In
American
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, pe ...
,
Canadian
Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...
, and
Mexican
Mexican may refer to:
Mexico and its culture
*Being related to, from, or connected to the country of Mexico, in North America
** People
*** Mexicans, inhabitants of the country Mexico and their descendants
*** Mexica, ancient indigenous people ...
broadcasting, a city of license or community of license is the community that a
radio station
Radio broadcasting is transmission of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based radio ...
or
television station
A television station is a set of equipment managed by a business, organisation or other entity, such as an amateur television (ATV) operator, that transmits video content and audio content via radio waves directly from a transmitter on the earth ...
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
AM broadcasting is radio broadcasting using amplitude modulation (AM) transmissions. It was the first method developed for making audio radio transmissions, and is still used worldwide, primarily for medium wave (also known as "AM band") transm ...
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
The law of the United States comprises many levels of Codification (law), codified and uncodified forms of law, of which the most important is the nation's Constitution of the United States, Constitution, which prescribes the foundation of the ...
as early as 1939.
Various specific obligations have been applied to broadcasters by governments to fulfill
public policy
Public policy is an institutionalized proposal or a decided set of elements like laws, regulations, guidelines, and actions to solve or address relevant and real-world problems, guided by a conception and often implemented by programs. Public p ...
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.
United States
In the United States, the
Communications Act of 1934
The Communications Act of 1934 is a United States federal law signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on June 19, 1934 and codified as Chapter 5 of Title 47 of the United States Code, et seq. The Act replaced the Federal Radio Commission with ...
requires that "the Commission shall make such distribution of licenses, frequencies, hours of operation, and of ower 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
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisdiction ...
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
FM broadcasting is a method of radio broadcasting using frequency modulation (FM). Invented in 1933 by American engineer Edwin Armstrong, wide-band FM is used worldwide to provide high fidelity sound over broadcast radio. FM broadcasting is cap ...
stations are required to provide a
field strength In physics, field strength means the ''magnitude'' of a vector-valued field (e.g., in volts per meter, V/m, for an electric field ''E'').
For example, an electromagnetic field results in both electric field strength and magnetic field strength.
As ...
of at least 3.16
millivolt
The volt (symbol: V) is the unit of electric potential, electric potential difference (voltage), and electromotive force in the International System of Units (SI). It is named after the Italian physicist Alessandro Volta (1745–1827).
Definit ...
s per meter (mV/m) over the entire land area of the community, whereas
non-commercial educational
A non-commercial educational station (NCE station) is a radio station or television station that does not accept on-air advertisements (TV ads or radio ads), as defined in the United States by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and was or ...
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
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisdiction ...
(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
In broadcasting and radio communications, a call sign (also known as a call name or call letters—and historically as a call signal—or abbreviated as a call) is a unique identifier for a transmitter station. A call sign can be formally assigne ...
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). The former requirement to (in most cases) maintain an official main studio within 25 miles of the community's geographic center was discontinued in December 2017 when the regulation was amended.
Policy and regulatory issues
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 is magnetic tape used for storing video and usually sound in addition. Information stored can be in the form of either an analog or digital signal. Videotape is used in both video tape recorders (VTRs) and, more commonly, videocassett ...
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
upright=1.4, gate (G), body (B), source (S) and drain (D) terminals. The gate is separated from the body by an insulating layer (pink).
A transistor is a semiconductor device used to Electronic amplifier, amplify or electronic switch, switch e ...
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
In electronics and telecommunications, a radio transmitter or just transmitter is an electronic device which produces radio waves with an antenna (radio), antenna. The transmitter itself generates a radio frequency alternating current, which i ...
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
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 opera ...
