City of license
Encyclopedia
A city of license or community of license, in American
and Canadian
broadcasting, is the community that a radio station
or television station
is officially licensed to serve by that country's broadcast regulator.
In North American broadcast law, the concept of community of license dates to the early days of AM radio broadcasting. The requirement that a broadcasting station operate a main studio within a prescribed distance of the community which the station is licensed to serve appears in U.S. law as early as 1939.
Various specific obligations have been applied to broadcasters by governments to fulfill public policy
objectives of broadcast localism
, both in radio and later also in television, based on the legislative presumption that a broadcaster fills a similar role to that held by community newspaper publishers.
requires that “the Commission shall make such distribution of licenses, frequencies, hours of operation, and of power among the several States and communities as to provide a fair, efficient, and equitable distribution of radio service to each of the same.” The Federal Communications Commission
interprets this as requiring that every broadcast station “be licensed to the principal community or other political subdivision which it primarily serves.” For each broadcast service, the FCC defines a standard for what it means to serve a community; for example, commercial FM radio stations are required to provide an electric field
of at least 3.16 millivolts per meter (mV/m) over the entire land area of the community, whereas non-commercial educational
FM stations need only provide a field strength of 1 mV/m over 50% of the community's population. This electric field contour is called the “principal community contour”.
The Federal Communications Commission
(FCC) makes other requirements on stations relative to their communities of license; these requirements have varied over time. One example is the requirement for stations to identify themselves, by call sign
and community, at sign-on, sign-off, and at the top of every hour of operation. Other current requirements include providing a local telephone number in the community's calling area (or else a toll-free number) and (in most cases) maintaining an official main studio within 25 miles of the community's geographic center.
The nominal main studio requirement has become less relevant with the introduction of videotape
recorders in 1956 (which allowed local content to be easily generated off-site and transported to stations), the growing portability of broadcast-quality production equipment due to transistor
ization and the elimination of requirements (in 1987 for most classes of US broadcast stations) that broadcasters originate any minimum amount of local content.
While the main studio concept nominally remains in US broadcast regulations, and certain administrative requirements (such as the local employment of a manager and the equivalent of at least one other full-time staff member, as well as the maintenance of a public inspection file) are still applied, removal of the requirement that stations originate local content greatly weakens the significance of maintaining a local main studio. A facility capable of originating programming and feeding it to a transmitter
must still exist, but under normal conditions there most often is no requirement that these local studio actually be in active use to originate any specific local programming.
In many cases, the use of centralcasting
and broadcast automation
has greatly weakened the role and importance of manual control by staff at the nominal local station studio facilities.
Exceptions to these rules have been made by regulators, primarily on a case-by-case basis, to deal with "satellite stations": transmitters which are licensed to comply with the technical requirements of full service
broadcast facilities and have their own independent call sign
s and communities of license but are used simply as full-power broadcast translators to rebroadcast another station. These are most often non-commercial educational stations or stations serving thinly-populated areas which otherwise would be too small to support an independent local full-service broadcaster.
and community broadcasting
as a means to oppose the construction and use of local stations as mere rebroadcasters or satellite-fed translators of distant stations. Without specific requirements for service to the local community of license, stations could be constructed in large number by out-of-region broadcasters who feed transmitters via satellite
and offer no local content.
There also has been a de-facto preference by regulators to encourage the assignment of broadcast licenses to smaller cities which otherwise would have no local voice, instead of allowing all broadcast activity to be concentrated in large metropolitan areas already served by many existing broadcasters.
When dealing with multiple competing US radio station applications, current FM allotment priorities are: (1) first full-time aural service; (2) second full-time aural service; (3) first local aural transmission service; and (4) Other public interest matters.
Similar criteria were extended to competing applicants for non-commercial stations by US legislation passed in 2000.
By 1969, the same issues had spread to FM licensing; instead of building transmitters in the community to nominally be served, applicants would often seek to locate the tower site at least halfway to the next major city. In one such precedent case (the Berwick Doctrine), the FCC required a hearing before Berwick, a prospective broadcaster, could locate transmitters midway between Pittston, Pennsylvania
(the city of license) and a larger audience in Wilkes-Barre
.
A related problem was that of 'move-in'. Outlying communities would find their small-town local stations sold to outsiders, who would then attempt to change the community of license to a suburb of the nearest major city, move transmitter locations or remove existing local content from broadcasts in an attempt to "move in" to the larger city.
The small town of Anniston, Alabama
, due to its location 90 miles west of Atlanta and 65 miles east of Birmingham
, has lost local content from both TV and FM stations which were re-targeted at one of the two larger urban centres or moved outright (WHMA-FM Anniston is now licensed as WNNX College Park, Georgia
- an Atlanta suburb - after a failed attempt to relicense it to Sandy Springs, Georgia
- another Atlanta suburb. Transmitters are now in downtown Atlanta.)
A 1988 precedent case (Faye and Richard Tuck, 3 FCC Rcd 5374, 1988) created the "Tuck Analysis" as a standard which attempts to address the Suburban Community Problem on a case-by-case basis by examining:
Despite the best intentions of regulators, the system remains prone to manipulation.
somewhere within 25 miles of the city, and to cover the entire city with a local signal. In the United States, a station's transmitter
usually cannot be located more than 15 miles from the city of license, even if it primarily serves another city. For example, American television station WTTV
primarily serves Indianapolis
; however, the transmitter is located farther south than the other stations in that city because it is licensed to Bloomington
, 50 miles south of Indianapolis. In some cases, such as Jeannette, Pennsylvania
-licensed WPCW-TV 19, the FCC has waived this requirement; the station claimed that retaining an existing transmitter site 25.6 miles southeast of its new community of license of Jeannette would be in compliance with the Commission's minimum distance separation requirements (avoiding interference to co-channel
WOIO
19 Shaker Heights
). Another extreme example of a station's transmitter located far from the city of license is the FM station KPNT
, licensed in the town of Collinsville, IL. The station primarily serves the greater St. Louis, MO area, as well as numerous outlying communities south of St. Louis and near the Illinois border. The station's transmitter is actually located near Hillsboro, MO, about 72 km (45 mi) away from the community of license, Collinsville, IL.
FCC regulations also require stations at least once an hour to state the station's call letters, followed by the city of license. However, the FCC has no restrictions on additional names after the city of license, so many stations afterwards add the nearest large city. For example, American television station WOIO
is licensed to Shaker Heights
, a suburb of Cleveland. It is identified as "WOIO - WOIO DT
Shaker Heights-Cleveland." Similarly, northern New York's
WWNY identifies as WWNY-TV
7
Carthage
-Watertown as a historical artifact; the original broadcasts originated from Champion Hill
in 1954 so the license still reflects this tiny location.
If the station is licensed in the primary city served, on occasion the station will list a second city next to it. For example, American television station WTVT
, licensed to Tampa, Florida
, its primary city, identifies as "WTVT/WTVT-DT Tampa/St. Petersburg
," as St. Petersburg is another major city in the market.
There is no longer a requirement to carry programs relevant to the particular community, or even necessarily to operate or transmit from that community. Accordingly, stations licensed to smaller communities in major metropolitan markets
often target programming toward the entire market rather than the official home community, and often move their studio facilities to the larger urban centre as well. For instance, the Canadian radio station CFNY
is officially licensed to Brampton, Ontario
, although its studio and transmitter facilities are located in downtown Toronto
.
This may, at times, lead to confusion — while media directories normally list broadcast stations by their legal community of license, audiences often disregard (or may even be entirely unaware of) the distinction.
, the Federal Communications Commission
maintains a Table of Allotments, which assigns individual channel frequencies to individual cities or communities for both TV
and FM radio.
A corresponding Table of Allotments for digital television
was created in 1997. To operate a licensed station, a broadcaster must first obtain allocation of the desired frequencies in the FCC's Table of Allotments for the intended city of license. This process is subject to various political and bureaucratic restrictions, based on considerations including the number of existing stations in the area.
The term "city" has in some cases been relaxed to mean "community", often including the unincorporated areas around the city that share a mailing address. This sometimes leads to inconsistencies, such as the licensing of one metro Atlanta
station to the unincorporated Cobb County
community of Mableton
, but the refusal to license another to Sandy Springs
, which is one of the largest cities in the state, and was at the time an unincorporated part of Fulton County
only for political reasons in the Georgia General Assembly
.
Often, the city of license does not correspond to the location of the station itself, of the primary audience or of the communities identified in the station's branding and advertising.
Some of the more common reasons for a community of license to be listed as a point far from the actual audience include:
The "compromise" location: A broadcaster may wish to serve two different communities, both in the same region but far enough from each other that a transmitter in one market would provide poor service to the other. While a transmitter in each community served would be preferable, occasionally a station licensed to a small town between the two larger centres will be used.
The suburb
an station: In FM radio broadcasting, small local stations were sometimes built to serve suburban or outlying areas in an era where AM radio stations held the largest audiences and much of the FM spectrum lay vacant. In the era of vacuum tube
s, the five-tube AM radio with no FM tuning capability and limited audio quality was common; later advances in receiver design were to make good-quality FM commonplace (even though most AM/FM stereo receivers still have severely-limited AM frequency response and no AM stereo
decoders). Eventually FM spectrum became a very scare commodity in many markets as AM stations moved to the FM dial, relegating AM largely to talk radio
. As cities expanded, former small-town FM stations found themselves not only in what were now becoming rapidly-expanding suburbs but also on what was becoming some of the most valuable spectrum in broadcast radio. The once-tiny FM stations would often then be sold, increased (where possible) to much-higher power and used to serve a huge mainstream audience in the larger metropolitan area.
The short-spaced station: To avoid co-channel interference
, a minimum distance is maintained between stations operating on the same frequency in different markets. On VHF, full-power stations are typically 175 miles or more apart before the same channel is used again. An otherwise-desirable channel may therefore be unavailable to a community unless either it is operated at greatly reduced-power, forced onto a strongly-directional antenna pattern to protect the distant co-channel station or relocated to some other, more distant location in the region to maintain proper spacing. The choice of another community as home for a station can be one possible means to avoid short-spacing, effectively shifting the entire station's coverage area to maintain the required distances between transmitters.
The distant mountaintop antenna: In hilly or mountainous regions, a city would often be built in a waterfront or lakeside location (such as Plattsburgh-Burlington
, both on Lake Champlain
) - lower ground which in turn would be surrounded by tall mountain peaks. The only reliable means to get the VHF television or radio signals over the mountains was to build a station atop one of the mountain peaks. This occasionally left stations with a distant mountaintop (or its nearest small crossroads) as the historical city of license, even though the audience was elsewhere.
The relocation of an existing station: Often, a license for a new station will not be available in a community, either because a regulatory agency was only willing to accept new applications within specified narrow timeframes or because there are no suitable vacant channels. A prospective broadcaster must therefore buy an existing station as the only way to readily enter the market, in some cases being left with a station in a suburban, outlying or adjacent-market area if that were the only facility available for sale.
The border blaster
: Occasionally, a community on an international border is served using a station licensed to another country. This may provide access to less restrictive broadcast regulation or represent a means to use local marketing agreement
s or adjacent-market licences to circumvent limits on the number of stations under common ownership.
The last-available frequency allocation: In the early days of television, the majority of stations could be found on the VHF band; in North America, this currently represents just twelve possible channels and in large markets any suitable allocations in this range were mostly full by the early 1950s. Occasionally, a prospective broadcaster could obtain one of these coveted positions by acquiring an existing station or permit in an adjacent community - although in some cases this meant a move out-of-state.
The use of an adjacent market: Occasionally, a station owner would reach a legal limit on concentration of media ownership
, already having the maximum number of commonly-owned stations in a market. Additional stations would be possible by transmitting the extra signals from a station technically in an adjacent market.
