City of license: Difference between revisions

In [[United States|American]]U.S., [[Canada|Canadian]], and [[Mexico|Mexican]] broadcasting, a '''city of license''' or '''community of license''' is the community that a [[radio station]] or [[television station]] is officially licensed to serve by that country's broadcast regulator.

The nominal main studio requirement has become less relevant with the introduction of [[videotape]] recorders in 1956 (which allowed local content to be easily generated off-site and transported to stations), the growing portability of broadcast-quality production equipment due to [[transistor]]ization, and the elimination of requirements (in 1987 for most classes of US broadcast stations) that broadcasters originate any minimum amount of local content.{{synthesis|date=April 2010}}

By 1969, the same issues had spread to FM licensing; instead of building transmitters in the community to nominally be served, applicants would often seek to locate the tower site at least halfway to the next major city. In one such precedent case (the Berwick Doctrine), the FCC required a hearing before Berwick, a prospective broadcaster, could locate transmitters midway between [[Pittston, Pennsylvania]] (the city of license), and a larger audience in [[Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania|Wilkes-Barre]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://findarticles.com/?noadc=1|archive-url=httphttps://archive.today/20120708020143/http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m6836/is_4_50/ai_n25004469/ |url-status=dead |title=FindArticles.com &#124; CBSi|website=findarticles.com|archive-date=July 8, 2012 }}</ref>

The small town of [[Anniston, Alabama]], due to its location 90 miles west of [[Atlanta]] and 65 miles east of [[Birmingham, Alabama|Birmingham]], has lost local content from both TV and FM stations which were re-targeted at one of the two larger urban centers or moved outright. ([[WNNX|WHMA-FM]] Anniston is now licensed as WNNX [[College Park, Georgia]] - an—an Atlanta suburb - aftersuburb—after a failed attempt to relicense it to [[Sandy Springs, Georgia]] - another—another [[Metro Atlanta#Surrounding cities|Atlanta suburb]]. Transmitters are now in downtown Atlanta.)<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.fybush.com/site-020605.html|title=A selection from a decade of visits to tower and studio sites in the Northeast and beyond|website=www.fybush.com}}</ref>

While becoming less meaningful over the decades, stations are still required to post a [[public file]] somewhere within 25 miles of the city, and to cover the entire city with a local [[Signaling (telecommunications)|signal]]. In the United States, a station's [[transmitter]] must be located so that it can provide a strong signal over nearly all of its "principal community" (5 mV/m or stronger at night for AM stations, 70 dbuV for FM, 35 dbu for DTV channels 2–6, 43 dbu for channels 7-13 and 48 dbu for channels 14+), even if it primarily serves another city.<ref>FCC Rules §73.24, §73.315 and §73.625</ref> For example, American television station [[WTTV]] primarily serves [[Indianapolis]]; however, the transmitter is located farther south than the other stations in that city because it is licensed to [[Bloomington, Indiana|Bloomington]], 50 miles south of Indianapolis (it maintains a satellite station, WTTK, licensed to [[Kokomo, Indiana]], but in the digital age, WTTK is for all intents and purposes the station's main signal, transmitting from the traditional Indianapolis transmitter site). In some cases, such as [[Jeannette, Pennsylvania]]-licensed [[WPCWWPKD-TV]] 19, the FCC has waived this requirement; the station claimed that retaining an existing transmitter site 25.6 miles southeast of its new community of license of Jeannette would be in compliance with the commission's minimum distance separation requirements (avoiding interference to [[co-channel interference|co-channel]] [[WOIO]] 19 [[Shaker Heights, Ohio|Shaker Heights]]).<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Mass_Media/Orders/1997/da971503.txt|title=MM Docket No. 97-96 Table of Allotments, RM-8756 TV Broadcast Stations (Johnstown and Jeannette, Pennsylvania)}}</ref> Another extreme example of a station's transmitter located far from the city of license is the FM station [[KPNT]], formerly licensed to [[Ste. Genevieve, Missouri]], and transmitting from [[Hillsboro, Missouri|Hillsboro]], but serving the [[St. Louis]] and [[Metro East]] market to the north. In 2015, the station was allowed by the FCC to move their city of license to [[Collinsville, Illinois]], and have a transmitter in St. Louis proper with a power decrease.

FCC regulations also require stations at least once an hour to state the station's call letters, followed by the city of license. However, the FCC has no restrictions on additional names after the city of license, so many stations afterwards add the nearest large city. For example, CBS affiliate [[WOIO]] is licensed to [[Shaker Heights, Ohio|Shaker Heights]], a suburb of [[Cleveland]], and thus identifies as "WOIO Shaker Heights-Cleveland." Similarly, northern [[New York (state)|New York]]'s [[WWNY-TV]] (also a CBS affiliate) identifies as "WWNY-TV [[North American broadcast television frequencies|7]] [[Carthage, New York|Carthage]]-[[Watertown, New York|Watertown]]" as a historical artifact; the original broadcasts originated from [[Champion, New York|Champion Hill]] in 1954 so the license still reflects this tiny location.{{efn|It's is possible for two stations to have the same studio location and transmit from the same mast at the same site, but be licensed to different communities; [[WWNY-TV]] and [[WNYF-CD]] (Carthage and Watertown NY, respectively) are one example.}}

If the station is licensed in the primary city served, on occasion the station will list a second city or region next to it. For example, the [[Tampa Bay]] region's Fox owned-and-operated station [[WTVT]] is licensed to [[Tampa, Florida]], its primary city, but identifies on-air as "WTVT Tampa/[[St. Petersburg, Florida|St. Petersburg]]", as St. Petersburg is another major city in the market. To encompass [[Appleton, Wisconsin|Appleton]] and the smaller cities clustered around the [[Fox River (Green Bay tributary)|Fox River]] southwest of [[Green Bay, Wisconsin]], stations in the Green Bay–Appleton area identify as "Green Bay/[[Fox Cities]]" (e.g. "[[WBAY-TV]], Green Bay/Fox Cities"); Green Bay-licensed stations thus still carry an official identification, while providing the ability for stations licensed to other places in the region to officially prefix their name before the mention of "Green Bay/Fox Cities".