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 or Full Service may refer to:
* Full-service radio, a wide range of programming
* Full Service Network, a communications company
Entertainment
* "Full Service", a song by the New Kids on the Block from their album ''The Block''
* F ...
broadcast facilities and have their own independent
call sign
In broadcasting and radio communications, a call sign (also known as a call name or call letters—and historically as a call signal—or abbreviated as a call) is a unique identifier for a transmitter station. A call sign can be formally assigne ...
s and communities of license but are used simply as full-power
broadcast translator
A broadcast relay station, also known as a satellite station, relay transmitter, broadcast translator (U.S.), re-broadcaster (Canada), repeater (two-way radio) or complementary station (Mexico), is a broadcast transmitter which repeats (or tran ...
s 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
localism 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
A satellite or artificial satellite is an object intentionally placed into orbit in outer space. Except for passive satellites, most satellites have an electricity generation system for equipment on board, such as solar panels or radioisotope ...
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 favoring 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 recognized 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 neighboring, 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 is a city in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is situated between Scranton, Pennsylvania, Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Wilkes-Barre in Northeastern Pennsylvania. The city gained prominence in the late 19th an ...
(the city of license) and a larger audience in
Wilkes-Barre
Wilkes-Barre ( or ) is a city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Luzerne County. Located at the center of the Wyoming Valley in Northeastern Pennsylvania, it had a population of 44,328 in the 2020 census. It is the secon ...
.
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 into the larger city.
The small town of
Anniston, Alabama
Anniston is the county seat of Calhoun County in Alabama and is one of two urban centers/principal cities of and included in the Anniston-Oxford Metropolitan Statistical Area. As of the 2010 census, the population of the city was 23,106. Acco ...
, due to its location 90 miles west of
Atlanta
Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,715 ...
and 65 miles east of
Birmingham
Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the West ...
, has lost local content from both TV and FM stations which were re-targeted at one of the two larger urban centers or moved outright. (
WHMA-FM
WHMA-FM (95.3 FM, "The Big 95") is a radio station broadcasting a country music format. Licensed to Alexandria, Alabama, United States, it serves the Anniston-Oxford metropolitan area. The station is currently owned by Williams Communication ...
Anniston is now licensed as WNNX
College Park, Georgia
College Park is a city in Fulton County, Georgia, Fulton and Clayton County, Georgia, Clayton counties, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia, United States, adjacent to the southern boundary of the city of Atlanta. As of the 2020 United States Census, 20 ...
- an Atlanta suburb - after a failed attempt to relicense it to
Sandy Springs, Georgia
Sandy Springs is a city in northern Fulton County, Georgia and an inner ring suburb of Atlanta. The city's population was 108,080 at the 2020 census, making it Georgia's seventh-largest city. It is the site of several corporate headquarters, i ...
- another
Atlanta suburb. Transmitters are now in downtown Atlanta.)
The same is true for WJSU, which served East Alabama with local news until the station was merged into a triplex to form
ABC 33/40
WBMA-LD (channel 58) is a low-power television station in Birmingham, Alabama, United States, affiliated with ABC. It is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group alongside MyNetworkTV affiliate WABM (channel 68) and Homewood-licensed CW affiliate W ...
which focuses its coverage on the central part of the state.
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 file
A public file (or public inspection file) is a collection of documents required by a broadcasting authority to be maintained by all broadcast stations under its jurisdiction.
Such a file is required by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) i ...
somewhere within 25 miles of the city, and to cover the entire city with a local
signal
In signal processing, a signal is a function that conveys information about a phenomenon. Any quantity that can vary over space or time can be used as a signal to share messages between observers. The ''IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing'' ...
. In the United States, a station's
transmitter
In electronics and telecommunications, a radio transmitter or just transmitter is an electronic device which produces radio waves with an antenna (radio), antenna. The transmitter itself generates a radio frequency alternating current, which i ...
must be located so that it can provide a strong signal over nearly all of its "principal community" (5 mV/m or stronger at night for AM stations, 70 dbuV for FM, 35 dbu for DTV channels 2–6, 43 dbu for channels 7-13 and 48 dbu for channels 14+), even if it primarily serves another city. For example, American television station
WTTV
WTTV (channel 4), licensed to Bloomington, Indiana, United States, and WTTK (channel 29), licensed to Kokomo, Indiana, are television stations affiliated with CBS and serving the Indianapolis area. They are owned by Nexstar Media Group alongsid ...
primarily serves
Indianapolis
Indianapolis (), colloquially known as Indy, is the state capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Indiana and the seat of Marion County. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the consolidated population of Indianapolis and Marion ...
