Sigma

I'll begin this story on broadcasting networks and their affiliates by sharing my experience at one I worked at early in my career. That television station is located in San Jose. My father worked there a few years before I did. They hired me as "summer relief" my first summer out of high school, and then they hired me again the following summer. Summer relief was a short-term role to fill in for staff on vacation during the summer. I was a studio camera person. In those days, most people captured remote "video" using film cameras. This was still in my "sometimes in the way" phase of my career.

The station had two of these in their studio when I worked there

KNTV was an affiliate of ABC. Next door was the Sunlite Baking Company. Both operations were owned by Allen T. Gilliland. The station, which signed on in 1955, started as an independent station. It was evident from the beginning that it would face financial difficulties as an independent. It sometimes showed programs that other local network affiliates refused to air. But that wasn't enough. Things got worse when a second independent station joined the Bay Area, KTVU in Oakland.

San Jose is now recognized as being in the San Francisco Bay area television market. Back then, not so much. KNTV placed its transmitter on Loma Prieta in the Santa Cruz mountains. This spot is halfway between San Jose and Monterey. Yes, the Loma Prieta that was near the epicenter of the famous 1989 earthquake. As such, it had great coverage of the Monterey Bay and Salinas communities. The other Bay Area stations all had their transmit sites on top of San Bruno Mountain just south of San Francisco. That mountain significantly blocked KNTV's signal from reaching most of San Francisco and northern areas of the market.

ABC decided to let KNTV broadcast its programs. This was despite KNTV owning its station, KGO, in San Francisco. The decision was based on the logistics mentioned earlier. Back then a network, or any owner of television stations could only own five stations max. This would play a big part in KNTV's future. But to become an ABC affiliate KNTV had to lower its transmitter power. So even in the city it was licensed to it didn't have very good coverage. Add the fact that back until the mid-80s, most received television using antennas. Many on the roof, and in San Jose they were pointed north towards San Francisco, not south towards KNTV's site.

In the second half of the 60s, Gilliland did two things. He hired a crew to install a second small antenna. This would be done at homes for free. The new antenna would work with the main one to receive the KNTV channel 11 signal. The second thing he did was start an early cable system in San Jose called Gill Cable. You can find the rest of the KNTV story here.

Before TV and video, there was radio. There's an old joke that video without audio is a mistake. Audio without video is radio! Yes, it's corny and very dated.

Many people debate this, but some say KDKA in Pittsburgh was the first real radio station. Some have claimed that San Jose might hold that record. While the station that did start early on in San Jose eventually became KCBS-AM in San Francisco.

Most of the original radio networks started in New York City or nearby. To broaden their reach, they linked to other stations that sprang up in nearby cities. The advantage was that the local station got programming from the network it affiliated with. Plus, the network paid the local stations, based on market size, some amount of compensation. The local station also received a few minutes each hour to sell commercial time to sponsors.

As time went on more and more stations were added as the "network" spread west and south out of the northeast.

In 1926, radio equipment vendor RCA launched the NBC radio network. That was followed the next year by CBS.

NBC actually ran two parallel networks, Red and the Blue. Eventually adding two more on the west coast, the Orange and then Gold networks.

They were ultimately compelled to spin one of the networks off, (Blue) because of monopoly concerns. It became ABC.

In 1934 the Communications Act established the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) to regulate broadcasting.

Television development was well underway at that time.

In 1941, NBC and CBS began commercial TV broadcasting. Although the war greatly curtailed that, it picked up again with a vengeance in 1946.

In 1970s PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) emerges as a non-commercial alternative.

In 1980 CNN (Cable News Network) launched, offering 24-hour news. In 1986 the Fox Broadcasting Company ( ) was founded, breaking the ABC, NBC, and CBS monopoly. Then in the 1990s, cable TV exploded with niche networks: MTV, ESPN, HBO, Discovery, and FX. Viewers gained more options, which weakened the power of traditional networks.

Then, at the turn of the century, the digital and streaming revolution started. DVRs like TiVo changed viewing habits. By 2007 Netflix introduced their streaming video service. Since 2010, streaming services like Hulu, Amazon Prime, Disney+, Peacock, and HBO Max have challenged TV networks.

Early 2000s watched TV broadcasters forced to start transmitting digitally. This put a tremendous strain on the broadcasting industry financially. While they had been rapidly converting to digital equipment and methods inside their facilities, the final path from transmitting antenna to home was the expensive part. Many stations faced well over a million dollars to do so. And to make matters worse, for a number of years they had to run two transmit operations. Their current analog one and a new digital one. When running just one, the power bill often was the largest line item in the expense budget. Now they had two!

Now cable networks struggle as viewers move to streaming. Live events such as sports, news, and reality TV remain the strongest assets of traditional TV. We can only guess how AI-driven content and personalized media will shape the future.