Often, a station will keep a tiny outlying community in its licensing and on-air identity long after the original rationale for choosing that location is no longer truly applicable. [[Sneedville, Tennessee]], as city of license for PBS member station [[WETP-TV]] originally made sense as a compromise location to serve both [[Knoxville, Tennessee|Knoxville]] and the [[Tri-Cities, Tennessee|Tri-Cities of Tennessee and Virginia]] on VHF channel 2. It met the minimum distance requirements to two other channel 2 stations in the region, [[WKRN]] in [[Nashville]] and [[WSB-TV]] in [[Atlanta]]. This became less important after full-power UHF satellite [[WKOP-TV]] signed on in Knoxville, and irrelevant once the [[Digital television transition in the United States|2003-09 DTV transition]] and [[2016 United States wireless spectrum auction#Repacking|2016-21 repack]] moved WETP's main signal to physical channel UHF 24. Nonetheless, broadcasters and regulatory authorities are more likely to retain the original city of license, rather than bring unwanted scrutiny for taking away a small community's only station, which may be a mark of [[Boosterism|civic pride]], only to move it to some larger center which already has multiple stations.

A corresponding Table of Allotments for [[digital television]] was created in 1997.<ref>[http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Mass_Media/News_Releases/1997/nrmm7006.html Commission adopts Table of Allotments for DTV] (MM DOCKET NO. 87-268)</ref> To operate a licensed station, a broadcaster must first obtain allocation of the desired frequencies in the FCC's Table of Allotments for the intended city of license. This process is subject to various political and bureaucratic restrictions, based on considerations including the number of existing stations in the area.{{efn|It is possible for an applicant to petition the FCC for rulemaking to change the table of allotments, but it's is a long bureaucratic process. The [https://web.archive.org/web/20080517113019/http://www.w9wi.com/articles/1952.htm original 1952 allotments] for [https://web.archive.org/web/20110515212431/http://www.w9wi.com/images/1952allotments4.jpg New York State TV] had 2,4,7,17,*23,59 (* non-commercial education) allocated to Buffalo or Buffalo-Niagara, while Watertown is only allocated 48. An applicant who wanted to build 7 in Watertown, for example, would encounter multiple obstacles: They'd have to petition the FCC to change the table of allotments. They'd have to show adequate distance from existing same-channel allocations (in those days, 175 miles, straight-line). They'd have to show adequate distance from adjacent-channel stations (so 7 or 9 couldn't have been assigned to Syracuse without some major reshuffling of existing channels if 8 was CBS in that city way back [[WTVH|WHEN]]). Within 200 miles of the Canada or Mexico border? Everything becomes subject to international co-ordination. Find your tiny spot 175 miles from Buffalo and nowhere near anything else on 7 or 8, jump through all the bureaucratic hoops to add that community to the Table of Allotments, get that channel allotted to that community, convince the FCC that your application is in the public interest and eventually, maybe your [[WWNY-TV|channel 7]] will flicker to life, live long and prosper. A more complex application (such as the attempts to shoehorn a third VHF into Syracuse and Rochester for ABC in the 1960s) might involve swapping allocations between multiple communities or even displacing existing stations in frequency or location. For instance, if Syracuse already had [[WTVH|CBS 8]], poaching a vacant 9 Elmira and moving that allocation to Syracuse required that [[WTVH|8 Syracuse]] swap channels with [[WROC-TV|5 Rochester]], which then allowed [[CBLT|a Toronto station]] to move to 5, which then left 6 vacant for a Canadian [[CIII-DT#Transmitters|broadcaster]] or [[CJOH-DT#Transmitters|two]].}}

The definition of a "community" also comes into play when a broadcaster wants to take a station away from a tiny hamlet like [[North Pole, New York]], whose population is in decline. In general, regulators are loath to allow a community's only license to be moved away - especially to a city which already has a station.{{efn|A rare few exceptions were made to accommodate the then-fledgling third-rank [[American Broadcasting Company]] in the 1950s and early 1960s. There was also a loophole to accommodate stations which no longer reached their original communities of license after having sold their spectrum in the [[2016 United States wireless spectrum auction]]).}} A broadcaster may make the case that the "community" functionally no longer exists in order to be released from its local obligations. <!-- see [[WPTZ]] below and its cited sources -->

||Originally owned by the Pasadena [[Presbyterian Church]] and, until 1969, broadcast from a studio in the basement of the church. Multiple changes of ownership, location, format and callsign (the station went bankrupt more than once) ended with Infinity Broadcasting (now [[CBSAudacy]]) buying the station in 1986 and moving the studios to Burbank the following year and it is currently located in Los Angeles' Miracle Mile district. The city of license still indicates Pasadena.

||Transmitter primarily served Kingston, but its construction at full-power in Kingston itself would have resulted in interference to a small part of the [[CBMT]] ([[CBC Television|CBC]] 6 [[Montreal]]) coverage area. The station was therefore built further west, on Mount Carmel in Deseronto, to cover Kingston and [[Belleville, Ontario|Belleville]]. (The last of CJOH's rebroadcasters were taken [[dark (broadcasting)|dark]] in 2020.) Co-channel [[CIII-TV]] 6 ([[Global Television Network|Global]]) would in turn be pushed westward to [[Paris, Ontario]], when it signed on a few years later, causing it to need a powerful [[UHF]] rebroadcaster to adequately cover the [[Toronto]] area.

||[[CJSS-TV]] 8 Cornwall was the first Canadian OTA TV station to fail; it was a local CBC TV affiliate station originating content from 1959- to 1963 but could not compete with the network's owned-and-operated station, [[CBMT]] 6 Montreal. Ernie Bushnell purchased CJSS-TV 8 to rebroadcast his [[Ottawa, Ontario|Ottawa]] CTV member station CJOH-TV into the Montreal market. The VHF 8 slot could not be assigned to Montréal directly, in order to protect co-channel [[WMTW (TV)|WMTW]]. As a [[rimshot (broadcasting)|rimshot]], channel 8 was carried on cable in Montreal for many years; it was ultimately dropped from Vidéotron as, once CJOH-TV and [[CFCF-TV]] were both owned by the network, they were largely duplicating the same programming. [[Bell Media]] pulled the plug on the station in 2017<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2017/2017-149.htm|title=Bell Media Inc. – Licence renewals for English-language television stations and services|date=May 15, 2017}}</ref>