; 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 (it maintains a satellite station, WTTK, licensed to
Kokomo, Indiana
Kokomo ( ) is a city in Indiana and the county seat of Howard County, Indiana, United States. It is the principal city of the Kokomo, Indiana Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includes all of Howard County, the Kokomo-Peru CSA, which includ ...
, but in the digital age, WTTK is for all intents and purposes the station's main signal, transmitting from the traditional Indianapolis transmitter site). In some cases, such as
Jeannette, Pennsylvania
Jeannette is a city in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, United States. Jeannette was founded in 1888. The city got its name from one of the original city fathers, who wished to honor his wife, Jeannette McLaughlin, by giving the new town her fi ...
-licensed
WPCW
WPCW (channel 19), branded on-air as Pittsburgh's CW, is a television station licensed to Jeannette, Pennsylvania, United States, serving as the CW affiliate for the Pittsburgh area. It is owned by the CBS News and Stations group alongside CB ...
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 or CCI is crosstalk from two different radio transmitters using the same channel. Co-channel interference can be caused by many factors from weather conditions to administrative and design issues. Co-channel interference ...
WOIO
WOIO (channel 19) is a television station licensed to Shaker Heights, Ohio, United States, serving the Cleveland area as an affiliate of CBS. It is owned by Gray Television alongside low-power Telemundo affiliate WTCL-LD (channel 6) and Lorai ...
19
Shaker Heights
Shaker or Shakers may refer to:
Religious groups
* Shakers, a historically significant Christian sect
* Indian Shakers, a smaller Christian denomination
Objects and instruments
* Shaker (musical instrument), an indirect struck idiophone
* Cockta ...
). Another extreme example of a station's transmitter located far from the city of license is the FM station
KPNT
KPNT (105.7 FM, "105-7 The Point") is a commercial radio station licensed to Collinsville, Illinois, and broadcasting to Greater St. Louis. It mainly airs an alternative rock radio format, with some elements of active rock. It is owned by Hubba ...
, formerly licensed to
Ste. Genevieve, Missouri
Ste. Genevieve (french: Sainte-Geneviève ) is a city in Ste. Genevieve Township and is the county seat of Ste. Genevieve County, Missouri, United States. The population was 4,999 at the 2020 census. Founded in 1735 by French Canadian coloni ...
and transmitting from
Hillsboro, but serving the
St. Louis
St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...
and
Metro East
Metro East is a region in southern Illinois that contains eastern and northern suburbs and exurbs of St. Louis, Missouri, United States. It encompasses five Southern Illinois counties (and parts of three others) in the St. Louis Metropolitan Stati ...
market to the north. In 2015, the station was allowed by the FCC to move their city of license to
Collinsville, Illinois
Collinsville is a city located mainly in Madison County, and partially in St. Clair County, Illinois. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 25,579, an increase from 24,707 in 2000. Collinsville is approximately from St. Louis, Mis ...
and have a transmitter in St. Louis proper with a power decrease.
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, CBS affiliate
WOIO
WOIO (channel 19) is a television station licensed to Shaker Heights, Ohio, United States, serving the Cleveland area as an affiliate of CBS. It is owned by Gray Television alongside low-power Telemundo affiliate WTCL-LD (channel 6) and Lorai ...
is licensed to
Shaker Heights
Shaker or Shakers may refer to:
Religious groups
* Shakers, a historically significant Christian sect
* Indian Shakers, a smaller Christian denomination
Objects and instruments
* Shaker (musical instrument), an indirect struck idiophone
* Cockta ...
, a suburb of
Cleveland
Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...
