Triopoly and Quadropoly
Until January 2011, NBCUniversal owned three full-power stations in Los Angeles; NBC O&O KNBC, Telemundo O&O KVEA, and former Spanish language independent KWHY-TV (now owned by Meruelo Group and affiliated with MundoFox). Los Angeles and San Francisco are the only two US markets which can have a full-power triopoly (three stations) as the FCC allows common ownership if 18 television stations are in the market.
In 2013, through its acquisition of stations from Newport Television, Nexstar and Mission Broadcasting formed a full-power quadropoly in Little Rock, Arkansas consisting of NBC station KARK-TV and MyNetworkTV station KARZ-TV (owned by Nexstar), along with Fox station KLRT-TV and CW station KASN (owned by Mission, operated by Nexstar under a local marketing agreement). All four stations were consolidated into KARK's facilities; 30 employees were laid off as part of the consolidation.
In Canada, at least one community (Rivière-du-Loup, Quebec) has all three of its local French language stations, CKRT-TV, CIMT-TV and CFTF-TV, under common ownership, however such levels of common ownership are for the most part strongly discouraged unless the stations serve remote communities or are operated in different languages (such as a triopoly owned by Rogers Media in Toronto, consisting of the English-language CITY-DT and the multicultural stations CFMT-DT and CJMT-DT.) In Mexico, media concentration is endemic and it is not uncommon for as many as four stations to be operated by one entity. Televisa owns four Mexico City stations (2 • 4 • 5 • 9) while TV Azteca, México's second-largest broadcaster, owns three (7 • 13 • 40). These broadcasts in turn feed large numbers of full-power affiliates. The largest Mexican network is Televisa's Canal de las Estrellas which feeds more than one hundred stations nationwide.
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