PRE-1970 STATIONS (NOT O & O) STILL WITH THEIR DEBUT NETWORK

[azumanga]

Which no doubt explains why people in Roanoke would likely avoid
WSET; its coverage is oriented toward Lynchburg and Danville.  I think,
and  somebody correct me on this, if you live along U.S. 29 you're probably
going to watch WSET; if you live along U.S. 220 you're probably going to
watch either WDBJ or WSLS.

That being said, outside of local news programming, how well did ABC's programs do in Roanoke? Or NBC and CBS shows in Lynchburg and Danville?

[mleach]

I'm not going to get into Jerry Falwell; I am going to say that
viewers in hyphenated markets (and I've lived in more than my
share of them) tend to watch the station closest to them, simply
because particular stations tend to report the news for their
immediate areas.  So you're not likely to find a Greensboro viewer
watching WXII's news, nor are you likely to find a Winston-Salem
viewer watching WFMY's, simply because WXII's coverage of Greensboro
is pretty sporadic, as is WFMY's of Winston-Salem.

I have to wonder if this sort of this applies to such markets as the Twin Cities, Dallas-Fort Worth, Charleston-Huntington, Bloomington-Indianapolis, Pueblo-Colorado Springs ?

With Hampton Roads I believe the viewers in that market for the most part has put each station on the same level as if the entire region were one big city.  The ratings there kinda point that out with WAVY and WVEC being the top dogs even though both Portsmouth ( WAVY ) and Hampton ( WVEC ) are two of the more smaller cities in Hampton Roads

[OhioMediaWatch]

have to wonder if this sort of this applies to such markets as the Twin Cities, Dallas-Fort Worth, Charleston-Huntington, Bloomington-Indianapolis, Pueblo-Colorado Springs ?

There's definitely a market divide in Charleston-Huntington.

I believe WCHS/3 (Huntington) is the market's news leader, and marketwide probably for one specific reason - they actually have a separate Charleston anchor, and split newscasts at some point and continue with Charleston-only news (on cable, and on an LPTV in Charleston itself, Channel 16) while 3 continues with regional news for the rest of the market.

IIRC, the Huntington and Charleston anchors share duties before the split, and WCHS has been doing this since nearly signing on!

[RyanHoward]

have to wonder if this sort of this applies to such markets as the Twin Cities, Dallas-Fort Worth, Charleston-Huntington, Bloomington-Indianapolis, Pueblo-Colorado Springs ?

There's definitely a market divide in Charleston-Huntington.

I believe WCHS/3 (Huntington) is the market's news leader, and marketwide probably for one specific reason - they actually have a separate Charleston anchor, and split newscasts at some point and continue with Charleston-only news (on cable, and on an LPTV in Charleston itself, Channel 16) while 3 continues with regional news for the rest of the market.

IIRC, the Huntington and Charleston anchors share duties before the split, and WCHS has been doing this since nearly signing on!

You mean WSAZ/3 in Huntington. WCHS is 8 in Charleston.

[OhioMediaWatch]

Yes, I did...too late to correct it.  I should have realized with the "CHS" part!  But I always get those two stations confused.  Always.

[Scott Fybush]

As for some of the other hyphenated markets, it depends. There was a time, back when Amon Carter still owned the station and it was WBAP-TV, when channel 5 absolutely owned Fort Worth while channels 4 and 8 owned Dallas. I suspect the homogenization of the market and its significant sprawl north, far beyond both core cities, has eroded that distinction. Indianapolis/Bloomington isn't really a hyphenated market, since there's no local Bloomington news and the "Bloomington" station, WTTV 4, is operated out of Indy's WXIN 59 now. Minneapolis/St. Paul border each other (and KSTP's studios actually sit right astride the city line), and I've never perceived any distinction between Mpls-licensed WCCO/KMSP/KARE and St. Paul-licensed KSTP. And there certainly was a time when KOAA-5 was the "Pueblo" station while channels 11 and 13 were the Springs stations, but KOAA's studios are now in the Springs also.

There are certainly other hyphenated markets with distinctions: WLNE 6 in Providence is still widely viewed as the "New Bedford" station even though it long ago moved its studios to Providence and finally achieved signal parity with the DTV conversion. WPTZ 5 enjoys a certain amount of dominance on the New York side of the Burlington-Plattsburgh market, though it has studios on the Vermont side as well. In Michigan, WNEM 5 tends to dominate the Bay City end of the Flint-Saginaw-Bay City market, while WJRT 12 owns the Flint side; over at the other end of the state, WWMT 3 owns the Kalamazoo end of the Grand Rapids-Kalamazoo market, while WOOD-TV 8 and WZZM 13 fight for Grand Rapids viewers 40 miles away. And on California's central coast, each piece of the San Luis Obispo-Santa Maria-Santa Barbara market watches its own local news: SLO on KSBY 6, SM on KCOY 12, SB on KEYT 3.

