Reverse compensation, in
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 ...
broadcasting, is the practice of a commercial
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 ...
paying a
television network
A television network or television broadcaster is a telecommunications network for distribution of television program content, where a central operation provides programming to many television stations or multichannel video programming distributo ...
in exchange for being permitted to affiliate with that network. The word "reverse" refers to the historical practice of networks paying stations to compensate them for the airtime networks use to run network
advertisement
Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a product or service. Advertising aims to put a product or service in the spotlight in hopes of drawing it attention from consumers. It is typically used to promote a ...
s during their programming.
Reverse compensation first appeared in the 1990s, with
The WB Television Network
The WB Television Network (for Warner Bros., or the "Frog Network", for its former mascot, Michigan J. Frog) was an American television network launched on broadcast television on January 11, 1995, as a joint venture between the Warner Bro ...
receiving reverse compensation from several stations. In 2001,
San Jose, California
San Jose, officially San José (; ; ), is a major city in the U.S. state of California that is the cultural, financial, and political center of Silicon Valley and largest city in Northern California by both population and area. With a 2020 popul ...
station
KNTV
KNTV (channel 11), branded as NBC Bay Area, is a television station licensed to San Jose, California, United States, serving as the San Francisco Bay Area's NBC network outlet. It is owned and operated by the network's NBC Owned Television Sta ...
agreed to pay $362 million over ten years to become the
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an Television in the United States, American English-language Commercial broadcasting, commercial television network, broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Enterta ...
affiliate for the
Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Gov ...
market, the largest such agreement to date. Shortly after, NBC bought KNTV when the station's owner ran into financial difficulty.
The practice played a role in the 2006 affiliation drives of two newly announced networks,
The CW Television Network
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the m ...
and
MyNetworkTV
MyNetworkTV (unofficially abbreviated MyTV, MyNet, MNT or MNTV, and sometimes referred to as My Network) is an American commercial broadcast television syndication service and former television network owned by Fox Corporation, operated by its ...
. The CW reportedly demanded reverse compensation from affiliates for an arguably proven, but still low-rated, prime time schedule; MyNetworkTV made no such demand and also allowed stations to keep more ad time than a traditional network would. As a result, several stations that seemed to be good candidates to become CW affiliates, including most WB- and
UPN
The United Paramount Network (UPN) was an American broadcast television network that launched on January 16, 1995. It was originally owned by Chris-Craft Industries' United Television. Viacom (through its Paramount Television unit, which prod ...
-affiliated
Sinclair Broadcast Group
Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc. (SBG) is a publicly traded American telecommunications conglomerate that is controlled by the descendants of company founder Julian Sinclair Smith. Headquartered in the Baltimore suburb of Cockeysville, Maryland, t ...
stations, announced affiliations with MyNetworkTV instead, though in cases where Sinclair had market duopolies, eventually relented and affiliated the second stations with The CW before their launch.
Pappas Telecasting
Pappas Telecasting Companies was a diversely organized broadcasting company headquartered in Visalia, California, United States. Founded in 1971, it was one of the largest privately held broadcasting companies in the country, with its stations r ...
and
Tribune Company
Tribune Media Company, also known as Tribune Company, was an American multimedia conglomerate headquartered in Chicago, Illinois.
Through Tribune Broadcasting, Tribune Media was one of the largest television broadcasting companies, owning 39 ...
, the two major station groups which did carry The CW, both filed for bankruptcy protection in 2008. Tribune, which operated the largest group of CW affiliates at the time of the network's launch, removed the network name from its stations' branding for a few years, until management changes returned the network branding to most of their affiliates.
Tonight's Top Story on Tribune's TV Stations: Its Bankruptcy Filing
Brian Stelter, New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
, December 8, 2008
In Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
, CTV attempted to move from a traditional network affiliation contract to a reverse compensation model in the early 2000s, which played a role in the disaffiliation of CHAN-TV
CHAN-DT (channel 8), branded on-air as Global BC (formerly British Columbia Television or BCTV), is a television station in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, serving as the West Coast flagship of the Global Television Network. Owned and oper ...
in Vancouver
Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the ...
, British Columbia
British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, ...
and CJON-TV
CJON-DT (channel 21), branded on-air as NTV (short for Newfoundland Television), is an English-language independent television station in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, owned by Newfoundland Broadcasting Company Ltd. The stati ...
in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador
Newfoundland and Labrador (; french: Terre-Neuve-et-Labrador; frequently abbreviated as NL) is the easternmost province of Canada, in the country's Atlantic region. The province comprises the island of Newfoundland and the continental region ...
from the network.
References
{{reflist
Television terminology