Media Notes / American Television Stations

While first proposed by German Paul Nipkow, television was invented^note As in creating a useful system by American Philo Farnsworth, and it was in the United States where Television first emerged as a mass media.

During the late 1930s, television in the United States more-or-less took off. A few full-time television stations were started as early as 1938. In 1941, these were finally allowed to broadcast on a commercial basis — the first one was a test card showing a Bulova watch (Bulova paid only $7 to run its ad, but it was a start.) ^note There had been a few non-paid commercials during the 1930s experimental days, for example during the first-ever major league baseball telecast by NBC over W2XBS (now WNBC) on August 26, 1939 (Brooklyn Dodgers vs. Cincinnati Reds) — to secure the rights for the broadcast, the Dodgers' radio sponsors (Ivory Soap, Mobil, Wheaties) were each allowed one free commercial during the telecast, done by the Dodgers' announcer Red Barber with simple visual aids (holding a bar of Ivory soap, putting on a gas station attendant cap for Mobil or eating a bowl of Wheaties).

Originally, television stations operated on Channels 1 through 13 (VHF). A small part of the frequency was shared with radio broadcasters, but was given entirely to them by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) after it became obvious that this couldn't work for very long. As a result, there is no Channel 1 in the US. Later, there were so many television stations around that it was becoming harder to find free space for new channels. So the FCC issued a freeze on further licenses for television stations in 1948.

Eventually the FCC developed the UHF television band, and added TV channels numbered 14 through 83. They also set up an allocation system: Each community in the United States was assigned a series of channel allocations, generally designed to prevent stations from interfering with each other, usually with 150 miles distance between two channels (Chicago shares the same channels as Wausau, Wisconsin, for instance). Also, to prevent interference with radio astronomy, Channel 37 has never been used - no stations had taken that channel before the FCC forbade its allocation in 1963. ^note (The initial post-freeze channel allocations gave channel 37 to 19 communities and a few of these received applications, but all of those fell through or were still pending by the time the FCC disallowed channel 37 allocations. Most other NTSC-M nations have also restricted use of channel 37; PAL/SECAM nations use a different frequency for channel 37 outside the range set aside for radio astronomy, while NTSC-J's equivalent of channel 36 is used by some TV Asahi stations in Japan.)

In addition to adding the UHF band, it was necessary to make sure people could watch channels using that area of the spectrum. As a result, a 1963 Federal law mandated all that new television could receive channels 14-83 in addition to channels 2-13. This practice of mandating additional features in televisions would continue in the 1980s, when deaf people bought Closed Caption Converters, which cost about $200, making it rare that people would have them, thus most people could not access closed captioning, making it not very likely to be used. A new law required all TV sets over 12 inches to have a built-in closed caption converter. This was eventually extended to all new TV sets. A few years later, television producers over a certain revenue amount - about US$3 million - were required to insert closed captioning in their programs. It is estimated that the mandatory closed captioning feature raised the price of television sets by a whopping $2.

With the lack of use and need by other services for the frequencies, the FCC dropped TV channels 70-83 in 1983 and released them for other services, so for several years the highest channel that could be assigned was 69. ^note (When they were around, channels 70-83 were mostly used for repeater transmitters that increased the coverage of existing stations on lower channels, though a rare few stations used them as their main frequency. Three stations [WFMJ in Youngstown, OH; WLOK in Lima, OH; WTVU in Scranton, PA] operated on channel 73 for a short time in the 1950s before switching to lower frequencies. WMGT in Adams, MA was the highest-numbered UHF station in the U.S., operating on channel 74 briefly in 1954 before switching to channel 19. The highest-numbered UHF station in Canada was CITY-TV in Toronto, ON, which operated on channel 79 from 1972 to 1983 (moving to channel 57 afterwards), with a close second being CBEFT [Radio Canada Windsor], which operated on channel 78 from 1976 to 1982.) With the creation in the late 1990s of digital television, and the 2009 conversion of analog broadcast television to digital, more of the high-end channel assignments are also being reassigned to other services, so currently the UHF band ends at Channel 36, with 38-69 assigned for other purposes. Channel 55 was bought by Qualcomm for their Flo TV mobile television service nationwide, a service that flopped for multiple reasons (including equipment costs and a monotonous schedule); Channel 55 was then sold to AT&T to expand their 4G cellular telephone footprint.