||Watertown is close to a long list of places - Montréal (155&nbsp;mi), Ottawa (100&nbsp;mi), Toronto (175&nbsp;mi), Buffalo (165&nbsp;mi), Rochester (105&nbsp;mi), Binghamton (130&nbsp;mi), Albany (140&nbsp;mi) and Plattsburgh-Burlington (130&nbsp;mi and 140&nbsp;mi) - too far to receive OTA TV from any of them, but too close to use the same channels again. Syracuse and Utica (75&nbsp;mi) may or may not be receivable. Once VHF 11 had been assigned to Canada, there's nothing left.{{efn|Watertown NY in 1952-54 would have been free to request allotment of any full-power VHF TV channel which isn'tis not co-channel to [[CBFT-DT|2 Montréal]], [[WGRZ-TV|2 Buffalo]], [[WSTM-TV|3 Syracuse]], [[WCAX|3 Burlington]], [[CBOT-DT|4 Ottawa]], [[WIVB-TV|4 Buffalo]], [[WRGB|4 Albany]], [[WROC-TV|5 Rochester]], [[WPTZ|5 North Pole]], [[CBMT-DT|6 Montreal]], [[WKBW-TV|7 Buffalo]], [[WTVH|8 Syracuse]], [[CJSS-TV|8 Cornwall]], [[CBOFT-DT|9 Ottawa]], [[WHEC-TV|10 Rochester]], [[CFTM-DT|10 Montréal]], [[WTEN|10 Albany]], [[CKWS-DT|11 Kingston]], [[WBNG-TV|12 Binghamton]], [[CFCF-DT|12 Montreal]] or [[WKTV|13 Utica]]. There were also minimum distances between adjacent-channel stations.}} Watertown was allotted UHF 48; a 1952 construction permit listed WWNY-TV Watertown, New York, as community of license.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://dumonthistory.com/a11.html|title = DuMont Television Network &#124; Historical Web Site}}</ref> WWNY returned the UHF 48 permit unbuilt{{efn|Many early permits were left unbuilt and eventually cancelled as the vast majority of the UHF pioneers who launched during the 1952 land rush were already [[dark (broadcasting)|out of business]], most within the first year. The [[All-Channel Receiver Act]] required UHF tuners in all 1964-model or later US TV receivers; that's too late for many stations which launched in the 1950s. ACRA didn'tdid not apply to Canada, where 12-channel TV's continued to be sold through the 1960s.}} on March 10, 1954<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://uhfhistory.com/45-83.html|title=History of UHF Television|website=uhfhistory.com}}</ref> in exchange for WCNY-TV 7 Carthage (a tiny hamlet ten miles further east). That pushed the station clear of Buffalo; it signed on from Champion Hill on October 22, 1954, and never looked back. (Buffalo signed on [[WKBW-TV]] 7 on the same channel, 175 miles away, in 1958.) The studio was moved to Watertown in 1971 and the signal moved from VHF DT7 to VHF DT8 in the 2020 repack, but the transmitter and license remain at their original location. UHF finally came to Watertown in 1971, when non-commercial [[WPBS-TV|WNPE/WNPI]] signed on from "[[Watertown (city), New York|Watertown]] and [[Norwood, New York|Norwood]]".{{efn|Watertown's market boundaries are drawn to include [[Massena, New York|Massena]], some 90mi distant. A single full-power UHF transmitter is not enough to cover the entire market. Non-commercial [[WPBS-TV]] avoided this issue by signing on two full-power transmitters (Watertown and Norwood) with identical content. A commercial station likely could not do the same without proof of economic hardship in some form. [[KVRR]] (four full-power VHF transmitters) is one such commercial station, but only qualifies due to an extreme rural location on the North Dakota border.}} Cross-border rival [[CKWS-DT|CKWS 11]] [[Kingston, Ontario|Kingston]] did make it to air a few months after WWNY, but all subsequent new entrants were forced to outlying communities or UHF on both sides of the border.

||WITI originally signed on in 1956 with the North Shore suburb of Whitefish Bay as nominal community of license<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.milwaukee-horror-hosts.com/MilwTV.html |title=Milwaukee TV Horror Hosts - TV History |publisher=Milwaukee-horror-hosts.com |access-date=2010-02-21 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080827161216/http://milwaukee-horror-hosts.com/MilwTV.html |archive-date=2008-08-27 }}</ref> operating from a transmission site far north of Milwaukee in the then-rural [[Ozaukee County, Wisconsin|Ozaukee County]] town of [[Mequon, Wisconsin|Mequon]] (which has since been incorporated as the City of Mequon)<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.fybush.com/sites/2006/site-060324.html |title=A selection from a decade of visits to tower and studio sites in the Northeast and beyond |publisher=Fybush.com |access-date=2010-02-21}}</ref> as the allocation of VHF 6 to Milwaukee itself at the time would have left the station short-spaced to [[WLNS|WJIM-TV]] in [[Lansing, Michigan]], and [[KWQC-TV|WOC-TV]] in [[Davenport, Iowa]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.milwaukeehdtv.org/forums/showthread.php?t=4105 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050510031810/http://www.milwaukeehdtv.org/forums/showthread.php?t=4105 |url-status=dead |archive-date=2005-05-10 |title=WISN-TV's 50th Anniversary - MilwaukeeHDTV.org Forums |publisher=Milwaukeehdtv.org |access-date=2010-02-21 }}</ref> By 1962, its [[WITI TV Tower|new transmitter]] in [[Shorewood, Wisconsin|Shorewood]] was activated, and its community of license was shifted to Milwaukee as the FCC learned how to better finesse distancing requirements and allow some exceptions depending on area geography.<ref>{{cite web |author=Gary Shea |url=http://www.garyshea.com/Archives/tv_history.htm |title=Analog TV in Milwaukee History lecture review |publisher=Garyshea.com |access-date=2010-02-21 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090114104359/http://www.garyshea.com/Archives/tv_history.htm |archive-date=2009-01-14 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

||East Tennessee Public Television was founded in 1967 with a transmitter atop Short Mountain in tiny Sneedville (pop. 1000) as the only location which could reach both Knoxville and [[Johnson City, Tennessee]], on this frequency without being short-spaced to co-channel stations in [[WKRN-TV|Nashville]] to the west, [[WSB-TV|Atlanta]] to the south and [[WFMY-TV|Greensboro]] to the east. A local signal was extended into Knoxville itself in 1990 using WKOP, a [[UHF]] station.