The arbitrary nominal location: In some cases, stations were constructed or acquired with the express purpose of driving a regional or province-wide chain of full-power repeaters. Which of these "satellite stations" would be designated as the main signal could be an arbitrary choice, as the programming carried on all stations in the system would be identical.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and Canadian
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
broadcasting, is the community that a radio station
Radio station
Radio broadcasting is a one-way wireless transmission over radio waves intended to reach a wide audience. Stations can be linked in radio networks to broadcast a common radio format, either in broadcast syndication or simulcast or both...
or television station
Television station
A television station is a business, organisation or other such as an amateur television operator that transmits content over terrestrial television. A television transmission can be by analog television signals or, more recently, by digital television. Broadcast television systems standards are...
is officially licensed to serve by that country's broadcast regulator.
In North American broadcast law, the concept of community of license dates to the early days of AM radio broadcasting. The requirement that a broadcasting station operate a main studio within a prescribed distance of the community which the station is licensed to serve appears in U.S. law as early as 1939.
Various specific obligations have been applied to broadcasters by governments to fulfill public policy
Public policy
Public policy as government action is generally the principled guide to action taken by the administrative or executive branches of the state with regard to a class of issues in a manner consistent with law and institutional customs. In general, the foundation is the pertinent national and...
objectives of broadcast localism
Localism (politics)
Localism describes a range of political philosophies which prioritize the local. Generally, localism supports local production and consumption of goods, local control of government, and promotion of local history, local culture and local identity...
, both in radio and later also in television, based on the legislative presumption that a broadcaster fills a similar role to that held by community newspaper publishers.
United States
In the United States, the Communications Act of 1934Communications Act of 1934
The Communications Act of 1934 is a United States federal law, enacted as Public Law Number 416, Act of June 19, 1934, ch. 652, 48 Stat. 1064, by the 73rd Congress, signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, codified as Chapter 5 of Title 47 of the United States Code, et seq. The Act replaced the...
requires that “the Commission shall make such distribution of licenses, frequencies, hours of operation, and of power among the several States and communities as to provide a fair, efficient, and equitable distribution of radio service to each of the same.” The Federal Communications Commission
Federal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, created, Congressional statute , and with the majority of its commissioners appointed by the current President. The FCC works towards six goals in the areas of broadband, competition, the spectrum, the...
interprets this as requiring that every broadcast station “be licensed to the principal community or other political subdivision which it primarily serves.” For each broadcast service, the FCC defines a standard for what it means to serve a community; for example, commercial FM radio stations are required to provide an electric field
Electric field
In physics, an electric field surrounds electrically charged particles and time-varying magnetic fields. The electric field depicts the force exerted on other electrically charged objects by the electrically charged particle the field is surrounding...
of at least 3.16 millivolts per meter (mV/m) over the entire land area of the community, whereas non-commercial educational
Non-commercial educational
The term non-commercial educational applies to a radio station or TV station that does not accept on air advertisements , as defined in the United States by the Federal Communications Commission . NCE stations do not pay broadcast license fees for their non-profit uses of the radio spectrum...
FM stations need only provide a field strength of 1 mV/m over 50% of the community's population. This electric field contour is called the “principal community contour”.
The Federal Communications Commission
Federal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, created, Congressional statute , and with the majority of its commissioners appointed by the current President. The FCC works towards six goals in the areas of broadband, competition, the spectrum, the...
(FCC) makes other requirements on stations relative to their communities of license; these requirements have varied over time. One example is the requirement for stations to identify themselves, by call sign
North American call sign
Call signs in North America are frequently still used by North American broadcast stations in addition to amateur radio and other international radio stations that continue to identify by call signs around the world...
and community, at sign-on, sign-off, and at the top of every hour of operation. Other current requirements include providing a local telephone number in the community's calling area (or else a toll-free number) and (in most cases) maintaining an official main studio within 25 miles of the community's geographic center.
Nominal main studio requirements
The requirement that a station maintain a main studio within a station's primary coverage area or within a maximum distance of the community of license originated in an era in which stations were legally required to generate local content and the majority of a station's local, non-network programming was expected to originate in one central studio location. In this context, the view of broadcast regulators held that an expedient way to ensure that content broadcast reflected the needs of a local community was to allocate local broadcast stations and studios to each individual city.The nominal main studio requirement has become less relevant with the introduction of videotape
Videotape
A videotape is a recording of images and sounds on to magnetic tape as opposed to film stock or random access digital media. Videotapes are also used for storing scientific or medical data, such as the data produced by an electrocardiogram...
recorders in 1956 (which allowed local content to be easily generated off-site and transported to stations), the growing portability of broadcast-quality production equipment due to transistor
Transistor
A transistor is a semiconductor device used to amplify and switch electronic signals and power. It is composed of a semiconductor material with at least three terminals for connection to an external circuit. A voltage or current applied to one pair of the transistor's terminals changes the current...
ization and the elimination of requirements (in 1987 for most classes of US broadcast stations) that broadcasters originate any minimum amount of local content.
While the main studio concept nominally remains in US broadcast regulations, and certain administrative requirements (such as the local employment of a manager and the equivalent of at least one other full-time staff member, as well as the maintenance of a public inspection file) are still applied, removal of the requirement that stations originate local content greatly weakens the significance of maintaining a local main studio. A facility capable of originating programming and feeding it to a transmitter
Transmitter
In electronics and telecommunications a transmitter or radio transmitter is an electronic device which, with the aid of an antenna, produces radio waves. The transmitter itself generates a radio frequency alternating current, which is applied to the antenna. When excited by this alternating...
must still exist, but under normal conditions there most often is no requirement that these local studio actually be in active use to originate any specific local programming.
In many cases, the use of centralcasting
Centralcasting
In terrestrial radio and television broadcasting, centralcasting refers to the use of systems automation by which customised signals for broadcast by multiple individual stations may be created at one central facility.- :...
and broadcast automation
Broadcast automation
Broadcast automation incorporates the use of broadcast programming technology to automate broadcasting operations. Used either at a broadcast network, radio station or a television station, it can run a facility in the absence of a human operator...
has greatly weakened the role and importance of manual control by staff at the nominal local station studio facilities.
Exceptions to these rules have been made by regulators, primarily on a case-by-case basis, to deal with "satellite stations": transmitters which are licensed to comply with the technical requirements of full service
Full service
Full service is a term that has many different uses. In general the term implies that the customer will receive as much service as is reasonably possible.-Gas station:...
broadcast facilities and have their own independent call sign
Call sign
In broadcasting and radio communications, a call sign is a unique designation for a transmitting station. In North America they are used as names for broadcasting stations...
s and communities of license but are used simply as full-power broadcast translators to rebroadcast another station. These are most often non-commercial educational stations or stations serving thinly-populated areas which otherwise would be too small to support an independent local full-service broadcaster.
Political considerations
The requirement that a full-service station maintain local presence in its community of license has been used by proponents of localismLocalism (politics)
Localism describes a range of political philosophies which prioritize the local. Generally, localism supports local production and consumption of goods, local control of government, and promotion of local history, local culture and local identity...
and community broadcasting
Community radio
Community radio is a type of radio service, that offers a third model of radio broadcasting beyond commercial broadcasting and public broadcasting. Community stations can serve geographic communities and communities of interest...
as a means to oppose the construction and use of local stations as mere rebroadcasters or satellite-fed translators of distant stations. Without specific requirements for service to the local community of license, stations could be constructed in large number by out-of-region broadcasters who feed transmitters via satellite
Communications satellite
A communications satellite is an artificial satellite stationed in space for the purpose of telecommunications...
and offer no local content.
There also has been a de-facto preference by regulators to encourage the assignment of broadcast licenses to smaller cities which otherwise would have no local voice, instead of allowing all broadcast activity to be concentrated in large metropolitan areas already served by many existing broadcasters.
When dealing with multiple competing US radio station applications, current FM allotment priorities are: (1) first full-time aural service; (2) second full-time aural service; (3) first local aural transmission service; and (4) Other public interest matters.
Similar criteria were extended to competing applicants for non-commercial stations by US legislation passed in 2000.
Suburban community problem
Any policy favouring applicants for communities not already served by an existing station has had the unintended effect of encouraging applicants to merely list a small suburb of a large city, claiming to be the "first station in the community" even though the larger city is well served by many existing stations. "The Suburban Community Problem" was recognised in FCC policy as early as 1965. "Stations in metropolitan areas often tend to seek out national and regional advertisers and to identify themselves with the entire metropolitan area rather than with the particular needs of their specified communities," according to an FCC policy statement of the era. In order "to discourage applicants for smaller communities who would be merely substandard stations for neighbouring, larger communities," the FCC established the so-called "Suburban Community presumption" which required applicants for AM stations in such markets to demonstrate that they had ascertained the unmet programming needs of the specific communities and were prepared to satisfy those needs.By 1969, the same issues had spread to FM licensing; instead of building transmitters in the community to nominally be served, applicants would often seek to locate the tower site at least halfway to the next major city. In one such precedent case (the Berwick Doctrine), the FCC required a hearing before Berwick, a prospective broadcaster, could locate transmitters midway between Pittston, Pennsylvania
Pittston, Pennsylvania
Pittston is a city in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, United States, between Scranton and Wilkes-Barre. It gained prominence in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as an active anthracite coal mining city, drawing a large portion of its labor force from European immigrants. The population was...
(the city of license) and a larger audience in Wilkes-Barre
Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania
Wilkes-Barre is a city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania, the county seat of Luzerne County. It is at the center of the Wyoming Valley area and is one of the principal cities in the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre metropolitan area, which had a population of 563,631 as of the 2010 Census...
.
A related problem was that of 'move-in'. Outlying communities would find their small-town local stations sold to outsiders, who would then attempt to change the community of license to a suburb of the nearest major city, move transmitter locations or remove existing local content from broadcasts in an attempt to "move in" to the larger city.
The small town of Anniston, Alabama
Anniston, Alabama
Anniston is a city in Calhoun County in the state of Alabama, United States.As of the 2000 census, the population of the city is 24,276. According to the 2005 U.S. Census estimates, the city had a population of 23,741...
, due to its location 90 miles west of Atlanta and 65 miles east of Birmingham
Birmingham, Alabama
Birmingham is the largest city in Alabama. The city is the county seat of Jefferson County. According to the 2010 United States Census, Birmingham had a population of 212,237. The Birmingham-Hoover Metropolitan Area, in estimate by the U.S...
, has lost local content from both TV and FM stations which were re-targeted at one of the two larger urban centres or moved outright (WHMA-FM Anniston is now licensed as WNNX College Park, Georgia
College Park, Georgia
College Park is a city located partly in Fulton County, Georgia and partially in Clayton County, Georgia, in the United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 13,942...
- an Atlanta suburb - after a failed attempt to relicense it to Sandy Springs, Georgia
Sandy Springs, Georgia
Sandy Springs is a city in north Georgia, United States. It is a northern suburb of Atlanta. With a 2010 population of 93,853, Sandy Springs is the sixth-largest city in the state and the second-largest city in Metro Atlanta. Sandy Springs is located in north Fulton County, Georgia, just south of...
- another Atlanta suburb. Transmitters are now in downtown Atlanta.)
A 1988 precedent case (Faye and Richard Tuck, 3 FCC Rcd 5374, 1988) created the "Tuck Analysis" as a standard which attempts to address the Suburban Community Problem on a case-by-case basis by examining:
- the station’s proposed signal coverage over the urbanized area (the “Coverage Factor”);
- the relative population size and distance between the suburban community and the urban market (the “Relative Size and Distance Factor”); and
- the independence of the suburban community, based on various factors that would indicate self-sufficiency (the “Independence Factor”).
Despite the best intentions of regulators, the system remains prone to manipulation.
