[1] Ownership of television stations with overlapping coverage areas was normally not allowed in the United States prior to 2002, even those that were not duopolies under the present legal definition, by way of being located in separate albeit adjacent markets; this required broadcasters to apply for cross-ownership waivers in some cases to retain full-power stations based in adjacent markets.
In some cases (like with WHDH and WLVI in Boston, Massachusetts, when the former's owner Sunbeam Television formed a duopoly with WLVI after purchasing the station from Tribune Broadcasting in 2006), the junior partner's news department is shut down completely, with the senior partner subsequently taking over production of its news content using only their existing staff.
In many cases, news programming on a junior partner is structured to avoid direct competition with a senior partner affiliate of either ABC, NBC or CBS (one notable exception involves WTTV and WXIN in Indianapolis, which carry competing morning and evening newscasts as Tribune Broadcasting opted to launch a separate slate of newscasts for WTTV when it became a CBS affiliate in January 2015,[5] rather than shift those seen on sister Fox affiliate WXIN to the station; WXIN and WTTV largely maintain their own anchors, but share a news department and most reporting staff).
Although the FCC bars common ownership of any of the four major broadcast networks (ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox), it does not prohibit duopolies involving stations affiliated individually with any two of them, unless both are among the four highest-rated in the market at the time of a sale.
One of the few markets where two major network duopolies exist in some form is Jacksonville, Florida, where two companies once owned the licenses of the Big Four stations they respectively controlled.
The following year, Clear Channel Communications created a legal duopoly involving its existing Fox affiliate WAWS (now WFOX-TV) and WTEV-TV (now WJAX-TV), a UPN affiliate that it had been managing under a local marketing agreement since 1994; WTEV's viewership gradually rose after it became a CBS affiliate in July 2002, putting it in the top four threshold with WAWS, resulting in Newport Television – upon purchasing the Clear Channel television group in 2007 – restructuring the operation as a virtual duopoly by selling WTEV to shell licensee High Plains Broadcasting (WFOX and WJAX are now respectively owned by the Cox Media Group and Bayshore Television, LLC, but remain under common management through JSA/SSA in which WJAX is the junior partner).
In its decision, the FCC eliminated the "Eight-Voices Test" requirement, allowing media companies to form duopolies regardless of the number of full-powered stations licensed to each market.
It also allows media companies to form duopolies comprising two of the four highest-rated stations in a particular market, provided that companies can prove to the FCC that the transaction "would serve the public interest, convenience, and necessity," and that it is necessary "due to specific circumstances in a local market or with respect to a specific transaction on a case-by-case basis.
For instance, radio station WLYK in Cape Vincent, New York in the United States is operated from the Canadian studios of Kingston, Ontario's CIKR-FM, a broadcaster already at the two-station limit in its own market, under an LMA.
[19] Broadcasters such as Entravision have often entered into local marketing agreements with Mexican border stations (such as Tecate's XHDTV-TDT for content directed at San Diego).
Requests for failing station waivers have historically met with variable reception; in general, the FCC views requests favorably if: Waivers under these criteria were granted to sell WASV-TV in Asheville to Media General, owner of CBS affiliate WSPA-TV in that market,[21] and KWBA in Tucson to the Journal Broadcast Group, owner of that market's ABC affiliate KGUN-TV.
[22][23] A similar waiver was refused to KNIN-TV in Boise as the station, a CW affiliate at the time the waiver application was filed, appeared to have reasonable prospects of financial break-even without a takeover by Journal-owned ABC affiliate KIVI-TV;[24] that decision was subsequently appealed, with the waiver being granted upon further review (Journal Broadcast Group would eventually be required to sell KNIN in 2014, as the station's financial condition improved enough in its post-2011 existence as a Fox affiliate to make it unsuitable for the E. W. Scripps Company – which was in the process of purchasing Journal's broadcasting unit in a deal in which Journal simultaneously merged with Scripps' publishing unit – to acquire it under a renewed waiver, in addition to the fact that it could not acquire it legally as the market had fewer than eight unique owners[25]).
