Out of town stations that you used to see on cable

[ftballfan]

This is a spin-off of the regional TV markets thread. Back in the early days of cable, cable companies outside of the largest cities used to import network affiliates from other markets because they had the space to fill. They started dropping off one by one as stations became more protective of their market areas, stations stopped pre-empting network programming, new stations signed on in formerly short (short meaning a market without affiliates of all the Big Three/Four) markets, and cable channels coming on the air.

I'm quite young compared to some people, so when I was growing up, there were no out of market stations in my hometown (Manistee, MI) with the exception of the obvious superstations, WTBS and WGN. In the 1980s, before I was born, Manistee had the following (affiliations at the time listed):
WBAY (2) Green Bay [CBS, dropped early 1990s]
WFRV (5) Green Bay [NBC -> ABC, dropped late 1980s]
WLUK (11) Green Bay [ABC -> NBC, dropped early 1990s]
WZZM (13) Grand Rapids [ABC, dropped early 1990s]
WPNE (38) Green Bay [PBS, dropped 1984 when local PBS WCMW came on the air]

Ludington, 30 miles to the south, managed to hold on to 2, 5, and 11 from Green Bay until 2009 (!!) and still has 13. Side note: Ludington and Manistee were always served by different cable companies until Charter bought most of the cable companies in rural Michigan. Ludington, in addition to the ones available in Manistee (Ludington never had WPNE AFAIK), had:
WTMJ (4) Milwaukee [NBC, dropped early 2000s]
WITI (6) Milwaukee [ABC -> CBS -> FOX, dropped late 1990s]
WMVS (10) Milwaukee [PBS, dropped late 1990s]
For a while, Ludington dropped the in-market ABC affiliate (WGTU), but it returned in 2014.

Also, Manistee and Ludington never had WKBD from Detroit, so they missed out on FOX until then-WGKI was added to the cable systems around 1990/91. Ludington missed out on the last few years of the WB (after WGN dropped the network on the national feed) and the first eight years of the CW (CW+ was added to the Ludington system at the same time WGTU returned).

Grand Rapids, where my aunt lived, had WKBD nights and weekends until 1999, when WXSP came on and took the UPN affiliation.

[OracleUsr]

Greensboro had a few:

WRDU (Ch 28 Raleigh...can't remember when it was dropped)
WDCA (Ch 20 Washington, DC...stopped being on Cablevision of Greensboro in 1985)
WTBS (Can't remember the channel # but it was Atlanta's station before it became its own cable network)

[Otto Yamamoto]

In San Diego we used to get LA stations via cable, up until the early 80's.

P00I

[allniter89]

Greensboro had a few:

WRDU (Ch 28 Raleigh...can't remember when it was dropped)
WDCA (Ch 20 Washington, DC...stopped being on Cablevision of Greensboro in 1985)
WTBS (Can't remember the channel # but it was Atlanta's station before it became its own cable network)

I think it was channel 17

[Brian556]

I remember seeing these on cable lineups. I never got to watch them, because my mom would not let us have it, because, according to her, "its nothing but trash"

[LM117]

When I lived in Wayne County in North Carolina it was (and still is) part of the Raleigh/Durham market. We used to have Time Warner Cable (now known as Spectrum) and it had some stations from the Greenville market. Those stations were:

WITN (NBC ch. 7)
WNCT (CBS ch. 9)
WUNK (PBS UNC-TV ch. 25)

[bandit957]

Storer Cable in northern Kentucky (Cincinnati market) used to have WDRB Louisville and WKYT Lexington. WDRB was dropped not long after we got cable. WKYT lasted a few more years. When Storer dropped WKYT, they kept running these little tirades by Storer management personnel blaming the local newspaper (the Kentucky Post) for making viewers think they'd lose sports coverage.

I'm disappointed that Storer had no out-of-town network affiliates after that, because Cincinnati stations were the absolute worst with preempting popular shows, usually because of content. There was a time there when 'New Year's Rockin' Eve' wasn't even shown in Cincinnati because it was considered too controversial for WKRC-TV to air. This was in the late '80s/early '90s. Also, WLWT kept preempting '80s favorites like 'Diff'rent Strokes' by showing 'The Billy Graham Crusade' instead.

[ghYHZ]

I'm in the Canadian Maritimes.....in the early days of cable we got our US networks out of Bangor, Maine. Now...depending on your provider......they're out of Boston or Detroit and if you have  the west coast package.....you also get the Seattle stations.

[hbelkins]

The Frankfort, Ky. cable system has both the Louisville and Lexington network affiliates.

You can go to several places in West Virginia and get both the Huntington/Charleston network affiliates and affiliates from other cities.

[txstateends]

Amarillo's cable system used to carry KERA from DFW prior to 1988, as the market had no PBS station of its own.  Since KACV launched in 1988, it was not necessary to show another PBS station on the cable there.  Also on the cable into the early 1990s there was KTVT from DFW; it was an indie then (now a CBS station) and acted as a superstation.  KTVT left the cable listings there when they phased out superstation status.  Also, listed in Amarillo's TV Guide, was WFAA from DFW; I'm not sure what cable systems included WFAA then, but it definitely was not on Amarillo's system listing.