Licensing and on-air identity
While becoming less meaningful over the decades, stations are still required to post a public filePublic file
A public file is a collection of documents required by a broadcasting authority to be maintained by all broadcast stations under its jurisdiction....
somewhere within 25 miles of the city, and to cover the entire city with a local signal. In the United States, a station's transmitter
Transmitter
In electronics and telecommunications a transmitter or radio transmitter is an electronic device which, with the aid of an antenna, produces radio waves. The transmitter itself generates a radio frequency alternating current, which is applied to the antenna. When excited by this alternating...
usually cannot be located more than 15 miles from the city of license, even if it primarily serves another city. For example, American television station WTTV
WTTV
WTTV is a CW-affiliated television station licensed to Bloomington, Indiana, serving the Indianapolis television market. WTTV is owned by the Tribune Company, and is one-half of a duopoly with WXIN , the market's Fox affiliate. The two stations share a studio at 6910 Network Place on the northwest...
primarily serves Indianapolis
Indianapolis
Indianapolis is the capital of the U.S. state of Indiana, and the county seat of Marion County, Indiana. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city's population is 839,489. It is by far Indiana's largest city and, as of the 2010 U.S...
; however, the transmitter is located farther south than the other stations in that city because it is licensed to Bloomington
Bloomington, Indiana
Bloomington is a city in and the county seat of Monroe County in the southern region of the U.S. state of Indiana. The population was 80,405 at the 2010 census....
, 50 miles south of Indianapolis. In some cases, such as Jeannette, Pennsylvania
Jeannette, Pennsylvania
Jeannette is a city in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 10,788 at the 2000 census.-Geography:Jeannette is located at ....
-licensed WPCW-TV 19, the FCC has waived this requirement; the station claimed that retaining an existing transmitter site 25.6 miles southeast of its new community of license of Jeannette would be in compliance with the Commission's minimum distance separation requirements (avoiding interference to co-channel
Co-channel interference
Co-channel interference or CCI is crosstalk from two different radio transmitters using the same frequency. There can be several causes of co-channel radio interference; four examples are listed here....
WOIO
WOIO
WOIO, virtual channel 19 , is the CBS affiliate in Cleveland, Ohio. It is licensed to the nearby suburb of Shaker Heights. WOIO is owned by Raycom Media and its sister station to MyNetworkTV affiliate WUAB . The two stations share a studio facility in Cleveland and WOIO's transmitter is located in...
19 Shaker Heights
Shaker Heights, Ohio
Shaker Heights is a city in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, United States. As of the 2010 Census, the city population was 28,448. It is an inner-ring streetcar suburb of Cleveland that abuts the city on its eastern side.-Topography:Shaker Heights is located at...
). Another extreme example of a station's transmitter located far from the city of license is the FM station KPNT
KPNT
KPNT is a commercial radio station licensed to Collinsville, IL, broadcasting to the St. Louis, Missouri area on 105.7 FM. KPNT airs a mainly modern rock music format with just a hint of active rock branded as "The Point".- History :...
, licensed in the town of Collinsville, IL. The station primarily serves the greater St. Louis, MO area, as well as numerous outlying communities south of St. Louis and near the Illinois border. The station's transmitter is actually located near Hillsboro, MO, about 72 km (45 mi) away from the community of license, Collinsville, IL.
FCC regulations also require stations at least once an hour to state the station's call letters, followed by the city of license. However, the FCC has no restrictions on additional names after the city of license, so many stations afterwards add the nearest large city. For example, American television station WOIO
WOIO
WOIO, virtual channel 19 , is the CBS affiliate in Cleveland, Ohio. It is licensed to the nearby suburb of Shaker Heights. WOIO is owned by Raycom Media and its sister station to MyNetworkTV affiliate WUAB . The two stations share a studio facility in Cleveland and WOIO's transmitter is located in...
is licensed to Shaker Heights
Shaker Heights, Ohio
Shaker Heights is a city in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, United States. As of the 2010 Census, the city population was 28,448. It is an inner-ring streetcar suburb of Cleveland that abuts the city on its eastern side.-Topography:Shaker Heights is located at...
, a suburb of Cleveland. It is identified as "WOIO - WOIO DT
Digital television
Digital television is the transmission of audio and video by digital signals, in contrast to the analog signals used by analog TV...
Shaker Heights-Cleveland." Similarly, northern New York's
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
WWNY identifies as WWNY-TV
WWNY-TV
WWNY-TV is the CBS-affiliated television station for Upstate New York's North Country region, licensed to Carthage. It broadcasts a high definition digital signal on VHF channel 7 from a transmitter along State Street/NY 126 in Wilna's Carthage section. The station can also be seen on Time Warner...
7
North American broadcast television frequencies
The North American broadcast television frequencies are on designated television channels numbered 2 through 69, approximately between 54 and 806 MHz. Traditionally, the frequencies are divided into two sections, the very high frequency band and the ultra high frequency band. The VHF band is...
Carthage
Carthage, New York
Carthage is a village located in the Town of Wilna in Jefferson County, New York. The population was 3,721 at the 2000 census. The village is named after the historic Carthage in North Africa....
-Watertown as a historical artifact; the original broadcasts originated from Champion Hill
Champion, New York
Champion is a town in Jefferson County, New York, USA. The population was 4,494 at the 2010 census. The town is named after General Henry Champion, early owner.The Town of Champion is in the southern part of the county and is east of Watertown....
in 1954 so the license still reflects this tiny location.
If the station is licensed in the primary city served, on occasion the station will list a second city next to it. For example, American television station WTVT
WTVT
WTVT, channel 13, is a television station in Tampa, Florida. It is an owned and operated station of the Fox Broadcasting Company, a subsidiary of the News Corporation...
, licensed to Tampa, Florida
Tampa, Florida
Tampa is a city in the U.S. state of Florida. It serves as the county seat for Hillsborough County. Tampa is located on the west coast of Florida. The population of Tampa in 2010 was 335,709....
, its primary city, identifies as "WTVT/WTVT-DT Tampa/St. Petersburg
St. Petersburg, Florida
St. Petersburg is a city in Pinellas County, Florida, United States. It is known as a vacation destination for both American and foreign tourists. As of 2008, the population estimate by the U.S. Census Bureau is 245,314, making St...
," as St. Petersburg is another major city in the market.
There is no longer a requirement to carry programs relevant to the particular community, or even necessarily to operate or transmit from that community. Accordingly, stations licensed to smaller communities in major metropolitan markets
Metropolitan area
The term metropolitan area refers to a region consisting of a densely populated urban core and its less-populated surrounding territories, sharing industry, infrastructure, and housing. A metropolitan area usually encompasses multiple jurisdictions and municipalities: neighborhoods, townships,...
often target programming toward the entire market rather than the official home community, and often move their studio facilities to the larger urban centre as well. For instance, the Canadian radio station CFNY
CFNY-FM
CFNY-FM, promoted under the branding 102.1 The Edge, is a Canadian radio station, broadcasting at 102.1 FM. The station rose to prominence in the 1970s and 1980s due to its freestyle DJing format and unique choice to play alternative music...
is officially licensed to Brampton, Ontario
Brampton
Brampton is the third-largest city in the Greater Toronto Area of Ontario, Canada.Brampton may also refer to:- Canada :* Brampton, a city in Ontario** Brampton GO Station, a station in the GO Transit network located in the city- United Kingdom :...
, although its studio and transmitter facilities are located in downtown Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
.
This may, at times, lead to confusion — while media directories normally list broadcast stations by their legal community of license, audiences often disregard (or may even be entirely unaware of) the distinction.
Table of allotments
In the United StatesUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, the Federal Communications Commission
Federal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, created, Congressional statute , and with the majority of its commissioners appointed by the current President. The FCC works towards six goals in the areas of broadband, competition, the spectrum, the...
maintains a Table of Allotments, which assigns individual channel frequencies to individual cities or communities for both TV
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
and FM radio.
A corresponding Table of Allotments for digital television
Digital television
Digital television is the transmission of audio and video by digital signals, in contrast to the analog signals used by analog TV...
was created in 1997. To operate a licensed station, a broadcaster must first obtain allocation of the desired frequencies in the FCC's Table of Allotments for the intended city of license. This process is subject to various political and bureaucratic restrictions, based on considerations including the number of existing stations in the area.
The term "city" has in some cases been relaxed to mean "community", often including the unincorporated areas around the city that share a mailing address. This sometimes leads to inconsistencies, such as the licensing of one metro Atlanta
Metro Atlanta
The Atlanta metropolitan area or metro Atlanta, officially designated by the US Census Bureau as the Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta Metropolitan Statistical Area, is the most populous metro area in the U.S. state of Georgia and the ninth-largest metropolitan statistical area in the United States...
station to the unincorporated Cobb County
Cobb County, Georgia
Cobb County is a county located in the U.S. state of Georgia. Its county seat and largest city is Marietta, which is located in the center of the county. The county was named for Thomas Willis Cobb, who in the early 19th century was a United States representative and senator from Georgia...
community of Mableton
Mableton, Georgia
Mableton is a census-designated place in Cobb County, Georgia, United States. As of the 2010 census, the CDP had a population of 37,115.It was named for Robert Mable, who in 1843 bought 300 acres of land on September 11...
, but the refusal to license another to Sandy Springs
Sandy Springs, Georgia
Sandy Springs is a city in north Georgia, United States. It is a northern suburb of Atlanta. With a 2010 population of 93,853, Sandy Springs is the sixth-largest city in the state and the second-largest city in Metro Atlanta. Sandy Springs is located in north Fulton County, Georgia, just south of...
, which is one of the largest cities in the state, and was at the time an unincorporated part of Fulton County
Fulton County, Georgia
Fulton County is a county located in the U.S. state of Georgia. Its county seat is Atlanta, the state capital since 1868 and the principal county of the Atlanta metropolitan area...
only for political reasons in the Georgia General Assembly
Georgia General Assembly
The Georgia General Assembly is the state legislature of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is bicameral, being composed of the Georgia House of Representatives and the Georgia Senate....
.
Often, the city of license does not correspond to the location of the station itself, of the primary audience or of the communities identified in the station's branding and advertising.
Some of the more common reasons for a community of license to be listed as a point far from the actual audience include:
The "compromise" location: A broadcaster may wish to serve two different communities, both in the same region but far enough from each other that a transmitter in one market would provide poor service to the other. While a transmitter in each community served would be preferable, occasionally a station licensed to a small town between the two larger centres will be used.
| Broadcaster | City | Community of license | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| CBK (AM) CBK (AM) CBK is a Canadian clear-channel station, broadcasting the CBC Radio One network at 540 AM to most of southern Saskatchewan. The AM transmitter is located in Watrous, the city of licence, but the studios are in the CBC Regina Broadcast Centre, 2440 Broad Street in Regina. This facility also houses... 540 |
Regina Regina, Saskatchewan Regina is the capital city of the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. The city is the second-largest in the province and a cultural and commercial centre for southern Saskatchewan. It is governed by Regina City Council. Regina is the cathedral city of the Roman Catholic and Romanian Orthodox... |
Watrous Watrous, Saskatchewan Watrous is a small town in Saskatchewan, Canada, approximately 100 km east of Saskatoon. Its economy is based on agriculture and tourism, due to its proximity to Manitou Beach, home of the Mineral Spa and Danceland dance hall . Watrous was named after Frank Watrous Morse... |
The original historic AM transmitter was built in Watrous in 1939 to serve both Regina and Saskatoon Saskatoon Saskatoon is a city in central Saskatchewan, Canada, on the South Saskatchewan River. Residents of the city of Saskatoon are called Saskatonians. The city is surrounded by the Rural Municipality of Corman Park No. 344.... from studios in Regina. Both cities are now served by local FM repeaters of CBK, yet the original clear-channel AM 540 and the community of license remain with tiny Watrous. |
| CHWI-TV CHWI-TV CHWI-DT is a Canadian television station owned by Bell Media. It is part of the CTV Two system. The station is licensed to Wheatley, Ontario, but operates out of Windsor. CHWI also has offices in Chatham.... 16 / 60 A-Channel |
Windsor Windsor, Ontario Windsor is the southernmost city in Canada and is located in Southwestern Ontario at the western end of the heavily populated Quebec City – Windsor Corridor. It is within Essex County, Ontario, although administratively separated from the county government. Separated by the Detroit River, Windsor... |
Wheatley Wheatley, Ontario Wheatley is a community in Southwestern Ontario, Canada, within the municipality of Chatham-Kent. It lies about east of Leamington. Nearby parks include Two Creeks Conservation Area, which has 15 km of hiking and bicycling paths, Kopegaron Woods Conservation Area, Hillman Marsh Conservation... |
Founded 1993 as an independent local television station, licensed to Wheatley in an attempt to serve both Chatham Chatham–Kent Chatham–Kent is a unitary authority in Southwestern Ontario, Canada. Mostly rural, its centres of population are Blenheim, Chatham, Dresden, Ridgetown, Tilbury and Wallaceburg. Modern Chatham–Kent was created in 1998 by the merger of Kent County and its municipalities.- History :The former city of... and Windsor, Ontario. The UHF 16 Wheatley transmitter proved inadequate to cover Windsor so, in 1995, a Windsor repeater was deployed on channel 60. Newsrooms are in Windsor. |
The suburb
Suburb
The word suburb mostly refers to a residential area, either existing as part of a city or as a separate residential community within commuting distance of a city . Some suburbs have a degree of administrative autonomy, and most have lower population density than inner city neighborhoods...