, and thus identifies as "WOIO Shaker Heights-Cleveland." Similarly, northern
New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
New York may also refer to:
Film and television
* '' ...
's
WWNY-TV
WWNY-TV (channel 7) is a television station licensed to Carthage, New York, United States, serving as the CBS affiliate for the Watertown area. It is owned by Gray Television alongside low-power, Class A Fox affiliate WNYF-CD (channel 28). B ...
(also a CBS affiliate) identifies as "WWNY-TV
7 Carthage
Carthage was the capital city of Ancient Carthage, on the eastern side of the Lake of Tunis in what is now Tunisia. Carthage was one of the most important trading hubs of the Ancient Mediterranean and one of the most affluent cities of the classi ...
-
Watertown Watertown may refer to:
Places in China
In China, a water town is a type of ancient scenic town known for its waterways.
Places in the United States
*Watertown, Connecticut, a New England town
**Watertown (CDP), Connecticut, the central village ...
" as a historical artifact; the original broadcasts originated from
Champion Hill
Champion Hill is a football stadium in East Dulwich in the London Borough of Southwark. It is the home ground of Dulwich Hamlet.
History
Dulwich Hamlet began playing at the ground in 1912. 'The Hill' was formerly one of the largest amateur grou ...
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, the
Tampa Bay
Tampa Bay is a large natural harbor and shallow estuary connected to the Gulf of Mexico on the west-central coast of Florida, comprising Hillsborough Bay, McKay Bay, Old Tampa Bay, Middle Tampa Bay, and Lower Tampa Bay. The largest freshwater in ...
region's Fox owned-and-operated station
WTVT
WTVT (channel 13) is a television station licensed to Tampa, Florida, United States, broadcasting the Fox network to the Tampa Bay area. Owned and operated by the network's Fox Television Stations division, WTVT maintains studios on Kennedy Bo ...
is licensed to
Tampa, Florida
Tampa () is a city on the Gulf Coast of the United States, Gulf Coast of the U.S. state of Florida. The city's borders include the north shore of Tampa Bay and the east shore of Old Tampa Bay. Tampa is the largest city in the Tampa Bay area and ...
, its primary city, but identifies on-air as "WTVT Tampa/
St. Petersburg
Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...
", as St. Petersburg is another major city in the market.
There is no longer a requirement to carry
program
Program, programme, programmer, or programming may refer to:
Business and management
* Program management, the process of managing several related projects
* Time management
* Program, a part of planning
Arts and entertainment Audio
* Progra ...
s 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-FM
CFNY-FM (''102.1 the Edge'') is a Canadian radio station, broadcasting at 102.1 MHz in the Greater Toronto Area, licensed to the suburb of Brampton. CFNY plays an alternative rock format. Owned by Corus Entertainment, its studios are in Downtown ...
is officially licensed to
Brampton, Ontario
Brampton ( or ) is a city in the Canadian province of Ontario. Brampton is a city in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) and is a lower-tier municipality within Peel Region. The city has a population of 656,480 as of the 2021 Census, making it th ...
, although its studio and transmitter facilities are located in downtown
Toronto
Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...
.
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. For instance, for a short time while resolving a license conflict and ownership transaction in 1989, the current day
KCAL-TV
KCAL-TV (channel 9) is an independent television station in Los Angeles, California, United States. It is owned by the CBS News and Stations group alongside CBS West Coast flagship KCBS-TV (channel 2). Both stations share studios at the C ...
in
Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...
was licensed to the little-known southeast suburb of
Norwalk, California
Norwalk is a city in Los Angeles County, California, Los Angeles County, California, United States. The population was 105,549 at the 2010 United States Census, 2010 census and an estimated 103,949 in 2019. It is the 58th most densely-populated ...
, with the station's identifications at the time only vocally mentioning the temporary city of license in a rushed form, with Norwalk barely receiving any visual mention on the station; at no time were any station assets actually based in Norwalk, nor was public affairs or news programming adjusted to become Norwalk-centric over that of Los Angeles and
Southern California
Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and Cultural area, cultural region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. It includes the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the second most po ...
