NY, circa 1983, and WPIX was a fixture here as early as the late 70s. (And much earlier than that in the rural areas that had cable decades before we got it in "the big city"!)

I'm pretty sure both services (along with WOR/WWOR, another fixture here, and WNEW-TV, which briefly hit Rochester cable in the same timeframe) were distributed by Eastern Microwave, with the cable company paying only for the transmission of the signal and not for the content, meaning the only extra money WSBK and WPIX got out of all that additional carriage was whatever they could charge their advertisers for those extra eyeballs.
 
...somewhat afield from the subject, but I always wondered why Lee Rothman would make references to WVTV/18 Milwaukee being carried by cable systems as far west as North Dakota. I guess their microwave network (which also carried WBBM-TV/2 Chicago after WVTV signed off for the night) indeed did travel that far at one point around the time WVTV took the Milwaukee Bucks and Brewers games away from WTMJ-TV/4, and every Wisconsin cable system carried WVTV because it was Wisconsin's only independent station between the demise of KFIZ-TV/34 Fond du Lac in '72 and the sign-ons of WCGV/24 Milwaukee and WLRE/26 Green Bay in '80. But it still seems to me that North Dakotans would be more interested in the independent station from Minneapolis-St. Paul (WTCN-TV/11 before 3/5/79, KMSP-TV/9 after 3/5/79) than whatever Milwaukee could offer at the time...
 
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