Superstation
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Superstation (alternatively rendered as "super station" or informally as "SuperStation") is a term in North American broadcasting that has several meanings. Commonly, a "superstation" is a form of distant signal, a
Outside of their originating
Individual radio stations have also been redistributed via satellite as superstations through cable radio services offered by television providers and standalone satellite radio services. In other parts of North America, the definition of what may constitute even a de facto superstation varies depending on the country and the overall availability of the distributed stations.
Definition
In its most precise meaning, per an amended definition under the Copyright Act of 1947, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the United States defines a superstation as a "television broadcast station, other than a network station, licensed by the [FCC], that is secondarily transmitted by a satellite carrier."[1] Superstations may fall into one of two classifications, based on the factoring of their extended reach for advertising and program acquisition purposes:[2]
- Active superstations – Television stations that intentionally seek retransmission of their signal outside of their home market through an arrangement with a common satellite carrier firm (which uses an FCC-licensed satellite or satellite service facility to establish "point-to-multipoint" broadcast signal distribution, and which owns or leases a capacity or service on a satellite to provide such distribution), and markets the added distribution to program suppliers and advertisers; these stations target their programming and purchase advertising aimed at a national or regional audience, in addition to selling localized advertising viewable only on the originating broadcast feed;
- Passive superstations – Television stations that make little or no acknowledgement of their superstation status in on-air and other marketing avenues; the station's signal is involuntarily redistributed without prior formal consent by a satellite carrier, which handles national advertising, marketing and some programming services for the cable-originated feed in lieu of the station's licensee, which itself maintains a neutral or obstinate stance toward the expanded distribution. Locally, the "passive superstation" prioritizes programming and advertising for their originating market, charging rates for such acquisitions and sales accordingly. The station may receive supplementary revenue from federal royalty paymentsfor licensee-copyrighted programs, but subscriber fees paid by cable systems for the use of their signals are distributed to the common carrier.
Through an amendment to the compulsory license statute of the 1947 copyright law, the Satellite Home Viewer Improvement Act of 1999 (SHVIA) created a sub-definition for "nationally distributed superstations," which the FCC constitutes as FCC-licensed television stations permitted by Congress for retransmission by satellite carriers regardless of whether they reach "served" or "unserved" subscribers pursuant to the Copyright Act (effectively preventing them from subjection to geographic retransmission restrictions and absolving them from copyright liability if received by subscribers not residing in "unserved households" that have limited to no access to television stations offering similar programming). These stations must also fit the following tight date-specific criteria:[3][4]
- "(A) [the applicable station] is not owned or operated by or affiliated with a television network that, as of January 1, 1995, offered interconnected program service on a regular basis for 15 or more hours per week to at least 25 affiliated television licensees in ten or more states;"
- "(B) [the applicable station] on May 1, 1991, was retransmitted by a satellite carrier and was not a network station at that time; and
- "(C) [the applicable station] was, as of July 1, 1998, retransmitted by a satellite carrier under the statutory license of Section 119 of Title 17, United States Code."
Beyond the six stations that fit that criteria (including WPIX, KTLA and KWGN-TV, which, at present, uniquely constitute as both "network stations" as well as "nationally distributed superstations" under the FCC and the SHVIA's overlapping definitions for both), the definitions under SHVIA and Congressional retransmission consent rules (per Section 325 of U.S. Code Title 47, as amended through the enactment of SHVIA) are restrictive, leaving little possibility that any television stations would in the future be able to befit such criteria and legally be considered a national superstation.
While the FCC defines "superstation" as a term, it does not prohibit its use by others outside of that scope; for example, primary
United States
Early television superstations
In the early days of television broadcasting, most large
Early community antenna television (CATV) systems were restricted from retransmitting distant signals to communities no more than approximately 100 miles (160 km) from the closest signal, which was a detriment to many small communities, especially sparsely populated areas of the Western United States, that were too distant from any receivable signal.
Within a few years, many other microwave-capable CATV system operators began to import out-of-market television signals based on program offerings they thought would appeal to their subscribers. Except for areas that were far enough out of a signal's reach to make this an unviable option, these systems selected major-market independent stations (often located anywhere between 60 and 200 miles [97 and 322 km] away from the relay towers) that aired popular feature films and local sports events. In 1962,
Because of changes to cable television regulations in the 1960s and 1970s, carriage of out-of-market independent stations increased significantly, allowing for the development of the first true "regional superstations." By way of the microwave connections,
WTCG: The first national superstation
In December 1975, Ted Turner announced plans to redistribute Atlanta's WTCG via satellite to cable and C-band satellite services throughout the United States, beyond the 460,000 households in middle and southern Georgia and surrounding Deep South states that had been receiving its signal via microwave since the early 1970s. (Jack Matranga, then the president of KTXL [channel 40, now a Fox affiliate] also unveiled similar plans for his Sacramento, California independent, which were never formulated to fruition.) Turner conceptualized the idea upon hearing of premium cable service Home Box Office (HBO)'s groundbreaking innovation to retransmit its programming nationwide using communications satellites beginning with its September 30, 1975, telecast of the "Thrilla in Manila" boxing match.[8][9] With a more cost-effective and expeditious distribution method in place than would be capable through setting up microwave and coaxial telephone relay systems across the entire country, Turner got his idea off the ground by founding Southern Satellite Systems (SSS) – a common carrier uplink provider based in Tulsa, Oklahoma – to serve as the station's satellite redistributor, and subsequently purchased an earth-to-satellite transmitting station to be set up outside of WTCG's Peachtree Street studios in Atlanta. To get around FCC rules in effect at the time that prohibited a common carrier from having involvement in program origination, Turner decided to sell SSS to former Western Union vice president of marketing Edward L. Taylor for $1 and sold the transmitting station to RCA American Communications. Upon the sale's consummation in March 1976, Turner reached an agreement with Taylor to have the firm uplink the WTCG signal to the Satcom 1 satellite.[10][11]
WTCG became America's first nationally distributed superstation on December 17, 1976, when its signal began to be relayed to four cable systems in the Midwestern and Southeastern United States. At 1:00 pm. ET (12:00 pm. CT) that day, subscribers of Multi-Vue TV in Grand Island, Nebraska, Hampton Roads Cablevision in Newport News, Virginia, Troy Cablevision in Troy, Alabama and Newton Cable TV in Newton, Kansas began receiving WTCG's presentation of the 1948 Dana Andrews-Cesar Romero film Deep Waters (which had started on the Atlanta broadcast signal 30 minutes prior).[12] Southern Satellite Systems initially charged prospective cable systems 10¢ per subscriber to transmit WTCG full-time and 2¢ per subscriber to carry it as an intermediary, post-sign-off timeshare service (from as early as midnight to as late as 6:00 a.m. local time).[12] One key legal point in Turner's contracts with programming distributors and advertisers was that they continued to charge him for programming content and commercial time as if his station were reaching only a local market. No one had thought of adding contract language to deal with satellite-delivered broadcasts of a television station to a much larger region. Turner Communications Group also chose to revise its advertising rates to better reflect WTCG's national cable audience in October 1978.[13]
Also setting WTCG apart from other superstations that would soon follow in its footsteps was that it directly promoted its programming to its national audience, made investments in programming production as well as acquisitions, and charged separate advertising rates at the national and local levels. Given Turner's deep pockets, the station paid for syndicated programming at (albeit reasonably cheaper) rates comparable to other national networks, rather than merely receiving royalty payments from cable systems for programs to which it held the copyright. Cable systems found WTCG—one of the few American television stations offering a 24-hour-a-day programming schedule at the time—an attractive offering as it had an extensive film library heavily reliant on classic feature films (amounting to 30 movies per week out of the 2,700 titles that Turner had accrued since taking over the station), high-profile syndicated programs and games from various Atlanta-area sports teams (including the Atlanta Braves Major League Baseball club, the Atlanta Hawks of the NBA - both of which were owned by Turner - and the Atlanta Flames of the NHL). Soon after it was uplinked, an increasing number of cable television systems throughout the United States sought to carry WTCG as part of their channel lineups, ultimately making it the most widely distributed superstation for the rest of its existence under the format. By May 1978, WTCG was being received by 1.5 million households in 45 states, with figures suggesting that its reach had been increasing at the rate of 100,000 cable households per month; by the end of that year, the station was available through cable systems in all 50 states. By July 1979, the station (by then, known as WTBS) was available to 4.8 million cable subscribers plus an additional 556,000 households that received the station through other distribution methods (including microwave and MMDS services).[11]
As WTBS, the station also served to help promote Turner's subsequent cable efforts, providing simulcasts of Cable News Network (CNN) and CNN2 (later Headline News and now HLN) upon their launches in June 1980 and January 1982, respectively, as well as offering weekend-long marathons promoting the 1992 launch of Cartoon Network. (CNN also produced the station's only conventional, long-form news effort as a superstation, the TBS Evening News, a prime time newscast that ran from July 1980 to July 1984.) Aside from Turner's use of WTBS to help launch his other cable ventures, Southern Satellite Systems also distributed the United Press International (UPI) teletext news service (from 1978 to 1981) and the Electra teletext service (from 1981 to 1993) to the vertical blanking interval (VBI) of the WTBS feed. WTBS remained the most widely distributed superstation for the rest of its existence under the format; by 1987, WTBS was available to 41.6 million cable and satellite subscriber households nationwide. A separate feed of WTBS intended for distribution to cable providers outside the Atlanta market, incorporating national advertising substituting commercials intended for its Atlanta viewing audience, was launched in 1981. (Since the original incarnation of the syndication exclusivity rules had been repealed by that time, program substitutions on the national feed were very limited.)
