CBS also has Let’s Make a Deal.
Just realized I read this question wrong. You’re right that The Price is Right is not syndicated, it’s broadcast by CBS during their daytime block. Other daytime game shows like Jeopardy are syndicated.
There was also the DuMont Television Network, one of the original three networks. It was founded in 1946. At its height it was broadcasting in thirty-two cities.
DuMont was an electronics company that began manufacturing televisions. They then got into broadcasting to support television sales. But this put them at a disadvantage. NBC and CBS were based on existing radio networks. This gave them experience and a pool of talent they could use for the production of television shows. They also had access to advertising on their radio networks for their new television networks. DuMont wasn’t a success and slowly fell apart in the fifties. It broadcast its last program in 1955.
While not financially successful, DuMont did achieve some television firsts: it aired the first sit-com, the first soap opera, and the first science fiction show. Their best known show was The Honeymooners which originated on the DuMont network before moving to CBS.
That would be Andorra and smaller ones. Anything larger needs repeater antennas.
PBS is not a network. It’s a program producer. Public stations can get their programs from PBS, from individual station/producers (WNET, WGBH, KCET, etc. ), from state-government, community-funded, or independent producers (Children’s Television Workshop), or from foreign sources (TV Ontario).
But to understand American TV, you first have to understand what a station is under American broadcasting law. A station is an entity licensed by the FCC to broadcast a TV (or radio) signal at a particular frequency, at a particular power, during specified hours, and, most importantly, to a specific geographical region.
The FCC has divided the entire country up into about 300 broadcast markets (also known as an Area of Dominant Influence or Designated Market Area).
Each market is assigned a specific number of stations based on its population size. New York has about 20 and Dayton, Ohio, has five or six.
The frequencies (channel numbers), power, etc. are specified by the FCC so that stations don’t interfere with nearby stations. A certain number of stations will be designated as not-for-profit educational (“public”) stations.
Each station is responsible for meeting certain obligations to its local audience, but within those parameters is allowed acquire programming from wherever it wants, whether a network or syndicator or independent producer, or even in-house. Traditionally, the FCC has encouraged locally produced programming.
The most successful stations are the ones who have garnered major network affiliations.
The official name of a station is its four-letter call sign paired with its city of license (e.g., “KDKA Pittsburgh”) , generally starting with “W” in the east and “K” in the west. (A handful of very old stations still have three-letter designations).
Because of this system, networks operate on different channels in different cities, depending on what channels have been allocated to a market and which local station they happen to get as an affiliate.
So for example ABC is on WJLA (Channel 7) in Washington, WCPO (Channel 9) in Cincinnati, WEWS (Channel 5) in Cleveland, WSYX (Channel 6) in Columbus, WKEF (Channel 22) in Dayton, etc.
Historically, the VHF channels (2-13) had better signals than UHF (14-83), so the more lucrative stations are the ones with low channel numbers. (There is no broadcast Channel 1 and even many cable systems start with Channel 2.)
Few other things:
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Public TV stations and program producers get some government funding through the CPB, but the majority of their funding comes from viewer contributions and corporate/charitable underwriting.
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Stations holding not-for-profit educational licenses are not allowed to show commercials but are allowed to make sponsorship announcements. (“This program is made possible by Exxon Mobile, the Carnegie Foundation, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and viewers like you”). Sometime the line between an underwriting announcement and a commercial seems awfully thin, but at least they happen only between shows instead of during them.
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Stations are allowed to apply to the FCC to change their call signs. For example, when Channel 2 in Dayton changed ownership in 1976, it changed from WLWD Dayton to WDTN Dayton.
- Stations and networks are free to renegotiate affiliation agreements, so network affiliations can change.
E.g., before digital broadcasting, Channels 2 and 7 on Dayton were better than Channel 22. So the older networks affiliated with the better stations (WHIO 7 = CBS and (WLWD 2 = NBC). When ABC was created, it was stuck with affiliating with the only available local station? WKEF (22).
By the early 1980s, ABC had become much more popular than NBC, so WDTN 2 signed up with ABC, and NBC was stuck with WKEF 22.
However, 20 years later, the fortunes of ABC and NBC has flipped again so in Dayton the networks again traded channels.
- Three or four times a year, public stations will host on-air fund drives to encourage viewers to pledge money to fund their local stations.
This begging process comes in for a lot of “taking the piss” as our British friends might say, but it has been very successful. Public TV member-viewer-contributors tend to be educated, affluent, and loyal and most public stations get a huge chunk of their funding through voluntary contributions from individual viewers and listeners (“Viewers Like You”)
interesting historically is that in early tv times when a city might have 1 or 2 stations, those stations could each be affiliated with 2 or 3 networks.
