Flagship (broadcasting)

Sports

In sports broadcasting, the flagship radio station is the sports team's primary station in the team's home market that produces game broadcasts and feeds them to affiliates. For example, WJZ-FM is the radio flagship station of the Baltimore Orioles baseball team, which feeds Orioles' games to 20 stations in Maryland and adjacent states.

Television

A flagship television station is the principal privately owned

When television networks were formed in the United States in the late 1940s and grew during the early 1950s, network-owned stations in New York City became the production centers for programs originating on the East Coast, feeding affiliates of ABC, CBS, and NBC in the eastern three-fourths of the country. Stations in Los Angeles similarly started producing programs on the West Coast, feeding affiliates in the Pacific Time Zone, Alaska and Hawaii. Consequently, the networks' New York City stations became known as the "East Coast flagships" of their respective networks and the networks' Los Angeles stations became known as the "West Coast flagships".

However, before the 1950s, San Francisco was also considered a West Coast flagship market for the networks, with much of the CBS and NBC network's West Coast news programming originating from that city. This is seen the calls of CBS's KCBS (AM) being based in their original city of San Francisco instead of Los Angeles (the use of KCBS-TV in Los Angeles only dates back to 1984), while KNBR (which was subsequently sold to another party by NBC in 1987) was formerly known as KNBC before the network moved those calls to KRCA-TV in Los Angeles in 1962.

ABC, CBS and NBC are headquartered in New York City, which is the largest television market in the U.S., so their respective radio and television stations in that market are considered the overall network flagship stations. As programming schedules increased and modern technology improved transmission to affiliates, the networks set up operations centers in New York City (for the East Coast feed) and Los Angeles (for the West Coast feed). Los Angeles is the second largest television market in the U.S., and traditional home to the motion picture industry and its pool of popular talent, one of the reasons the radio networks set up operations there in the 1930s and 1940s (just as the medium of television was starting to take off).

This arrangement is reversed for the

In 2006, when The WB and UPN merged to form The CW, Philadelphia station WPSG and San Francisco station KBCW (now KPYX) were designated as the network's de facto East Coast and West Coast flagships, respectively, due to CBS owning half of The CW's controlling shares at the time. New York's affiliate WPIX and Los Angeles' affiliate KTLA did not have such status since the network's inception, as Tribune Media (who had a minority stake in The WB) opted not to have any controlling interest with The CW, by selling off its share of The WB; instead, to secure the affiliation across most of the former WB affiliates they owned at the time. Nexstar Media Group then bought Tribune in 2019; however, it had to sell off WPIX to the E. W. Scripps Company to prevent breaching the required market ownership cap set by the FCC for each broadcaster. Two years after WPIX returned to Nexstar control through partner company Mission Broadcasting, the Irving, Texas-based media firm announced that it would buy 75% of CW's shares in August 2022. With the purchase completion announced on October 3, 2022, both WPIX and KTLA formally became flagship stations for the first time. However, as part of the Nexstar agreement, Paramount was given a right with the transaction to disaffiliate all eight of their CW affiliates, which was exercised on May 5, 2023.^[2] By the time of the disaffiliations on September 1, Nexstar repatriated The CW affiliations onto their MyNetworkTV affiliates in Philadelphia, San Francisco and Tampa–St. Petersburg,^[3] announced the purchase of Detroit station WADL through affiliate company Mission Broadcasting,^[4] and signed long-term agreements with Hearst Television,^[5] Gray Television^[6] Sinclair Broadcast Group,^[7] and the E. W. Scripps Company.^[8]

Network

United States

Notes

¹ East Coast flagships are normally in the New York City designated market area (DMA), while the West Coast flagships are located in the Los Angeles area. WCAU in Philadelphia is listed for NBC because its parent company Comcast is headquartered here.

Meanwhile,

² While the Virginia-based

• KTBN 40 in Santa Ana, California – flagship of the Trinity Broadcasting Network
• Daystar Television Network
• Three Angels Broadcasting Network
• WTCT 27 in Marion, Illinois – flagship of Tri-State Christian Television
• Golden Eagle Broadcasting
• WHME-TV 46 in South Bend, Indiana - flagship of Family Broadcasting Corporation

Canada

Canadian network flagship locations vary by language. Most English-language networks eastern flagships are located in Toronto, French-language eastern flagships are located in Montreal, and West Coast flagships (regardless of language) are located in Vancouver. CTV 2, being a secondary system to the main CTV network, maintains its eastern flagship in Barrie (which is on the northwestern fringe of the Toronto market) and West Coast flagship in Victoria (which is on the southwestern fringe of the Vancouver market). CIII-DT-41 had always been considered the flagship station of Global in Toronto despite being a technical satellite station of CIII-DT, which is licensed to Paris, Ontario. However, since July 2009, the CRTC has considered CIII-DT-41 "the originating station" of Global Ontario.^[10]

The secondary French-language networks TVA and Noovo are not carried terrestrially in Western Canada, although they are usually available on pay television.