[bpatrick]

I think the lines have been blurred considerably in DFW
since I lived there; KTVT (licensed to Ft. Worth) has
replaced KDFW as the CBS station and has become quite
competitive in both cities.  Likewise, in Norfolk WVEC isn't
hurt by the fact that in the 1980s they hired Jim Kincaid
from ABC (he's now retired) and the ratings began to move
up; WVEC's news also follows Oprah.  WTKR, the market
leader when I lived there in the '60s, has been through a
lot of turmoil, especially in ownership changes. 

But sometimes a network switch is to the good; I keep going
back to WTSP St. Petersburg, which is far stronger with CBS
than it ever was with ABC, but the Bay Area's demographics
tend to favor CBS.

I got to thinking: what markets, since ABC's ascendancy in
the '70s, still have the same ABC, CBS, and NBC affiliates
as then? New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago don't count)?  Some I know of:

Little Rock
Colorado Springs
Hartford/New Haven
Washington, DC
Orlando
Ft. Myers/Naples
Tallahassee
Columbus, GA
Augusta, GA (technicality: WJBF acquired exclusive ABC
   affiliation around 1977)
Boise
Ft. Wayne
Peoria
Topeka
Wichita
Lexington
Paducah/Cape Girardeau/Harrisburg
Des Moines
Cedar Rapids
Sioux City
Mason City/Rochester/Austin
Shreveport/Texarkana
Bangor
Portland, ME
Grand Rapids (somebody correct me on this)
Traverse City/Cadillac
Duluth
Jackson
Lincoln (I think)
Las Vegas
Reno
Albuquerque
Buffalo
Syracuse
Greenville/New Bern/Washington
Columbus
Youngstown
Oklahoma City
Tulsa
Portland
Eugene (I think)
Pittsburgh
Scranton/Wilkes-Barre
Erie
Greenville/Spartanburg/Asheville
Columbia, SC
Nashville (channel swap: ABC and PBS, Chs. 2 and 8)
Chattanooga
Bristol/Kingsport/Johnson City
Houston
San Antonio
Amarillo
Corpus Christi
Lubbock
Abilene/Sweetwater
Wichita Falls/Lawton
El Paso (there was an ABC/PBS channel swap
    between 7 and 13)
Burlington/Plattsburgh
Norfolk
Richmond
Roanoke/Lynchburg
Yakima
Madison
LaCrosse/Eau Claire
Wausau/Rhinelander

Anchorage may also be one; Honolulu is not, since NBC
moved from KHON/2 to KHNL/13.  I have also excluded
markets, such as Savannah and Jacksonville, where a
station switched, then went back to its original affiliation
(WSAV and WTLV, respectively, went from NBC to ABC
and back to NBC--Columbus, MS and Columbia, MO are two
more--Columbus from CBS to ABC and back; Columbia from
NBC to ABC and back, and KIRO Seattle went from CBS to
UPN and back).

Harrisburg, PA is also not in this list: Chs. 15 and 43 both
dropped CBS.

[gregg75]

bpatrick you get 10 extra credit points for that post.....well done. You just might graduate
at the head of the class this year........if you keep it up.

[mleach]

Likewise, in Norfolk WVEC isn't
hurt by the fact that in the 1980s they hired Jim Kincaid
from ABC (he's now retired) and the ratings began to move
up; WVEC's news also follows Oprah.  WTKR, the market
leader when I lived there in the '60s, has been through a
lot of turmoil, especially in ownership changes. 

Actually WTKR was the market leader ( or a very strong number 2 ) until the mid 90's when they were "Channel 3 Eyewitness News". However what really hurt them even more-so than the ownership changes was WTKR firing their very popular weather guy Dr. Duane Harding. To this day there are a good number of folks who still won't forgive WTKR over that.

Oddly enough, recently WAVY had fired their own popular weather forcaster, Jon Cash and at the time it was expected by many that WAVY would "have problems" over it.  So far for WAVY, no backlash but then again I would imagine that is because of Cash's actions since being let go such as begging for money to help feed his family and crying like a big baby over his job loss therefor getting on peoples nerves, even his many fans share that opinion.

[KeithE4]

Indy/Bloomington was never a "hyphenated market."  It was always just Indianapolis.  WTTV moved 99% of its operations to Indy back in the mid '50s, with only a few Bloomington-oriented news/public-affairs/IU-related shows remaining until they shut the studio down in the mid or late '70s.  It was never equipped for color, so it was an anachronism 15 years before it closed.

Even back when WTTV first went on the air in 1949 and its signal barely made it out of B-town, it was considered the Indy market's primary NBC affiliate.  The Channel 10 allocation was actually for Indy, not Bloomington, according to the 1947 allocations table.  Bloomington got Channel 4 because the station was already on the air and hadn't yet moved its operations to Indy.  That's why their tower had to be in Bloomington, then Cloverdale, and finally Trafalgar.  A city-grade signal into B-town is required, even though WTTV has had no presence there in decades.