During the analog TV era, the prevention of co-channel and adjacent-channel interference from other stations was one of the FCC's top priorities. On the VHF band, no two stations could be assigned next to each other, so there would never, for example, be a Channel 9 and Channel 10 in the same area. (The minimum separation distance was 60 miles.) There are some exceptions: Because of a 4 megahertz distance between their frequencies, a Channel 4 and Channel 5 can be in the same area (e.g., the Twin Cities). Also, the entire FM band separates Channel 6 and 7, so those two channels can exist in the same area, though this is much rarer; Channel 6 overlaps just enough with the FM band that any FM radio can pick up the audio of Channel 6—or could before the digital transition.

Generally speaking, in the UHF band at least six channels separated stations located within 20 miles of each other. There were rare exceptions to this rule. For instance, in Sacramento, Channel 31 had been on the air since 1974 with its transmitter located with the rest of the city's TV transmitters about halfway between Sacramento and Stockton to the south. In the late 1980s, the FCC assigned Channel 29 to Sacramento with the proviso that the new station's transmitter could only be located about 15 miles north of the city. However, with the advent of digital TV, which has fewer problems with co-channel and adjacent-channel interference, Channel 29 has since relocated its transmitter near the rest of the Sacramento transmitters.

UHF stations are also allowed to use much higher power output than VHF. In the analog era, this was 5000 kilowatts compared to 100 kilowatts for Channels 2-6 and 316 kilowatts for channels 7-13. However in the digital age, channels 2-6 are undesirable for transmissions due to signal noise, so they have been rarely assigned for digital television outside wide flat areas (such as the NBC affiliate in Las Vegas or the CBS affiliate in southwest Kansas).

This also made for some strange channel configurations. Channel 3 is used mostly in cities that live in the shadow of other larger cities — like Philadelphia to New York City, or Sacramento to San Francisco — or in fairly remote areas. Milwaukee formerly had a Channel 3, which was for its NBC affiliate WTMJ, which since moved to Channel 4 (using an allocation formerly used in Chicago by the current CBS O&O station WBBM-TV, which moved to Channel 2). The nearest Channel 3 for Southern California is over 100 miles away in Santa Barbara. Los Angeles was allocated 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11 and 13 (as was New York). San Diego was allocated Channels 8 and 10, but as a sop to the Mexicans, Tijuana was allowed to have Channels 6 and 12, though Channel 6 broadcast in English and catered to San Diego from its 1953 inception to 2017, when it became a transmitter of the Mexican Canal 5 network.

The addition of the UHF band allowed for the addition of something else: Educational Television. This originally began in the mid-1950s with the National Educational Television (NET) network, which was privately operated but had government grants to help with some of the operating costs (it eventually became PBS, the Public Broadcasting Service in 1969). Also, educational stations are not permitted to run commercials, so most of them were started by local governments who used them to run programs to their local schools. In some of the larger cities (Los Angeles, New York City, Washington, D.C.) educational television stations were licensed by private non-profit groups. Some stations are run by colleges.

Even though channels 2-6 aren't desirable as much for broadcast anymore, you'll still see stations identifying themselves with those numbers. There's four reasons:

• That station's position on most of the cable systems in its area is still on that channel (Example: KSNW in Wichita, Kansas, was channel 3 before the digital transition and is still on channel 3 on area cable TV).
• A technology known as "PSIP" makes a digital TV set receiving a signal over the air display a "virtual channel" number (So even though KSNW is actually on digital channel 45, your TV will show it as being on channel 3). This isn't limited to stations that used to be on 2-6, by the way. Many digital TV stations are on frequencies that differ from what the TV will indicate (KFXJ in Pittsburg, Kansas, broadcasts on channel 13 but still identifies as "Fox 14"). This also allows the usage of the otherwise forbidden channels 1 and 37, as done by KAXT-CD in San Francisco (digital channel 22, virtual channel 1) and WNWT-LD in New York (digital channel 3, virtual channel 37).
• Lower channel numbers still have as much cache to broadcasters as they did when television started, mainly for perception; the biggest example is in Atlanta, where ABC affiliate WSB-TV on Channel 2 has dominated the market for years, while WANF, the CBS affiliate, really doesn't want anyone to know they're on Channel 46 (and has the ratings to prove it), and CW affiliate WUPA does everything they can to avoid mentioning they're on Channel 69, the highest and most infamous channel position in the digital age. The station in UHF was on Channel 62, for a fictional example. However, the current CBS affiliate in Detroit, WWJ-TV, which is also on Channel 62, began to brand itself as "CBS 62" in 2012, after years of referring to itself as "CBS Detroit", similar to the network's other O&O stations branding as "CBS #" (i.e. "CBS 2" in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago), though it would revert back to the "CBS Detroit" branding in 2022 in preparation for the (re)launch of its in-house news department the following year.
• Another Channel 69 in San Diego, KSWB, is that market's Fox affiliate and has a false branding of "Fox 5" based on their much lower cable channel number, though in that market many of the stations are in UHF, so false cable channel brandings are normal. Many stations past Channel 30 usually use their cable channels rather than their real or PSIP channels so they can seem like they're a respectable operation, while Ion Television stations never give their channel numbers because they're usually past 14 nearly universally.