||[[North Pole, New York|North Pole]]

||WPTZ was originally licensed in 1954 to [[North Pole, New York]], the closest tiny crossroads to its [[mountain]]top transmitter site near [[Lake Placid, New York|Lake Placid]]/[[Adirondack State Park]]. The station then used "North Pole - Plattsburgh - Pole–Plattsburgh–[[Burlington, Vermont|Burlington]]" or even "[[Montreal]]" as part of its on-air identity but the community of license, once chosen, is not easily modified. The station moved its transmitter to [[Mount Mansfield]], [[Vermont]], in the digital age to centralize its signal with the rest of the market's stations licensed east of [[Lake Champlain]], and in January 2011, the city of license was authorized to become Plattsburgh.<ref>[http://ftp.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Mass_Media/Notices/1999/da991235.txt FCC notice of proposed rule making] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070930095411/http://ftp.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Mass_Media/Notices/1999/da991235.txt |date=September 30, 2007 }}, MM Docket No. 99-238, RM-9669 (North Pole and Plattsburgh, New York)</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2011/db0105/DA-10-2443A1.pdf |access-date=February 23, 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110810230737/http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2011/db0105/DA-10-2443A1.pdf |archive-date=August 10, 2011 }}</ref> In 2019, the station relocated their main studios to [[South Burlington, Vermont]], keeping a relocated and downsized news bureau and backup facility in Plattsburgh.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.pressrepublican.com/news/local_news/wptz-nbc5-unveils-new-studio/article_f6ba89db-cd9d-5b26-92ed-06bb2efadf83.html|title=WPTZ NBC5 unveils new studio|website=Press-Republican|date=September 13, 2020 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.mynbc5.com/article/nbc5-continues-long-standing-commitment-to-north-country-announces-studio-in-new-york/32159967|title=NBC5 Continues Long-Standing Commitment to North Country, Announces Studio in New York|date=April 15, 2020|website=WPTZ}}</ref>

||[[NBC]] programming traditionally had been carried by [[KRON-TV]] 4, a San Francisco affiliate which NBC had unsuccessfully attempted to purchase outright for [[United States dollar|$]]750 million in 1999. Outbid by an outside buyer, NBC attempted to force the new owners to rebrand the station as "NBC 4" and greatly restrict the station's ability to schedule its programming differently from the main network. The new owners refused. NBC purchased the San Jose station for $230 million in 2001,<ref>[http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2001/12/17/daily1.html NBC to buy San Jose's KNTV, Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal, December 17, 2001]</ref> moving their network programming on January 1, 2002, and relocating KNTV's transmitters to [[San Bruno Mountain]] on September 12, 2005, over KRON's objections. The station's license and newly built studios remain in San Jose and the station has well-lapped KRON-TV, which is now affiliated with [[MyNetworkTV]] and shares a building with ABC's [[KGO-TV]].

||[[WPCWWPKD-TV]] 19 [[TheIndependent CWstation|Independent]]

||Originally a [[Johnstown, Pennsylvania|Johnstown]] station, one of the rare instances in which the community of license for an existing channel has successfully been changed. WPCWWPKD-TV (then WTWB) managed to circumvent an [[Federal Communications Commission|FCC]] moratorium on new channel allocations in Pittsburgh by listing Jeannette, a small community of 11,000 people technically in the Pittsburgh market area, as the new city of license for an existing station.<ref>[http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Mass_Media/Notices/1997/da970540.txt FCC notice] of proposed rule making (Johnstown and Jeannette, Pennsylvania)</ref> Effectively a [[flag of convenience (business)|flag of convenience]], this maneuver portrays the station's owners as moving it from a community that had at least two other broadcasters (Johnstown) to one that had none (Jeannette)<ref>[http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Mass_Media/Orders/1997/da971503.txt FCC report and order] Table of Allotments, RM-8756 (Johnstown and Jeannette, Pennsylvania)</ref> - easier to justify for regulatory purposes. The actual intended target market, Pittsburgh, already has many local stations. While the transmitter remains in [[Jennerstown, Pennsylvania|Jennerstown]] (a small borough near Johnstown) and is inadequate to properly cover Pittsburgh over-the-air, this nominal community of license in the Pittsburgh market confers "[[must-carry]]" status for Pittsburgh's [[CATV|cable TV]] systems. Studios are at [[KDKA-TV]] Pittsburgh and city-grade coverage for Pittsburgh itself is supplied by a [[UHF]] [[broadcast translator|repeater]]. The main transmitters never were moved, and soon after taking a license to serve Jeannette the station applied for [[must-carry]] on cable in Johnstown, its former community of license.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Cable/Orders/1998/da980102.txt|title=FCC In re Petition of: Venture Technologies Group, Inc. CSR-5094-A For Modification of Market of Station WNPA-TV}}</ref> No physical connection of this station with the small community of Jeannette has ever existed except as a very clever [[legal fiction]].<ref>[http://www.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/stories/2000/09/11/daily18.html WNPA-TV moves under KDKA umbrella], Pittsburgh Business Times, September 13, 2000</ref> The station's newold WPCW callsigncall issign was marketed using the slogan "Pittsburgh's CW", and has filed two [[construction permit]] applications to base a future digital transmitter within Allegheny County that would still give Jeannette a decent signal. Its current calls mentions Pittsburgh's initial, along with emulating KDKA's calls partially to further muddle the station's actual city.

||WPWR operates from Chicago studios, transmitting from the [[Willis Tower]] (formerly known as the Sears Tower), but is licensed out-of-state. Its owners obtained this channel allocation by first buying an existing construction permit for a Gary, Indiana, station which had been licensed as Channel 56 but never built, then swapping its channel allocations with [[WYIN]] - a—a [[Public Broadcasting Service|PBS]] member station also licensed to Gary, Indiana. WYIN had been refused a Sears Tower transmitter location as Chicago had two locally licensed PBS member stations before 2017.