WGN, WOR and other emerging superstations
Turner's innovation signaled the development of basic cable programming in the United States and, within three years of WTCG achieving national status, was soon copied by other common carrier firms who decided to apply for satellite uplinks to distribute other independent stations as national superstations; however, while Turner had aggressively pursued national availability for WTCG, the other superstations that would soon emerge did not purposely seek such widespread reach and were either recalcitrant about having their signals imported without consent or ignored the issue directly and allowed their newfound expanded distribution to continue unfettered.
On November 9, 1978, Chicago independent WGN-TV became America's second national superstation, when Tulsa, Oklahoma-based common carrier firm United Video Satellite Group, Inc. – one of four applicants, along with Southern Satellite Systems, Lansing, Michigan-based American Microwave & Communications and Milwaukee-based Midwestern Relay Company, that the FCC granted approval to operate satellite transponders to relay the signal following the institution of the FCC's distant signal "open entry" policy for carrier firms – uplinked its signal onto a Satcom-3 transponder for redistribution to cable and satellite subscribers. United Video stepped in to assert uplink responsibilities as SSS had become embroiled in a transponder lease dispute with RCA American Communications in pertinence to a lawsuit involving RCA American and SSS's Satellite Communication Systems joint venture over the use of Satcom Transponder 18.[14][15] While TBS partnered with a satellite carrier to relay the WTBS Atlanta signal to a national audience, United Video used the legally structured loophole in the Copyright Act's compulsory license statute to uplink the signal of WGN without the prior consent of owner WGN Continental Broadcasting Company (later known as Tribune Broadcasting), a model that would be used for other superstations that emerged in the coming years. United Video did not compensate WGN directly for the retransmission of its signal, though the station and its parent company received royalty payments from cable systems that received the United Video-fed signal for any copyrighted programming (local newscasts, public affairs shows, locally originated children's programs and sports) that WGN owned and/or produced.
The station quickly turned into a major commodity among cable systems because of WGN's telecasts of Chicago Cubs and Chicago White Sox baseball, DePaul Blue Demons college basketball, and Chicago Bulls basketball games and its locally popular in-house children's programs like The Bozo Show (the Chicago iteration of the Bozo the Clown television franchise). As the first superstation that offered long-form newscasts (compared to the newsbriefs offered by WTCG/WTBS for most of the time until 1996 as well as an abbreviated daily satirical newscast, 17 Update Early in the Morning, which aired from 1976 to 1979 and mixed improvisational and scripted comedy with actual news content), upon moving its late evening newscast to 9:00 p.m. Central Time in March 1980, it also provided a prime time news alternative for viewers wanting to find out national and international headlines without having to wait for post-prime-time newscasts on local network stations, something of particular benefit to snowbirds and other Chicago residents who temporarily or permanently relocated elsewhere in the United States. Immediately after achieving superstation status, WGN-TV became available to an estimated approximately 200 cable systems and 1.5 million subscribers throughout the country;[16] its distribution was heavily concentrated in the Central U.S. until the early 1980s and, by the end of the decade, had gradually expanded to encompass most of the nation with some gaps in the Northeastern U.S. that remained into the early 2010s. In 1985, Tribune—which would assume satellite distribution rights for the WGN national feed through its April 2001 purchase of the portion of United's UVTV unit that handled the feed's uplink and marketing responsibilities—began providing a direct microwave link of the WGN Chicago signal to United Video, providing it a second signal source in the event technical problems arose with the intercepted satellite signal and vice versa. WGN would become the only superstation to come close to reaching parity with WTBS, although it would continue to lag somewhat in coverage partly due to the two-year headstart of WTBS into the cable market.