The short version of all of this is that American television networks are middlemen. Most primetime shows are produced by independent studios and most television broadcasting stations are owned independently. (Although there are a few exceptions to both of these.) So a television network buys shows from different studios, puts together a package of shows, and then signs agreements with television stations to broadcast the network package.
Local news is a big one. There are also local produced talk shows, children’s shows, and game shows, which are relatively low budget.
Some stations have gotten a little more ambitious and will produce short documentary features. There was also Operation Prime Time in the seventies when a group of independent stations joined together to produce their own primetime content.
DuMont was the first fourth network; ABC having been established as a separate company formed from the NBC “blue” network much earlier in 1943.
FOX very much rose from the ashes of the failed DuMont network. Many of their original affiliates were former DuMont-affiliated stations. Their New York headquarters is still in the DuMont building.
Wow, that thread is a treasure trove of information on American TV business. Thanks to everybody who contributed. One more question: How is advertising marketed? My understanding is that each affiliate station markets its own advertising time - they buy the program from the network (and pay for it), sell airtime to advertisers, and the difference between what they pay to the network and their other cost on the one hand and the advertising revneues on the other is their profit. Then again, every time there’s a major sports event like the Super Bowl you hear about how much airtime costs and what sort of fancy commercial big corporations produced for the occasion. Does that mean that for such events, advertising is actually marketed centrally, and the same commercials are aired nationwide? Is it marketed by the network, which pays a share of the revenues to the affiliated stations that carry the broadcast?
I think the commercials that run during a network TV show are a mixture of national and local (i.e. some “come with” the program, but there’s also time allotted for the local station to insert its own ads and promos). But I’m sure someone else with more expert knowledge will come along.
Network feeds have designated spots for inserting local commercials. For each given hour of network time, the local stations are guaranteed a certain amount of commercials (this is governed by the affiliation contract.) The remaining commercial time is sold by the networks for national advertising campaigns and appears everywhere. Naturally network ad time is fantastically more expensive than buying an ad on a local station.
ETA: Of course, the major advantage for the local station here is that they get the famous network show to attract an audience for their local ads.
Generally speaking, the network reserves commercial time for itself during its own programming. Those commercials are national or regional and will be seen at the same time everywhere in the coverage area. Commercials are purchased from the network by advertising agencies, which pays a rate commensurate with the expected number of people that might see it. The ratings that everybody talks about incessantly are there solely to set prices for commercials. They are measured in six-minute blocks so that ads can be priced and placed accordingly. For continuing programming, the network sets a guaranteed minimum of viewers and may have to do “givebacks” if that number isn’t reached. (If the show is an unexpected hit, the network loses potential money but raises rates as soon as the contract ends.) Givebacks may be a return of money or more usually additional free airings of the commercial or a later one. Programs with no commercials do not have ratings unless specially commissioned: PBS doesn’t have program ratings technically. The affiliates get none of this money.
However, some of the commercial time may be held back for local stations to sell individually. If a local station doesn’t run the network show, then it gets to sell all the commercial time. This is the prime revenue source for affiliates. The commercials can be from national firms or local ones. Stations contract with the ratings firms, Nielsen is the most famous but others have appeared over the years, to do local versions. Ratings “books” are broken down by every conceivable demographic so that commercials can be appropriately targeted.
The networks are not allowed to stop an affiliate station from affiliating with multiple networks. It still happens in some small towns.
It was very common to have shows that showed syndicated programming but “hosted” by a local host in a studio with a live audience.
For example, WKEF 22 in Dayton used to have:
—“Clubhouse 22” which showed syndicated cartoons with a live studio audience of local children every afternoon after school hosted by station employees Joe Smith and someone in a dog costume playing the mute Duffy the Dog.
Their theme song was based on “High Hopes” and had the line “Joe and Duff on ‘Clubhouse 22’” instead of “Oops, there goes another rubber tree.”
— “Shock Theater” a Sunday afternoon show featuring old monster movies hosted by Dr. Creep, a guy wearing white makeup and a black cape and top hat.
Don’t forget Elvira, Mistress of the Dark! Before she was a movie star she hosted crappy horror movies on a local station in Los Angeles.
ABC was only a radio network in 1943. It didn’t do any television broadcasting until 1948.
Some might argue that we should go back to the founding of the company rather than when they began broadcasting television. But even if that’s the case, DuMont predated ABC - the company had been founded in 1931.