|A station which came on the air in 1988 as an affiliate of the religious [[Lester Sumrall|LeSEA]] network with low penetration into the general Milwaukee area and some local programming for Kenosha mixed within the general LeSEA schedule, WHKE (as it was known at the time) was purchased in 1995 by Paxson Communications to become the eventual Milwaukee station for the PAX network due to that network's strategy of buying low-rated outlying stations to quickly launch their network, and since then the station has drifted continuously north of their city of license. The station's analog tower was actually located in north-central [[Racine County, Wisconsin|Racine County]],<ref name="autogenerated1">[http://www.fcc.gov/ftp/Bureaus/MB/Databases/fm_tv_service_areas/maps/TV249466.gif] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080625000221/http://www.fcc.gov/ftp/Bureaus/MB/Databases/fm_tv_service_areas/maps/TV249466.gif|date=June 25, 2008}}</ref> just close enough to serve the northern reaches of the Milwaukee area and still provide a city grade signal to Kenosha. The station has no Kenosha facilities and hasbefore the 2021 purchase of their officesparent company by the [[E. W. Scripps Company]], had their office in a small office suite the northern Milwaukee suburb of [[Glendale, Wisconsin|Glendale]], whilewith its engineering often coming from a rotating employee also engineering other Ion stations across the station'sUpper digitalMidwest; transmitterthe isGlendale withinstudio also served as the traditionalstudio towerfor site[[Wausau, ofWisconsin|Wausau]] allarea Milwaukeestation television[[WTPX-TV]]. stationsSince onthen, Milwaukee'sits northwestengineering operations have been consolidated with Scripps NBC affiliate [[WTMJ-TV]], though it still maintains a separate [[WITI TV Tower|transmitting tower]] from sideWTMJ,<ref name=autogenerated1 /> thusAt WPXEthe issame time with the 2019 repeal of the Main Studio Rule, it (and many of its sister Ion stations, including WTPX) share a stationtechnical 'studio facility' based inwithin Milwaukee[[Cincinnati]]'s which[[Scripps nominallyCenter]], servesthough aall cityof thirtyits milesoperations awayoutside fromof theirover-the-air stationsignal facilitiestransmission are based out of Ion's [[West Palm Beach, Florida]], headquarters, with WTMJ promoting subchannel availability of WPXE's networks occasionally. TheAs of 2022, the only mentionssign of KenoshaWPXE's atlocality allis beyondWTMJ's identificationengineer comeresolving duringtransmitter theirand twosatellite locallyfaults, produceda programs,local whichmailing airaddress usuallyat earlyWTMJ's Radio City studio, and its inclusion in theWTMJ's [[retransmission consent]] morningnegotiations.

|The newest example in this list, this was a result of the FCC's 2016 [[spectrum auction]] to [[Spectrum reallocation|reallocate television spectrum]] for the use of wireless devices. WYCN was previously a [[Low-power broadcasting|low-power]] community station serving Nashua carrying low-interest networks out of primetime, but was purchased by [[OTA Broadcasting]] in 2013, a company that mainly purchased stations to profit from their spectrum rather than a genuine interest in broadcasting. OTA won $80.4 million from the FCC for returning its spectrum, but also decided to retain the station's license for a channel sharing arrangement with another station, of which it had perfect timing; [[NBCUniversal]] was looking for both a full-market station and a way to broadcast their "[[NBC]] Boston" service (originating on equally low-power [[WYCN-LD|WBTS-LD]]) after their 2017 disaffiliation from [[WHDH (TV)|WHDH]]. OTA, NBC, and the [[WGBH Educational Foundation]] then made an arrangement where WYCN would be purchased from OTA by NBC's [[NBC Owned Television Stations|O&O group]], and WGBH would arrange to share their spectrum on secondary [[PBS]] member station [[WGBX-TV]], allowing NBC a full-market and central home for their NBC and [[Cozi TV]] programming in Boston on their signal, using the license of what is in technicality a low-power station. The station thus moved on January 18, 2018, from transmitting a low-power signal only serving Nashua, to a full-power signal transmitting {{convert|32|mi|km}} away in [[Needham, Massachusetts]], with NBC programming, sports and Boston news replacing the repeat-heavy [[Heroes & Icons]] network. In the summer of 2019 NBC coordinated a callsign swap between the two stations which made the now-WBTS-CD ''de facto'' full-power signal the main station in the NBC Boston service; the current WYCN-CD has since undergone a transmitter move and re-licensing to [[Providence, Rhode Island]], eventually revealed to be an extension of WBTS-CD's sister station, [[Telemundo]] O&O [[WNEU]] (channel 60) into Providence as a satellite station; WNEU itself is licensed to [[Merrimack, New Hampshire]], which moved its transmitter over thirty years from New Hampshire into the core of [[Greater Boston]].

||WTOR airs a multicultural format aimed primarily at listeners in the [[Greater Toronto Area]] in [[Canada]], rather than in its home state of [[New York (state)|New York]]. The station uses a highly directional transmitter array, aimed so strongly at Toronto that parts of [[Michigan]] can receive the station even though it's is barely audible in [[Buffalo, New York|Buffalo]], just 20 miles south of its transmitter. Outside the minimum [[skeleton crew]] to fulfill the FCC-required engineer and general manager duties at its transmitter site and 'main studio' in [[Ransomville, New York]], and a majority American 'owner' to avoid [[foreign agent]] rules, all the station's staff and programming originate from the Toronto suburb of [[Mississauga]].

||A south-of-the-border station licensed to a tiny border village of 760 people. Owned by US-based Border International Broadcasting, but operated through a [[local marketing agreement]] from the Kingston (Williamsville) studios of Rogers-owned [[CIKR-FM]] (K-Rock 105.7). Primary audience is Kingston, Ontario, population 132,485. The use of a foreign station circumvents Canada's limit on common ownership (two stations per-band in the same language, same market) and the Canadian content requirements which would apply to a domestic station. Canada does regulate shared-service and local marketing agreements (where one company nominally owns a station and has someone else operate it) but WLYK legally isn'tis not a Canadian station.

