Fox Television Stations, LLC (FTS) is a group of television stations in the United States owned-and-operated by Fox Corporation. It owns LiveNOW from Fox, Fox Local, and Fox Soul. It also oversees the MyNetworkTV syndication service and has a half-interest in the Movies! digital sub-channel network, which is shared with Weigel Broadcasting.
History Foundations
The Fox Broadcasting Company's foundations were laid in March 1985 through News Corporation's $255 million purchase of a 50% interest in TCF Holdings, the parent company of the 20th Century Fox film studio. In May 1985, News Corporation, a media company owned by Australian publishing magnate Rupert Murdoch that had mainly served as a newspaper publisher at the time of the TCF Holdings deal, agreed to pay $2.55 billion to acquire independent television stations in six major U.S. cities from the John Kluge-run broadcasting company Metromedia: WNEW-TV (now WNYW) in New York City, WTTG in Washington, D.C., KTTV in Los Angeles, KRIV in Houston, WFLD in Chicago, and KRLD-TV (now KDAF) in Dallas. A seventh station, ABC affiliate WCVB-TV in Boston, was part of the original transaction but was spun off to the Hearst Broadcasting subsidiary of the Hearst Corporation in a separate, concurrent deal as part of a right of first refusal related to that station's 1982 sale to Metromedia.
Because Metromedia, originally known as Metropolitan Broadcasting at its founding, was spun off from the failed DuMont Television Network, radio personality Clarke Ingram has suggested that the Fox network is a revival or at least a linear descendant of DuMont. The former Metromedia stations WNEW-TV (originally known as WABD) and WTTG were two of the three original owned-and-operated stations of the DuMont network, and the former base of DuMont's operations, the DuMont Tele-Centre in Manhattan, eventually became the present-day Fox Television Center.
On December 31, 1986, WXNE-TV in Boston (later renamed WFXT on January 19, 1987), became the seventh Fox-owned property, and the first to be acquired separately from News Corporation's 1986 purchase of Metromedia's six television stations. However, as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) prohibited the common ownership of a television station and a newspaper in the same market, News Corporation had to apply for and was granted a temporary waiver in order to retain WFXT and the newspaper it had also published, the Boston Herald. In 1989, Fox placed WFXT in a trust company; the following year, it sold the station to the Boston Celtics' ownership group. News Corporation then later sold the Boston Herald in February 1994, eliminating the potential regulatory conflict with reacquiring WFXT. On October 5, 1994, Fox announced it would exercise the purchase option; (preview of subscription content) it retook control of WFXT on July 7, 1995. (preview of subscription content)
In 1990, FTS bought KSTU in Salt Lake City, making it the first network-owned station in Utah. In 1995, Fox transferred its production subsidiary, Fox Television Stations Productions, itself a successor to Metromedia's in-house production unit, to 20th Television, and it was renamed to Foxlab.
New World Communications deal
FTS gained a bulk of stations through the 1997 purchase of New World Communications, succeeding a 1994 business deal between the two companies which led to all of New World's stations switching from other networks to Fox during 1994–95. A significant factor that resulted in Fox's affiliation with, and later purchase of, New World Communications was Fox acquiring TV rights to the National Football League (NFL), primarily covering games involving teams in the National Football Conference (NFC). Because NFL games generate high ratings, owning these stations outright allows FTS to also collect the local advertising revenue, as well as use them as leverage during retransmission consent negotiations with cable and satellite providers.
The original 1994 affiliation deal with New World also triggered a chain of affiliation changes across the country and other multi-station affiliation deals for the next couple of years. Renaissance Broadcasting had previously sold WATL to FTS in 1993 to become a Fox owned-and-operated station, the first network-owned station in Atlanta. FTS was in the planning stages for a news department at the station, and WATL had even gone as far as hiring a news director. However, when the New World affiliation deal was signed, it was agreed that New World's and Atlanta's longtime CBS affiliate WAGA-TV switch to the Fox network. As a result, Fox cancelled the plans for a newscast on WATL and put the station up for sale.
Renaissance Broadcasting had also sold KDVR in Denver, along with its satellite station KFCT in Fort Collins, Colorado, to FTS on November 15, 1994, in exchange for acquiring KDAF in Dallas. One of original core stations that FTS acquired from Metromedia, it was set to lose Fox programming to that market's longtime CBS affiliate, New World's KDFW.
New World was also expanded its own broadcasting holdings in 1994 by buying other stations groups, but its combined purchases ran afoul with the FCC's media ownership rules at the time prohibiting a single company from owning more than twelve television stations nationwide. New World thus established a trust company in preparation for its sale of WGHP in High Point, North Carolina and WBRC in Birmingham, Alabama, which it would place the stations into in September and October 1994 respectively. Under the arrangement, New World owned the licenses of WBRC and WGHP, while its previous owner Citicasters continued to control their operations under outsourcing agreements.
In April 1995, Citicasters transferred the operations of WBRC and WGHP to the FTS, which assumed operational control through time brokerage agreements with New World. Both stations were sold directly to Fox three months later on July 22, 1995.
FTS also acquired WHBQ-TV in Memphis in an unrelated deal on August 18, 1994.
