Fox affiliate switches of 1994
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The Fox affiliate switches of 1994 constituted some of the most sweeping changes in American television history. The major impetus for the changes was to improve local coverage of the network's new National Football League packages.
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[edit] NFL on FOX
For some time, Rupert Murdoch, chief executive officer of News Corporation, the parent company of the Fox network, lusted after a major-league sports presence for his network. He thought that landing a live sports broadcasting package would elevate Fox to the level of ABC, CBS and NBC, the other nationwide broadcast networks in the United States at the time.
In 1987, the network bid for Monday Night Football, then the NFL's crown-jewel program, but the offer was rejected. Six years later, Fox stunned the sports and TV worlds by acquiring partial rights to the NFL. The package – covering four seasons of games involving teams in the National Football Conference, as well as several Super Bowls, a package previously owned by CBS – cost Fox $1.58 billion. CBS, then run by the cost-cutting Laurence Tisch, had reportedly bid only $290 million and was unwilling to even approach the Fox offer.
At the time of Fox's bid, most of its affiliates were lower-powered UHF stations. As Fox put together its new sports division to cover the NFL, it wanted to affiliate with VHF stations that had lower channel numbers (channels 2 to 13), more established histories, and carried more value with advertisers.
[edit] New World Deal
In the spring of 1994, months after completing the NFL contract, Fox agreed to purchase a 20 percent stake in New World Communications in a multi-million-dollar deal. The following stations were part of the deal:
[edit] Existing New World stations
- KNSD, San Diego, affiliated with NBC
- WAGA, Atlanta, affiliated with CBS
- WJBK, Detroit, affiliated with CBS
- WITI, Milwaukee, affiliated with CBS
- WJW, Cleveland, affiliated with CBS
- WTVT, Tampa/St. Petersburg, affiliated with CBS
[edit] Stations that were acquired from Argyle Television
- KDFW, Dallas/Fort Worth, affiliated with CBS
- KTBC, Austin, affiliated with CBS
- KTVI, St. Louis, affiliated with ABC
- WVTM, Birmingham, affiliated with NBC
[edit] Stations that were acquired from Citicasters
- KSAZ, Phoenix, affiliated with CBS
- WBRC, Birmingham, affiliated with ABC
- WDAF, Kansas City, affiliated with NBC
- WGHP, Greensboro/Winston-Salem/High Point, affiliated with ABC
In addition, two Citicasters stations, WKRC (Cincinnati) and WTSP (Tampa/St. Petersburg) were left out of the New World deal. Both would later be sold to Jacor; today, WKRC is owned by Clear Channel Communications, which bought Jacor, and WTSP is owned by Gannett.
Not all the stations involved would switch to Fox:
- Because of Federal Communications Commission rules of the time, New World could not keep WBRC and WVTM; WBRC was placed in a blind trust and would later be sold to Fox directly, as would WGHP. New World kept WVTM and it remained as an NBC affiliate, and in fact was once owned by the network itself. (It has since been sold to Media General.)
- KNSD also stayed with NBC because Fox already had an affiliate on the VHF band, XETV. Today, NBC Universal owns 76 percent of KNSD, and LIN TV 24 percent.
- WSBK did not join Fox because the network would repurchase its existing affiliate, WFXT. WSBK would later be sold to Viacom and became a charter member of UPN, which launched on January 16, 1995.
The key to the deal was that Fox upgraded its affiliate stations in some NFC markets. With that, fans of the Arizona Cardinals, Atlanta Falcons, Dallas Cowboys, Detroit Lions, Green Bay Packers, and Tampa Bay Buccaneers would continue to see at least their team's road games on local VHF stations. Many were former CBS affiliates from which Fox won the NFC rights. (St. Louis received an NFC team a year after the Fox switches, when the Los Angeles Rams moved there.)