[26][27] As such, low-power stations can also be formed to create duopolies; for instance, Weigel Broadcasting maintains triopolies in three markets surrounding the southern part of Lake Michigan (Chicago, Illinois; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and South Bend, Indiana) using a combination of full-power and low-power television stations.
Weigel also takes advantage of digital subchannel broadcasting heavily in addition to MeTV, it also owns MeTV+, Heroes & Icons, Start TV, Decades, Movies!, and Story Television, all of which air on its stations, in addition to other station groups; the company had also previously executed time share agreements on other subchannels with ethnic broadcasters, and in Milwaukee, a local real estate agency to air programming.
[28] The group is the sole over-air provider of secular network television programming in the Lima market, though area cable systems also carry out-of-market affiliates from Toledo, Columbus and Dayton.
As mentioned above, current FCC rules limit the number of radio stations a single entity may own in a certain market.
However, in many cases the subsequent sale never happened, as the community's economic growth failed to lend itself to competition between multiple television broadcasters.
In other markets where the CRTC had licensed competing broadcasters, such as Northern Ontario, twinstick mergers were subsequently allowed to permit the survival of both television stations after similar economic difficulties were encountered.
Within Quebec, twinsticks consist of TVA and V affiliates: From 1997 to 2002, CTV directly owned several CBC twinstick stations that it had inherited from Baton Broadcasting (CKNC, CHNB, CJIC and CFCL in Northern Ontario, which were part of the MCTV system, and CKBI and CKOS in Saskatchewan); these were sold to the CBC in 2002.
Similarly, until August 2008, Cogeco owned three twinsticks in Quebec: CKTV and CFRS in Saguenay, CKSH and CFKS in Sherbrooke and CKTM and CFKM in Trois-Rivières.
One "triple-stick" also exists, in which a single company, Télé Inter-Rives, operates all three licensed stations in Rivière-du-Loup: CKRT, CIMT and CFTF.
Following this acquisition, Rogers Media briefly held twinsticks in Vancouver (CKVU and CHNU) and Winnipeg (CHMI and CIIT), formed from its newly acquired Citytv stations and its Omni-branded religious stations; these two sets of twinsticks were dissolved in 2008 following the sales of CHNU and CIIT to S-VOX.
Unlike the situation in smaller markets, this type of "consolidation" twinstick had been increasingly common up to the late 2000s, concurrently with the rise of secondary television systems (such as CH/E!
In many major markets, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation operates both CBC Television (English) and Ici Radio-Canada Télé (French) stations, as listed below.
The two Omni stations in Toronto each serve different segments of the market's multicultural audience, and thus are also permitted under the language exemption.
Even though KBVO was converted into a separately programmed station in October 2009 (and therefore no longer acts as a KXAN repeater, even by way of a subchannel), the FCC granted Media General permission to acquire its license under an existing satellite waiver during that company's merger with LIN Media in 2014[35] (without the waiver, Media General/LIN would have been forced to sell either KBVO or KNVA, which would not have been viable in any event, since there are not enough unique full-power station owners in the Austin market to permit a second legal duopoly with an owner of one of the market's three English language major network affiliates and neither would have likely had long-term financial survivability as a standalone station).
[41] A similar virtual quadropoly in the Mobile, Alabama-Pensacola, Florida market was formed through another acquisition from Newport, this time by Sinclair, consisting of Pensacola-based ABC affiliate WEAR-TV and MyNetworkTV affiliate WFGX (which were both already owned by Sinclair and licensed to the beach community of Fort Walton Beach), and Mobile-based NBC affiliate WPMI and Pensacola-licensed independent station WJTC (owned by Deerfield, and operated by Sinclair under a local marketing agreement).
Similarly structured virtual triopolies (many of which are run by Nexstar and Sinclair) also exist in a few markets, in which either an existing owner-operator of a legal duopoly also manages a tertiary station owned by a separate if indirectly related licensee, or owns-operates one station and runs two others that are owned by different licensees.
The largest Mexican network is the Televisa-owned Canal de las Estrellas, which feeds its programming to more than 100 stations nationwide.