Meanwhile, across the state in Tyler/Longview, many cable systems there have previously included most if not all major stations from the nearest adjacent market (DFW, Shreveport, Houston).  With the growing availability of local stations in that market, fewer and fewer out-of-market stations were listed over time.  For example, in Tyler:
* WFAA continues to be listed despite the presence (and local top ratings) of KLTV (the local ABC)
* KXAS is no longer listed (KETK is the local NBC)
* KTVT is no longer listed (KYTX is the local CBS
; also, KTVT was previously DFW's primary indie station and there was no local market indie in Tyler/Longview)
* KDFW is still listed despite the presence of local Fox station KFXK (very likely as KFXK's local news and synd. programs pale compared to what KDFW offers)
* KXTX is possibly no longer listed (if so, it really wouldn't be necessary now; KXTX was for many years DFW's second-banana among indie stations there and there was no local Tyler/Longview indie stations... since then KXTX flipped to Telemundo (KLTV now carries Telemundo locally on a subchannel)
* KERA is still available on cable there.  There has been no PBS station before in the Tyler/Longview market, although KERA did try a few years ago to apply for a translator in Tyler.  It was denied as another applicant got the frequency instead.

[Desert Man]

Palm Springs and Palm Desert before merging with Indio have two separate cable services in the 1970s - the Palm Springs and Palm Desert ones had XETV 6 (ABC-now Spanish independent), KFMB 8 (CBS) and KOGO, later KGTV 10 (NBC-now ABC) from San Diego, but they dropped them before 1980. The Indio services had KECY 10 (CBS/ABC-channel 9-now FOX/My Network) and KYEL 13 (NBC-renamed KSWT-was ABC now CBS) out of El Centro/Yuma Az. KVCR 12 (PBS-channel 24) from San Bernardino-Riverside on both cable services, but was eventually dropped in the early 1980s...it was brought back in the 2000s as a result of an over-air translator on channels 9 and 18.

[Stephane Dumas]

I remember a time in the Eastern Townships, we got once in the cable line-up, CKTM-TV Trois-Rivières and CFCM Québec city who had been dropped in the mid-1980s. Also we used to get WMTW-8 ABC Portland/Mt. Washington until the early to mid-1990s replaced by Burlington station WVNY-22.

[dvferyance]

Milwaukee
WGN Chicago
WHA Madison (former)
WHA I believe is still on cable in Rockford since that city has no PBS affiliate of it's own. They have to get their public TV from either Chicago or Madison.

[bandit957]

So Cheap Trick isn't allowed to watch 'Sesame Street'.

[cl94]

Growing up in the Albany area, we got a few New York City stations, including WPIX (WB 11 at the time) and WPXN (PAX). We may have gotten the New York UPN affiliate as well. I know for a fact that Albany had both WB and UPN affiliates. On Adelphia, WPIX was 11 and WEWB 45 (Albany's WB) was 12, so two adjacent stations often showed the same thing, but 11 was how we got Yankees games on broadcast TV.

Currently, I know that both Watertown, NY and Salisbury, MD/Delmarva get some stations from out of the area, because some networks have no local affiliate. Delmarva gets Baltimore stations and Watertown gets Syracuse.

[SP Cook]

You can go to several places in West Virginia and get both the Huntington/Charleston network affiliates and affiliates from other cities.

To flesh out, WV has only the one true market, Huntington-Charleston, and, of course the topography is non-conductive to TV reception.  Combined with the fact that even the Huntington-Charleston station's towers are 40 miles apart (4 in Huntington, 2 in Charleston) and thus have different reception patterns this means "everybody" has to have cable or dish to have TV, even long before cable (then called CATV) offered anything more than what most people got for free. 

In any event, because the rest of the state's markets are not full (missing affiliates) and serve such a small area (and thus have totally amateur hour local news) there is a mix in the southern half of the state of the local Bluefield-Beckley stations with Huntington-Charleston, the Tri-Cities, and/or Roanoke-Lynchburg.  The Parkersburg market (only one station) has always gotten either H-C or Columbus stations.  In the north, there is a little overlap between H-C and Clarksburg, but not much mainly because this is the empty part of WV with little population.  Most of the Clarksburg market also gets Pittsburgh TV.  All of the Wheeling-Steubenville market does as well.  In the eastern panhandle, technically in the DC market a random mix of DC, Baltimore and the single stations in that rural area show up. 

Back when even H-C had no "independent" station, much of the area got Indy's WTTV microwaved in.  Even though it only covered its own market in terms of ads, sports or news.

[Sctvhound]

In Charleston, there are no out of town stations on local cable, since we are about 100 miles from Myrtle Beach and Savannah, and 110 from Columbia. In the 70s and early 80s, local cable would sometimes use a channel to broadcast Savannah or Columbia stations when the local stations preempted a program.

55 miles up US 17 in Georgetown, Myrtle Beach stations are on the cable. Wilmington stations (WECT NBC and WWAY ABC) were also there at one time. Beaufort, about 50-60 miles S, carries Savannah stations.

