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U.S. television stations owned by their own broadcast networks In the United States, (often abbreviated as O&O s) constitute only a portion of their moms and dad tv networks' station bodies, due to ownership limits imposed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Presently, the overall number of tv stations owned by any business (including a television network) can just reach an optimum of 39% of all U.S.
Distribution At the dawn of the American television industry, each business was only permitted to own an overall of five television stations around the country. As such, when the networks launched their tv operations, they discovered it more useful to put their five owned-and-operated stations in large media markets that had more households (and for that reason, denser populations) on the belief that it would lead to greater revenue.
The five-station limit presented an issue for the Du, Mont Tv Network, the very first attempt at a " 4th" television network. Paramount Pictures, which had actually owned KTLA (channel 5) in Los Angeles and WBKB (channel 4, now WBBM-TV on channel 2) in Chicago, owned a share of the network. However, the FCC declared that Paramount managed Du, Mont and hence forbade the network and the studio from acquiring anymore stations.
For much of the period from 1958 to 1986, the major network-owned stations were dispersed as follows: ABC, CBS and NBC each owned stations in the leading 3 markets (New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago). Between 1958 and 1965, fourth-ranked Philadelphia housed CBS-owned WCAU-TV (channel 10) and NBC-owned WRCV-TV (channel 3, now KYW-TV), a station which NBC had gotten 2 years previously through a trade with Westinghouse Broadcasting in return for NBC's television and radio stations in Cleveland.
Each network owned stations in other markets where the other networks did not: in addition to Cleveland, these were ABC's KGO-TV (channel 7) in San Francisco and WXYZ-TV (channel 7) in Detroit, NBC's WRC-TV (channel 4) in Washington, D.C., and CBS' KMOX-TV (channel 4, now KMOV) in St. Louis. As More Details of a revision to the FCC's media ownership rules in 1999, a company can now own any number of television stations with a combined market reach of less than 39% of the nation, but can not own 2 of the 4 highest-rated stations in any market.