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[Desert Man]

A thread about regional television markets, their stations and how far they can reach or serve.

The L.A. TV market extends 60 miles east to Riverside and San Bernardino, where the only major TV station is a PBS public one: KVCR 24. The FCC designated Riverside county a separate market - for Palm Springs (KESQ-ABC, KPSP-CBS, KCWQ-CW, KDFX-FOX, KPSE-My Net and KMIR-NBC), but Temecula can get San Diego (KGTV-ABC, KFMB-CBS, KSWB-FOX, KNSD-NBC and others) and Blythe can get Yuma AZ (KECY-FOX/My Net, KSWT-CBS and KYMA-NBC) with some Phoenix stations (KNXV-ABC). The L.A. TV market permits some Bakersfield TV (KBAK-CBS) in Lancaster and Victorville, Santa Barbara TV (KEYT-ABC) in Ventura and most Las Vegas TV in Needles (i.e. KSNV-NBC). And 2 superstations-cable: WPCH (was WTBS) Atlanta and WOR 9 (My) New York.

My wife grew up with a pair of same major TV networks in her cable in her childhood in San Mateo in the San Francisco bay area. KNTV 11 (ABC) from San Jose, now NBC for the whole SF bay area took up KGO 7 (ABC)'s market. KPIX 5 (CBS) and KOFY (secondary CBS or now ABC) due to major league baseball coverage, same with KTVU 2 (FOX) from Oakland and KTXL 40 from Stockton. And KRON 4 (NBC, now My Net) vs. KCRA 3 (NBC) from Sacramento. There were 2 UPN stations: KICU 36 San Jose and KBHK 44 Contra Costa between Oakland and Stockton, also had major league sports coverage. And 2 WB stations: briefly KNTV 11 and WGN 9 Chicago or KTLA 5 LA. There's a local CW station in SF Bay area (Wikipedia says it's KBWB 44 Concord). PBS from KCSM 60 San Mateo with KQED 9, and an independent station: KFTY 50 Santa Rosa.

In many TV markets with 2 of the same network, the local ones don't cover their primetime with local access or informercials (on cable), FCC regulations requires the secondary "regional" ones to not show the same programming the local affiliate has. However, in Indio/Coachella, Banning/Beaumont and Hemet/San Jacinto in Riverside county, you receive other areas' TV stations over-air, esp. in perfect atmospheric conditions 60-80 miles away. KESQ (ABC) had a transmitter in Hemet in the 1980s-90s, but I think it's on cable and satellite now - they co-own KPSP (CBS) and KCWQ (CW) - carries KTLA 5 news from L.A., and KECY (FOX/My-former CBS/ABC) put a transmitter in Indio in the 1990s-2000s - now KDFX (Fox).   

[bing101]

KVIE Sacramento and KQED9/KQED+ serves Solano County. It's where the San Francisco DMA and Sacramento DMA have a dividing line somewhere in Fairfield and Suisun City where the line is drawn.

Vallejo and Benicia gets the San Francisco TV stations but Vacaville and Dixon get the Sacramento TV stations.

At one point there was confusion over the NBC3 brand in Solano county mainly because back in 2001-2002 NBC was taking over KNTV and in most Bay Area counties KNTV was placed in channel 3 in Cable systems. However Solano county residents had KCRA3 the Hearst owned NBC affiliate in Sacramento via OTA was picked up on channel 3 though for NBC programming.

[Desert Man]

KVIE Sacramento and KQED9/KQED+ serves Solano County. It's where the San Francisco DMA and Sacramento DMA have a dividing line somewhere in Fairfield and Suisun City where the line is drawn.

Vallejo and Benicia gets the San Francisco TV stations but Vacaville and Dixon get the Sacramento TV stations.

At one point there was confusion over the NBC3 brand in Solano county mainly because back in 2001-2002 NBC was taking over KNTV and in most Bay Area counties KNTV was placed in channel 3 in Cable systems. However Solano county residents had KCRA3 the Hearst owned NBC affiliate in Sacramento via OTA was picked up on channel 3 though for NBC programming.

