Network affiliation

In the broadcasting industry (particularly in North America), a network affiliate or affiliated station is a local broadcaster, owned by a company other than the owner of the network, which carries some or all of the lineup of television programs or radio programs of a television or radio network. This distinguishes such a television or radio station from an owned-and-operated station (O&O), which is owned by the parent network.

Notwithstanding this distinction, it is common in informal speech (even for networks or O&Os themselves) to refer to any station, O&O or otherwise, that carries a particular network's programming as an affiliate, or to refer to the status of carrying such programming in a given market as an "affiliation".

Stations which carry a network's programming by method of affiliation maintain a contractual agreement, which may allow the network to dictate certain requirements that a station must agree to as part of the contract (such as programming clearances, local programming quotas or reverse compensation of a share of a station's retransmission consent revenue to the network). Affiliation contracts normally last between three and five years, though contracts have run for as little as one year or as long as ten; in addition, if a company owns two or more stations affiliated with the same network, affiliation contracts may have end-of-term dates that are the same or differ among that company's affiliates, depending on when a particular station's affiliation agreement was either previously renewed or originally signed.

While many television and radio stations maintain affiliations with the same network for decades, on occasion, there are certain factors that may lead a network to move its programming to another station (such as the owner of a network purchasing a station other than that which the network is already affiliated with, the network choosing to affiliate with another local station in order to improve local viewership of its programming by aligning with a stronger station, or a dispute between a network and station owner while negotiating a contract renewal for a particular station such as those over reverse compensation shares), often at the end of one network's existing contract with a station. One of the most notable and expansive affiliation changes occurred in the United States from September 1994 to September 1996, when television stations in 30 markets changed affiliations (through both direct swaps involving the new and original affiliates, and transactions involving multiple stations) as a result of a May 1994 agreement by New World Communications to switch twelve of its stations to Fox, resulting in various other affiliation transactions including additional groupwide deals (such as those between ABC and the E. W. Scripps Company, and CBS and Westinghouse Broadcasting).

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