Eastern Microwave was somewhat more successful in distributing WOR-TV (which had been available to cable and CATV systems via microwave throughout much of the Northeastern United States since 1965), when it began retransmitting the New York station's signal to cable affiliates and C-band satellite receivers throughout the remainder of the country over transponder 17 of Satcom I in April 1979. Until WOR adopted a 24-hour schedule in 1980, the satellite feed initially included a backup feed of CBS-owned New York City station WCBS-TV (channel 2) during WOR's off-hours. Even though WOR had a similar film library as other superstations (further boosted by the acquisition of the Universal Pictures film library when MCA Inc. acquired the station in a $387-million deal with the legally embattled RKO General in April 1987) and held rights to events from several New York-area professional sports teams (including the New York Mets, the New York Rangers, the New Jersey Devils and the New York Knicks as well as college basketball games involving Big East Conference universities), the station's distribution—while broad—was still relatively regionally scattered and paced far behind that of WTBS and WGN well into the 1990s.[19][20]
United Video would eventually gain an oligopoly in superstation distribution throughout the 1980s, building on its success with WGN-TV by commencing distribution of three other superstations and handling marketing responsibilities for one more (including three that were owned by then-WGN parent Tribune Broadcasting). On May 1, 1984, United Video—which picked up the station's satellite retransmission rights from Southern Satellite Systems—uplinked the signal of WPIX to the
On February 15, 1988, Eastern Microwave Inc. began distributing WSBK-TV and KTLA (channel 5) in Los Angeles via the Satcom I-R satellite. (WSBK-TV was selected primarily for its broadcasts of
Unlike with WTCG/WTBS, Tribune Broadcasting (owners of WGN-TV, WPIX, KTLA and KWGN-TV until the completion of Tribune's purchase by
Even so, WGN would gradually switch to a more "active" stance in later years; Tribune began relaying the station's Chicago broadcast feed to United Video directly in 1985, and eventually acquired a majority stake in the rechristened
Distant signal regulation and conflicts
During the 1960s, the FCC began to severely restrict the importation of distant signals by larger CATV and cable systems, limiting their distribution to smaller-market and rural systems, based in part on the framework of the 1963 Carter Mountain Transmission Corp. v. FCC case, which stemmed from a legal challenge by Chief Washakie TV, then-owner of KWRB-TV (channel 10, now KFNE and operating a satellite station of Casper Fox affiliate KLWY) in Riverton, Wyoming, against the FCC license of Cody-based microwave relay firm Carter Mountain Transmission Corp., which intended to relay the signal of CBS/NBC affiliate KTWO-TV (channel 2) in Casper, Wyoming to CATV systems in three cities that were within the range of KWRB's off-air signal: Riverton, Lander and Thermopolis. The FCC's denial of Carter's license renewal—because of its refusal to guarantee KWRB program duplication protection and the harm it would induce to the station, especially given Carter's refusal to offer the KWRB signal—was affirmed in a unanimous, three-judge decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on May 24, 1963, and a consideration refusal on the case by the U.S. Supreme Court on December 19.[27][28][29][30]
Further expansion of "proto-superstation" signals came through federal court rulings on separate lawsuits filed in July 1961 by
On March 31, 1972, the FCC implemented a broad package of cable industry regulations passed that February, which included two rules pertaining to distant signal importation. Among the implemented rules was the original incarnation of the
FCC soon began outlining a regulatory framework that allowed cable systems to import some out-of-market signals without running into copyright liability. In August 1975, the agency began allowing unlimited signal importation upon either the final daily
On October 1, 1976, the U.S. Congress unanimously passed the
The distribution of these superstations eventually caused conflicts between these stations and providers of similar, or identical, programming in local markets. Among the earliest opponents to the emergence of superstations was the
On October 25, 1978, the FCC implemented an "open entry" policy for satellite resale carriers wanting to feed local television stations to cable systems, a move that would pave the way for the emergence of additional superstations. The policy also commenced review on FCC applications filed by four individual satellite carriers to authorize relay of other independent stations through the Satcom satellite fleet:[13]
- Southern Satellite Systems – seeking to carry KTTV (channel 11, now a Fox owned-and-operated station) in Los Angeles and WPIX (channel 11, now a CW affiliate) in New York City;[13][14]
- Satellite Communication Systems (a joint venture of Holiday Inns and SSS) – seeking to relay KTVU in Oakland–San Francisco;[13][14]
- Eastern Microwave Inc. (a subsidiary of Newhouse Newspapers) – seeking to relay WOR-TV (channel 9, now Secaucus, New Jersey-licensed MyNetworkTV owned-and-operated station WWOR-TV) in New York City and WSBK-TV (channel 38, now an independent station) in Boston;[13]
- and United Video, which also sought to relay WOR (without an overnight backup feed) and WSBK.[13]
Reactions to the FCC's 1978 "open entry" policy ruling among program distributors ranged from "anger to passive acceptance," with concerns that satellite-distributed superstations would not adequately compensate program syndicators based on the acquired program's national availability and provide difficulty for program sales once content was sold to broadcasters in smaller markets with superstation importation via cable.[44] Then on November 4, the FCC rescinded a provision requiring cable systems seeking a waiver of signal importation limits to prove the unique circumstances that justified the waiver, while still requiring them to show that local stations would not suffer adverse public service impacts as a result of ratings or revenue losses from the imported signal, an action that was considered a greenlight to the creation of additional national superstations.[45]
While most superstations took on a passive stance on their distribution—programming to their local audience while benefiting tacitly from their extended distribution—a small number attempted to fight efforts to be redistributed; in March 1979, Metromedia—which was fighting an FCC grant allowing ASN Inc. (which also had been given permission to uplink WGN-TV and WOR-TV) to make KTTV an "involuntary superstation," claiming such retransmission would be a violation of a provision of Section 325 of the Communications Act that prohibited signal retransmission without a broadcaster's express consent, even though Section 111 of the 1976 Copyright Act effectively allowed such importation – asked the FCC to temporarily halt all authority for the satellite distribution and marketing of superstation signals.[46] Concurrent with the Metromedia petition, the NAB—later to be joined in the petition by, among others, the MPAA, the NBA, the National Hockey League (NHL), Major League Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, WGN Continental Broadcasting and ABC—urged the FCC to conduct an expedited rulemaking aimed at curbing "the harmful impact of superstation development on broadcast program service to the public," positing that they posed a serious threat to the ability of program producers to guarantee exclusive local rights to prospective stations seeking to buy programs being offered on the syndication market. ASN rebutted that KTTV had acknowledged the company was being authorized to redistribute its programming without distributor permission as the station could not do it on its own without shouldering liability. The issue was never fully settled, however, as ASN Inc. ceased operations amid financial issues before it could be able to retransmit KTTV's signal.[46][47]
The FCC repealed its remaining cable television regulations in a 4–3 vote on July 22, 1980, eliminating its restrictions on the number of broadcast stations that cable systems could carry and syndication exclusivity protections for local television stations on the basis that "local stations are not adversely affected when a cable system offers subscribers signals from television stations in other cities." The repeal of its signal importation and Syndex rules resulted in many cable systems beginning to carry other national superstations and additional regional out-of-market independents.[48] The following day (July 23), television station owner Malrite Broadcasting (later Malrite Communications) filed a lawsuit in United States Court of Appeals for the Eastern District of New York to stop the rules from going into effect. The National Association of Broadcasters and Field Communications subsequently filed stay motions to the FCC (which denied the requests) until the Malrite suit was adjudicated, amid concerns over harm that the repeal could incur to station revenue and local viewership of syndicated programs if the same program could be duplicated by superstations and other distant signals.[49][50][51] On June 19, 1981, the three-judge New York Court of Appeals panel unanimously affirmed the distant signal and syndication exclusivity repeals; after multiple delays, the repeal of both regulations went into effect one week later on June 24. The U.S. Supreme Court also affirmed the repeal by declining a request by the NAB to review the FCC order in January 1982.[52][53][54]
Interpretations of the copyright act also led to legal cases against superstation distributors. In April 1981, Tribune Broadcasting filed a
The MPAA, the NAB (despite its insistence that the CRT had limited to no authority to set rates outside the mandatory five-year interval), sports leagues and other copyright holders soon asked the Copyright Office to hike its royalty rates to compensate for the loss of the distant signal carriage and syndication exclusivity deregulation.
On May 18, 1988, the FCC passed a new version of the Syndication Exclusivity Rights Rule. The new policy—spurred in part by a 1987 study conducted by the Association of Independent Television Stations (INTV), which provided evidence that programming duplication between superstations and local stations created significant ratings dilution for the latter group in certain time periods and a resulting significant loss of advertising revenue—not only allowed television stations to claim local exclusivity over syndicated programs (even if the out-of-market station has the same owner as the station with that particular exclusive program) and required cable systems to black out claimed programs; it also granted cable systems or carrier firms the ability to secure an agreement with the claimant station or a syndication distributor to continue carrying a claimed program through an out-of-market station, allowing some superstations to acquire partial or exclusive national cable rights to certain programs. The law also closed the
A major concern brought about by the new rules was that it would force cable systems to drop certain superstations altogether, rather than shoulder expenses that would be incurred with the resultant blackouts and any responsibilities for acquiring substitute programming, thereby denying viewers access to sporting events popular among subscribers who received those signals. In preparation for the policy's implementation – which took effect on January 1, 1990, after FCC-enforced delays in the regulation's rollout – some superstations decided to indemnify cable systems from potential blackouts by ensuring that, at least, some programs that could be subjected to local syndication exclusivity claims could continue to be shown to their national audience, so as to prevent the loss of sports access. WTBS effectively limited the number of necessary blackouts or substitutions by licensing the majority of its programming for carriage on both its national and Atlanta area feeds. (Certain local programs carried by the station, such as public affairs and educational children's programs, were not carried on the TBS national feed, but these omissions were because those programs were strictly intended to fulfill local obligations for public affairs content.)[70]
United Video and Eastern Microwave respectively opted to devise standalone national feeds of WGN and WWOR, each incorporating an alternate schedule differing from the local broadcast signal to some degree—comprising both programs aired by the parent station for which the companies were able to secure the national retransmission rights (including some held over from before the SyndEx law was enacted), and supplementary programs acquired specifically for the national cable feed to absolve any holes caused by exclusivity claims—as well as separate national advertising, and in the case of WWOR, local advertising sold by individual cable systems. This would be achieved by "splitting" the signal, often requiring the use of a separate transponder to switch between the local feed and the alternate programming feed, so that certain programs viewed in the station's home market could be easily replaced with separate content that would only be shown over the national cable feed.
