O&O - means owned and operated.
A city is a market when there is no other local cities with a transmitter - that has the same affiliate.
In a state like Pennsylvania on the western side, you have the Johnstown / Altoona Market, the Pittsburgh market and the Erie Market.
I never said you couldn't own more than one station in a state, I said they let you own one network affiliate per a market - unless there is a situation where no one else wants to own it and then they will give you a special dispensation so you can own more than one.
In television COX Media owns a lot of stations - such as WJAC - (NBC)
In Pittsburgh WTAE (ABC) is owned by Hearst Communications - who is also part owner in the Disney corporation.
When you have a network station being owned by large corporation, even if it looses some money, they can offset the cost of running that one station against the profits of other stations that are making money.
When Fox came along, the other stations were already established and Fox was a side show and often relegated into the UHF band. ? How many people can remember the Fox viewing position on Married with Children.
When DTV came along, the stations that were low powered or already on UHF were protected - where they could remain where they were and not have to be moved for the larger network stations that were going to be moved up into the UHF if space allowed.
Some low powered stations actually sold their UHF channel to the larger stations and moved down into the VHF - where weather and noise is a larger factor, but was cheaper to broadcast with less digital power than if they would have stayed on the UHF frequencies.
As I explained before about the pie and only so many ways to slice up the pie (budget). When you move up into the UHF and your power consumption bill (electricity) goes up as much as 400% and your revenue (income) remains the same, sooner or later, something has to happen or your station goes dark.
Many stations have discontinued their news broadcast, bought local news programs from other local stations or combined their resources to save money on transmitters and repeaters.
One example I can give to you is WWCP (Fox) 8 out of Johnstown PA.
It's sister station WATM - (ABC) is on channel 23. (digital channel 24)
Channel 23 never came in well at my location when it was analog because the transmitter was tilted towards Johnstown and Pittsburgh, because of it's original license application, and I was in the wrong location to receive it.
When the digital transition came along, WATM (ABC) found that their signal could not be received in the Altoona area because the mountain their transmitter was on was too tall to broadcast over. Quote
- they found that the signal could not be received in Altoona - 5 miles away! - So basically there was not going to be any ABC network station which could be received in Altoona or State College or even Punxsutawney PA or points north.
So they combined resources and used the Channel 8 WWCP transmitter to transmit the High Def signal to the Johnstown - Pittsburgh market and used the sub channels to transmit the WATM signal into that market on standard definition off the same stick off the same tower.
At the same time, they transmit the WATM signal in High Def on channel 23 (digital channel 24), in the Altoona / State College area - which now comes in with no issues, other then the fact that you have to move the antenna further to the east to receive it better, since UHF is line of sight.
They broadcast the WWCP signal on the sub channel in standard definition (SD) on the same stick on the tower. So neither station has to use more power or more transmitters to cover the same amount of area as before the digital transition other then the addition of some low power translators.
The stations are all hard wired with fiber optic cable directly to the cable and sat dish companies, so there is no over the air issues with the cable and Sat TV transmission of their signals.
Low power stations and translators do not fall under any rules of ownership other then they cannot transmit outside the service contour map area of the original license of the station they serve. " You can't infringe upon other markets with your signal "
When you get into other markets such as Morgantown WV, Steubenville Oh, Youngstown OH, you might have the same network, but they have their own studios in that town that does all the local programming, news, weather etc... Even though you might be able to receive KDKA - (CBS) in those markets with some difficulty, they would not be served by KDKA because they could not serve the mission of the station which is to produce so many hours a week of local programming and kids shows.
Translators do not physically have any personnel working there on a permanent basis, so there is no updates for the PSIP or any other services other then to keep the transmitter running, so you still have the same programming as the home base transmitter, but you have no PSIP information for your program guide or clock or station identification and their signal might be followed by their call signs which might have a letter such as a W and then the number for the translator such as 56 followed by other letters, which means nothing to nobody except the station and the FCC.
You might never even see that unless they shut down their transmitter at the end of the broadcast day - such as does WATM / WWCP when they turn off their repeater near Somerset PA
WWCP is owned by Peak Media, while WATM is owned by Palm Television - they are both owned by the same person or the same corporation - and are ran by the same person, they just have different names on paper to keep the FCC happy. WATM (ABC) uses WJAC's (NBC) personnel and studios to produce their daily news program - which is broadcast with a 2 minute delay.
http://en.allexperts.com/e/w/ww/wwcp-tv.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WATM-TV
