U.S. Television Network Affiliate Switches of 1994 - Current Statuses

Current Statuses

In 1996, News Corporation announced that it was going to acquire New World outright, making all of New World's stations owned-and-operated stations of Fox. The deal was completed on January 22, 1997. To this day, six of the Fox stations owned by New World which changed affiliations (KDFW, WAGA, WJBK, KSAZ-TV, WTVT and KTBC) are still owned and operated by News Corp. Fox Television Stations Group, the division of News Corp. that controls the stations, announced its intent on June 13, 2007 to sell nine of their stations, six of which are former New World stations (WJW-TV, KTVI, WDAF-TV, WITI-TV, WBRC-TV and WGHP; the other stations Fox has announced its intention to sell are KDVR in Denver, KSTU in Salt Lake City, and WHBQ-TV in Memphis). Of these nine, only KTVI is located in an NFC market (by way of the St. Louis Rams), while WITI is part of the Green Bay Packers' unique two market area encompassing Green Bay and Milwaukee. WDAF-TV, however, is in an interesting situation as regular season games of the Kansas City Chiefs franchise—which is in the AFC conference, only air when the Chiefs host an NFC opponent; otherwise, the Chiefs' regular season games are broadcast on CBS affiliate KCTV (channel 5). Subsequently, on December 21 of that same year, Fox agreed to sell eight of the stations—all except WHBQ—to Local TV, a subsidiary of Oak Hill Capital Partners. Local TV at the time of the purchase was relatively new as it was formed on May 7, 2007 to assume ownership of the broadcasting division of the New York Times Company. This group deal closed on July 14, 2008.

Under the control of Local TV, the eight stations will remain Fox affiliates for the foreseeable future (WHBQ remained on the market until January 16, 2009 because Local TV could not buy it, for the same reason Newport sold WTEV; Local TV is the licensee for Memphis' CBS affiliate, WREG-TV. As a result, WHBQ remains to this day a Fox O&O). Local TV later swapped WBRC to Raycom Media. The Local TV stations are run under a co-management agreement with Tribune Broadcasting, which provides web hosting, technical and engineering services to Local TV stations, along with news sharing among all of the stations, and the Local TV/Tribune stations make up the nucleus of the Antenna TV digital subchannel network, which carries classic television programming and films.

Fox no longer owns any of the former Burnham stations. Savoy/Fox (SF) sold the stations in 1997 to now-defunct Silver King Broadcasting (later USA Broadcasting) and later to Emmis Communications to 1998. Emmis has since sold WLUK and WALA to LIN TV and KHON to Montecito Broadcast Group, who later sold KHON to New Vision Television (ironically, LIN now owns the stations of New Vision). It took until May 2008 for Emmis to finally find a buyer for WVUE, when the Louisiana Media Company, a new media holdings group founded by New Orleans Saints owner Tom Benson, purchased the station. WVUE's sale process had been made more difficult in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which greatly affected its New Orleans viewing area. (The sale closed on July 18, 2008; 18 months later, the Saints won Super Bowl XLIV, a game shown on CBS.) All stations are still Fox affiliates.

As a result of the affiliation deals, Fox now has VHF affiliates in 13 out of 16 television markets with NFL teams that are based in the NFC, including the Seattle Seahawks, who moved from the AFC to the NFC in 2002; Seattle's Fox affiliate, KCPQ, broadcasts on VHF channel 13. Only the Carolina Panthers, Chicago Bears and Philadelphia Eagles are located in markets with UHF Fox affiliates. Two of them, WFLD in Chicago and WTXF-TV in Philadelphia, are owned by the network. The third station, WCCB in Charlotte, is owned by Bahakel Communications.

Westinghouse bought CBS in 1995 after the affiliation deals, making all stations CBS affiliated Group W stations CBS O&Os. The announcement came just one day after Capital Cities Communications, parent company of rival ABC, was to be acquired by The Walt Disney Company. Viacom bought Westinghouse/ CBS in 1999, which created duopolies in several markets between CBS O&O's and UPN O&O's. Viacom and CBS split in 2006, with the current CBS Corporation retaining the broadcasting side of the company including UPN. Shortly afterward, CBS and Time Warner announced the merger of UPN and The WB to form The CW. All of the stations that CBS acquired either by the station swap with NBC or when the network itself was acquired by Westinghouse are still owned by CBS except for KUTV which was sold to Cerberus Capital Management's Four Points Media Group in 2007 (it is now owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group).

On November 3, 2010, Broadcasting & Cable magazine announced that SJL Broadcasting, now owned by the principal owners of Lilly Broadcasting, made an agreement with Disney to buy back WJRT and WTVG for a total of $30 million, upon speculation that Disney may sell off ABC. Both stations are expected to retain their affiliations with ABC. SJL teamed up with a new private equity partner, Bain Capital, whose affiliated offshoot Sankaty Advisors provided the capital for the purchases. The sale was completed on April 1, 2011. As a result, ABC now no longer owns any television stations anywhere near Detroit, where the network had owned WXYZ-TV from its founding in 1948 until 1986 when it was sold to current owner Scripps.

On October 3, 2011, McGraw-Hill announced the sale of its entire television broadcasting division to Scripps for $212 million. This group deal would add four additional ABC affiliates to the six already owned by Scripps, making that company the second-largest owner of ABC-affiliated stations in total market coverage (after Argyle successor Hearst-Argyle Television).