. The station returned to its Los Angeles city of license after the transaction was complete.
Often, a station will keep a tiny outlying community in its licensing and on-air identity long after the original rationale for choosing that location is no longer truly applicable.
Sneedville, Tennessee
Sneedville is the only city in and the county seat of Hancock County, Tennessee, United States. The population was 1,282 per the 2020 census.
History
Settlement began in the 1790s, following the American Revolutionary War,Will Thomas Hale and Dix ...
as city of license for PBS member station
WETP-TV originally made sense as a compromise location to serve both
Knoxville
Knoxville is a city in and the county seat of Knox County in the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of the 2020 United States census, Knoxville's population was 190,740, making it the largest city in the East Tennessee Grand Division and the state's ...
and the
Tri-Cities of Tennessee and Virginia on VHF channel 2. It met the minimum distance requirements to two other channel 2 stations in the region,
WKRN
WKRN-TV (channel 2) is a television station in Nashville, Tennessee, United States, affiliated with ABC and owned by Nexstar Media Group. The station's studios are located on Murfreesboro Road (U.S. Routes 41 and 70S) on Nashville's southeast ...
in
Nashville
Nashville is the capital city of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the seat of Davidson County. With a population of 689,447 at the 2020 U.S. census, Nashville is the most populous city in the state, 21st most-populous city in the U.S., and the ...
and
WSB-TV
WSB-TV (channel 2) is a television station in Atlanta, Georgia, United States, affiliated with ABC. It is the flagship television property of locally based Cox Media Group, which has owned the station since its inception, and is sister to rad ...
in
Atlanta
Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,715 ...
. This became less important after full-power UHF satellite
WKOP-TV signed on in Knoxville, and irrelevant once the
2003-09 DTV transition and
2016-21 repack moved WETP's main signal to physical channel UHF 24. Nonetheless, broadcasters and regulatory authorities are more likely to retain the original city of license, rather than bring unwanted scrutiny for taking away a small community's only station, which may be a mark of
civic pride, only to move it to some larger center which already has multiple stations.
Table of allotments
In the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
, the
Federal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisdiction ...
maintains a Table of Allotments, which assigns individual channel frequencies to individual cities or communities for both
TV and
FM radio
FM broadcasting is a method of radio broadcasting using frequency modulation (FM). Invented in 1933 by American engineer Edwin Armstrong, wide-band FM is used worldwide to provide high fidelity sound over broadcast radio. FM broadcasting is cap ...
.
A corresponding Table of Allotments for
digital television
Digital television (DTV) is the transmission of television signals using digital encoding, in contrast to the earlier analog television technology which used analog signals. At the time of its development it was considered an innovative advanc ...
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, designated by the United States Office of Management and Budget as the Atlanta–Sandy Springs–Alpharetta, GA Metropolitan Statistical Area, is the most populous metropolitan statistical area in the U.S. state of Georgia and the ...
station to the unincorporated
Cobb County
Cobb County is a county in the U.S. state of Georgia, located in the Atlanta metropolitan area in the north central portion of the state. As of 2020 Census, the population was 766,149. Its county seat and largest city is Marietta.
Along with ...
community of
Mableton, but the refusal to license
another to
Sandy Springs
Sandy Springs is a city in northern Fulton County, Georgia and an inner ring suburb of Atlanta. The city's population was 108,080 at the 2020 census, making it Georgia's seventh-largest city. It is the site of several corporate headquarters, i ...
, which is one of the largest cities in the state, and was at the time an unincorporated part of
Fulton County Fulton County is the name of eight counties in the United States of America. Most are named for Robert Fulton, inventor of the first practical steamboat:
*Fulton County, Arkansas, named after Governor William Savin Fulton
*Fulton County, Georgia
*F ...
only for political reasons in the
Georgia General Assembly
The Georgia General Assembly is the state legislature of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is bicameral, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives.