Locally, we receive 2 PBS stations - KVCR and KOCE 50 from Orange county, and former PBS KCET L.A. In Palm Springs, the cable service has KPBS 15 San Diego and KQED san Francisco, but Palm Desert has different channels. There are 2 independent stations in Riverside (Temecula): KZSW 27 and KUSI 51 based in San Diego, and 2 in San Bernardino (Victorville): KPXN 30 (has KNBC 4 news) and KVVB 33 for the Mojave desert. And Victorville (KABC) and Yucca Valley (KESQ) have ABC TV transmitters.

Spanish-Language TV works like this: KVER 12 (Univision) Indio will have news from KMEX 34 L.A. and sister station KEVC 5 (UniMas) also from Indio has news from San Diego-Tijuana, but KVER has a news studio here and KEVC's in Mexicali. KUNA 15 (Telemundo) again Indio, has local news and KVEA 52 from L.A.-Corona (by Riverside). And Televisa from Mexicali (over-air XHBC 4 and XHBM 32), and (TV) Azteca from L.A (channel 47-cable only) owned by a Mexican TV network with affiliates in the USA.

And for the rest of Southern CA: the Santa Barbara market - KEYT (ABC), KCOY (CBS) Santa Maria and its FOX sister station with transmitter in Ventura, and KSBY (NBC) San Luis Obispo with a transmitter in Santa Barbara. And Bakersfield market - KERO (ABC), KBAK (CBS), KGET (NBC) and KMPH (FOX) from Tulare county-Fresno area. Univision owns English-language KUVI (My Net) formerly KUZZ which owned a country music radio station. KTLA (CW) news on transmitters in Santa Barbara and Bakersfield. 

[bing101]

Lake Tahoe get the Reno TV stations but some areas get Sacramento TV stations on cable systems.

[Desert Man]

KTVU 2 and KTXL 40 are Fox affiliates, but parts of Nevada have their transmitters or on cable. KTLA 5 (CW) does the "superstation" thing in parts of the western US. The Christian television network KTBN 40 based in Orange county CA has transmitters all over the place. In Loma Linda CA, the majority seventh-Day Adventist church HQ town has the 3 Angels Broadcast Network, also has transmitters. And I receive the Latter-day saints church owned BYU-TV (Brigham Young University) from Provo, UT on my cable service, some parts of the west US has over-air transmitters of Mormon programming.

[CNGL-Leudimin]

IIRC there is a Nevada county which is part of the market... of Denver!

[7/8]

Maybe a bit off topic, but my brother and I went to the Tim Horton's in Port Huron, MI right across the border from Canada and the TV they had was on CTV Kitchener! Pretty odd to see our local news station in a different country . The quality looked terrible though.

[LM117]

Mecklenburg County in VA is part of the Raleigh/Durham market in NC, which makes absolutely no damn sense, especially when the TV stations give the county zero coverage, except as part of a weather forecast. Mecklenburg should be part of the Richmond market, IMO.

Another one that doesn't make sense is Edgecombe County in NC. It borders Pitt County, home of the Greenville market, and yet Edgecombe County is part of the Raleigh/Durham market. WTF?

[bing101]

I say Tracy and Manteca should get gerrymandered over to the San Francisco TV Market because currently Sacramento TV stations hold territory to these two cities. But Tracy and Manteca are closer to the Bay Area by characteristics though. Also in the past two decades they've been counted as part of the Bay Area.

[Stephane Dumas]

I remember when I was younger, the SRC and TVA affiliated stations of Sherbrooke, Trois-Rivières and Québec got different shows compared to Montreal. 2 SRC affiliates CKTM (Trois-Rivières) and CKSH(Sherbrooke) used to show "Le Cinéma de 5 heures" on 5PM weekdays instead of CBFT-2 schedule.

[ftballfan]

Grand Rapids, MI still has two ABC affiliates. The primary one, WZZM, has its stick near Fremont in Newaygo County while WOTV has its stick in Barry County. Most cable systems carry both affiliates, but some (Charter in Coldwater and Sturgis) carry only WOTV.