||Mexican-owned station, fed from a [[San Diego]]-based studio. San Diego (channels 8 and 10), Los Angeles (channels 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, and 13) and Santa Barbara (channel 3) had already been allocated as early as 1952, with the remaining pair of VHF channels (6 and 12) allocated to [[Tijuana]] by [[Mexico|Mexican]] authorities. The only means to add a third [[VHF]] TV broadcaster to San Diego without unacceptable interference was therefore to enter a [[local marketing agreement]] with Mexican-owned [[Televisa]]. The station, which carried ABC from 1956–19731956 to 1973, was a charter Fox affiliate until 2008, when San Diego-licensed [[KSWB-TV]] took over the affiliation. The digital age allowed XETV to affiliate with Televisa's [[Canal 5 (Televisa Network)|Canal 5]] network using their DT2 signal, and for over a year until it was signed off in mid-July 2013, the analog signal carried Canal 5, made XETV the only North American station at the time to carry both an American-originated and Mexican-originated network on their signal. The station lost its affiliation to the CW after failing to reach an agreement with the network, which later switched to [[KFMB-TV|KFMB-DT2]] and shut down its news operation. It ended English-language programming on May 31, 2017, with Canal 5 programming moving to 6.1.

||A [[Spanish language]] broadcaster licensed to [[Tijuana]], [[Mexico]], this station is fed from studios in San Diego, USAUS. The same US-based facilities also formerly fed [[English language]] [[XHDTV-TV]] ([[MyNetworkTV|My]] 49, [[Tecate]], [[Baja California]]) until it itself switched to carrying [[Milenio Television]] in September 2018. The station was formerly a Telemundo affiliate until June 30, 2017, after NBC, which owns [[KNSD]] in San Diego, announced plans to create a Telemundo O&O station. Telemundo programming was later moved to the recently acquired [[KUAN-LD]] where it has been a Telemundo O&O Stationstation since 2017.

||Finest City Broadcasting holds a programming and [[local marketing agreement]] with Mexican XHITZ, [[XETRA-FM]] (91.1) and [[XHRM-FM]] (92.5), delivering programming from San Diego studios across the [[U.S.-Mexico border]]. Direct competitor [[XHMORE-FM]], alsowith licensedXHITZ toand [[Tijuana]],XERTA marketson itselfa asportion "Blazin'of 98.9the FM, Sanband Diego'sotherwise officialreserved hipfor [[non-hopcommercial educational station]]s across the border."

|[[KVOS]] 12 [[Heroes & Icons|H&I]]/[[MeTVUnivision]]

|[[Vancouver]]/[[Seattle]]

||Based in Bellingham, a city that was considered far too small to support a television station on its own, for much of its history the station actively targeted the much larger metropolitan [[Vancouver]] market in Canada; in fact, when the station launched in 1953 it was the first television station available over the air in the Vancouver market at all, as television was just being introduced to Canada and [[CBUT-DT]] did not launch until about six months later.<ref name=boei>William Boei, "KVOS turned off by groups bidding for Vancouver license". ''[[Vancouver Sun]]'', September 4, 1996.</ref> Its debut broadcast on its very first day of operations was a kinescope of the [[Coronation of Elizabeth II]], an event of much greater relevance to Vancouver than to Bellingham. In later years the station launched a production office in the Vancouver suburb of [[Burnaby, British Columbia|Burnaby]], and for some time it was actually spending more money on Canadian television production than any Canadian media company but the [[Canadian Broadcasting Corporation]].<ref name=boei/> This ended in the 1970s, with the advent of [[Canadian content]] regulations in broadcasting and a change in Canadian tax regulation by which Canadian companies could no longer use advertising purchased on non-Canadian broadcast stations as a tax deduction.<ref name=boei/> The station also later carried some programming syndicated from the Canadian [[Citytv]] network, which did not yet have a station in Vancouver.<ref>Alex Strachan, "A tale of two CITYs". ''[[Vancouver Sun]]'', June 2, 2001.</ref> Despite the tax changes, the station continued to face claims that it was "draining" advertising revenue from the Vancouver stations, most notably in the [[Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission|CRTC]] hearings on the licensing of Vancouver's [[CIVT-DT]] in 1996;<ref>Keith Damsell, "U.S. independent KVOS TV holding its own in Vancouver". ''[[Financial Post]]'', May 1, 1997.</ref> the station finally lost much of its remaining market share in the Vancouver market following the [[2001 Vancouver TV realignment]], both being bumped from its position on the cable dial in Vancouver to make space for the new [[CIVI-DT]] and losing Citytv as a programming source due to that network's acquisition of [[CKVU-DT]].<ref>Alex Strachan, "Goodbye ckvu, hello Citytv: What's in store for Vancouver: Famous for its Speakers Corner, the people behind the newly launched network say they are after a non-traditional market". ''[[Vancouver Sun]]'', June 7, 2002.</ref> Currently it is owned by [[Weigel Broadcasting]] with Seattle station [[KFFV]], with both stations broadcasting the company's six digital broadcast networks in tandem across the Seattle market. In 2024, it began to carry the Spanish-language network [[Univision]] mainly for the Seattle area after a station in Seattle, [[KUNS-TV]], ended their affiliation to become a CW affiliate, bringing the network over-the-air into Canada for the first time and conflicting with Univision's domestic [[Univision Canada]] cable channel, becoming an example of both a border blaster and a last-available frequency for Univision (which prefers main channel carriage to any subchannel arrangements nationwide).

||[[KCND-TV]] 12 Ind.

||Until the 1970s, KCND was a tiny originating station in a just-as-tiny town on the Manitoba-North Dakota border. Its programming largely targeted Winnipeg, the largest community in the region. Ultimately, the [[CRTC]] gave Izzy Asper's Canwest the [[CKND-DT|CKND-TV 9 Winnipeg]] licence in return for his acquiring the non-licence assets of KCND-TV (which he can't not legally operate, being Canadian) and taking it off the air. Canwest went on to operate as the [[Global Television Network]] until it was broken up in a 2010 bankruptcy, with the television stations sold to [[Shaw Media]] and the Southam newspaper chain sold to venture capitalists as [[Postmedia]]. The VHF 12 Pembina frequency is still in use as [[KNRR]], a full-power rebroadcaster of Fox affiliate [[KVRR]], but is not carried by any Winnipeg-area cable system.