[edit] Burnham Broadcasting
Just weeks after completing the New World deal, Fox announced another purchase, this one of Burnham Broadcasting. The stations involved were:
- WVUE, New Orleans, affiliated with ABC
- WLUK, Green Bay, affiliated with NBC
- WALA, Mobile, affiliated with NBC
- KHON, Honolulu, affiliated with NBC
Fox would own the stations in conjunction with Savoy Broadcasting, a minority-owned communications firm. The deal gave Fox upgrades for the home markets of two more teams: the Packers and the New Orleans Saints.
[edit] Consequences
Overnight, the landscape of local television in many areas changed as viewers got used to new affiliations.
In some cases, the transition was straightforward. In Kansas City, St. Louis, Austin, Cleveland and the Piedmont Triad, the old Fox affiliates simply were swapped with the new ones (KSHB joined NBC, KDNL and WXLV affiliated with ABC, and KEYE and WOIO affiliated with CBS). But in other cities, several affiliations changed at once. For example, in Phoenix, where KSAZ switched from CBS to Fox, Scripps-owned KNXV, which KSAZ replaced, did not join CBS but ABC instead. A new CBS affiliate was needed, and former independent station KPHO (which, ironically, was CBS's original Phoenix affiliation) stepped in. KTVK, the longtime ABC affiliate, became independent. In Tampa-St. Petersburg, ABC went to another Scripps-owned Fox affiliate, WFTS, leaving CBS to then ABC affiliate WTSP.
Oddly, in signing KNXV and WFTS, both on the UHF band, ABC willingly dropped stations with a much larger presence in their respective markets. Scripps had made the continued affiliation of WXYZ in Detroit and WEWS in Cleveland, both in New World markets and both being courted by CBS, contingent on also gaining the ABC affiliation in four other markets, including Phoenix and Tampa.
In Birmingham, six different stations changed affiliations due to WBRC moving from ABC to Fox. WCFT and WJSU, the CBS affiliates for Tuscaloosa and Anniston, merged and became the combined ABC affiliate for Birmingham and central Alabama. WNAL, the former Fox affiliate for Gadsden, became the CBS affiliate for northeast Alabama before eventually becoming the Pax network affiliate for Birmingham. WTTO and WDBB, the Fox affiliates for Birmingham and Tuscaloosa, became independent stations before eventually affiliating with the WB Network.
As expected, CBS bore the worst brunt of the changes. In Atlanta, Detroit, and Milwaukee, the new affiliates were all UHF stations with far less transmitting power than the previous affiliates.
- In Atlanta, CBS almost purchased channel 69, the highest available for TV broadcasts in the U.S. Eventually, they reached a deal with the owners of WGNX, now WGCL (Channel 46). (Ironically, CBS Corporation now owns channel 69, WUPA, as a CW affiliate; it was with UPN until September 2006.) The market's former Fox O&O WATL (Channel 36) became an affiliate of The WB, and in 2006 after the merger of the WB and UPN into The CW, moved over to another new network, MyNetworkTV.
- Milwaukee's new CBS station, WDJT (Channel 58), had a general syndicated schedule, with some ethnic and time-brokered religious programming mixed in; WDJT joined the network a week before the switch, after an attempt by CBS to buy religious station WVCY (Channel 30) fell through. The station then built a new transmitter in 1999 which has transmitting power equal with the market's other five commercial stations. Part of the switches resulted in one of the remaining sports properties on CBS, the Daytona 500, not being carried in some Milwaukee markets in 1995. Former Fox affiliate WCGV (Channel 24) became a UPN affiliate, and is also now affiliated with MyNetworkTV.
- In Detroit, CBS bought WGPR (Channel 62) from an African-American religious broadcaster and changed its name to WWJ-TV. The former Fox affiliate, WKBD (Channel 50), also joined UPN, and is now a CW affiliate co-owned with WWJ.
The only VHF success story was Dallas-Fort Worth, when KTVT (Channel 11) became the new CBS affiliate after KDFW switched to Fox. (The former Fox O&O in the Metroplex, KDAF (Channel 33), became a WB affiliate, and is now affiliated with The CW.)