To blunt potential subscriber complaints over widespread programming blackouts, many cable systems removed both regional and quasi-national superstations (like WSBK, WPIX and KTVT) as well as other distant signals that their satellite carriers were unable or unwilling to take immediate steps to ensure their programming was "Syndex-proofed" to avoid blackouts. WGN and WTBS saw little negative impact to their distribution following the Syndex implementation, with WGN actually heavily benefiting from provider removals of other superstations (including then sister station WPIX) during the early 1990s, allowing for further expansion of its distribution reach. EMI estimated simultaneous losses of 500,000 subscribers and an increase of around one million households to its cable distribution of WWOR, the latter being attributed to some local cable systems adding the Syndex-proof WWOR EMI Service feed. Most complaints over the removal of some regional and quasi-national superstations were because of the loss of access to coverage from regional professional sports teams (such as the Boston Red Sox via WSBK, the Texas Rangers and Dallas Mavericks via KTVT and the New York Yankees via WPIX), leading some systems to resort to cherrypicking sports from the removed superstations to mollify subscribers and local politicians acceding to complaints from their constituents by pushing other cable systems to seek solutions to resume sporting events lost through the removal of those superstations. (For example, amid public pressure from the Providence City Council and Rhode Island Department of Public Utilities and Carriers, Dimension Cable Services's Providence, Rhode Island system [now operated by Cox Communications], which removed the 24-hour WPIX feed upon the Syndex rollout, began placing the station's Yankees telecasts on a local origination channel in May 1990, in exchange for paying United Video full-time copyright fees.)[73][74][75][76] The WWOR EMI Service—despite having SyndEx-proofed its programming schedule—and WPIX would each see their distribution erode during the early 1990s, as some of the cable affiliates that carried either superstation began replacing them with the WGN national feed.[77][78]
The passage of the
Copyright laws pertaining to broadcast signal carriage by satellite providers were eventually overhauled through amendments to the Communications Act of 1996 that were added through the November 1999 implementation of the Satellite Home Viewer Improvement Act (SHVIA), which allowed satellite providers to carry local broadcast signals on the Congressionally-suggested condition that the FCC develop rules protecting the sports, network and syndicated programming rights of local broadcasters. On November 2, 2000, the FCC approved identical network non-duplication, syndication exclusivity and sports blackout rules applying to the six FCC-designated national superstations (WGN-TV, KTLA, WPIX, KWGN-TV, WSBK-TV and WWOR-TV) and, in the case of the sports blackouts, other distant signals retransmitted over home dish units to an extent where it would be "technically feasible and not economically prohibitive;" this statute would eventually limit distribution of the five
Conflicts with professional sports leagues
Much of the appeal of superstations to viewers came from the national carriage of sporting events involving professional league teams that contracted their telecasts to the originating stations within home markets. Although professional sports teams benefited heavily from their national exposure—especially with regards to WTCG/WTBS's carriage of the Atlanta Braves and the Atlanta Hawks, and WGN-TV's broadcasts of sporting events featuring the Chicago Cubs, Chicago White Sox and Chicago Bulls—superstation broadcasts of National Basketball Association (NBA) and Major League Baseball (MLB) games were met with resistance from league commissioners, who contended these telecasts—regardless of the positive effects on team loyalty—diluted the value of their national television contracts with other broadcast and cable networks. Some superstation operators (like Ted Turner and former Tribune Company vice president John Madigan) note a lack of corroborating evidence of any negative effects on game attendance and league revenue, suggesting that sports leagues have used superstation telecasts of their games as a scapegoat for financial problems incurred by the league caused by other factors such as the performance of certain teams and management issues.[87]
The only federal restrictions applying to sports events shown on superstations and other imported signals was the so-called "same-game rule," enacted by the FCC in June 1975 to prohibit cable systems from retransmitting a sports event through a distant signal within a 35 miles (56 km) zone around the city of the home team's arena if the game is not airing on a local television broadcaster, with a subsequent amendment requiring the broadcast rights-holder to inform local cable systems of game deletions no later than Monday of the preceding calendar week of the proposed deletion. (Other leagues had proposed a broader blackout zone: the National Hockey League [NHL] suggested that the protection zone should be extended across a team's entire home market, while the National Football League [NFL] and Major League Baseball each advocated for a 75-mile (121 km) zone, with the latter also seeking a 20-mile [32 km] zone around the cities of minor league franchises and a 35-mile [56 km] zone around a team's local television rights-holder.)[88][89][90] The major professional sports leagues eventually imposed their own broadcasting restrictions around the number of games that could air annually on any out-of-market stations, which resulted in superstations sometimes substituting sports events with syndicated programming and feature films in adherence. (This had an adverse effect on WGN, WWOR and WPIX, which each had news departments, as some of their respective newscasts would be subjected to substitutions if a sports event—particularly one shown during prime time—was preempted.)