||One of the victims of the [[September 11 attacks|September 11, 2001 attacks]] (which martyred one of its broadcast engineers, Gerald "Rod" Coppola). WNET broadcast from a shared master antenna atop the World Trade Center. Its community of license remains at Newark because the only means to acquire scarce [[VHF]]-[[TV]] spectrum in [[New York City]] in 1961 was to purchase existing Newark independent WATV. An on-air identifying logo displays initially as "WNET Newark, New Jersey", then transitions to "WNET New York"; the station provides [[New Jersey]] local public-affairs coverage through its co-operated sister network for that state, [[NJTV]]. The studios are in [[New York City]]; the transmitters have moved back from the [[Empire State Building#Broadcast stations|Empire State Building]] to [[1 World Trade Center]], joining other [[New Jersey]] licensees including [[WWOR-TV]] 9 [[Secaucus, New Jersey|Secaucus]] and [[WNJU]] 47 [[Linden, New Jersey|Linden]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.thebroadcastbridge.com/content/entry/8291/future-of-nyc-broadcast-tv-moving-to-1-wtc|title=Future of NYC Broadcast TV Moving to 1 WTC - The Broadcast Bridge - Connecting IT to Broadcast|first=The Broadcast|last=Bridge|date=April 10, 2017|website=www.thebroadcastbridge.com}}</ref>

In the USU.S., [[PAX Network]] (now [[Ion Television]]) was prone to this, building a network largely from outlying [[owned-and-operated station|owned-and-operated]] UHF stations.

In Canada, third networks such as [[Global Television Network|Global]] were often a motley collection of outlying stations in their early years. [[CIII-TV|CKGN-TV]], Ontario's original "Global Television Network" repeater chain, signed on in 1974 in an already densely-packed stretch of the beaten-path Windsor-Quebec corridor in which few desirable channels were available. Cities such as [[Windsor, Ontario|Windsor]], [[London, Ontario|London]], [[Toronto, Ontario|Toronto]], [[Peterborough, Ontario|Peterborough]], [[Kingston, Ontario|Kingston]] and [[Cornwall, Ontario|Cornwall]]{{efn|Canada's broadcast regulator allows existing broadcasters in a market to oppose applications from new entrants if the competition would harm the existing station. Any attempt to locate in Kingston would likely be opposed by that city's lone originating station. CIII-TV never got a Cornwall transmitter as that city is in the Montréal market, which was subject to a moratorium on new entrants at the time.}} are notable by their absence from the network's original roster.<ref>Global Ontario [[CIII-TV]] signoff (1984) at www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCwHMFgW7Pw lists five transmitters, most in outlying markets, at reduced power or on less-desirable UHF channel assignments.</ref> The five transmitters on-air in 1984 (after a decade of operation as a struggling "third network") were:

Sometimes, putting a usable over-the-air signal into the primary community served is anywhere from second-priority to not a priority at all. A station could be [[rimshot (broadcasting)|barely within]] the [[Designated Market Area|market's boundaries]] or be underpowered to the point of putting a "B" grade signal into the community at best. On anything less than a huge rooftop antenna, the station is unwatchable — but, even if the underlying over-the-air signal wasn'twas not valuable, the corresponding [[cable television]] slots in the various communities it was almost serving were. Any full-service domestic signal above some arbitrary minimum had access to "[[must carry]]" protection, could request favourable placement on the dial and (in Canada) could engage in [[signal substitution]] to take ad revenue from other stations already carrying the same content.

The [[2016 United States wireless spectrum auction|2016-2020 OTA TV repack]] opened additional possibilities for using an outlying community's licence as an over-the-air placeholder. Buy a station, return the licensed broadcast spectrum to the government, then claim to be "sharing" a channel with another broadcaster by using the orphan licence to place content on one of their [[digital subchannel]]s. Suddenly, an outlying commercial low-power station in [[New Hampshire]] is "sharing" space on [[WGBX]], a full-power non-commercial station in the heart of the [[Boston]] market. The same transmitter can, by using two different licences in a "channel sharing" arrangement, have two different communities of licence - which may allow more flexibility for its location. It's is also possible to mix commercial and non-commercial licences. In Canada, where [[CRTC]] regulations prevent carrying any additional, unique programming on digital subchannels without obtaining a second licence (and taking all the obligations which go with it) for each subchannel, returning just the spectrum (and keeping the licence) can be used as a means to recycle licences from abandoned, defunct outlying stations for use elsewhere in the network.

||CKWS-TV was a CBC TV affiliate in [[Kingston, Ontario]], from its 1954 inception until the network dumped its affiliate stations in 2015.<!-- The last CBC affiliate standing, [[CKSA-DT]], lost affiliation in 2016.--> It used to be carried on CATV systems as far north as Ottawa and as far south as [[Utica, New York]]. When the Ottawa cable system dropped CKWS to make room for more speciality channels, station management realised that many of the cable systems which carried CKWS 11 were under no [[must-carry|obligation to do so]]. Fearful of being dropped from cable in additional communities, they established three underpowered UHF rebroadcasters (26 Prescott, 36 Smiths Falls, 66 Brighton); as Canada licences [[broadcast translator|rebroadcasters]] as full-power stations, these had [[must-carry]] status everywhere from Brockville to Belleville. [[Corus Entertainment]], which has owned CHEX/CKWS since the turn of the millennium, acquired third-ranked [[Global Television Network]] from Shaw (a company under common control) in 2016, making the stations Global [[owned-and-operated station|O&O's]] in 2018. The tiny 130-watt Prescott-licensed digital UHF transmitter in [[Spencerville, Ontario|Spencerville]] is not valuable to the network, but the associated cable "must carry" status is - especially if the licence can be used to operate a [[digital subchannel]] on the commonly-owned Ottawa repeater CIII-DT-6 and reach the larger market.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2020/2020-391.htm|title=Various television stations – Licence amendments|date=December 4, 2020}}</ref> [[Gatineau, Quebec|Gatineau]] is [[Vidéotron]] territory and that company's proprietor [[Quebecor]] has obtained CRTC permission to not carry CKWS-TV{{efn|The dealings between [[Quebecor]] and rival CKWS TV are complex. Parent station [[CKWS-DT]] 11 was supposed to move to DT13 to protect [[CFTM-DT|Télé-Métropole]], [[TVA (Canadian TV network)|TVA's]] flagship French-language Montréal station, once that station is repacked from DT10 to DT11. In an unusual move (given the long history of Kingston-market VHF being pushed west/northwest to outlying communities to protect Montreal stations) the CRTC allowed CKWS to stay on DT11 and dump a limited amount of [[co-channel interference]] on the TVA owned-and-operated flagship. Québécor owns both Vidéotron cable and the TVA network, which may explain their desire not to carry CKWS-DT-2 on Vidéotron in Gatineau. The station that CKWS-TV claims to be trying to protect by staying on DT11? [[WNYI]], a satellite-fed repeater of [[Daystar (TV network)|Daystar]] which rebroadcasts brokered religious programming and originates nothing, but which nominally holds a full-service VHF TV license. As one further wrinkle, leaving CKWS-DT on 11 means that commonly owned-and-operated CIII-TV-2 Bancroft cannot go digital as its assigned repack channel was DT11. Instead, it will go dark; its licence will be assigned to a digital subchannel on CKWS's [[Wolfe Island, Ontario]], transmitter... which does not reach Bancroft over-the-air.}} - but nothing precludes Corus from using CKWS-DT-2's licence and a digital subchannel on the Ottawa transmitter to attempt to get back on [[Rogers Cable]] on the Ontario side of Ottawa.