At the same time, Fox was establishing itself also as a news network when it gained more affiliations which had aired newscasts for years. Fox had a higher interest in getting its affiliates to air more local news, because it does not have early evening national newscasts. The pressure paid off when the former Big Three affiliates in addition to many original Fox stations with newscasts expanded them over the course of time. Morning newscasts were automatically expanded to compete with the nationwide morning shows aired by the Big Three.
Unfortunately, many of the new Big Three affiliates were not as lucky. As these were former Fox affiliates (or independents) that did not have newscasts in that era, almost all of them had to give in to launching them to back up the nationally-aired newscasts provided by the networks. And the cons of the "Big Switch" outweighed the pros under this status:
- Stations such as KEYE, KNXV, WFTS, WGCL-TV, WDJT, WOIO and KSHB have the lowest-rated newscasts on average in their respective markets since their launch. Despite being fourth place on average, commonly behind their VHF long-standing news station competitors, they still air newscasts to this day.
- However, there were other new affiliates that launched newscasts with no permanent success. As a result of dismal ratings, these stations cancelled their entire news departments and have not renewed them:
- WWJ-TV Detroit -- premiered a newscast in fall 2001 produced by sister station WKBD. Both the WKBD and WWJ newscasts were cancelled in late 2002 under an agreement made by WXYZ. WWJ is now the largest-market major-network affiliate, and the only O&O of any major network, to have no newscasts.
- KDNL St. Louis -- premiered newscast soon after switching to ABC. News department lasted for six years until its cancellation, widely blamed on a transmitter problem.
- WXLV Greensboro-Winston Salem -- the newscast was cancelled under orders of its owner Sinclair (through its News Central division) due to poor ratings.
[edit] Beyond sports
Needless to say, the deal helped elevate Fox to major network status on par with its older competitors. And its sports division has expanded to include Major League Baseball, NASCAR, and the Bowl Championship Series. (The National Hockey League once aired on Fox as well, from 1995 to 1999.) There is even a Fox Sports Net, expanding the division to 24-hour coverage and many home team broadcasts.
But Fox's entertainment programs also benefited from the heavy promotion they received during the sportscasts. Some of the beneficiaries include shows already on Fox at the time, such as The Simpsons, as well as newer programs like American Idol and 24. In fact, Idol has been the number one rated primetime program on all networks the last two years (2005 and 2006).
[edit] Upgrades after 1994
Fox continued to upgrade its stations in at least two unrelated deals struck later:
- In 1995, NewsCorp purchased WHBQ in Memphis, Tennessee from Communications Corporation of America. This was part of the RKO General empire which had collapsed due to corruption and perjury.
- In 2002, KMSP, which is in the home market of the Minnesota Vikings, returned to the Fox network after seven years as an UPN station. Fox had purchased KMSP from Chris-Craft's United Television two years earlier.
At least one other station owner has pulled off a similar maneuver. In 2001, Meredith Corporation moved the Fox affiliation in the Portland, Oregon-Vancouver, Washington market from KPDX, on UHF channel 49, to KPTV, on VHF channel 12. Meredith had just acquired KPTV from Chris-Craft. In an ironic twist, Fox Television Stations Group would later buy all the remaining Chris-Craft stations, which in 2006 would all join MyNetworkTV as part of the 2006 United States broadcast TV realignment. This makes for an indirect connection between the last two major changes in broadcast affiliate lineups in the U.S.
[edit] Current statuses
- All Fox stations owned by New World which changed affiliations are still owned by NewsCorp today.
- None of the Burnham/SF stations are owned by Fox any longer. SF sold them to Silver King Broadcasting (later USA Broadcasting, now defunct) in 1997 and to Emmis Communications to 1998. Emmis has since sold WLUK and WALA to LIN TV and KHON to Montecito Broadcast Group. It is still seeking a buyer for WVUE. All stations are still Fox affiliates.
