How do single stations in smaller markets decide what network to affiliate with?
Like Bowling Green, KY has one ABC channel. Why not NBC? Why only one channel?
Also what about markets like Tampa they (well used to they may still have) one ABC in Tampa and One ABC in Sarasota. Even though people in Sarasota get their NBC and CBS from Tampa.
Same for Akron Ch23 a few years back was ABC even though other Akronites got NBC and CBS from Cleveland. I think Ch23 no longer is a ABC station. Why two?
This probably isn’t really the answer you’re looking for, but I don’t think it has as much to do with locations as, simply, the whims of the networks and the call of the lowest bidder–that is, whichever network will cost them the least to become an affiliate. (Or pay them the most? I can never remember who pays who in this scenario).
I was raised in Toledo, OH, and now live in Ann Arbor, MI, so I’ve dealt with the Toledo/Detroit market all my life. For many many years the lineup was thus:
2 (WJBK Detroit): CBS
4 (WDIV Detroit): NBC
7 (WXYZ Detroit): NBC
11 (WTOL Toledo): CBS
13 (WTVG Toledo): NBC
24 (WNWO Toledo): ABC
With the addition of FOX, we gained:
36 (WUPW Toledo): FOX
50 (WKBD Detroit): FOX
Then… came all of the changes, and they all happened in the space of two-three years, right around the time UPN and the WB started becoming, sort of, competition, and at the same time Disney was buying out ABC:
50 went from FOX to UPN.
2 went from CBS to FOX.
CBS was relegated, in Detroit, to UHF 62.
13 Toledo was bought by ABC/Disney. (They’re not an affiliate; they’re owned outright).
24 Toledo became NBC since NBC no longer had an affiliate in Toledo.
All of these happened within a very short time-span, and as I said at the beginning, it seems subject to whims more than to logic.
LL
Basically, its whatever network gave them the best deal. Oh, there are such things as tradition, but it’s usually the money.
A decade or so ago the three network affiliates in the Albany NY area did a round robin. The problem was that the ABC affiliate had a weaker signal than the rest. So ABC went to the CBS station and got them to change. The ABC station (with the weak signal) went to CBS. A few years later, CBS approached the NBC affiliate (one of NBC’s very first network station) and another switch was carried out.
In the early early years of television, there was NBC and CBS. ABC came along later, so they either got shut out of markets or wound up with the stations the other two didn’t want. As a result, ABC took a lot of secondary markets, like Bowling Green, in order to get full (or at least fuller) coverage.
That started to change in the late 1970s, when ABC bought their way into better affiliates, and changed even more when Fox, WB and UPN shook up the local station lineup, but even now you’ll find the occasional odd city with the odd station in it.
By the way, technically, local stations choose to affiliate with networks, not the other way around. However, once the contract is sign, the network can ask for certain proofs of performance, and revoke the contract if they aren’t met.