One of the first known legal efforts to challenge superstation telecasts of sports events came in April 1981, when Eastern Microwave Inc. filed a declaratory judgement inquiry in the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York, contending that its cable retransmissions of WOR's New York Mets telecasts did not constitute copyright infringement. Mets owner Doubleday Sports Inc. contended it had the right to control the telecasts outside of its home market and informed EMI that the telecasts would be recorded upon transmission, effectively subjecting them to copyright by Doubleday; EMI contended that it was exempt from paying royalties for the telecasts under Section 111 (a) (3) of the Copyright Act, which contends that the secondary transmission of a program by an intermediary carrier did not infringe upon a copyright if the carrier had "no direct or indirect control over the content or selection of the primary transmission or over the particular recipients of the secondary transmission," and if the carrier's transmission activities only pertained to providing "wires, cables or other communications channels for the use of others."[55] On March 12, 1982, District Judge Neal P. McCurn ruled that EMI and other satellite carriers were liable for royalty payments to program suppliers. The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (in a reversal of the Central District Court decision on October 20) and the Supreme Court (in a February 25, 1983, decision refusing review of the case) both concurred with EMI's arguments, holding that the company constituted as a "passive" carrier exempt from copyright fee payments—along with noting that EMI had only one available transponder for its extraterrestrial services and "naturally" sought to re-transmit "a marketable station"—under the Copyright Act's existing structure.[91][92][93]
Outside of the teams that benefited from the broader exposure the telecasts gave them, Major League Baseball had long felt that superstations ate into their ability to gain revenue from agreements with national networks like ESPN. (As a comparison, in 1992, ESPN televised 175 baseball games as part of a broader $100-million-per year deal at a per-game cost of $571,428, about 12 times more than what TBS, WGN, WWOR and WPIX paid cumulatively for their respective team-based packages that year, encompassing a combined 435 games for an annual fee of $20 million or a per-game cost of $46,000). A succession of three MLB Commissioners—which, among the position's responsibilities, handles negotiations for all national broadcasting contracts but is prohibited under the federal compulsory license law from controlling carriage of superstation telecasts—attempted to curb the telecasts or convince superstations to pay a higher fee for the national telecasts to varying success. After Bowie Kuhn was appointed Commissioner in 1981, team owners lobbied the league to place a tax on superstation telecasts; the proposed tax passed in a 24–2 vote (with the Braves and the Cubs dissenting). Other legal attempts by Kuhn and league management to reduce the superstation telecasts ultimately failed because of federal copyright laws that protected the broadcasts. The tax was implemented in January 1985, under successor Peter Ueberroth, with Ted Turner becoming the first MLB team owner to agree to the revenue-sharing plan, under which he made annual contributions to the league's Central Fund for the continued right to carry Braves baseball games over WTBS. The Tribune Company (then-owner of WGN and WPIX, the former of which cited its absent accounting of its national cable audience in its advertising rates for its initial participation reluctance, as well as the Cubs), MCA Inc. (then owner of WWOR) and Gaylord Broadcasting (then owner of KTVT) soon each agreed to contribute to the fund for the right to air Cubs, White Sox, Yankees, Mets and Rangers games outside the teams' respective home markets. (The total payment reflected the reach of each superstation; by 1992, Turner and the Cubs paid $12 million and $6 million, respectively, reflecting WTBS's 58-million subscriber audience and WGN's 35 million subscribers at the time, whereas WWOR and WPIX each chipped in only $1 million, better reflecting their more regionalized distribution.).[94][95][96][97]
Concerns by many of Major League Baseball team owners that the share would be used to buoy the expansion of KTVT into a fourth national superstation (a move that would have had to be undertaken by United Video as it was the station's satellite redistributor), American League team owners voted down Gaylord Broadcasting President
Ueberroth's successor, Fay Vincent, took a more hard-line approach against baseball telecasts shown over superstations. During his two-year tenure as league commissioner, he tried to introduce contract language in local broadcast agreements that would allow a team to terminate the contract if broadcasts were re-transmitted "by any means" to more than 200,000 homes outside the team's territory, launched a petition to the FCC to redefine how its non-duplication rules constitute a "network program" to force cable systems to blackout superstation-licensed live sports broadcasts, and asked Congress for the repeal the compulsory copyright license and the inclusion of an amendment to the Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act of 1992 that would force superstations to enforce blackouts of sporting events if a conflict occurred with a local telecast of the same game. (The latter amendment spurred an on-air campaign by Turner Broadcasting, which saw responses, mostly opposed to the proposed legislation, by more than 17,000 viewers.)[105][106][107][108][109][110] Then in July 1992, in a move seen by some as targeting the Cubs' WGN telecasts, Vincent ordered a realignment of the National League (NL) that sought to move the Chicago Cubs and the St. Louis Cardinals to the National League West and the Atlanta Braves and the Cincinnati Reds to the National League East starting with the 1993 season. Tribune staunchly opposed the proposed realignment, filing a breach of contract lawsuit accusing Vincent of overstepping his authority in ordering the realignment and arguing it would dilute existing team rivalries. (The realignment proposal also sparked concerns that local advertising revenue for WGN's prime time newscast would be depressed by frequent post-9:00 p.m. [Central Time] delays during the regular season from an increased number of Cubs games involving Pacific Time Zone-based Western Division teams starting in the late evening in the eastern half of the country. The Braves as well as the Cubs' American League [AL] rivals, the Chicago White Sox, had each already played many late-evening [Eastern/Central Time] games during the regular and postseason against West Coast teams in the western divisions of the National and American Leagues.) U.S. District Judge Suzanne B. Conlon issued a preliminary injunction in favor of Tribune and the Cubs on July 23, 1992, six weeks prior to an 18-9-1 motion of no confidence against Vincent among team owners on September 4.[111][112][113][114][115] Impacts to baseball's attempts to curb superstation telecasts were felt following Vincent's subsequent resignation as MLB Commissioner on September 7, 1992; one week after his departure, the proposed blackout amendment failed to make a Cable Television Act reconciliation bill due to the lack of support for the provision in the Senate.[116]
The NBA also undertook actions to limit superstation telecasts of the league's games. In 1982, it began prohibiting television stations that reached at least 5% of all out-of-market cable households from airing games that conflicted with those shown on the league's national cable partners (at the time, ESPN and USA Network); this transitioned in June 1985 to a 25-game limit on the number of seasonal NBA telecasts that could be licensed to superstations (sixteen fewer than the 41-game maximum under existing NBA local broadcast rules).[117] Concerned with the potential impact that the concurring returns of the Chicago Bulls and the Atlanta Hawks to WGN and WTBS, respectively, would have on its national contracts with NBC and ESPN, in April 1990, NBA Commissioner David Stern further reduced the amount of superstation-licensed NBA telecasts to 20 games per season. This sparked a 5½-year legal battle against the NBA by Tribune Broadcasting and Chicago Bulls parent Chicago Professional Sports L.P. The conspiracy and antitrust lawsuit filed by the co-plaintiffs in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois on October 16, 1990, alleged that the 20-game limit was aimed at "phas[ing] out such superstations telecasts entirely in increments of five games each year over the next five years," a separate plan proposed by Stern that was never voted upon by NBA team owners. (The NBA contended the restriction was exempt from antitrust law under a provision of the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, which was deemed in later rulings to only be applicable to the sale or transfer a national game package to a television network and not those involving individual teams.)[118][119][120][121] After four separate rulings in favor of Tribune and the Bulls issued by Northern District Judge Hubert L. Will (on January 26, 1991, and January 6, 1995),[122][123] the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals (on April 14, 1992),[124] and the U.S. Supreme Court (on November 5, 1992),[125] a Seventh Circuit judiciary panel overturned their 1992 ruling on September 10, 1996,[121] which forced WGN-TV – which had been allowed to air at least 30 Bulls telecasts over its local and national feeds between the 1992–93 and 1995–96 seasons per agreement between the lawsuit parties – to relegate the 35 Bulls games it was scheduled to air during the 1996–97 season exclusively to the Chicago area signal. (The embargoed Bulls telecasts were supplanted on the WGN superstation feed by syndicated feature films, and caused the national preemption of the station's 9:00 p.m. newscast on nights when prime time games overran into the time slot.)[126][127][128][129][130] Tele-Communications Inc. (TCI, now defunct) cited the national restrictions on the Bulls as partly being behind its December 1996 decision to remove the WGN national feed from most of its systems throughout the country, affecting around 3.5 million TCI subscribers by March 1997, though criticism over the move led TCI to rescind its plans to remove the WGN national feed from affected systems in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Wisconsin and Michigan with the remaining systems reinstating WGN through 1999.[131][132][133][134][135] The Bulls, WGN and the NBA reached a settlement on December 12, 1996, allowing WGN-TV to air the league broadcast maximum of 41 games for the remainder of the 1996–97 season (35 that would air only on the Chicago signal and twelve that would be shown on both the local and superstation feeds). From the 1997–98 season thereafter, the number of games permitted to air on the superstation feed increased to 15 per year. The parties also agreed to replace the NBA's licensing tax for superstations with a revenue sharing model, under which the NBA would collect 50% of all advertising revenue accrued from the national WGN telecasts.[136][137]
TBS was able to work around these issues by supplementing its Atlanta-originated sports broadcasts with more nationalized sports fare, including a package of regular season NBA games involving the league's other teams, early round
Evolution and decline; the remaining superstations
Even though superstations remained reasonably popular among cable and satellite subscribers, in no small part because of team-based sports broadcasts, various changes to the television industry beginning in the 1990s—especially the proliferation of cable-originated program services and the resultant increase in original programming produced by many cable channels—as well as existing distant signal policies—such as the syndication exclusivity rules—precipitated the decline in their viability. As early as 1986, with the launch of the Fox Broadcasting Company, a handful of the intrastate superstations – such as
Very few of these stations reduced their distribution as a result of taking affiliations with either the United Paramount Network (UPN) or The WB Television Network. In fact, in December 1993, Time Warner permitted Tribune Broadcasting and United Video to have WGN-TV—which initially had intended to maintain a limited, if any, relationship with the network—act as a de facto national feed for The WB to cover smaller and mid-sized markets where extra time was needed for the network to fill absences in local affiliate coverage. (The Tribune Company held minority ownership in The WB from August 1995 until the founding of successor The CW in January 2006, when the company relinquished its interest to avoid partially shouldering The WB's shutdown expenses.) Station management had expressed concerns over the potential negative impacts fulfilling commitments to the network's soon-to-be-expanded program offerings would have on its sports broadcast rights and, by association, its national distribution; Time Warner rectified those issues by agreeing to reduce the network's initial schedule to one night per week (from two) in exchange for leasing airtime on the WGN national feed.[143][144][145][146] WGN carried the full WB programming schedule—including the Kids' WB children's program block, which was not carried by the WGN Chicago signal until 2004—nationwide from the network's January 1995 launch until October 1999, when carriage of the network (outside Chicago) was discontinued upon mutual agreement between Time Warner and Tribune/United Video to limit programming conflicts with The WB's initial charter affiliates and other local broadcast and cable-only affiliates that joined the network over the previous four years.[147][148] In direct contrast, WWOR (owned at the time by network parent Chris-Craft/United Television) restricted availability of UPN programming to its New York-area signal,[149][150] believed to be the result of a network non-duplication claim filed by non-equity network partner Paramount Television that prohibited Eastern Microwave from using the WWOR EMI Service as a national UPN feed. The downside of the Paramount decision was that, from January 1995 until over-the-air digital multicasting became viable in the first half of the 2000s, it left most or all UPN programming unavailable in some mid-sized and most smaller markets where the network was not able, at least initially, to gain even secondary affiliate clearances.