an station: In FM radio broadcasting, small local stations were sometimes built to serve suburban or outlying areas in an era where AM radio stations held the largest audiences and much of the FM spectrum lay vacant. In the era of vacuum tube
Vacuum tube
In electronics, a vacuum tube, electron tube , or thermionic valve , reduced to simply "tube" or "valve" in everyday parlance, is a device that relies on the flow of electric current through a vacuum...
s, the five-tube AM radio with no FM tuning capability and limited audio quality was common; later advances in receiver design were to make good-quality FM commonplace (even though most AM/FM stereo receivers still have severely-limited AM frequency response and no AM stereo
AM stereo
AM stereo is a term given to a series of mutually incompatible techniques for wireless radio broadcasting stereo audio in the AM band in a manner that is compatible with standard AM receivers...
decoders). Eventually FM spectrum became a very scare commodity in many markets as AM stations moved to the FM dial, relegating AM largely to talk radio
Talk radio
Talk radio is a radio format containing discussion about topical issues. Most shows are regularly hosted by a single individual, and often feature interviews with a number of different guests. Talk radio typically includes an element of listener participation, usually by broadcasting live...
. As cities expanded, former small-town FM stations found themselves not only in what were now becoming rapidly-expanding suburbs but also on what was becoming some of the most valuable spectrum in broadcast radio. The once-tiny FM stations would often then be sold, increased (where possible) to much-higher power and used to serve a huge mainstream audience in the larger metropolitan area.
| Broadcaster | City | Community of license | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| CFNY-FM CFNY-FM CFNY-FM, promoted under the branding 102.1 The Edge, is a Canadian radio station, broadcasting at 102.1 FM. The station rose to prominence in the 1970s and 1980s due to its freestyle DJing format and unique choice to play alternative music... 102.1 |
Toronto Toronto Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from... |
Brampton, Ontario Brampton Brampton is the third-largest city in the Greater Toronto Area of Ontario, Canada.Brampton may also refer to:- Canada :* Brampton, a city in Ontario** Brampton GO Station, a station in the GO Transit network located in the city- United Kingdom :... |
Originally a secondary signal for a tiny local station, CHIC CIAO (AM) CIAO is a Canadian radio station, broadcasting at 530 AM in Brampton, Ontario. The station, owned by Evanov Communications, broadcasts a multilingual programming format.-History:... AM Brampton, the station originally operated with a mere 857 watts, first rebroadcasting existing AM programming, then adopting an alternative-rock format in which entire albums were broadcast nonstop with just a break for the AM operator to flip the LP over. The station has since changed hands various times in the 1980s and now broadcasts from Toronto's CN Tower CN Tower The CN Tower is a communications and observation tower in Downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Standing tall, it was completed in 1976, becoming the world's tallest free-standing structure and world's tallest tower at the time. It held both records for 34 years until the completion of the Burj... with a modern rock Modern rock Modern rock is a rock format commonly found on commercial radio; the format consists primarily of the alternative rock genre... format. Effectively now a Toronto station, the city of license still indicates Brampton. |
| KROQ-FM KROQ-FM KROQ-FM — branded 106.7 KROQ — is a commercial modern rock radio station licensed to Pasadena, California serving the Greater Los Angeles. The call sign is pronounced "kay rock." It is the flagship station of Loveline hosted by Dr... 106.7 |
Burbank Burbank, California Burbank is a city in Los Angeles County in Southern California, United States, north of downtown Los Angeles. The estimated population in 2010 was 103,340.... - Los Angeles Los Ángeles Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants... |
Pasadena, California Pasadena, California Pasadena is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. Although famous for hosting the annual Rose Bowl football game and Tournament of Roses Parade, Pasadena is the home to many scientific and cultural institutions, including the California Institute of Technology , the Jet... |
Originally owned by the Pasadena Presbyterian Church and, until 1969, broadcast from a studio in the basement of the church. Multiple changes of ownership, location, format and callsign (the station went bankrupt more than once) ended with Infinity Broadcasting (now CBS CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of... ) buying the station in 1986 and moving the studios to Burbank the following year. The city of license still indicates Pasadena. |
The short-spaced station: To avoid co-channel interference
Co-channel interference
Co-channel interference or CCI is crosstalk from two different radio transmitters using the same frequency. There can be several causes of co-channel radio interference; four examples are listed here....
, a minimum distance is maintained between stations operating on the same frequency in different markets. On VHF, full-power stations are typically 175 miles or more apart before the same channel is used again. An otherwise-desirable channel may therefore be unavailable to a community unless either it is operated at greatly reduced-power, forced onto a strongly-directional antenna pattern to protect the distant co-channel station or relocated to some other, more distant location in the region to maintain proper spacing. The choice of another community as home for a station can be one possible means to avoid short-spacing, effectively shifting the entire station's coverage area to maintain the required distances between transmitters.
| Broadcaster | City | Community of license | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| CJOH-TV-6 CJOH-TV CJOH-DT is a television station serving Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, and the surrounding region. Owned by Bell Media, it is part of the CTV Television Network.... CTV CTV television network CTV Television Network is a Canadian English language television network and is owned by Bell Media. It is Canada's largest privately-owned network, and has consistently placed as Canada's top-rated network in total viewers and in key demographics since 2002, after several years trailing the rival... |
Kingston Kingston, Ontario Kingston, Ontario is a Canadian city located in Eastern Ontario where the St. Lawrence River flows out of Lake Ontario. Originally a First Nations settlement called "Katarowki," , growing European exploration in the 17th Century made it an important trading post... |
Deseronto, Ontario Deseronto, Ontario Deseronto is a town in the Canadian province of Ontario, in Hastings County, located on the shore of the Bay of Quinte. The town had a population of 1,824 in the Canada 2006 Census.The town was named for Capt... |
Transmitter primarily serves Kingston, but its construction at full-power in Kingston itself would have resulted in interference to a small part of the CBMT CBMT CBMT-DT is the CBC's television station in Montreal, Quebec. Programming on CBMT is seen on a network of more than 50 rebroadcasters throughout Quebec and in three communities in northern Manitoba: Brochet, Poplar River, and Shamattawa.-History:... (CBC CBC Television CBC Television is a Canadian television network owned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the national public broadcaster.Although the CBC is supported by public funding, the television network supplements this funding with commercial advertising revenue, in contrast to CBC Radio which are... 6 Montreal Montreal Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America... ) coverage area. The station was therefore built further west, on Mount Carmel in Deseronto, to cover Kingston and Belleville Belleville, Ontario Belleville is a city located at the mouth of the Moira River on the Bay of Quinte in Southern Ontario, Canada, in the Quebec City-Windsor Corridor. It is the seat of Hastings County, but is politically independent of it. and the centre of the Bay of Quinte Region... . Co-channel CIII-TV CIII-TV CIII-DT-41 is a television station owned by Shaw Communications that serves much of the population of the Canadian province of Ontario. It is a flagship station of the Global Television Network... 6 (Global Global Television Network Global Television Network is an English language privately owned television network in Canada, owned by Calgary-based Shaw Communications, as part of its Shaw Media division... ) would in turn be pushed westward to Paris, Ontario Paris, Ontario Paris, Ontario is a community on the Grand River in Ontario, Canada. The town was established in 1850. In 1999, its town government was amalgamated into that of the County of Brant, Ontario, thus ending about 149 years as a separate incorporated municipality.-History:The town was first settled in... when it signed on a few years later, causing it to need a powerful UHF rebroadcaster to adequately cover the Toronto Toronto Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from... area. |
| WITI 6 Fox; CBS CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of... at the time |
Milwaukee | Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin Whitefish Bay is a village in Milwaukee County in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. The population was 13,508 as of the 2005 census.-Geography:Whitefish Bay is located at .... |
WITI originally signed on in 1956 with the North Shore suburb of Whitefish Bay as nominal community of license operating from a transmission site far north of Milwaukee in the then-rural Ozaukee County town of Mequon Mequon, Wisconsin Mequon is a city in Ozaukee County, Wisconsin, United States. It had a population of 21,823 at the 2000 census, and an estimated population of 23,739 in July 2009... (which has since been incorporated as the City of Mequon) as the allocation of VHF 6 to Milwaukee itself at the time would have left the station short-spaced to WOC-TV KWQC-TV KWQC-TV, virtual channel 6 , is the NBC-affiliated television station for the Quad Cities television market . It is licensed to Davenport and is owned by Young Broadcasting... in Davenport, Iowa Davenport, Iowa Davenport is a city located along the Mississippi River in Scott County, Iowa, United States. Davenport is the county seat of and largest city in Scott County. Davenport was founded on May 14, 1836 by Antoine LeClaire and was named for his friend, George Davenport, a colonel during the Black Hawk... . By 1962, transmitters and community of license had both moved to Milwaukee as the FCC learned how to better finesse distancing requirements and allow some exceptions depending on area geography. |
| WETP 2 PBS Public Broadcasting Service The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia.... |
Knoxville Knoxville, Tennessee Founded in 1786, Knoxville is the third-largest city in the U.S. state of Tennessee, U.S.A., behind Memphis and Nashville, and is the county seat of Knox County. It is the largest city in East Tennessee, and the second-largest city in the Appalachia region... Tri-Cities Tri-Cities, Tennessee In Tennessee and Virginia the name "Tri-Cities" refers to the region comprising the cities of Kingsport, Johnson City and Bristol and the surrounding smaller towns and communities in Northeast Tennessee and Southwest Virginia... |
Sneedville, Tennessee Sneedville, Tennessee Sneedville is a town in Hancock County, Tennessee, United States. The population was 1,387 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Hancock County.- History :... |
East Tennessee Public Television was founded in 1967 with a transmitter atop Short Mountain in tiny Sneedville (pop. 1000) as the only location which could reach both Knoxville and Johnson City, Tennessee Johnson City, Tennessee Johnson City is a city in Carter, Sullivan, and Washington counties in the U.S. state of Tennessee, with most of the city being in Washington County... on this frequency without being short-spaced to co-channel stations in Nashville WKRN-TV WKRN-TV, virtual channel 2.1 , is the ABC-affiliated television station in Nashville, Tennessee. It is owned by Young Broadcasting under the operation of Gray Television. Its transmitter is located in Brentwood, Tennessee.... to the west, Atlanta WSB-TV WSB-TV, virtual channel 2.1 , is the ABC affiliate in Atlanta, Georgia. It is the flagship television station of Cox Enterprises and its Cox Media Group subsidiary... to the south and Greensboro WFMY-TV WFMY-TV is a television station in Greensboro, North Carolina. Owned by the Gannett Company, WFMYis the CBS affiliate for the Greensboro/High Point/Winston-Salem area... to the east. A local signal was extended into Knoxville itself in 1990 using WKOP, a UHF station. |
The distant mountaintop antenna: In hilly or mountainous regions, a city would often be built in a waterfront or lakeside location (such as Plattsburgh-Burlington
Burlington, Vermont
Burlington is the largest city in the U.S. state of Vermont and the shire town of Chittenden County. Burlington lies south of the U.S.-Canadian border and some south of Montreal....