Each of the General Assembly's 236 members serve two-year terms and are directly ...
.
The definition of a "community" also comes into play when a broadcaster wants to take a station away from a tiny hamlet like
North Pole, New York
North Pole is a small hamlet located in the town of Wilmington within Essex County, New York, United States, in the Adirondack Mountains.
Geography
North Pole is located in Adirondack Park at the northern edge of Essex County near Whitefa ...
whose population is in decline. In general, regulators are loath to allow a community's only license to be moved away - especially to a city which already has a station. A broadcaster may make the case that the "community" functionally no longer exists in order to be released from its local obligations.
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 suburban station
In
FM radio
FM broadcasting is a method of radio broadcasting using frequency modulation (FM). Invented in 1933 by American engineer Edwin Armstrong, wide-band FM is used worldwide to provide high fidelity sound over broadcast radio. FM broadcasting is cap ...
broadcasting, small local stations were sometimes built to serve
suburb
A suburb (more broadly suburban area) is an area within a metropolitan area, which may include commercial and mixed-use, that is primarily a residential area. A suburb can exist either as part of a larger city/urban area or as a separate ...
an or outlying areas in an era where
AM radio
AM broadcasting is radio broadcasting using amplitude modulation (AM) transmissions. It was the first method developed for making audio radio transmissions, and is still used worldwide, primarily for medium wave (also known as "AM band") transm ...
stations held the largest audiences and much of the FM spectrum lay vacant. In the era of
vacuum tube
A vacuum tube, electron tube, valve (British usage), or tube (North America), is a device that controls electric current flow in a high vacuum between electrodes to which an electric voltage, potential difference has been applied.
The type kn ...
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 scarce commodity in many markets as AM stations moved to the FM dial, relegating AM largely to
talk radio
Talk radio is a radio format containing discussion about topical issues and consisting entirely or almost entirely of original spoken word content rather than outside music. Most shows are regularly hosted by a single individual, and often featur ...
. 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
Co-channel interference or CCI is crosstalk from two different radio transmitters using the same channel. Co-channel interference can be caused by many factors from weather conditions to administrative and design issues. 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-height and 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
Plattsburgh ( moh, Tsi ietsénhtha) is a city in, and the seat of, Clinton County, New York, United States, situated on the north-western shore of Lake Champlain. The population was 19,841 at the 2020 census. The population of the surrounding ...
-
Burlington
Burlington may refer to:
Places Canada Geography
* Burlington, Newfoundland and Labrador
* Burlington, Nova Scotia
* Burlington, Ontario, the most populous city with the name "Burlington"
* Burlington, Prince Edward Island
* Burlington Bay, no ...
, both on
Lake Champlain
, native_name_lang =
, image = Champlainmap.svg
, caption = Lake Champlain-River Richelieu watershed
, image_bathymetry =
, caption_bathymetry =
, location = New York/Vermont in the United States; and Quebec in Canada
, coords =
, type =
, ...
) - 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
In North American broadcasting, a local marketing agreement (LMA), or local management agreement, is a contract in which one company agrees to operate a radio or television station owned by another party. In essence, it is a sort of lease or tim ...
s or adjacent-market licenses 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 new entrant
A new network or station group will often enter a market after all of the most valuable available frequencies (such as the analogue VHF TV assignments in major cities) are already taken. This often results in building a network by constructing outlying stations, UHF stations, underpowered stations or some mix of all three. That can leave transmitters licensed to some very strange or tiny places. This happened to some degree with networks which signed on in the 1960s, such as
National Educational Television
National Educational Television (NET) was an American non-commercial educational, educational terrestrial television, broadcast television network owned by the Ford Foundation and later co-owned by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. It o ...
in the US or the
CTV Television Network
The CTV Television Network, commonly known as CTV, is a Canadian English-language terrestrial television network. Launched in 1961 and acquired by BCE Inc. in 2000, CTV is Canada's largest privately owned television network and is now a divis ...
in Canada. Later entrants fared worse.