WWOR—although it technically never gave up its superstation status—ceased distributing a national cable feed on December 31, 1996, a move made by
The separation of TBS from its founding Atlanta parent left the WGN national feed – which became known as Superstation WGN in November 2002 and then as
The five remaining "true" superstations—WPIX, KTLA, KWGN-TV, WWOR-TV and WSBK-TV—are carried on some rural cable providers and via satellite through Dish Network and C-Band systems. Since the 1988 syndication exclusivity rules were implemented,
Canada
Canada does not have any television stations that operate as "superstations" in the traditional construct of the term. Technically, virtually every Canadian terrestrial television station is a superstation, as almost every local television station in that country – most commonly those that are owned-and-operated stations, as well as a few affiliates, of the five national
Beginning in the late 1980s, Canadian Satellite Communications (Cancom, now Shaw Broadcast Services) began distributing the signals of independents CHAN-TV (channel 8, now a Global owned-and-operated station) in Vancouver, British Columbia, CITV-TV (channel 13, now a Global owned-and-operated station) in Edmonton, Alberta, and CHCH-TV (channel 11) in Hamilton, Ontario, primarily for distribution by cable systems in smaller markets throughout Canada. Coincidentally, these stations were, like Cancom, either owned or later acquired by Western International Communications (WIC). As a result of their early availability, which predated the existence of most Canadian specialty channels, these stations – the former two of which are now owned by Corus Entertainment and the latter by Channel Zero – continue to maintain a superstation-type status on analog cable in many smaller Canadian communities as well as on border-area cable systems in the United States (such as Buffalo–Niagara Falls, New York, Burlington, Vermont, and Bellingham, Washington).
Presently, both the aforementioned CHCH and CJON-DT (channel 21) in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador use slogans referring to each as a "superstation", though neither station has any special regulatory status at present conferring that title. Neither CHCH nor CJON holds a formal network affiliation, although the latter (which identifies under the "NTV" brand) carries news and entertainment programming from Global and news programming from CTV, and both stations carry programming from the country's only syndicator, the religious and secular family service yes TV. (CJON and CHCH are both notable for streaming their programming feeds to viewers in a superstation-type manner within and outside of Canada through their websites; yes TV and CBC Television also maintain free online live streams but restrict access to viewers with Canadian IP addresses. In both cases, only a limited amount of non-local programming is carried on the online feed.)
Moreover, multichannel television providers within Canada are able to distribute American television stations in their digital package, regardless of whether they are superstations or affiliates of the five major U.S. broadcast networks (ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox or The CW) that are authorized by the
On April 4, 1985, the CRTC granted authorization for WTBS, WGN-TV, WPIX and WOR-TV to be distributed to cable providers within Canada under Section "B" of the Part II eligible services list. Three other superstations were given clearance by the CRTC under the Part II Section "B" list during the 1990s: WSBK-TV was granted authorization on April 29, 1991 (per a request by First Choice Canadian Communications Corporation, then-owner of premium service First Choice [now Crave]), KTLA was granted authorization on July 17, 1991, and KWGN was granted authorization on July 22, 1997. KTLA and KWGN were each placed under the Part III non-Canadian services list simultaneous with their placement on the Part II list. (As of 2019[update], KWGN-TV is the only one of the seven CRTC-approved superstations that has no cable or satellite availability within Canada.)[168][169][170][171]
TBS was removed from the Canadian market when it became a cable-exclusive channel in the U.S. in October 2007, as the CRTC had only given approval for its former parent Atlanta broadcast signal to be carried by cable, satellite and other multichannel television providers within the country; for this reason, Canadian viewers instead receive the rechristened WPCH-TV. (WPCH is one of only two superstations eligible under the Commission's foreign distribution list, along with WGN-TV as a result of its programming separation from its WGN America companion service in December 2014, that is no longer distributed in the United States as a regional or national superstation.)
Mexico
Much as is the case in Canada, almost all of the commercial and non-commercial television stations in Mexico are available on satellite to be carried on cable and other direct-to-home (DTH) television providers within the country. However, no station had equal transmission nationwide: certain laws, such as the electoral law, forbid television stations from broadcasting advertisements (particularly, political campaign ads) originating from other states or regions within the country.[174] The country's telecommunications agency, the Federal Telecommunications Institute (IFT), also mandates that direct-broadcast satellite providers carry the signals of stations that are part of television networks that cover 50% of the Mexican territory, albeit with regional lockouts for advertisements.[175]
Radio superstations
The first radio station in North America to achieve superstation distribution via satellite was Chicago's
Some local radio stations are, or have been distributed on
Three other specialty format stations—
Prior to
In many cases where radio stations distribute outside their home market, the local stations make some concessions, such as replacement of local advertisements with either national advertising or a bed of production music that plays over commercial breaks. Also in the example of WFAN, that station's play-by-play coverage of the New York Mets and Giants, the New Jersey Devils and the Brooklyn Nets is not carried on the Florida HD Radio affiliates and replaced with alternate programming, as the station only has rights to transmit the game broadcasts in the New York metropolitan area.