, both on Lake Champlain
Lake Champlain
Lake Champlain is a natural, freshwater lake in North America, located mainly within the borders of the United States but partially situated across the Canada—United States border in the Canadian province of Quebec.The New York portion of the Champlain Valley includes the eastern portions of...
) - lower ground which in turn would be surrounded by tall mountain peaks. The only reliable means to get the VHF television or radio signals over the mountains was to build a station atop one of the mountain peaks. This occasionally left stations with a distant mountaintop (or its nearest small crossroads) as the historical city of license, even though the audience was elsewhere.
| Broadcaster | City | Community of license | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| WPTZ WPTZ WPTZ, virtual channel 5, is an NBC-affiliated television station located in Plattsburgh, New York, USA. WPTZ is owned by Hearst Television, and has its studios in Plattsburgh and transmitter located on Mount Mansfield in Vermont.... 5 NBC NBC The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago... |
Plattsburgh | North Pole North Pole, New York North Pole is a small hamlet located in the town of Wilmington, Essex County, New York in the Adirondack Mountains.- Geography :This tiny hamlet is situated in Adirondack Park at the northern edge of Essex County near Whiteface Mountain, 12 miles from Lake Placid, New York and approximately 30... |
WPTZ was originally licensed in 1954 to North Pole, New York North Pole, New York North Pole is a small hamlet located in the town of Wilmington, Essex County, New York in the Adirondack Mountains.- Geography :This tiny hamlet is situated in Adirondack Park at the northern edge of Essex County near Whiteface Mountain, 12 miles from Lake Placid, New York and approximately 30... , the closest tiny crossroads to its mountain Mountain Image:Himalaya_annotated.jpg|thumb|right|The Himalayan mountain range with Mount Everestrect 58 14 160 49 Chomo Lonzorect 200 28 335 52 Makalurect 378 24 566 45 Mount Everestrect 188 581 920 656 Tibetan Plateaurect 250 406 340 427 Rong River... top transmitter site near Lake Placid Lake Placid, New York Lake Placid is a village in the Adirondack Mountains in Essex County, New York, United States. As of the 2000 census, the village had a population of 2,638.... /Adirondack State Park Adirondack State Park The Adirondack Park is a publicly protected area in northeast New York. It is the largest park and the largest state-level protected area in the contiguous United States, and the largest National Historic Landmark.... . Station has used "North Pole - Plattsburgh - Burlington" or even "Montreal Montreal Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America... " as part of its on-air identity but the community of license, once chosen, is not easily modified. It took until January 2011 to finally transfer the COL from North Pole to Plattsburgh. |
The relocation of an existing station: Often, a license for a new station will not be available in a community, either because a regulatory agency was only willing to accept new applications within specified narrow timeframes or because there are no suitable vacant channels. A prospective broadcaster must therefore buy an existing station as the only way to readily enter the market, in some cases being left with a station in a suburban, outlying or adjacent-market area if that were the only facility available for sale.
| Broadcaster | City | Community of license | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| CHRO-TV CHRO-TV CHRO-TV is a television station serving the National Capital and Ottawa Valley regions of Ontario, Canada. Owned by Bell Media, it is part of the CTV Two television system.... |
Ottawa Ottawa Ottawa is the capital of Canada, the second largest city in the Province of Ontario, and the fourth largest city in the country. The city is located on the south bank of the Ottawa River in the eastern portion of Southern Ontario... |
Pembroke Pembroke, Ontario Pembroke is a city in the province of Ontario, Canada, at the confluence of the Muskrat River and the Ottawa River in the Ottawa Valley... |
Launched in the small city of Pembroke in 1961, the station struggled for financial viability until gaining carriage on cable systems in Ottawa Ottawa Ottawa is the capital of Canada, the second largest city in the Province of Ontario, and the fourth largest city in the country. The city is located on the south bank of the Ottawa River in the eastern portion of Southern Ontario... and adding a news bureau there — but because it was affiliated with television networks that already had other affiliates in Ottawa proper, it was restricted to cable distribution. It was eventually acquired by CHUM Limited CHUM Limited CHUM Limited was a media company based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada from 1945 to 2007. Immediately prior to its acquisition, it held full or joint control of two Canadian television systems — Citytv and A-Channel — comprising 11 local stations, and one CBC Television affiliate, one... in 1997, and added an over-the-air transmitter in Ottawa after joining CHUM's NewNet system. CHUM subsequently centralized the station's operations and studios in Ottawa — legally, however, the Pembroke transmitter is still the primary station. |
| CHSC CHSC (AM) CHSC was an AM radio station located in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada. CHSC broadcast both daytime and nighttime with a radiated power of 10,000 watts at 1220 kHz AM... |
Toronto Toronto Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from... |
St. Catharines | After going into bankruptcy in 2002, the station was acquired by Pellpropco, a company which repurposed the station as a multilingual station aimed at the sizable Italian Canadian community in Toronto Toronto Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from... . After numerous additional license violations over the next number of years, the CRTC revoked the station's license in 2010. |
| KNTV KNTV KNTV, channel 11, is the NBC owned-and-operated television station in the Bay Area market. It is licensed to San Jose, with its transmitter located on San Bruno Mountain, just south of San Francisco. It shares facilities in San Jose with NBC Universal sister station KSTS and CNBC's Silicon... 11 NBC NBC The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago... |
San Francisco | San José, California San Jose, California San Jose is the third-largest city in California, the tenth-largest in the U.S., and the county seat of Santa Clara County which is located at the southern end of San Francisco Bay... |
NBC NBC The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago... programming traditionally had been carried by KRON-TV KRON-TV KRON-TV, virtual channel 4 , is a television station in San Francisco, California, serving as the Bay Area affiliate of the MyNetworkTV programming service; the station is owned by Young Broadcasting... 4, a San Francisco affiliate which NBC had unsuccessfully attempted to purchase outright for $ United States dollar The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies.... 750 million in 1999. Outbid by an outside buyer, NBC attempted to force the new owners to rebrand the station as "NBC 4" and greatly restrict the station's ability to schedule its programming differently from the main network. The new owners refused. NBC purchased the San José station for $230 million in 2001, moving their network programming on January 1, 2002 and relocating KNTV's transmitters to San Bruno Mountain San Bruno Mountain San Bruno Mountain in northern San Mateo County, California is the northernmost part of the Santa Cruz Mountains. Most of the mountain lies within the San Bruno Mountain State Park, a unique open-space island in the midst of the San Francisco Peninsula's urbanization. Next to the state park is the... on September 12, 2005 over KRON's objections. The station's license and newly-built studios remain in San José and, in an odd twist of fate, KNTV will retain its valuable high-VHF Band III Band III is the name of a radio frequency range within the very high frequency part of the electromagnetic spectrum.Band III ranges from 174 to 230 MHz, and it is primarily used for radio and television broadcasting... channel position while KRON-TV (now affiliated with sixth-ranked My Network TV) is forced onto UHF by the upcoming 2009 digital television transition DTV transition in the United States The DTV transition in the United States was the switchover from analog to exclusively digital broadcasting of free over-the-air television programming... . |
| WPCW WPCW WPCW is a The CW-affiliated television station for Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania that is licensed to Jeannette. WPCW is owned by the CBS Corporation and serves as an affiliate of The CW Television Network for the television market... 19 The CW The CW Television Network The CW Television Network is a television network in the United States launched at the beginning of the 2006–2007 television season. It is a joint venture between CBS Corporation, the former owners of United Paramount Network , and Time Warner's Warner Bros., former majority owner of The WB... |
Pittsburgh | Jeannette, Pennsylvania Jeannette, Pennsylvania Jeannette is a city in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 10,788 at the 2000 census.-Geography:Jeannette is located at .... |
Originally a Johnstown Johnstown, Pennsylvania Johnstown is a city in Cambria County, Pennsylvania, United States, west-southwest of Altoona, Pennsylvania and east of Pittsburgh. The population was 20,978 at the 2010 census. It is the principal city of the Johnstown, Pennsylvania, Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includes Cambria County... station, one of the rare instances in which the community of license for an existing channel has successfully been changed. WPCW (then WTWB) managed to circumvent an FCC Federal Communications Commission The Federal Communications Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, created, Congressional statute , and with the majority of its commissioners appointed by the current President. The FCC works towards six goals in the areas of broadband, competition, the spectrum, the... moratorium on new channel allocations in Pittsburgh by listing Jeannette, a small community of 11,000 people technically in the Pittsburgh market area, as the new city of license for an existing station. Effectively a flag of convenience Flag of convenience (business) In business and commerce, the term flag of convenience is the use of a place, jurisdiction, state or country as a nominal "home base" for one's operations or charter, even though either no or virtually no operations or business are conducted there. It is also used where the organization operates... , this maneuver portrays the station's owners as moving it from a community that had at least two other broadcasters (Johnstown) to one that had none (Jeannette) - easier to justify for regulatory purposes. The actual intended target market, Pittsburgh, already has many local stations. While the transmitter remains in Jennerstown Jennerstown, Pennsylvania Jennerstown is a borough in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is part of the Johnstown, Pennsylvania Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 714 at the 2000 census. The borough is the home of Jennerstown Speedway. The town was named for Edward Jenner.Jennerstown is located... (a small borough near Johnstown) and is inadequate to properly cover Pittsburgh over-the-air, this nominal community of license in the Pittsburgh market confers "must-carry Must-carry In cable television, governments apply a must-carry regulation stating that locally-licensed television stations must be carried on a cable provider's system.- Canada :... " status for Pittsburgh's cable TV systems. Studios are at KDKA-TV KDKA-TV KDKA-TV, channel 2, is an owned and operated television station of the CBS Television Network, located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. KDKA-TV broadcasts from a transmitter located in the Perry North neighborhood of Pittsburgh, and its studios are located in downtown Pittsburgh at Gateway Center.... Pittsburgh and city-grade coverage for Pittsburgh itself is supplied by a UHF repeater. The main transmitters never were moved, and soon after taking a license to serve Jeannette the station applied for must-carry Must-carry In cable television, governments apply a must-carry regulation stating that locally-licensed television stations must be carried on a cable provider's system.- Canada :... on cable in Johnstown, its former community of license. No physical connection of this station with the small community of Jeannette has ever existed except as a very clever legal fiction Legal fiction A legal fiction is a fact assumed or created by courts which is then used in order to apply a legal rule which was not necessarily designed to be used in that way... . The station's new WPCW callsign is marketed using the slogan "Pittsburgh's CW", and has filed two construction permit Construction permit A construction permit or building permit is a permit required in most jurisdictions for new construction, or adding on to pre-existing structures, and in some cases for major renovations. Generally, the new construction must be inspected during construction and after completion to ensure compliance... applications to base a future digital transmitter within Allegheny County that would still give Jeannette a decent signal. |