Networks/systems with only one flagship station

Mexico

As of 2017, Mexico's national networks hold a nationwide virtual channel, thus all of the flagship stations mentioned below in most of the country are on the same channel on the rest of the stations in each network with some exceptions along the American, Guatemalan and Belizean border areas.

• Note - † Multimedios launched XHTDMX-TDT on August 27, 2018, and features limited local news and sports discussion programming on that station for Mexico City, though it continues to receive the majority of its programming from XHAW-TDT in Monterrey, which remains the main flagship for the network.

Australia

• Note: All flagship stations are located in Sydney and Melbourne. All SBS stations use the "SBS" callsign. 10 Peach was formerly known as Eleven, with 10 Bold formerly known as One until being re-branded by their new CBS Corporation, (now called Paramount Global) ownership in late 2018.

Japan

You can help expand this section with text translated from the corresponding article in Japanese. (April 2023) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the Japanese article. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 3,726 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Japanese Wikipedia article at [[:ja:キー局]]; see its history for attribution. You should also add the template {{Translated|ja|キー局}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

You can help expand this section with text translated from the corresponding article in Japanese. (April 2023) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the Japanese article. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 3,726 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Japanese Wikipedia article at [[:ja:準キー局]]; see its history for attribution. You should also add the template {{Translated|ja|準キー局}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

You can help expand this section with text translated from the corresponding article in Japanese. (April 2023) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the Japanese article. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 3,726 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Japanese Wikipedia article at [[:ja:基幹局]]; see its history for attribution. You should also add the template {{Translated|ja|基幹局}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Source:^[11]

Notes

¹ The total number of stations is including the three stations listed in the table.

² Among the subkey stations, the four major networks are wide area stations.TXN network member stations (Osaka and Aichi) are prefectural area broadcasts.

³ There are 13 independent stations in Japan.

Philippines

Note

¹ Sonshine's main headquarters are in Davao City, but also has a fully owned broadcast building in Metro Manila, thus giving the Manila station equal flagship.

American syndication examples

Current

• The popular nationally syndicated program
  Live with Kelly and Ryan is produced at WABC-TV
  in New York City.

• Although later produced by
  Harpo Studios, The Oprah Winfrey Show considered WLS-TV
  its flagship as the program concept as hosted by Winfrey originated in 1983 as part of WLS's mid-morning show AM Chicago; Oprah was always aired first in the nation at 9 a.m. local time on WLS.
• The popular nationally syndicated show
  Roger Ebert presents At the Movies originated from WTTW
  in Chicago.
• Until the consolidation of the
  Granada
  ).
• Starting in 2011, Family Feud had WUPA as its flagship station, as the show was produced at the Atlanta Civic Center; the program would relocate to Los Angeles in 2017 to accommodate Steve.
• The show View from the Bay was produced at
  Live Well Network
  nationwide.

Station groups

In the United States, the term "flagship station" may also be used in the broadcasting industry to refer to a station which is co-located with the headquarters of its station group and considered the company's most important station (such a station may or may not be affiliated with one of the major networks). For example, WDIV-TV in Detroit, affiliated with NBC, is the flagship station of Graham Media Group; and WGN-TV in Chicago was the flagship station of Tribune Broadcasting until it was purchased by Nexstar Media Group in 2019.

In essence, a flagship can be located in the market where the station's owner is headquartered, or in the largest market where that owner operates. For example,

The same also can be said for Nexstar listed two of the stations as flagships, one cited was WYOU-TV in Scranton, which Perry Sook said it was the flagship^{[citation needed]}, the other listed was KDAF-TV in Dallas, which became its flagship after its acquisition of Tribune Media in 2019, the latter partially is located in a suburb of that city and also owns and operates several stations larger than Dallas, such as WPIX-TV in New York, KTLA in Los Angeles, WGN-TV in Chicago and WPHL-TV in Philadelphia.^[12][13] Shortly after its acquisition of Young Broadcasting by Media General in 2013, WRIC-TV in Richmond become one of the two flagship stations of the Media General group prior to the 2017 acquisition by Nexstar, the other flagship was WFLA in Tampa Bay, which was always the television flagship of the group.^[14] The same can even be said for Scripps, which listed WCPO-TV in Cincinnati as the flagship, but also owned Ion Media, which is several times larger than Cincinnati themselves.^[15] Even the same can be said for Sinclair Broadcast Group, which listed WBFF-TV in Baltimore and WJLA-TV in Washington, D.C., listed as the flagship stations of the group.^[16]

The term is also used for stations that operate satellite stations in other cities. For example, KSNW in Wichita, Kansas is the flagship station of the Kansas State Network, a chain of NBC affiliates serving western and central Kansas as well as border areas of Nebraska.

See also

Look up flagship in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Television and radio flagship stations – Japan
• List of analog television stations in the Philippines
• Television in the United States

References