||WNYI, which should itself focus on Ithaca, the home of [[Cornell University]], instead has been used to provide another network to the larger Syracuse market with little success. Launched by [[Equity Media Holdings]] as a [[Univision]] affiliate, it had no local programming and was [[centralcasting|centralcast]] out of Equity's hub in [[Little Rock, Arkansas]], with the only local contributions being limited local advertising. As [[Time Warner Cable]] already carried Univision's national cable feed and held [[local insertion]] rights for advertising over it, it had little incentive to carry WNYI, whose signal range was not city-grade into Syracuse, thus [[must-carry]] rights could not be invoked. WNYI also suffered from constant technical issues which could take weeks to repair as Equity maintained no local engineers or staff in their markets, earning the ire of the few providers who could receive it over the air, Univision, whose carriage was never fully assured and who dealt with Equity affiliates like WNYI who had no local presence whatsoever, the station's few local advertisers, who might not see their commercials carried at all due to a transmitter or computer issue (as often Equity's systems would accidentally carry commercials from a market far out-of-state), and viewers of those systems. Those providers eventually resorted to acquiring the signal of Equity stations through the same satellite feeds Equity used to feed the transmitters. As many of Equity's full-power stations in the 2000s signed on too late to receive a digital companion channel and the company chose to launch with analog signals rather than choosing to launch as all-digital despite their known short life in the former format, they were forced to [[flash-cut]] to digital or go dark in 2009. Equity went bankrupt that year, at the height of the [[Great Recession]], having never [[flash-cut]] WNYI to digital. The station was sold in a bankruptcy sale with several others. Daystar, the new owner, had to build out the digital facilities themselves or forfeit the license after one year [[dark (broadcasting)|dark]]. Daystar also launched a translator, WDSS-LD, which served Syracuse itself. Eventually, it used the spectrum auction to build out a full-power transmitter from [[Moravia, New York|Moravia]] which transmits both WNYI and WDSS-LD, gaining must-carry rights. As with Equity, there has never been a local staff under Daystar ownership. As Daystar features a default national schedule and does not solicit advertising, there is no local content on the station.

||As station owner [[Rogers Communications]] already has multiple stations licensed to Ottawa, limits on [[concentration of media ownership]] restrict it from moving additional stations into that city. The city of license has therefore remained at Smiths Falls, a small town of roughly 80&nbsp;km distant, and the station was absent from the (now-defunct) Ottawa-Hull [[Digital Audio Broadcasting|digital radio]] cluster as that signal would not reach the community of license.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Decisions/2002/db2002-364.htm|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050219091524/http://www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Decisions/2002/db2002-364.htm |url-status=dead |title=Broadcasting Decision CRTC 2002-364, 13 November 2002, Rogers Broadcasting, Transitional digital radio undertaking associated with CIOX-FM Smiths Falls (CKBY-FM), (denied)|archive-date=February 19, 2005}}</ref> Despite this the station effectively acts as an adjunct to the Ottawa radio market, and has undergone frequent format, branding and call sign changes based on market conditions in Ottawa.{{efn|As [[Smiths Falls, Ontario]], is legally not in the [[Ottawa]] radio market, attempts by the Smiths Falls station to oppose proposed format changes by its Ottawa rivals have been rejected by the CRTC; likewise, any attempts by the Ottawa stations to oppose format changes in Smiths Falls have by this precedent also been dismissed - a situation which favours the Smiths Falls broadcaster by giving it added autonomy it would not have had in the city.}} Like its nominally Smiths Falls-licensed sibling [[CJET-FM]], CKBY's transmitters are actually in [[Carleton Place, Ontario]] - roughly halfway from Smiths Falls to Ottawa.

||From its launch in 1974 until 2009, this station's primary city of license was [[Paris, Ontario|Paris]], a small town near [[Brantford]], although the main studios were located in Toronto. A chain of repeaters covering most of [[Ontario]], the choice for the nominal primary station was an arbitrary one. A [[Greater Toronto Area]] community could have reasonably been chosen as nominal city of license, but to do so would be to name a suburban [[UHF]] outlet (22 [[Uxbridge, Ontario|Uxbridge]]) as the main station. Eventually UHF's perceived disadvantage was diminished by cable and the start of the digital era. Meanwhile, CIII-TV obtained a Toronto allocation (UHF 41) and took the outlying station dark (the UHF 22 allocation later went to [[CHEX-DT-2|CHEX-2 Durham]], but at much less power{{efn|[[CHEX-TV-2]] had 5500 watts of analogue UHF, the digital signal is 185 watts - a tiny amount for what is nominally the only originating OTA TV station licensed to a beaten-path industrial city of more than 160,000 people. This tiny signal does, however, get CHEX a slot on digital cable in [[Toronto]], the largest city in the nation.}}). The station's Toronto rebroadcaster on channel 41 (CIII-TV-41) became the originating broadcaster legally as defined by the CRTC for the CIII/Global Ontario network in mid-2009.<ref name=relicense>{{Cite web|url=https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2009/2009-409.htm|title=ARCHIVED - Licence renewals|first=Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC)|last=Government of Canada|date=June 6, 2009|website=crtc.gc.ca}}</ref>