State network

A state network in the United States broadcasting industry is a quasi-regional network of television stations, composed of a designated flagship station that originates the programming and several full-power satellite stations and low-power translators that relay a full-time or part-time simulcast of the main station's content throughout sections if not the entirety of a U.S. state and, in some cases, portions of adjoining states.

This type of setup is more commonly associated with non-commercial educational broadcasting; educational state networks (or "member networks"), which generally involve member stations of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), are common in many states where most of the cities are not large enough to support a standalone non-commercial station. Commercially licensed state networks that transmit programming from one of the major commercial broadcast networks (and in most cases, since shortly before the digital television transition, any multicast services carried by the originating station) exist mainly in markets covering large swaths of territory. The local affiliates in these markets usually require at least three full-power stations to adequately cover the market.

Under U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations, the parent station in a commercial state network and all of its satellites are counted together as one station, rather than individual stations.

The groundwork of the first state network in the United States was laid in 1953, when Alabama Governor Gordon Persons pushed the Alabama State Legislature to pass legislation to establish the Alabama Educational Television Commission, wanting to ensure that the entire state would receive educational programming. Persons was well aware that much of Alabama was still very rural – outside of the state's three largest cities, Birmingham, Montgomery and Mobile – and therefore, was too thinly populated to support multiple standalone educational television stations. The bill used to form the Commission did not include any state funding, however the Alabama State Docks donated $50,000 as initial support. After the Commission was formed, it requested construction permits from the FCC to build broadcasting facilities for four television stations, all of which would air the same programming throughout their broadcast day fed from a central studio in Birmingham.

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