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.