| WPWR-TV WPWR-TV WPWR-TV, channel 50, is a MyNetworkTV-affiliated television station licensed to Gary, Indiana, and serving the Chicago, Illinois area. WPWR-TV is owned by Fox Television Stations, a division of the News Corporation, and is a sister station to Fox network outlet WFLD-TV... 50 MyTV MyNetworkTV MyNetworkTV is a television broadcast syndication service in the United States, owned by the Fox Entertainment Group, a division of News Corporation... |
Chicago Chicago Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles... |
Gary, Indiana Gary, Indiana Gary is a city in Lake County, Indiana, United States. The city is in the southeastern portion of the Chicago metropolitan area and is 25 miles from downtown Chicago. The population is 80,294 at the 2010 census, making it the seventh-largest city in the state. It borders Lake Michigan and is known... |
WPWR operates from Chicago studios, transmitting from the Willis Tower (formerly known as the Sears Tower), but is licensed out-of-state. Its owners obtained this channel allocation by first buying an existing construction permit for a Gary, Indiana station which had been licensed as Channel 56 but never built, then swapping its channel allocations with WYIN WYIN WYIN, virtual channel 56, is a public television station in Gary, Indiana, serving the Indiana side of the Chicago, Illinois market on channel 17 as a Public Broadcasting Service member television station. Transmitting from Cedar Lake, Indiana, and with studios and offices in Merrillville,... - a PBS Public Broadcasting Service The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia.... member station also licensed to Gary, Indiana. WYIN had been refused a Sears Tower transmitter location as Chicago has two existing PBS stations. |
| WPXE WPXE WPXE-TV, digital channel 40, is the Ion Television O&O station for Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with the city of license thirty miles south in Kenosha. However, the digital transmitter is situated within the traditional tower farm site on Milwaukee's northeast side with the antenna located on the... 55 ION |
Milwaukee | Kenosha, Wisconsin Kenosha, Wisconsin Kenosha is a city and the county seat of Kenosha County in the State of Wisconsin in United States. With a population of 99,218 as of May 2011, Kenosha is the fourth-largest city in Wisconsin. Kenosha is also the fourth-largest city on the western shore of Lake Michigan, following Chicago,... |
A station which came on the air in 1988 as an affiliate of the religious LeSEA LeSEA LeSEA Broadcasting , also known as World Harvest Television, is an American Christian television network with over 40 affiliate stations in a number of U.S... network with low penetration into the general Milwaukee area and some local programming for Kenosha mixed within the general LeSEA schedule, WHKE (as it was known at the time) was purchased in 1995 by Paxson Communications to become the eventual Milwaukee station for the PAX network due to that network's strategy of buying low-rated outlying stations to quickly launch their network, and since then the station has drifted continuously north of their city of license. The station's analog tower was actually located in north-central Racine County, just close enough to serve the northern reaches of the Milwaukee area and still provide a city grade signal to Kenosha. The station has no Kenosha facilities and has their offices in the northern Milwaukee suburb of Glendale Glendale, Wisconsin Glendale is a city in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, United States. The population was 13,367 at the 2000 census.-Geography:Glendale is located at .... , while the station's digital transmitter is within the traditional tower site of all Milwaukee television stations on Milwaukee's northwest side, thus WPXE is a station based out of Milwaukee which nominally serves a city thirty miles away from their station facilities. The only mentions of Kenosha at all beyond identification come during their two locally-produced programs, which air usually early in the morning. |
| WTVE WTVE WTVE, Channel 25 , is a Reading, Pennsylvania television station that has been in operation since May 4, 1980 Its schedule consists mostly of infomercials and paid religious programs. It also simulcasts Real Politics Live and Richard French Live which are produced by sister station WRNN in... 51 Ind/Rel Religious broadcasting Religious broadcasting refers to broadcasting by religious organizations, usually with a religious message. Many religious organizations have long recorded content such as sermons and lectures, and have moved into distributing content on their Internet websites.While this article emphasises... |
Philadelphia | Reading, Pennsylvania Reading, Pennsylvania Reading is a city in southeastern Pennsylvania, USA, and seat of Berks County. Reading is the principal city of the Greater Reading Area and had a population of 88,082 as of the 2010 census, making it the fifth most populated city in the state after Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Allentown and Erie,... |
An outlying UHF station Rimshot (broadcasting) A rimshot is a radio and television broadcasting term for a station that attempts to reach a larger media market from a distant suburban, exurban, or even rural location. The term is primarily used with FM stations, and mainly in North America... which barely reaches Philadelphia despite applying for ever-increasing amounts of power, WTVE was near-bankrupt. Instead of building one main digital transmitter, WTVE is instead constructing a distributed transmission system Distributed transmission system In North American digital terrestrial television broadcasting, a distributed transmission system is a form of single-frequency network in which a single broadcast signal is fed via microwave, landline, or communications satellite to multiple synchronised terrestrial radio transmitter sites... composed nominally of eight co-channel transmitters in Reading Reading, Pennsylvania Reading is a city in southeastern Pennsylvania, USA, and seat of Berks County. Reading is the principal city of the Greater Reading Area and had a population of 88,082 as of the 2010 census, making it the fifth most populated city in the state after Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Allentown and Erie,... , Bethlehem Bethlehem, Pennsylvania Bethlehem is a city in Lehigh and Northampton Counties in the Lehigh Valley region of eastern Pennsylvania, in the United States. As of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 74,982, making it the seventh largest city in Pennsylvania, after Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Allentown, Erie,... , North East MD North East, Maryland North East is a town in Cecil County, Maryland, United States. The population was 2,733 at the 2000 census.-History:The Turkey Point Light Station was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2002... , Quarryville Quarryville, Pennsylvania Quarryville is a borough in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 1,994 at the 2000 census.-General information:*ZIP code: 17566*Area code: 717*Local phone exchanges: 786, 806*Named for noted quarries in the area... , Myerstown Myerstown, Pennsylvania Myerstown is a borough located in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania. It is part of the Lebanon, PA Metropolitan Statistical Area. As of the 2000 census, the borough had a total population of 3,171... , Lambertville Lambertville, New Jersey Lambertville is a city in Hunterdon County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city population was 3,906.Lambertville was originally incorporated as a town by an Act of the New Jersey Legislature on March 1, 1849, from portions of West Amwell Township... , Philadelphia Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,... and Brockton Brockton, Massachusetts Brockton is a city in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, United States; the population was 93,810 in the 2010 Census. Brockton, along with Plymouth, are the county seats of Plymouth County... for a combined total of 136.67kW of digital TV. As the bulk of this power (126 kW) is assigned to the Philadelphia transmitter site alone, effectively this configuration is a full-power Philadelphia station with a series of small low-power on-channel boosters covering the original service area and city of license. (Reading itself will get 760 watts.) |
| WVEA-TV WVEA-TV WVEA-TV is the Univision affiliate for Tampa Bay, Florida, licensed to Venice. The station is owned by Entravision Communications, and also operates Telefutura affiliate WFTT-TV. The two stations share studios on Hillsborough Avenue in Tampa, in a former Barnett Bank building west of Armenia Avenue... 62 Univisión Univision Univision is a Spanish-language television network in the United States. It has the largest audience of Spanish language television viewers according to Nielsen ratings. Randy Falco, COO, has been in charge of the company since the departure of Univision Communications president and CEO Joe Uva... |
Tampa Tampa, Florida Tampa is a city in the U.S. state of Florida. It serves as the county seat for Hillsborough County. Tampa is located on the west coast of Florida. The population of Tampa in 2010 was 335,709.... |
Venice, Florida Venice, Florida Venice is a city in Sarasota County, Florida, United States. According to the U.S. Census Bureau's 2007 estimates, the city had a population of 21,015. It is noted for its large snowbird population. Its newspaper is the Venice Gondolier Sun... |
A Spanish-language station licensed to Venice, a community nearly 60 miles away from its Tampa studios and nearly 55 miles away from its Riverview Riverview, Hillsborough County, Florida Riverview is an unincorporated census-designated place in Hillsborough County, Florida, United States. It is located near Brandon. The population was 71,050 at the 2010 census.... transmitter site, in a Tampa suburb. WVEA originally was an unprofitable English-language independent WBSV, which served the Sarasota Sarasota, Florida Sarasota is a city located in Sarasota County on the southwestern coast of the U.S. state of Florida. It is south of the Tampa Bay Area and north of Fort Myers... / Bradenton Bradenton, Florida Bradenton is a city in Manatee County, Florida, United States. The U.S. Census Bureau estimated the city's 2007 population to be 53,471. Bradenton is the largest Principal City of the Bradenton-Sarasota-Venice, Florida Metropolitan Statistical Area, which had a 2007 estimated population of 682,833... / Venice area. In 2000, Entravision acquired WBSV and in 2001 moved the transmitter from Venice to Riverview, increasing transmitter power and adopting its current Spanish-language « ¡vea! » identity (meaning "I see"). Prior to the move, WVEA's programming was seen on a low-powered channel in Tampa. |
The border blaster
Border blaster
A border blaster is a licensed commercial radio station that transmits at very high power from one nation to another. Border blasters should not be confused with international broadcast stations...
: Occasionally, a community on an international border is served using a station licensed to another country. This may provide access to less restrictive broadcast regulation or represent a means to use local marketing agreement
Local marketing agreement
In U.S. and Canadian broadcasting, a local marketing agreement is an agreement in which one company agrees to operate a radio or television station owned by another licensee...
s or adjacent-market licences to circumvent limits on the number of stations under common ownership.