List of superstations
Current
Originating city of license/market | Station | Owner | Affiliation | Signed on | Year of superstation attainment |
Year uplinked |
Availability/Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Atlanta, Georgia | WPCH-TV 17 | Gray Television | The CW | 1967 | 1971 | 1976 (operated as national superstation until 2007) |
WPCH is available on most cable and satellite providers throughout Canada. |
Boston, Massachusetts | WSBK-TV 38 | CBS News and Stations (Paramount Global) |
Independent |
1964 | 1974 | 1988 | WSBK is available in the United States through select cable providers in the New England region of the United States (primarily within Massachusetts and select systems in surrounding states) and the Dish Network superstation tier and in Canada on most cable, IPTV and satellite providers. |
Chicago, Illinois | WGN-TV 9 | Nexstar Media Group | Independent | 1948 | 1966 | 1978 (operated as national superstation until 2014) |
The Chicago broadcast feed of WGN-TV is currently available in Canada on most cable, IPTV and satellite providers (either in lieu of or alongside NewsNation), and in The Bahamas on REV TV. Until WGN-TV ceased carriage of sporting events from four of Chicago's six professional sports franchises at the conclusion of the 2019 Major League Baseball season, both feeds included select Chicago Bulls basketball and all Chicago Blackhawks hockey games that could not air on the U.S.-based national feed due to NBA and NHL restrictions. |
Denver, Colorado | KWGN-TV 2 | Nexstar Media Group | The CW (O&O) | 1952 | 1965 | 1987 | KWGN-TV is currently distributed through select cable providers in the Rocky Mountain region of the western United States, and throughout the remainder of the country on Dish Network's superstation tier. |
San Juan, Puerto Rico | WKAQ-TV 2 | Telemundo Station Group (NBCUniversal) |
Telemundo | 1954 | 2001 | 2001 | WKAQ (through its national Telemundo Puerto Rico feed) is available in the contiguous United States through Spanish-language programming tiers offered by select cable providers and the Dish Network and DirecTV satellite services. |
Los Angeles, California | KTLA 5 | Nexstar Media Group | The CW (O&O) | 1947 | 1972 | 1988 | KTLA is currently distributed through select cable providers in the Southwestern U.S., on Dish Network and DirecTV in the U.S, on most Canadian cable and satellite providers, and on REV TV in The Bahamas. |
New York City | WPIX 11 | Mission Broadcasting (operated by Nexstar Media Group via LMA) |
The CW (O&O) | 1948 | 1965 | 1984 | WPIX is currently distributed through select cable providers in the Northeastern United States and across the country, on Dish Network in the U.S., on most Canadian cable and satellite providers, and on REV TV in Plattsburgh markets) prior to the September 1998 launch of The WB 100+ Station Group , which ended WPIX's status as a default WB affiliate for those markets.
|
San Juan, Puerto Rico | WAPA-TV 4 | Hemisphere Media Group (InterMedia Partners [73%]; Azteca Acquisition Corporation [27%]) |
Independent | 1954 | 2004 | 2004 | WAPA (through its national WAPA America feed) is available in the contiguous United States through Spanish-language programming tiers offered by select cable providers and the Dish Network and DirecTV satellite services. |
Secaucus, New Jersey (New York City) |
WWOR-TV 9 | Fox Television Stations (Fox Corporation) |
MyNetworkTV | 1949 | 1965 | 1979 | The local feed of WWOR—featuring all programming seen in the New York City area, with any blackouts determined by local syndication exclusivity and network duplication claims, is currently distributed in the United States through Dish Network's superstation tier, in Canada on most cable, IPTV and satellite providers, and in The Bahamas on REV TV. |
Originating city of license/market | Station | Frequency | Owner | Format | Signed on | Year of superstation attainment |
Availability (delivery systems) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
New York City | WBBR | 1130 AM | Bloomberg L.P. | Financial news (Bloomberg Radio) |
1954 | 2001 | Satellite radio (via ) |
Provo, Utah (Salt Lake City) |
BYU Radio | KBYU 89.1 FM-HD2 |
Brigham Young University | BYU Radio | 2002 | 2011 | Satellite radio (via Sirius XM Satellite Radio); audio is also re-transmitted as a BYUTV, and in turn across Utah via KBYU-TV
|
Washington, D.C. | WCSP-FM | 90.1 FM | National Cable Satellite Corporation | Public affairs (C-SPAN Radio) |
1960 | 1998 | Satellite radio (via Sirius XM Satellite Radio) |
Former
Originating city of license/market | Station | Current affiliation | Current owner | Signed on | Years of availability |
Distribution |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Cincinnati, Ohio | WXIX-TV 19 | Fox | Gray Television | 1968 | 1971–1986 | WXIX maintained regionalized cable distribution in most of Ohio and Kentucky, along with a few areas of eastern Indiana. The station began terminating its carriage agreements with cable systems outside of the Cincinnati region when it affiliated with Fox in October 1986. |
Cleveland, Ohio | WUAB 43 | The CW | Gray Television | 1968 | 1971–1995 | WUAB maintained regionalized cable distribution in most of Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and Ontario. The station was dropped from most cable providers outside of Cleveland and Erie, Pennsylvania and Ontario's Lake Erie shoreline region in the 1990s. (The station is still available on Spectrum systems in the suburbs of Erie, Pennsylvania.) |
Dallas–Fort Worth, Texas | KTVT 11 | CBS (O&O) | CBS News and Stations (Paramount Global) |
1955 | 1971–1995 | KTVT maintained regionalized cable distribution throughout most of the South Central United States (concentrated mainly in Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas, with systems in some larger markets within that footprint dropping KTVT from their lineups upon the re-imposition of SyndEx in January 1990), with some scattered distribution in Nebraska and Kansas. The station began terminating its carriage agreements with cable systems outside of North Texas in the months preceding its assumption of the CBS affiliation from incoming Fox affiliate KDFW in July 1995.
|
KXTX-TV 39 | Telemundo (O&O) | NBC Owned Television Stations (NBCUniversal) |
1973 | 1977–1986 | KXTX maintained regionalized cable distribution throughout most of the South Central United States (concentrated mainly in Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas); it rolled back its regional distribution gradually between 1983 and 1986, due to effects from the January 1983 distant signal fee increase.
| |
Denver, Colorado | KDVR 31 | Fox | Nexstar Media Group | 1983 | 1983–2000 | KDVR maintained regionalized cable distribution in portions of the Rocky Mountain region of the western United States. The station's carriage agreements, except in certain markets where an affiliate was not initially available, began to be terminated upon KDVR becoming a charter Fox affiliate in October 1986; the station remained the default Fox affiliate for most of Colorado until 2000. |
Detroit, Michigan | WKBD-TV 50 | Independent | CBS News and Stations (Paramount Global) |
1965 | 1968–2006 | WKBD maintained regionalized cable distribution throughout most of the Fox Sports Detroit claiming all its former sports rights and the closure of its news department, respectively.