Unlike the choices made by other nations, the U.S. government never got into the broadcast business for domestic consumption. All U.S. broadcast stations, radio and television, are privately owned. Some stations were operated by municipal governments for educational television services, but in general, in the United States, private for-profit companies operate television stations. This is the reason why most countries have fewer than 10 broadcast television stations, and the United States has over 7,000. (Well, that, and the fact that the US is so huge.)

Same thing for broadcast networks. There are no federal networks; all broadcast networks, radio and television, are operated by private organizations. Even the educational networks are operated privately, although they do receive some public funding.

Until around the 1980s, the maximum number of television stations that could be owned by an organization was limited to seven, of which a maximum of five could be VHF stations. This rule was later changed to limit stations by amount of coverage of the country rather than absolute number. Also, during the 1970s a rule was created that prohibited a major newspaper from owning a television station in its home market. (Many television stations were owned by the local newspaper, one example until April 2015 being WTMJ Channel 4, the NBC affiliate in Milwaukee, was owned by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel; the two split in the Journal/Scripps merger that cast off the TV and newspaper operations of both companies separately.) Many newspapers solved this problem by making trades with other newspapers in other cities to own a station outside their home area.

There is, however, an exception to the seven-station rule for educational television networks which are operating on a state-wide basis, they can run as many stations in the state as they can find the funding for. Yes, I did say "find funding". With the exception of a small amount of money from the federally funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting, educational stations have to find ways to raise money on their own; they generally do not get public subsidies. Since educational stations can't show commercials, most educational television stations have "pledge weeks" where, instead of running commercial breaks, they have people come on and beg viewers to call in and subscribe to the station, usually asking for about $10 a year or so, with the amount rising with inflation, and as of 2010, the usual request is for about $30. Many stations offer premium gifts such as boxed sets of various programs, book tie ins, and other special offers in exchange for larger donations of $150 to $365 a year, along with the omnipresent (and often mocked) tote bag.

The above seven-station rule (for commercial stations) meant that even the networks could only own seven stations around the country. ^note (This rule was one of the major reasons why the DuMont network never took off: they were partially owned by Paramount, who also operated their own network, which lead the FCC to count both the DuMont VHF O&Os [WABD in New York, WTTG in Washington, D.C, WDTV in Pittsburgh] and the Paramount VHF O&Os [KTLA in Los Angeles, WBKB in Chicago, the latter of which became co-owned with Paramount again from 2000-05 and again since 2019 as WBBM-TV, see below] towards the five VHF stations limit, forcing them to rely on barely-watched UHF stations and VHF stations which were already affiliated to other networks and would only air a select few shows in fringe time slots.) Typically they owned the three major markets (LA, Chicago and New York), but beyond that the locations differed. Currently, the four major networks own stations in the following markets:

• ABC: New York (WABC), Los Angeles (KABC), Chicago (WLS), Philadelphia (WPVI), San Francisco (KGO), Houston (KTRK), Raleigh-Durham (WTVD), Fresno (KFSN);
• CBS: New York (WCBS), Los Angeles (KCBS), Chicago (WBBM), Philadelphia (KYW), Fort Worth-Dallas (KTVT), San Francisco (KPIX), Boston (WBZ), Detroit (WWJ), Minneapolis-St. Paul (WCCO/KCCO/KCCW), Miami-Fort Lauderdale (WFOR), Denver (KCNC), Sacramento (KOVR), Pittsburgh (KDKA), Baltimore (WJZ);
  • WBBM is the station founded by Paramount as WBKB-TV, which was originally owned by the studio's Chicago area theater chain Balaban and Katz. The TV station was included in the spin-off of United Paramount Theaters, which upon its purchase of ABC in 1953 sold channel 2 to CBS and kept channel 7. ^note (The "old" WBKB's talent and crew stayed at what was now WBBM on channel 2 while the WBKB call sign and UPT's upper management moved to channel 7, which was originally WENR in 1948-53 and became WLS in 1968. The WBKB call sign is now held by a station in Alpena, MI.) WBBM was reunited with Paramount in 2000, following the acquisition of CBS by the studio's parent company since 1994, Viacom. These ties were broken in the 2006 split of Viacom, but re-established in the 2019 Viacom/CBS re-merger.
  • Similarly, KDKA's ties to Paramount that they had as a DuMont O&O under the WDTV call letters were restored in the 2000 Viacom/CBS merger. Like the ties between WBBM and Paramount, they were broken again in 2006, but restored in 2019.
• FOX: New York (WNYW), Los Angeles (KTTV), Chicago (WFLD), Philadelphia (WTXF), Dallas-Fort Worth (KDFW), San Francisco (KTVU), Atlanta (WAGA), Washington DC (WTTG), Houston (KRIV), Phoenix (KSAZ), Tampa-St. Petersburg (WTVT), Seattle (KCPQ), Detroit (WJBK), Minneapolis-St. Paul (KMSP), Orlando (WOFL), Milwaukee (WITI), Austin (KTBC), Ocala-Gainesville (WOGX);
  • WNYW and WTTG were originally DuMont's O&Os. The former began as WABD (for founder Allen B. DuMont), then was WNEW under Metromedia ownership and became WNYW when Fox acquired it due to a now-defunct FCC rule that forbid radio and TV stations with different owners from sharing a call sign (Metromedia also owned WNEW-AM and FM). WTTG is named after Thomas T. Goldberg, chief engineer at DuMont and inventor of the Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device.
• NBC: New York (WNBC), Los Angeles (KNBC), Chicago (WMAQ), Philadelphia (WCAU), Fort Worth-Dallas (KXAS), San Jose-San Francisco (KNTV), Washington (WRC), Miami-Fort Lauderdale (WTVJ), San Diego (KNSD), New Britain-Hartford-New Haven (WVIT).

Another major change in the 1990s and beyond is that the FCC now allows duopolies, where one company can own two stations in the same market^note The fact they could not was a plot point in the 80s-era film UHF. Originally, this was allowed only if the second station was at risk of failing, but in recent years, it's become pretty easy to get an FCC waiver under just about any circumstances. FOX owns MyNetworkTV O&Os in many of its major markets, and CBS owns five CW stations in markets ^note Philadelphia, San Francisco, Detroit, Sacramento and Pittsburgh where it also owns its station; the other three CW O&Os ^note in Atlanta, Seattle and St. Petersburg/Tampa are not paired up with CBS stations. A number of other companies, including Sinclair and Nexstar, own legal duopolies, and semi-legal ones (where they own a holding company that owns the second station in the market).

Until the 1970s, most stations only operated from about 5 a.m. until about midnight or 1 a.m. While television stations were always licensed to operate 24/7, most did not. See ANSI Standard Broadcast TV Schedule for more details. This changed when the FCC changed its rules on advertising—Until the 1980s, a television station was restricted to 21 minutes of commercials per hour. In fact, they were required to list every time that they exceeded 21 minutes at any time. However, when this rule was in place, it typically was a technical error; e.g., a station at one time might have accidentally run 21:10 of advertising. The repeal of this rule allowed the stations to sell time during what would normally be off-air time to producers of infomercials. So stations that don't have enough material to fill the late-night time can sell the otherwise off-air time to infomercial producers.

At the very least, they do have to provide three hours of Edutainment Shows a week to serve their younger viewing audience with educational and informational content as a condition of their license. Most stations take this as a chore however (since nobody wants to advertise on them anymore because parents think that Lunchables will kill our children) and instead of actual enlightening programming, air either three hours of animal shows deep on Sundays when nobody is watching, quiz shows that think their audience has the intelligence of tree moss or, for the stations that really don't care but the FCC thinks they do, old school-set shows like Room 222 or Saved by the Bell. Networks have sold their children's blocks off to other companies which actually produced true educational programming or somehow are able to pass off that Hannah Montana has lessons about friendship and the music industry.

Which brings up another thing: any person can visit a television (or radio) station by asking to see the documents called its "public inspection file". Since television stations are privately licensed, the licensee is supposed to show that his license to operate a station is in "the public interest, convenience and necessity". So they keep files of all the comments they get, public and negative, as well as information about what good stuff they do, in hopes that their license will be renewed. In reality, a station is about as likely to have its license renewed as a single candidate in a dictatorship is likely to be re-elected.