| Broadcaster | City | Community of license | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| WTOR WTOR WTOR is a daytime-only radio station licensed to Youngstown, New York, USA. The station is currently owned by Birach Broadcasting Corporation. The station airs a multicultural programming format targeted primarily at the Greater Toronto Area in Canada... - AM 770 |
Toronto Toronto Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from... |
Youngstown, New York Youngstown, New York Youngstown is a village in Niagara County, New York, USA. The population was 1,957 at the 2000 census. It is part of the Buffalo–Niagara Falls Metropolitan Statistical Area.... |
WTOR airs a multicultural format aimed primarily at listeners in the Greater Toronto Area Greater Toronto Area The Greater Toronto Area is the largest metropolitan area in Canada, with a 2006 census population of 5.5 million. The Greater Toronto Area is usually defined as the central city of Toronto, along with four regional municipalities surrounding it: Durham, Halton, Peel, and York... in Canada Canada Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean... , rather than in its home state of New York New York New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east... . The station uses a highly directional transmitter array, aimed so strongly at Toronto that parts of Michigan Michigan Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake".... can receive the station even though it's barely audible in Buffalo Buffalo, New York Buffalo is the second most populous city in the state of New York, after New York City. Located in Western New York on the eastern shores of Lake Erie and at the head of the Niagara River across from Fort Erie, Ontario, Buffalo is the seat of Erie County and the principal city of the... , just 20 miles south of its transmitter. |
| KVRI KVRI KVRI is a radio station licensed to Blaine, Washington, United States, serving Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada with a combined India News/Talk/Music format. It broadcasts on AM frequency 1600 kHz and is under ownership of Multicultural Broadcasting with studios in Surrey, British... - AM 1600 |
Vancouver Vancouver Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,... |
Blaine, Washington Blaine, Washington Blaine is a city in Whatcom County, Washington, United States. The city's northern boundary is the Canadian border. Blaine is the shared home of the Peace Arch international monument... |
A Punjabi language Punjabi language Punjabi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by inhabitants of the historical Punjab region . For Sikhs, the Punjabi language stands as the official language in which all ceremonies take place. In Pakistan, Punjabi is the most widely spoken language... radio station licensed to the border town of Blaine, Washington. Owned by Multicultural Broadcasting Multicultural Broadcasting Multicultural Broadcasting is a media company based in New York City founded by Chinese-American businessman Arthur Liu. Multicultural caters mostly to the Asian American community and owns television and radio stations in several of the top markets in multiple languages.-History:This company was... , the station has a local marketing agreement with Radio India. Studios are located in Surrey, British Columbia Surrey, British Columbia Surrey is a city in the province of British Columbia, Canada. It is a member municipality of Metro Vancouver, the governing body of the Greater Vancouver Regional District... . |
| WLYK WLYK WLYK is a radio station in Cape Vincent, New York. The station airs an middle of the road music format.Although officially licensed to a community in the United States, the station primarily targets the larger neighboring Canadian market of Kingston, Ontario... -FM 102.7 |
Kingston Kingston, Ontario Kingston, Ontario is a Canadian city located in Eastern Ontario where the St. Lawrence River flows out of Lake Ontario. Originally a First Nations settlement called "Katarowki," , growing European exploration in the 17th Century made it an important trading post... |
Cape Vincent, New York Cape Vincent (village), New York Cape Vincent is a village in Jefferson County, New York, United States. The population was 760 at the 2000 census.The Village of Cape Vincent is in the northern part of the Town of Cape Vincent and is northwest of Watertown.- History :... |
A south-of-the-border station licensed to a tiny border village of 760 people. Owned by US-based Border International Broadcasting, but operated through a local marketing agreement Local marketing agreement In U.S. and Canadian broadcasting, a local marketing agreement is an agreement in which one company agrees to operate a radio or television station owned by another licensee... from the Kingston (Williamsville) studios of CIKR-FM CIKR-FM CIKR-FM is a Canadian radio station, broadcasting at 105.7 FM in Kingston, Ontario. The station broadcasts an adult rock format branded as K-Rock 105.7.... (K-Rock 105.7). Primary audience is Kingston, Ontario, population 117,000. |
| XETV XETV XETV is a television station licensed to Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico, serving as the CW Television Network affiliate for the San Diego, California area across the international border in the United States... 6 The CW The CW Television Network The CW Television Network is a television network in the United States launched at the beginning of the 2006–2007 television season. It is a joint venture between CBS Corporation, the former owners of United Paramount Network , and Time Warner's Warner Bros., former majority owner of The WB... |
San Diego | Tijuana Tijuana Tijuana is the largest city on the Baja California Peninsula and center of the Tijuana metropolitan area, part of the international San Diego–Tijuana metropolitan area. An industrial and financial center of Mexico, Tijuana exerts a strong influence on economics, education, culture, art, and politics... , Baja California Baja California Baja California officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Baja California is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is both the northernmost and westernmost state of Mexico. Before becoming a state in 1953, the area was known as the North... |
Mexican-owned station, fed from a San Diego-based studio. San Diego (channels 8 and 10), Los Angeles (channels 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, and 13) and Santa Barbara (channel 3) had already been allocated as early as 1952, with the remaining pair of VHF channels (6 and 12) allocated to Tijuana Tijuana Tijuana is the largest city on the Baja California Peninsula and center of the Tijuana metropolitan area, part of the international San Diego–Tijuana metropolitan area. An industrial and financial center of Mexico, Tijuana exerts a strong influence on economics, education, culture, art, and politics... by Mexican Mexico The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of... authorities. The only means to add a third VHF TV broadcaster to San Diego without unacceptable interference was therefore to enter a local marketing agreement Local marketing agreement In U.S. and Canadian broadcasting, a local marketing agreement is an agreement in which one company agrees to operate a radio or television station owned by another licensee... with Mexican-owned Televisa Televisa Televisa is a Mexican multimedia conglomerate, the largest mass media company in Latin America and in the Spanish-speaking world. It is a major international entertainment business, with much of its programming airing in the United States on Univision, with which it has an exclusive contract... . The station was a charter Fox affiliate until 2008, when San Diego-licensed KSWB-TV KSWB-TV KSWB-TV, virtual channel 69, is a Fox-affiliated television station in San Diego, California. It broadcasts a 720p high definition digital signal on UHF channel 19 from a transmitter southeast of Spring Valley... took over the affiliation. |
| XHAS-TV XHAS-TV XHAS-TV, channel 33, is the Telemundo-affiliated television station for San Diego, California, licensed to Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico, with studios and offices in San Diego, shared with KBNT-CA and XHDTV-TV... 33 Telemundo Telemundo Telemundo is an American television network that broadcasts in Spanish. The network is the second-largest Spanish-language content producer in the world, and the second-largest Spanish-language network in the United States, behind Univision.... |
San Diego | Tijuana Tijuana Tijuana is the largest city on the Baja California Peninsula and center of the Tijuana metropolitan area, part of the international San Diego–Tijuana metropolitan area. An industrial and financial center of Mexico, Tijuana exerts a strong influence on economics, education, culture, art, and politics... , Baja California Baja California Baja California officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Baja California is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is both the northernmost and westernmost state of Mexico. Before becoming a state in 1953, the area was known as the North... |
A Spanish language Spanish language Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the... broadcaster licensed to Tijuana Tijuana Tijuana is the largest city on the Baja California Peninsula and center of the Tijuana metropolitan area, part of the international San Diego–Tijuana metropolitan area. An industrial and financial center of Mexico, Tijuana exerts a strong influence on economics, education, culture, art, and politics... , Mexico Mexico The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of... , this station is fed from studios in San Diego, USA. The same US-based facilities feed English language English language English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria... XHDTV-TV (My MyNetworkTV MyNetworkTV is a television broadcast syndication service in the United States, owned by the Fox Entertainment Group, a division of News Corporation... 49, Tecate Tecate Tecate is a small city in Baja California, Mexico and the municipal seat of Tecate Municipality. It is located on the border with Tecate, California, United States in the San Diego–Tijuana metropolitan area. There is a small port of entry betwixt the sister cities that serves as a calmer... , Baja California Baja California Baja California officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Baja California is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is both the northernmost and westernmost state of Mexico. Before becoming a state in 1953, the area was known as the North... ). |
| XHITZ-FM XHITZ-FM XHITZ-FM is a Contemporary Hit Radio station in San Diego-Tijuana broadcasting on 90.3 MHz. The station is owned by Local Media of America and... 90.3 |
San Diego | Tijuana Tijuana Tijuana is the largest city on the Baja California Peninsula and center of the Tijuana metropolitan area, part of the international San Diego–Tijuana metropolitan area. An industrial and financial center of Mexico, Tijuana exerts a strong influence on economics, education, culture, art, and politics... , Mexico Mexico The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of... |
Finest City Broadcasting holds a programming and local marketing agreement Local marketing agreement In U.S. and Canadian broadcasting, a local marketing agreement is an agreement in which one company agrees to operate a radio or television station owned by another licensee... with Mexican XHITZ, XETRA-FM XETRA-FM XETRA-FM — branded 91X, and sometimes identified as XTRA-FM — is an English language, Mexican-owned modern rock music station broadcasting from Tijuana, Baja California on 91.1 MHz. The studios are located in the Mira Mesa area of San Diego... and XHRM-FM XHRM-FM XHRM-FM is an Urban Adult Contemporary radio format licensed in the Mexican state of Baja California, broadcasting at 92.5 MHz... , delivering programming from San Diego studios across the U.S.-Mexico border. Direct competitor XHMORE-FM XHMORE-FM XHMORE-FM , or MORE FM 98.9 is a Rock En Español station serving the Tijuana-San Diego radio market. The station, whose city of license is Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico and broadcasts at 98.9 MHz with an ERP of 50,000 watts.... , also licensed to Tijuana Tijuana Tijuana is the largest city on the Baja California Peninsula and center of the Tijuana metropolitan area, part of the international San Diego–Tijuana metropolitan area. An industrial and financial center of Mexico, Tijuana exerts a strong influence on economics, education, culture, art, and politics... , markets itself as "Blazin' 98.9 FM, San Diego's official hip-hop station." |
| XHRIO-TV XHRIO-TV XHRIO-TV, channel 2, also known as Fox Rio 2 or Fox XRIO, is the local Fox affiliate for the Lower Rio Grande Valley. It is licensed to Matamoros, Mexico, but serves American audiences across the Rio Grande Valley area from studios in McAllen, Texas... 2 Fox Fox Broadcasting Company Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly referred to as Fox Network or simply Fox , is an American commercial broadcasting television network owned by Fox Entertainment Group, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Launched on October 9, 1986, Fox was the highest-rated broadcast network in the... |
Rio Grande Valley Rio Grande Valley The Rio Grande Valley or the Lower Rio Grande Valley, informally called The Valley, is an area located in the southernmost tip of South Texas... , Texas Texas Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in... |
Matamoros, Tamaulipas Matamoros, Tamaulipas Matamoros, officially known as Heroica Matamoros, is a city in the northeastern part of Tamaulipas, in the country of Mexico. It is located on the southern bank of the Rio Grande, directly across the border from Brownsville, Texas, in the United States. Matamoros is the second largest and second... , Mexico Mexico The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of... |
Like XETV XETV XETV is a television station licensed to Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico, serving as the CW Television Network affiliate for the San Diego, California area across the international border in the United States... , Fox X'RIO broadcasts via a Mexican-owned station fed from a US-based studio. The ATSC digital ATSC ATSC standards are a set of standards developed by the Advanced Television Systems Committee for digital television transmission over terrestrial, cable, and satellite networks.... version of this broadcast is «Nuevo» KNVO-DT3, a subchannel of an Entravision-owned Spanish language Spanish language Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the... Univisión Univision Univision is a Spanish-language television network in the United States. It has the largest audience of Spanish language television viewers according to Nielsen ratings. Randy Falco, COO, has been in charge of the company since the departure of Univision Communications president and CEO Joe Uva... station licensed to McAllen, Texas McAllen, Texas McAllen is the largest city in Hidalgo County, Texas, United States. It is located at the southern tip of Texas in an area known as the Rio Grande Valley and is part of the . Its southern boundary is located about five miles from the U.S.–Mexico border and the Mexican city of Reynosa, the Rio... . |
The last-available frequency allocation: In the early days of television, the majority of stations could be found on the VHF band; in North America, this currently represents just twelve possible channels and in large markets any suitable allocations in this range were mostly full by the early 1950s. Occasionally, a prospective broadcaster could obtain one of these coveted positions by acquiring an existing station or permit in an adjacent community - although in some cases this meant a move out-of-state.