|
Houston, Texas | KHTV 39 (now KIAH) |
The CW (O&O) | Nexstar Media Group | 1967 | 1968–1990 | KHTV maintained regionalized cable distribution across portions of the South Central United States before it gave up its superstation status in 1990. |
Indianapolis, Indiana | WTTV 4 | CBS | Nexstar Media Group | 1949 | 1971–1987 | WTTV maintained regionalized cable distribution throughout most of Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky. Due to the syndication exclusivity rule, it was dropped from most cable systems outside Indiana by 1987. |
Kansas City, Missouri | KSHB-TV 41 | NBC | E. W. Scripps Company | 1971 | 1976–1986 | KSHB-TV maintained regionalized cable distribution throughout most of Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma; KSHB-TV lost its superstation status upon becoming a Fox affiliate in October 1986. |
Los Angeles, California | KTTV 11 | Fox (O&O) | Fox Television Stations (Fox Corporation) |
1949 | 1965–1998 | KTTV maintained regionalized cable distribution throughout most of the Southwestern United States (concentrated in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado); it lost its superstation status (except in areas where an affiliate was not initially available) when it became a charter Fox owned-and-operated station in October 1986.[46] The station continued to serve as the Fox affiliate of record for areas of southern California that did not have local affiliates of the network (in lieu of using the Foxnet national feed) until 1998. |
Milwaukee, Wisconsin | WVTV 18 | The CW | Sinclair Broadcast Group | 1959 | 1972–1997 | WVTV maintained regionalized cable distribution throughout most of Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota; the station's statewide coverage faded out over a period of five years upon becoming a WB affiliate in May 1997, as a result of its decision to not to renew existing carriage contracts. |
St. Paul, Minnesota |
KMSP-TV 9 | Fox (O&O) | Fox Television Stations (Fox Corporation) |
1955 | 1979–2002 | KMSP-TV (which served as the ABC affiliate for the Minneapolis–St. Paul market from its 1955 sign-on until the network shifted to KSTP-TV in October 1979) was distributed regionally on cable providers across much of Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, and Wisconsin, taking over some of the channel slots previously occupied by WTCN prior to its switch to NBC. KMSP began terminating its carriage agreements with cable systems outside of Minnesota upon the start of its first tenure as a Fox affiliate in October 1986, though it retained sizeable distribution throughout much of Minnesota thereafter (even serving as a default UPN affiliate for the Mankato, Rochester–Austin–Mason City and Duluth–Superior markets beginning in January 1995) until it became a Fox O&O in September 2002. |
WTCN 11 (now KARE) |
NBC | Tegna, Inc. |
1953 | 1968–1979 | WTCN was distributed regionally on cable providers across much of Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, and Wisconsin; all carriage agreements, except in certain markets where a local affiliate of the network was not available, were terminated upon WTCN's assumption of the NBC affiliation from KSTP-TV in October 1979. | |
KITN/WFTC 29 (now WFTC 9.2) | MyNetworkTV (O&O) | Fox Television Stations (Fox Corporation) |
1982 | 1984–1999 | KITN (later recalled WFTC) maintained regionalized cable distribution across much of Minnesota; it served as the default Fox affiliate for the entire state from 1988 to 1999, when its carriage agreements were terminated. | |
New York City | WNEW-TV/WNYW 5 | Fox (O&O) | Fox Television Stations (Fox Corporation) |
1944 | 1965–1997 | WNEW maintained regionalized cable distribution in portions of the Northeastern United States. Its carriage agreements, except in certain markets where an affiliate was not initially available, began to be terminated upon the station (re-called WNYW) becoming a charter Fox owned-and-operated station in October 1986. The station continued to be carried via cable in some areas of upstate New York (which was not served by Foxnet) until 1997. |
Phoenix, Arizona | KPHO-TV 5 | CBS | Gray Television | 1949 | 1971–1994 | KPHO-TV maintained regionalized cable distribution throughout much of Arizona and New Mexico, as well as parts of California, Nevada, and Utah; KPHO lost its superstation status upon becoming a CBS affiliate in September 1994. |
San Francisco, California | KTVU 2 | Fox (O&O) | Fox Television Stations (Fox Corporation) |
1958 | 1976–1999 | KTVU was distributed as a national superstation in the early 1980s, primarily on Primestar, effectively regaining national availability for five years during the mid-to-late 1990s, until the satellite provider sold its assets (and effectively, transferred its subscriber base) to DirecTV in 1999.
|
Seattle, Washington | KSTW 11 | Independent | CBS News and Stations (Paramount Global) |
1953 | 1973–1995 | KSTW maintained regionalized cable distribution across much of Washington, northern Idaho and much of the Canadian province of British Columbia; KSTW lost its superstation status upon becoming a CBS affiliate (its third affiliation tenure with that network) in March 1995. |
St. Louis, Missouri | KPLR-TV 11 | The CW (O&O) | Nexstar Media Group | 1959 | 1973–1995 | KPLR-TV maintained regionalized cable distribution across portions of Missouri, Illinois, and Arkansas. KPLR-TV began terminating its carriage agreements in 1989 due to the syndication exclusivity rule; it lost its superstation status upon becoming an affiliate of The WB in January 1995. |
Tampa–St. Petersburg, Florida | WTOG 44 | Independent | CBS News and Stations (Paramount Global) |
1968 | 1974–1986 | WTOG maintained intrastate cable distribution across portions of central and southwestern parts of Florida; it gave up its superstation status after becoming a Fox affiliate in October 1986. |
Virginia Beach– Norfolk–Hampton, Virginia |
WYAH-TV 27 (now WGNT) |
The CW | E. W. Scripps Company | 1961 | 1972–1986 | WYAH maintained regionalized cable distribution in most of Virginia and the eastern half of North Carolina; the station's distribution outside of the Hampton Roads area was rolled back throughout the mid-1980s, concluding around 1986. |
Washington, D.C. | WDCA 20 | MyNetworkTV (O&O) | Fox Television Stations (Fox Corporation) |
1966 | 1969–1990 | WDCA maintained regionalized cable distribution across portions of the Eastern Seaboard; WDCA gave up its superstation status in the late 1980s. |
WTTG 5 | Fox (O&O) | Fox Television Stations (Fox Corporation) |
1947 | 1966–2006 | WTTG maintained regionalized cable distribution across portions of the southern half of the Eastern Seaboard. Its carriage agreements, except in certain markets where an affiliate was not initially available, began to be terminated upon the station becoming a charter Fox owned-and-operated station in October 1986; the station's carriage ended in all markets outside of Virginia and Maryland by 1990. WTTG continued to serve as the default Fox affiliate for the entire states of Maryland and Virginia until the fall of 2006. |
Originating city of license/market | Station | Frequency | Current owner | Current format | Signed on | Years of availability |
Availability (delivery systems) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Boston, Massachusetts | WEEI | 850 AM | Entercom |
Sports radio (ESPN Radio) |
1929 | 1983–2014 | C-band/cable radio |
Chicago, Illinois | WFMT | 98.7 FM | Window to the World Communications, Inc. | Classical music | 1948 | 1979–2004 | Cable radio |
WGCI-FM | 107.5 FM | iHeartMedia | Urban contemporary
|
1958 | 2011–2013 | Satellite radio (via Sirius XM Satellite Radio) | |
Cincinnati, Ohio | WLW | 700 AM | iHeartMedia | News/talk | 1922 | 2002–2013 | Satellite radio (via XM Satellite Radio) |
Cocoa Beach, Florida (Orlando, Florida) |
WTKS-FM | 104.1 FM | iHeartMedia | Talk/Alternative rock | 1962 | 2009–2013 | Satellite radio (via Sirius Satellite Radio) |
Greater San Francisco Bay ) |
KPIG | 107.5 FM | Stephens Media Group |
Freeform/Americana |
1987 | 2007–2010 | Syndication (via Dial Global)[183] |
Houston, Texas | KHMX | 96.5 FM | Entercom | Hot AC |
1948 | 2011–2017 | Satellite radio (via Sirius Satellite Radio) |
Los Angeles, California | KIIS-FM | 102.7 FM | iHeartMedia | Top 40 (CHR) | 1948 | 2002–2007, 2011–2022 |
Satellite radio (via Sirius XM Satellite Radio) |
Nashville, Tennessee | WSIX-FM | 97.9 FM | iHeartMedia | Country | 1948 | 2002–2007, 2011–2013 |
Satellite radio (via Sirius XM Satellite Radio) |
Nashville, Tennessee | WSM | 650 AM | Ryman Hospitality Properties | Country/Americana | 1925 | 1981–2007 | C-band satellite; Satellite radio (via Sirius Satellite Radio) |
Newark, New Jersey (New York City) |
WHTZ | 100.3 FM | iHeartMedia | Contemporary hit radio | 1961 | 2011–2020 | Satellite radio (via Sirius XM Satellite Radio) |
New York City | WLTW | 106.7 FM | iHeartMedia | Lite AC | 1961 | 2002–2007, 2011–2013 |
Satellite radio (via Sirius XM Satellite Radio) |
Oakland, California (San Francisco, California) |
KNEW | 960 AM | iHeartMedia | Financial news (Bloomberg Radio) |
1925 | 2001–2013 | Satellite radio (via Sirius Satellite Radio) |
Pasadena, California (Los Angeles) |
KRDC | 1110 AM | ABC, Inc. )
(The Walt Disney Company |
Sports radio (ESPN Radio) |
1954 | 2014–2017 | Satellite radio (via Sirius XM Satellite Radio) |
See also
Notes
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