WZZM's stick is as far north as it is because it was short-spaced to co-channel stations in Rockford IL and Toledo OH. Its location also allowed it to serve as the default ABC affiliate for the southern and southwestern portion of the Traverse City market (Traverse City didn't get a full-time ABC affiliate (WGTU) until 1971 and even then it was very weak compared to the longer-established WPBN (NBC) and WWTV (CBS); for years, WGTU wasn't on cable in parts of its market). In particular, Manistee and Ludington used to be served by Green Bay and Milwaukee stations but were never in those markets AFAIK (maybe before Michigan adopted DST; for years, MI was EST year round, which made MI the same time as WI (and Chicago) in the summer)

[doorknob60]

I find it odd that the Bend, OR TV market technically only covers Deschutes County, and not at least Crook and Jefferson counties (whose economies are closely tied to Bend and Redmond). I'm pretty sure cable operators in those counties offer Bend stations though (in addition to some Portland stations), from what I can tell. And I'd throw Harney county in there too, it's just so far from Portland.

And then Union and Baker County, it's squished in between the Tri-Cities/Yakima market (which includes Pendleton) and the Boise market (which includes Ontario) which are geographically closer, but it's in the Portland market. I guess I understand why, they're pretty far away from Tri-Cities/Yakima, not economically tied to the area much since it's a small market in a different state, and it's also not exactly close to Boise, and in a different time zone. Unsure of cable/OTA channels available in this area.

Also odd that Benton County, OR (Corvallis) and Linn County, OR (Albany) are in different markets (Eugene and Portland, respectively). I'd throw them both into Portland because the boundary looks better on the map, and Corvallis is more closely tied to Salem and Albany than Eugene. Unsure of cable/OTA channels available in this area.

[gonealookin]

Lake Tahoe get the Reno TV stations but some areas get Sacramento TV stations on cable systems.

The California side of the Tahoe Basin has an inconsistency.  On the north side, all of Placer County is in the Sacramento DMA, so satellite customers along the CA 28 corridor all the way to the state line and the developed part of the CA 89 corridor down past the Homewood ski area receive the Sacramento stations, despite being much closer to Reno.  On the south side, El Dorado County is divided, with the portion west of the Sierra crest being in the Sacramento DMA while the Tahoe Basin portion is in the Reno DMA.

All of the I-80 corridor in Nevada County, California is also in the Sacramento DMA, so residents of Truckee and the rural area to the east receive the Sacramento stations, even though by the time you get to the state line you're just about to enter the western suburbs of Reno.

There are a few cases where cable systems carry a station from the "wrong" DMA; for example Charter in South Lake Tahoe carries KCRA, the NBC station in Sacramento, presumably with network programming blacked out in favor of KRNV in Reno which is the primary NBC station carried on the system.

[Pink Jazz]

Nielsen designated all of Pinal County, Arizona to be part of the Phoenix DMA.  I personally think some parts of southern Pinal County (with the line drawn somewhere between Casa Grande and Eloy) should be assigned to the Tucson DMA instead, since those parts of Pinal County are geographically and economically closer to Tucson than they are to Phoenix.  This would closely align to NWS forecast office boundaries, since Casa Grande is assigned to the Phoenix office while Eloy is assigned to the Tucson office.

[bing101]

http://www.thevab.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/2015-2016-TV-DMA-map.pdf

Nielsen has released the latest maps for 2015-2016 edition.

[23skidoo]

Maybe a bit off topic, but my brother and I went to the Tim Horton's in Port Huron, MI right across the border from Canada and the TV they had was on CTV Kitchener! Pretty odd to see our local news station in a different country . The quality looked terrible though.

This is probably because Port Huron is just out of range of the Detroit affiliates (at least it is now after the digital transition). If you don't have cable or satellite, there aren't any over-the-air signals from the US. They were probably watching one of the CTV repeaters located near Sarnia.

[23skidoo]

This is an interesting thread. I have some ideas about how the current US television market areas could be reformed, but I don't know if this would be the appropriate place for it. If people are interested, I might start a new thread on it.

Some ideas:
Merging small markets (<100,000 households) with larger ones
Carving new markets out of larger ones (especially where the over-the-air signals don't reach)
Relocating transmitters to better serve the whole market

[jwolfer]

This is an interesting thread. I have some ideas about how the current US television market areas could be reformed, but I don't know if this would be the appropriate place for it. If people are interested, I might start a new thread on it.

Some ideas:
Merging small markets (<100,000 households) with larger ones
Carving new markets out of larger ones (especially where the over-the-air signals don't reach)
Relocating transmitters to better serve the whole market

I don't see much relocating transmitters happening.. people are streaming more and more.