In the US,
PAX Network
Ion Television is an American broadcast television network owned by the Katz Broadcasting subsidiary of the E. W. Scripps Company. The network first began broadcasting on August 31, 1998, as Pax TV, focusing primarily on family-oriented enter ...
(now
Ion Television
Ion Television is an American broadcast television network owned by the Katz Broadcasting subsidiary of the E. W. Scripps Company. The network first began broadcasting on August 31, 1998, as Pax TV, focusing primarily on family-oriented enter ...
) was prone to this, building a network largely from outlying
owned-and-operated UHF stations.
In Canada, third networks such as
Global
Global means of or referring to a globe and may also refer to:
Entertainment
* ''Global'' (Paul van Dyk album), 2003
* ''Global'' (Bunji Garlin album), 2007
* ''Global'' (Humanoid album), 1989
* ''Global'' (Todd Rundgren album), 2015
* Bruno ...
were often a motley collection of outlying stations in their early years.
CKGN-TV, Ontario's original "Global Television Network" repeater chain, signed on in 1974 in an already densely-packed stretch of the beaten-path Windsor-Quebec corridor in which few desirable channels were available. Cities such as
Windsor
Windsor may refer to:
Places Australia
* Windsor, New South Wales
** Municipality of Windsor, a former local government area
* Windsor, Queensland, a suburb of Brisbane, Queensland
**Shire of Windsor, a former local government authority around Wi ...
,
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
,
Toronto
Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...
,
Peterborough
Peterborough () is a cathedral city in Cambridgeshire, east of England. It is the largest part of the City of Peterborough unitary authority district (which covers a larger area than Peterborough itself). It was part of Northamptonshire until ...
,
Kingston and
Cornwall
Cornwall (; kw, Kernow ) is a historic county and ceremonial county in South West England. It is recognised as one of the Celtic nations, and is the homeland of the Cornish people. Cornwall is bordered to the north and west by the Atlantic ...
are notable by their absence from the network's original roster.
[Global Ontario ]CIII-TV
CIII-DT (channel 41) is a television station in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, serving as the flagship station of the Global Television Network. Owned and operated by network parent Corus Entertainment, CIII-DT maintains studios at 81 Barber Green ...
signoff (1984) at www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCwHMFgW7Pw lists five transmitters, most in outlying markets, at reduced power or on less-desirable UHF channel assignments. The five transmitters on-air in 1984 (after a decade of operation as a struggling "third network" were:
:*
Sarnia
Sarnia is a city in Lambton County, Ontario, Canada. It had a 2021 population of 72,047, and is the largest city on Lake Huron. Sarnia is located on the eastern bank of the junction between the Upper and Lower Great Lakes where Lake Huron fl ...
transmitting from Oil Springs on UHF 29 (370kW)
:*
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
on VHF 6 (at the full 100kW, the most allocated to a station of this class in Ontario)
:*
Uxbridge
Uxbridge () is a suburban town in west London and the administrative headquarters of the London Borough of Hillingdon. Situated west-northwest of Charing Cross, it is one of the major metropolitan centres identified in the London Plan. Uxbrid ...
on UHF 22 (at the full 5000kW, the most powerful in the nation, but on an undesirable suburban UHF allocation nowhere near downtown Toronto)
:*
Bancroft on VHF 2 (at 87kW - and later increased to the full 100kW, but in the speck-on-a-map unincorporated hamlet of
Vennachar, near Denbigh).
:*
Ottawa
Ottawa (, ; Canadian French: ) is the capital city of Canada. It is located at the confluence of the Ottawa River and the Rideau River in the southern portion of the province of Ontario. Ottawa borders Gatineau, Quebec, and forms the core ...
on VHF 6 (at one-eighth the typical power for a station in its class, and on a sharp directional pattern focussed on Ottawa). This station had to protect
CBMT (VHF 6,
CBC Montréal) less than 120 miles distant - and this at a time when full-power VHF TV co-channel stations were typically spaced 175-200 miles (280-320km) apart to prevent interference.