| Broadcaster | City | Community of license | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| WCTV WCTV WCTV is the CBS-affiliated television station for southwest Georgia and Tallahassee, Florida that is licensed to Thomasville, Georgia. It broadcasts a high definition digital signal on UHF channel 46 from a transmitter in Metcalf along the Georgia and Florida state line. This is 609.6 meters high... 6 CBS CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of... |
Tallahassee Tallahassee, Florida Tallahassee is the capital of the U.S. state of Florida. It is the county seat and only incorporated municipality in Leon County, and is the 128th largest city in the United States. Tallahassee became the capital of Florida, then the Florida Territory, in 1824. In 2010, the population recorded by... |
Thomasville, Georgia Thomasville, Georgia Thomasville is the county seat of Thomas County, Georgia, United States. The city is the second largest in Southwest Georgia after Albany.The city deems itself the City of Roses and holds an annual Rose Festival. The town features plantations open to the public, a historic downtown, a large... |
First broadcast in 1955 from a studio in Tallahassee, but was licensed to Thomasville using a transmitter in Metcalf, Georgia Metcalf, Georgia Metcalf is a small village in southwestern Georgia. Near Metcalf there is the WCTV Tower, the tallest structure in Georgia. A lumberyard is located on the main highway. There are two churches located in Metcalf, Friendship Baptist and Metcalf Methodist Church. Friendship Baptist is one of the... . The FCC had allocated only one VHF channel to Tallahassee, which was already in use by Florida State University's noncommercial WFSU-TV 11. WTLH WTLH WTLH is the Fox-affiliated television station for Southwestern Georgia and Tallahassee, Florida, in the United States. Licensed to Bainbridge, Georgia, it broadcasts a high definition digital signal on UHF channel 50 from a transmitter in Metcalf, Georgia near the Florida state line. The station... Fox 49 also covers Tallahassee from a transmitter in Metcalf, Georgia Metcalf, Georgia Metcalf is a small village in southwestern Georgia. Near Metcalf there is the WCTV Tower, the tallest structure in Georgia. A lumberyard is located on the main highway. There are two churches located in Metcalf, Friendship Baptist and Metcalf Methodist Church. Friendship Baptist is one of the... . |
| WHYY-TV WHYY-TV For the former channel 12 in Wilmington, see WVUE .WHYY-TV, channel 12, is a non-commercial educational television station licensed to Wilmington, Delaware, USA... 12 PBS Public Broadcasting Service The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia.... |
Philadelphia | Wilmington, Delaware Wilmington, Delaware Wilmington is the largest city in the state of Delaware, United States, and is located at the confluence of the Christina River and Brandywine Creek, near where the Christina flows into the Delaware River. It is the county seat of New Castle County and one of the major cities in the Delaware Valley... |
Originally licensed in 1957 as channel 35 Philadelphia. In an era where TV manufacturers were not required to provide All Channels Act The All-Channel Receiver Act , commonly known as the All-Channels Act, was passed by the United States Congress in 1961, to allow the Federal Communications Commission to require that all television set manufacturers must include UHF tuners, so that new UHF-band TV stations could be received by... UHF tuners, few could receive the station. When WVUE WVUE (Delaware) This article is about a defunct television station in Wilmington, Delaware. For the current use of call letters "WVUE" by a station in New Orleans, Louisiana, see WVUE. For the current channel 12, see WHYY-TV.... 12 Wilmington went off the air in 1958, WHYY applied to serve Wilmington as channel 12 was the nearest available VHF allocation. |
| WNET WNET WNET, channel 13 is a non-commercial educational public television station licensed to Newark, New Jersey. With its signal covering the New York metropolitan area, WNET is a primary station of the Public Broadcasting Service and a primary provider of PBS programming... 13 PBS Public Broadcasting Service The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia.... |
New York New York City New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and... |
Newark, New Jersey Newark, New Jersey Newark is the largest city in the American state of New Jersey, and the seat of Essex County. As of the 2010 United States Census, Newark had a population of 277,140, maintaining its status as the largest municipality in New Jersey. It is the 68th largest city in the U.S... |
One of the victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks, WNET once broadcast from a shared master antenna atop the former World Trade Center World Trade Center The original World Trade Center was a complex with seven buildings featuring landmark twin towers in Lower Manhattan, New York City, United States. The complex opened on April 4, 1973, and was destroyed in 2001 during the September 11 attacks. The site is currently being rebuilt with five new... . Its community of license is Newark because the only means to acquire scarce VHF-TV spectrum in New York City New York City New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and... was to purchase existing Newark independent WATV. An on-air identifying logo displays initially as "WNET Newark, New Jersey", then transitions to "WNET New York"; the station provides New Jersey New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware... local public-affairs coverage but is located entirely in New York City New York City New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and... . Like other New Jersey New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware... licensees including WWOR-TV WWOR-TV WWOR-TV, virtual channel 9 , is the flagship station of the MyNetworkTV programming service, licensed to Secaucus, New Jersey and serving the Tri-State metropolitan area. WWOR is owned by Fox Television Stations, a division of the News Corporation, and is a sister station to Fox network flagship... 9 Secaucus Secaucus, New Jersey Secaucus is a town in Hudson County, New Jersey. As of the 2010 United States Census, the town population was 16,264. Located within the New Jersey Meadowlands, it is the most suburban of the county's municipalities, though large parts of the town are dedicated to light manufacturing, retail, and... , WXTV WXTV WXTV-DT channel 41 is a Univisión owned-and-operated television station, licensed to Paterson, New Jersey and serving the New York metropolitan area. WXTV's studios are located in Teaneck, New Jersey, and its transmitter in on the Empire State Building in Manhattan... 41 Paterson Paterson, New Jersey Paterson is a city serving as the county seat of Passaic County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, its population was 146,199, rendering it New Jersey's third largest city and one of the largest cities in the New York City Metropolitan Area, despite a decrease of 3,023... , WNJU WNJU WNJU, channel 47, is the flagship station of the Spanish-language Telemundo television network, licensed to Linden, New Jersey and serving the Tri-State area television market. WNJU is owned by NBCUniversal, and is one-half of a duopoly with NBC network flagship WNBC-TV... 47 Linden Linden, New Jersey - Local government :, the Mayor of Linden is . The former longtime Mayor of Linden is 82-year-old John T. Gregorio, who served as mayor of Linden for 30, nonconsecutive years and was repeatedly tagged with scandal during his mayoral career, including one felony conviction, later pardoned, which... and WFUT-TV WFUT-TV WFUT-DT, virtual channel 68, is a Spanish-language television station licensed to Newark, New Jersey, which serves as an affiliate of the Telefutura network for the New York City market... 68 Newark, it now transmits from atop the Empire State Building. |
The use of an adjacent market: Occasionally, a station owner would reach a legal limit on concentration of media ownership
Concentration of media ownership
Concentration of media ownership refers to a process whereby progressively fewer individuals or organizations control increasing shares of the mass media...
, already having the maximum number of commonly-owned stations in a market. Additional stations would be possible by transmitting the extra signals from a station technically in an adjacent market.
| Broadcaster | City | Community of license | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| CKBY-FM CKBY-FM CKBY-FM is a Canadian radio station, which airs a country music format at 101.1 FM in Smiths Falls and Ottawa, Ontario. The station is owned by Rogers Media, and uses the brand name Y101.-History:... 101.1 |
Ottawa Ottawa Ottawa is the capital of Canada, the second largest city in the Province of Ontario, and the fourth largest city in the country. The city is located on the south bank of the Ottawa River in the eastern portion of Southern Ontario... |
Smiths Falls Smiths Falls, Ontario Smiths Falls is a town in Eastern Ontario, Canada. It is in the census division for Lanark County, but is considered a separated town and does not participate in county government... |
As station owner Rogers Communications Rogers Communications Rogers Communications Inc. is one of Canada's largest communications companies, particularly in the field of wireless communications, cable television, home phone and internet with additional telecommunications and mass media assets... already has multiple stations licensed to Ottawa, limits on concentration of media ownership Concentration of media ownership Concentration of media ownership refers to a process whereby progressively fewer individuals or organizations control increasing shares of the mass media... restrict it from moving additional stations into that city. The city of license has therefore remained at Smiths Falls, a small town of roughly 80 km distant, and the station is absent from the Ottawa-Hull digital radio Digital audio broadcasting Digital Audio Broadcasting is a digital radio technology for broadcasting radio stations, used in several countries, particularly in Europe. As of 2006, approximately 1,000 stations worldwide broadcast in the DAB format.... cluster as that signal would not reach the community of license. |
The arbitrary nominal location: In some cases, stations were constructed or acquired with the express purpose of driving a regional or province-wide chain of full-power repeaters. Which of these "satellite stations" would be designated as the main signal could be an arbitrary choice, as the programming carried on all stations in the system would be identical.
| Broadcaster | City | Community of license | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| CHLF-TV 39 TFO TFO TFO is a Canadian French language educational public television network in the province of Ontario. It is the only French-language television network in Canada whose operations are based entirely outside of Quebec.... |
Toronto Toronto Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from... |
Hawkesbury Hawkesbury, Ontario Hawkesbury is a town in the Eastern portion of Southern Ontario, Canada, on the Ottawa River, near the Quebec-Ontario border.It lies on the south shore of the Ottawa River about halfway between Downtown Ottawa and Downtown Montreal in Prescott and Russell Counties. The Long-Sault Bridge links it... |
TFO (Télé-Française d'Ontario) is a repeater chain broadcasting the same signal in 17 cities and towns with large francophone Francophone The adjective francophone means French-speaking, typically as primary language, whether referring to individuals, groups, or places. Often, the word is used as a noun to describe a natively French-speaking person.... communities; it relies primarily on cable television Cable television Cable television is a system of providing television programs to consumers via radio frequency signals transmitted to televisions through coaxial cables or digital light pulses through fixed optical fibers located on the subscriber's property, much like the over-the-air method used in traditional... for distribution in much of Ontario Ontario Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa.... . Studios are in Toronto, the provincial capital, as TFO belongs to Ontario's government, although the station is not physically available over-the-air in that community. As such, the choice of which of the multiple repeaters to designate as the primary station is arbitrary; Hawkesbury was chosen due to its proximity to Montreal Montreal Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America... 's large francophone population. |
| CIII-TV CIII-TV CIII-DT-41 is a television station owned by Shaw Communications that serves much of the population of the Canadian province of Ontario. It is a flagship station of the Global Television Network... 6 Global Global Television Network Global Television Network is an English language privately owned television network in Canada, owned by Calgary-based Shaw Communications, as part of its Shaw Media division... |
Toronto Toronto Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from... |
Paris Paris, Ontario Paris, Ontario is a community on the Grand River in Ontario, Canada. The town was established in 1850. In 1999, its town government was amalgamated into that of the County of Brant, Ontario, thus ending about 149 years as a separate incorporated municipality.-History:The town was first settled in... |
From its launch in 1974 until 2009, this station's primary city of license was Paris Paris, Ontario Paris, Ontario is a community on the Grand River in Ontario, Canada. The town was established in 1850. In 1999, its town government was amalgamated into that of the County of Brant, Ontario, thus ending about 149 years as a separate incorporated municipality.-History:The town was first settled in... , a small town near Brantford, although the main studios were located in Toronto. A chain of repeaters covering most of Ontario Ontario Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa.... , the choice for the nominal primary station was an arbitrary one. Toronto could have reasonably been chosen as nominal city of license, but to do so would be to name a suburban UHF outlet as the main station. Eventually UHF's perceived disadvantage was tampered down by cable and the start of the digital era, and the station's Toronto rebroadcaster on Channel 41, CIII-TV-41 became the originating broadcaster legally as defined by the CRTC for the CIII/Global Ontario network in mid-2009. |
| CKMI-TV CKMI-TV CKMI-DT-1 is the Global Television Network owned-and-operated station in Quebec.Originally a privately owned CBC Television affiliate in Quebec City, the station moved most of its operations to Montreal in 1997 after launching a rebroadcaster there and becoming a Global affiliate as Global Quebec... 20 Global Global Television Network Global Television Network is an English language privately owned television network in Canada, owned by Calgary-based Shaw Communications, as part of its Shaw Media division... |
Montreal Montreal Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America... |
Quebec City Quebec City Quebec , also Québec, Quebec City or Québec City is the capital of the Canadian province of Quebec and is located within the Capitale-Nationale region. It is the second most populous city in Quebec after Montreal, which is about to the southwest... |
Similarly, from the station's launch until 2009, Quebec was the city of license and Montreal 46 / Sherbrooke 11 merely repeaters constructed after acquisition of the existing Quebec station. As the studios, master control facilities and largest audience are in Montreal, and the number of anglophones in mostly-francophone Quebec City is small, this was a Montreal station in all but name. Like its sister station CIII, the station's license was moved to Montreal in 2009. |
See also
- All Channels ActAll Channels ActThe All-Channel Receiver Act , commonly known as the All-Channels Act, was passed by the United States Congress in 1961, to allow the Federal Communications Commission to require that all television set manufacturers must include UHF tuners, so that new UHF-band TV stations could be received by...
- Border BlasterBorder blasterA border blaster is a licensed commercial radio station that transmits at very high power from one nation to another. Border blasters should not be confused with international broadcast stations...
- Rimshot (broadcasting)Rimshot (broadcasting)A rimshot is a radio and television broadcasting term for a station that attempts to reach a larger media market from a distant suburban, exurban, or even rural location. The term is primarily used with FM stations, and mainly in North America...
- TwinstickTwinstickA twinstick, in Canadian broadcasting, is a term for two television stations, broadcasting in the same market, which are owned by the same company...
and Duopoly (broadcasting)Duopoly (broadcasting)In United States broadcast television and radio, duopoly is a term used to describe a single company which owns two or more stations in the same city or community....