Z981

[bandit957]

When assigning a county to a market, they should have used only over-the-air viewership - not cable. That's actually more realistic, especially for the many people who didn't have cable.

[DandyDan]

One of the surprising things about living here in Mason City is that for TV, Mason City gets lumped together with Albert Lea, Austin and Rochester, MN. I thought, before I lived here, it would go with Waterloo and Cedar Falls. OTOH, this is the part of Iowa that has more attachment to Minnesota than the whole rest of the state.

[Roadgeekteen]

IIRC there is a Nevada county which is part of the market... of Denver!

What? Which one? I thought that all would be in Las Vegas or SLC markets if out of state.

[bandit957]

IIRC there is a Nevada county which is part of the market... of Denver!

What? Which one? I thought that all would be in Las Vegas or SLC markets if out of state.

I'm pretty sure either Eureka or Lander county (maybe both) have been in the Denver market before.

I know the Denver market extended into South Dakota at some point.

[Roadgeekteen]

IIRC there is a Nevada county which is part of the market... of Denver!

What? Which one? I thought that all would be in Las Vegas or SLC markets if out of state.

I'm pretty sure either Eureka or Lander county (maybe both) have been in the Denver market before.

I know the Denver market extended into South Dakota at some point.

Why wouldn't they be in Salt Lake Cities market?

[bandit957]

IIRC there is a Nevada county which is part of the market... of Denver!

What? Which one? I thought that all would be in Las Vegas or SLC markets if out of state.

I'm pretty sure either Eureka or Lander county (maybe both) have been in the Denver market before.

I know the Denver market extended into South Dakota at some point.

Why wouldn't they be in Salt Lake Cities market?

The only thing I can think of is that Denver would be a much larger market to begin with, so the Denver stations probably had more influence in getting on cable. But if that was the case, San Francisco would probably make just as much sense. Denver might have had a "superstation" or something, like WTBS in Atlanta or WGN in Chicago.

[SP Cook]

It goes back to even before the days of sat TV.  Denver stations existed first and were microwaved into many other places.  Later in the BUD (big ugly dish) era, among the options to get network stations was a package called "Netlink Denver 5" which was the Denver local stations. 

As to reforming TV markets, WV's micro markets are fast approaching the critical level where they should die.  First, for complex historical-political reasons none of transmitters are in the same towns, and this combined with the terrain, mean that essentially everyone has to have cable or a dish.  The edges of the state are covered by other states (Washington and Pittsburgh mostly).  The only real and legitimate market is, of course, Huntington-Charleston, with enough people to allow for serious news coverage and such.  That leaves:

- Parkersburg.  Historically just one station (NBC), everyone get provider TV and the H-C or Columbus stations anyway.  Shut it down and make H-C (the 2 WV counties) and Columbus (the one OH one) a little bigger.

- Bluefield-Beckley-Oak Hill.  Historically just two stations (NBC and ABC) which were so far apart no place could get both OTA.  CBS, and later Fox, was brought in by cable from H-C, Roanoke, or even Bristol.   (Now has a CBS with .2 Fox at a yet third independent location).  Population bleed has reduced what was always a small market to near nothing.  News coverage is pure amateur hour.  Kids just out of school and sales guy with no talent, using 30 year old SD equipment.  Shut it down and make H-C larger.

- Wheeling.  Historically just 2 stations (NBC and CBS) with ABC from Pittsburgh.  Just a few miles from Pittsburgh, the area got its own TV stations when the Rust Belt was not yet rusting.  Population bleed means no money for anything.  News operations are worse than Bluefield's.   Serves no purpose.  Shut it down and get Pittsburgh stations, which everybody does anyway.

- Clarksburg.  Also always missing ABC, which comes from Pittsburgh, along with all the other Pittsburgh stations.  Worse market in the state.  No money for anything.  In fact so amateurish that several counties have been "captured" by Nielsen's methods by Pittsburgh.  Shut it down and let Pittsburgh and H-C get larger.

In doing so the result is the two panhandles and the northern edge of the state served by the cities that are part of (DC or Pittsburgh) and the rest of the state being one market (similar to New Mexico or Utah) which would be 12 places larger in the list of markets, with the economy to support a serious effort at news and other local programming.