It basically takes these practices in order to lose your broadcast license;

• Serious corruption by the licensee, such as forcing the FCC in one way or another to grant a permit, forcing advertisers to pay a certain price to sponsor a certain show or buy advertising to get positive press in the station's newscasts:
  • The former undid RKO General in 1988, after years of FCC appeals and actions going back to 1965.
  • The original WHDH on Channel 5 in Boston (known for producing the Bozo the Clown show that was syndicated to stations that did not produce their own Bozo show) was thrown off the air in 1972 after years of struggle with the FCC due to accusations that they wrongfully influenced them (they had to renew their license every six months; licenses in that era usually lasted three years). Its replacement on Channel 5, WCVB, won the license by promising unparalleled public interest programming that was much more than WHDH already did. The WHDH letters are now assigned to the independent station on Channel 7, formerly known as WNAC, then WNEV after RKO General had to sell off the station.
  • The ABC affiliate in Miami was founded as WPST in 1957, but had to be sold off in 1961 when it turned out that the original owner's attorney bribed a (by then former) FCC commissioner to get the license. It signed back on as WLBW under new ownership and is today still on the air as WPLG.
• Incredible technical and financial incompetence which renders the station unwatchable, both in the form of their broadcast signal, or lousy programming:
  • The most apparent modern-day example is WAZE in Evansville, Indiana, an affiliate of The CW. After being bought by a group of brothers which dealt in shady business, the station suffered and by the time of the digital transition, only had their digital tower broadcasting to a short range, not even getting to Evansville (or, even more of an Epic Fail, at its worst not even reaching past the parking lot of the transmitter facility). The FCC finally pulled the license in 2011 when it was obvious the full digital signal would never be ready. The 'station' went on under a shoestring network of low-power analog transmitters, but also lost CBS and Warner Bros. syndicated programming because the owners couldn't pay the bill for it, meaning programming such as Byron Allen's network of No Budget programming and the long-canceled Judge Hatchett was supposed to attract viewers, and the station became a local joke. By 2013, the brothers ran out of money and gave up on the low-power shoestring network, leaving the CW with the ability to finally sign up with a station with a functioning technical staff and digital transmitter; in this case WTVW.
  • The chain of Equity Broadcasting went bankrupt in 2009, nearly killing the Retro Television Network. As the company never built digital transmitters for many of their stations, Fox nearly became unwatchable in the state of Montana until the local ABC affiliate stepped in to put it on their digital subchannels, and MyNetworkTV took a heavy hit in the state of Arkansas.
  • KRSD in Rapid City, South Dakota (and its translator KDSJ in nearby Lead) had by 1965 become notorious for the poor quality of its signal. That year, the FCC introduced a rule requiring that cable systems carry local stations over any other stations carrying the same programming; the Rapid City cable system previously carried KOA out of Denver instead of KRSD (both were then NBC stations), but was forced by the rule to carry KRSD instead, leading within hours to complaints and service cancellations. In 1971 the FCC began denying license renewals altogether to KRSD/KDSJ due to its continued poor technical operation; the owner tried to appeal the decision and lost, but the stations remained on the air under special temporary authority until 1976 when KEVN and KIVV (now KOTA and KHSD) finally replaced them.
• Taking too long to file paperwork. This is the most common reason for license denials, though it's mainly among rural stations or a station where the owner treats it more like a fun hobby than Serious Business. Usually these are sorted out with fines or sales.
• Other egregious or unconscionable misconduct.
  • WLBT, the NBC affiliate in Jackson, Mississippi, denied any airtime to African-Americans both locally and through NBC-transmitted programming during the Civil Rights Movement. After many raised objections to WLBT's conduct, including churches, local interest groups and NBC itself, the FCC stripped the license and gave it to much more neutral interests, who hired African-American station staff with the promise it would never happen again.
  • The license of WJIM, the CBS affiliate in Lansing, Michigan, became subject in 1973 to challenges by the American Civil Liberties Union, alleging that the owners, Gross Telecasting (owned by station founder Harold F. Gross), denied airtime to a number of prominent political figures, a culmination of years of mismanagement that included manipulation and preemptions of both news stories and CBS programming ordered by Gross dating back to the 1960s. Eight years later, in 1981, an FCC judge caught wind of the ACLU's challenges and ordered the station's license revoked, but the station continued broadcasting and the FCC reversed its decision the following year. The ACLU agreed to a cash settlement in 1984, but not before Gross, whose reputation was pretty much wrecked by the decade-long licensing dispute, went out of business and sold off the station. Under new ownership, the station became WLNS, which it still broadcasts as today.

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