The majority of these transmitters were not licensed to the primary community served. Many were underpowered, short-spaced or in undesirable locations - often just putting enough signal into key communities to obtain cable
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.
North America Canada
Under current CRTC regulations, the lowest tier of service on ...
protection. As the only transmitters to be operating on then-valuable VHF channels at anything other than greatly-reduced power were licensed to Paris and Bancroft, both awkward outlying communities, the Paris transmitter was arbitrarily listed as the main station for the entire network.
The cable or digital TV placeholder
Sometimes, putting a usable over-the-air signal into the primary community served is anywhere from second-priority to not a priority at all. A station could be
barely within the
market's boundaries or be underpowered to the point of putting a "B" grade signal into the community at best. On anything less than a huge rooftop antenna, the station is unwatchable — but, even if the underlying over-the-air signal wasn't valuable, the corresponding
cable television
Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with broa ...
slots in the various communities it was almost serving were. Any full-service domestic signal above some arbitrary minimum had access to "
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.
North America Canada
Under current CRTC regulations, the lowest tier of service on ...
" protection, could request favourable placement on the dial and (in Canada) could engage in
signal substitution to take ad revenue from other stations already carrying the same content.
The
2016-2020 OTA TV repack opened additional possibilities for using an outlying community's licence as an over-the-air placeholder. Buy a station, return the licensed broadcast spectrum to the government, then claim to be "sharing" a channel with another broadcaster by using the orphan licence to place content on one of their
digital subchannel
In broadcasting, digital subchannels are a method of transmitting more than one independent program stream simultaneously from the same digital radio or television station on the same radio frequency channel. This is done by using data compress ...
s. Suddenly, an outlying commercial low-power station in
New Hampshire
New Hampshire is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Gulf of Maine to the east, and the Canadian province of Quebec t ...
is "sharing" space on
WGBX
WGBX-TV (channel 44), branded on-air as GBH 44 since 2020, is the secondary PBS member television station in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. Owned by the WGBH Educational Foundation, it is sister to Boston's primary PBS member station a ...
, a full-power non-commercial station in the heart of the
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
market. The same transmitter can, by using two different licences in a "channel sharing" arrangement, have two different communities of licence - which may allow more flexibility for its location. It's also possible to mix commercial and non-commercial licences. In Canada, where
CRTC
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC; french: Conseil de la radiodiffusion et des télécommunications canadiennes, links=) is a public organization in Canada with mandate as a regulatory agency for broadcasti ...
regulations prevent carrying any additional, unique programming on digital subchannels without obtaining a second licence (and taking all the obligations which go with it) for each subchannel, returning just the spectrum (and keeping the licence) can be used as a means to recycle licences from abandoned, defunct outlying stations for use elsewhere in the network.
The use of an adjacent market
Occasionally, a station owner would reach a legal limit on
concentration of media ownership
Concentration of media ownership (also known as media consolidation or media convergence) is a process whereby progressively fewer individuals or organizations control increasing shares of the mass media. Contemporary research demonstrates in ...
, 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.
See also
*
All Channels Act
*
Border Blaster
A border blaster is a broadcast station that, though not licensed as an external service, is, in practice, used to target another country. The term "border blaster" is of North American origin, and usually associated with Mexican AM station ...
*
Rimshot (broadcasting)
*
Twinstick
A duopoly (or twinstick, referring to "stick" as jargon for a radio tower) is a situation in television and radio broadcasting in which two or more stations in the same city or community share common ownership.
United States
In the United States, ...
and
Duopoly (broadcasting)
A duopoly (or twinstick, referring to "stick" as jargon for a radio tower) is a situation in television and radio broadcasting in which two or more stations in the same city or community share common ownership.
United States
In the United States, ...
*
Flag of convenience (business)
Notes
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:City Of License
Broadcast law
United States communications regulation
Mass media regulation in Canada