Among the other affiliation changes, most notable was Westinghouse Broadcasting's affiliation deal with CBS in 1995. This set off a complex trade of Philadelphia stations between CBS/Westinghouse and NBC; FTS instead independently bought its own Philadelphia station, WTXF-TV.
When New World's sale to Fox closed in 1997, ten stations became Fox owned-and-operated stations: KSAZ-TV in Phoenix; WTVT in Tampa, Florida; WAGA-TV in Atlanta; WJBK in Detroit; KTBC in Austin, Texas; KDFW in Dallas; WDAF-TV in Kansas City, Missouri; KTVI in St. Louis; WJW in Cleveland; and WITI in Milwaukee.
Chris-Craft deal
FTS gained stations through the 2000 acquisition of the Chris-Craft/United group, which gave Fox ownership of several stations then affiliated with the UPN network (which had been a partnership between Chris-Craft and Viacom (Paramount's subsidiary) until March 2000 when the latter company bought the former's stake), and also created several duopolies (two stations in the same market owned by the same company). When the deal was finalized in 2001, this immediately created duopolies (two stations in the same market owned by the same company) between Fox and former Chris-Craft stations in markets such as Phoenix (KSAZ and KUTP), Los Angeles (KTTV and KCOP-TV) and New York City (WNYW and WWOR-TV).
Although former Chris-Craft station KTVX would have also created a duopoly with Fox station KSTU in Salt Lake City, FCC regulations at the time prohibited one company from owning two of the four highest-rated stations in a single market. FTS thus traded both KTVX and the former Chris-Craft station KMOL (now WOAI-TV) in San Antonio to Clear Channel Communications in 2001 in exchange for WFTC in Minneapolis, creating a duopoly for FTS with former Chris-Craft station KMSP-TV. Because KMSP had the stronger signal due to being a VHF station, while WFTC was a UHF station, FTS decided to switch the affiliations in 2002, with Fox programming going to KMSP and WFTC taking over the UPN affiliation.
FTS then bought KDFI in Dallas in 2000 and WPWR-TV in Chicago in 2002 to create duopolies with Fox-owned stations, KDFW and WFLD, respectively. FTS also made two other trades in 2002 to create more duopolies. Former Chris-Craft station KPTV in Portland, Oregon was traded to the Meredith Corporation in exchange for WOFL in Orlando, Florida, creating a duopoly with former Chris-Craft station WRBW. FTS then traded former Chris-Craft station KBHK (now KPYX) in San Francisco to Viacom for UPN stations KTXH in Houston and WDCA in Washington, D.C., creating duopolies with original Fox-owned stations KRIV and WTTG, receptively. WUTB in Baltimore was the only acquired Chris-Craft station during this time that FTS did not trade away or create a duopoly with.
Formation of MyNetworkTV
The Fox-owned UPN affiliates were not included in the UPN/WB merger (The CW), which was announced on January 23, 2006. Soon after, these stations removed references to UPN from their on-air branding and websites. On February 22, 2006, FTS announced that all nine of their non-Fox outlets will be charter affiliates of a new service known as MyNetworkTV, which commenced operations on September 5, 2006, with telenovela programming that was original to be syndicated.Higgins, John M. & John Eggerton. (February 22, 2006) News Corp. Unveils My Network TV. Broadcasting & Cable. Accessed on November 20, 2013. On May 23, 2016, it was announced that one of the Fox-owned former UPN affiliates that were left out of the initial negotiations for CW affiliation a decade earlier, MyNetworkTV owned-and-operated station WPWR in Chicago, would be taking over the market's affiliation with the network from rival WGN-TV in September of that year. MyNetworkTV remained on WPWR as a secondary affiliation until 2019, when the CW affiliation transferred to WCIU-TV.
On December 21, 2007, FTS announced that it would sell eight smaller-market stations to Local TV, LLC, a division of Oak Hill Capital Partners. Six of the stations that were sold were ex-New World stations, including the two stations that were first acquired by FTS directly in 1995 (WGHP in High Point, North Carolina and WBRC in Birmingham, Alabama) and four via the 1997 merger (WDAF-TV in Kansas City, Missouri; KTVI in St. Louis; WJW in Cleveland; and WITI in Milwaukee. The other three were KSTU in Salt Lake City, and KDVR in Denver and with its satellite station KFCT in Fort Collins, Colorado. The transaction was completed in 2008.
In January 2009, NBC Owned Television Stations and FTS set up the first Local News Service with their Philadelphia stations after testing since the summer 2008. Fox and NBC then added other markets where they both own stations.
On May 15, 2012, as part of a five-year affiliation agreement extension between Fox and Sinclair Broadcast Group's 19 Fox affiliates (including company flagship WBFF) that will run through 2017, Fox included an option for Sinclair to purchase WUTB, exercisable from July 1, 2012, to March 31, 2013. On November 29, 2012, Sinclair exercised its option to purchase WUTB through Deerfield Media. On May 6, 2013, the FCC granted its approval of WUTB to Deerfield Media, which was formally consummated on June 1.
Expansion into more NFL markets