[bandit957]

Back when even H-C had no "independent" station, much of the area got Indy's WTTV microwaved in.  Even though it only covered its own market in terms of ads, sports or news.

I'd think Cincinnati would be a better choice geographically than Indianapolis, but I guess the Cincinnati stations were just so bad.

[kphoger]

Where I grew up out in the boonies of western Kansas (1990s), we only had 20-something channels.  With cable.  And in those 20-something channels, there were two iterations of ABC, from two different cities.  Most of the time, the programming was exactly the same.

[hbelkins]

You can go to several places in West Virginia and get both the Huntington/Charleston network affiliates and affiliates from other cities.

To flesh out, WV has only the one true market, Huntington-Charleston, and, of course the topography is non-conductive to TV reception.  Combined with the fact that even the Huntington-Charleston station's towers are 40 miles apart (4 in Huntington, 2 in Charleston) and thus have different reception patterns this means "everybody" has to have cable or dish to have TV, even long before cable (then called CATV) offered anything more than what most people got for free. 

In any event, because the rest of the state's markets are not full (missing affiliates) and serve such a small area (and thus have totally amateur hour local news) there is a mix in the southern half of the state of the local Bluefield-Beckley stations with Huntington-Charleston, the Tri-Cities, and/or Roanoke-Lynchburg.  The Parkersburg market (only one station) has always gotten either H-C or Columbus stations.  In the north, there is a little overlap between H-C and Clarksburg, but not much mainly because this is the empty part of WV with little population.  Most of the Clarksburg market also gets Pittsburgh TV.  All of the Wheeling-Steubenville market does as well.  In the eastern panhandle, technically in the DC market a random mix of DC, Baltimore and the single stations in that rural area show up. 

Back when even H-C had no "independent" station, much of the area got Indy's WTTV microwaved in.  Even though it only covered its own market in terms of ads, sports or news.

I remember when WVAH, Channel 23 out of Hurricane, got started. I was in college in Morehead and it was added to the local cable system.

I spend the night in Princeton last night but didn't turn the TV on to look to see what local stations from what markets were carried. I've stayed in Clarksburg once and Weston several times, and there was a mixture of Huntington-Charleston and (I think) Pittsburgh.

Speaking of the Morehead cable system, when I was in college you didn't have a whole lot of channels available on TV, and most TVs at the time were limited to 13 cable channels. The Lexington stations were offered, I think maybe at least one Huntington station, WTBS from Atlanta, WVAH got added -- and there was at least one Cincinnati station. Can't remember which one it was, but it was the one that featured Al Schottelkotte (sp?) as the news anchor. All the southern Ohio students at MSU seemed to consider him a legend. I think he may have been on the station that also carried Bob Braun's talk show. If not, the local cable network carried both those Cincinnati stations.

And speaking of distant reception, my dad grew up at a place that was near the highest elevation in the county. They had a TV when he was a youngster and reception was, obviously strictly over-the-air and this may have been before Lexington got a TV station. Depending on which way they rotated the antenna, they could either pick up (very faintly) either Channel 3 from Louisville or Channel 3 from Huntington. Given that my grandfather was from about 30 miles south of Huntington, I can imagine which one they watched most of the time.

[epzik8]

I'm in Harford County, Maryland in the Baltimore market. Baltimore has WMAR (ABC), WJZ (CBS), WBFF (Fox), WBAL (NBC) and MPT (PBS). Before 2010, when we switched to Verizon FiOS, we also picked up two Susquehanna Valley stations from the SC Pennsylvania triangle of Harrisburg-York-Lancaster: WPMT (Fox) and WGAL (NBC). On FiOS I have two additional PBS affiliates from Washington, DC: WETA and WHUT.

[bandit957]

Speaking of the Morehead cable system, when I was in college you didn't have a whole lot of channels available on TV, and most TVs at the time were limited to 13 cable channels. The Lexington stations were offered, I think maybe at least one Huntington station, WTBS from Atlanta, WVAH got added -- and there was at least one Cincinnati station. Can't remember which one it was, but it was the one that featured Al Schottelkotte (sp?) as the news anchor. All the southern Ohio students at MSU seemed to consider him a legend. I think he may have been on the station that also carried Bob Braun's talk show. If not, the local cable network carried both those Cincinnati stations.

Al Schottelkotte was WCPO. Bob Braun was WLWT.

[bandit957]

Also, the Al Schottelkotte era was when WCPO used the "Brrring! Channel 9!" jingle.

[Flint1979]

Use to be able to get WKBD TV-50 out of Detroit on cable in other Michigan markets. It was an Independent station, then a FOX station, then an UPN station and is now a CW station but is of course no longer offered outside of the Detroit market.

[Flint1979]

Greensboro had a few:

WRDU (Ch 28 Raleigh...can't remember when it was dropped)
WDCA (Ch 20 Washington, DC...stopped being on Cablevision of Greensboro in 1985)
WTBS (Can't remember the channel # but it was Atlanta's station before it became its own cable network)

WTBS was channel 17.