Ask NorthPine: How are TV Markets Assigned?

What seems like an easy question is actually more complicated than it may seem: how do TV market borders get decided?

The first important question to consider is who makes the decision. Much of the coverage of “orphan counties” (counties assigned to TV markets based in other states) implies that the decision is made by greedy TV station owners or clueless regulators in Washington.

The decision on TV market assignments is actually made by Nielsen Media and is based on ratings data, updated annually. In most cases, a county is assigned to whatever TV market residents of the county watch the most.

In essence, that means the viewers actually choose their own TV market with their remote controls. But of course, there’s a big catch: viewers can only watch TV stations they can receive.

That’s why a place like Ironwood, Mich., ended up in a Minnesota-based TV market. The only reliable reception in Ironwood in the early days of TV was a few analog VHF Low signals from Duluth. Therefore, Ironwood and Gogebic County became assigned to the Duluth market.

In other cases, viewers more directly chose with their remotes. For example, much of western Wisconsin can receive TV from both Eau Claire and the Twin Cities, but the Twin Cities have more stations and therefore ended up accounting for a greater share of the audience. The same pattern is usually seen in counties that receive multiple markets: the market with more stations wins.

In the early days of cable TV, systems located between cities generally carried stations from both markets, but this changed over the years. In the 1980s, systems dropped many duplicate broadcast affiliates so they could fit new national channels onto their lineup. In the `90s, new regulations ended most carriage of out-of-market stations unless they were on the FCC’s “significantly viewed” list, which is based on broadcast viewership.

When satellite systems began carrying local stations around the turn of the century, the rules were even more strict: only in-market stations could be carried. Though updated rules now set a process for in-state signals to be imported into “orphan counties,” there are only a handful of cases where TV stations or local governments have actually used this process.

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It’s also important to consider the role that decisions by TV station owners in the 1950s and `60s played in defining markets that continue to exist today.

For example, again consider the case of Ironwood. Originally, channel 12 was allotted to Ironwood and trade publications from the early days of TV indicate that the channel may have actually been on the air for a brief time relaying WLUC from Marquette, Mich. Had that continued, Ironwood and Gogebic County almost definitely would have ended up in the Marquette market.

Instead, the channel 12 allotment was moved to Rhinelander, Wis., and became part of the Wausau TV market, leaving Ironwood viewers to watch the distant Duluth signals.

In many other locations, small cities were combined to form a single TV market (such as Rochester, Austin, and Mason City) while other cities that are just as close or closer (such as Omaha and Lincoln) became separate markets.

The desire to serve a nearby larger city is one obvious factor, such as Waterloo’s TV station choosing to put its transmitter closer to Cedar Rapids and Iowa City. Another important factor is that CBS and NBC were the dominant networks in the 1950s and 1960s and broadcasters in smaller cities made decisions that would allow them to affiliate with those networks.

In the case of Lincoln, the city was already receiving CBS and NBC from Omaha when the capital city’s first TV stations signed on, so they carried ABC and the DuMont network. Then, the owner of one station bought out the other, moved the transmitter 20 miles farther away from Omaha, and affiliated it with CBS (the other channel was donated to the university).

Similar decisions may have been made in other places, such as eastern Iowa. The coverage areas of Iowa City-licensed KIIN and KWKB show that it’s possible to serve both the Quad Cities and Cedar Rapids with one signal, potentially creating a much more highly-populated market. However, by the time Cedar Rapids’ first TV station launched, the Quad Cities already had CBS and NBC affiliates. The first Cedar Rapids station became a CBS affiliate serving Cedar Rapids and Waterloo.

The case of Bemidji, Minn., is perhaps the most interesting example of how a series of business decisions can cause an area to flip from market to market to market. The city’s first TV came from Duluth in 1958 via locally-owned translators. Then in 1964, KNMT/12 (Walker) launched as a satellite of KCMT/7 (Alexandria) and the area was regarded to be part of the Alexandria market, though the cable system also carried Duluth and Fargo stations. Finally, the entire Alexandria market was folded into the Minneapolis market in the late 1980s when WCCO-TV bought out KCMT/KNMT and converted them into satellites of WCCO. Bemidji became assigned to a market whose stations it couldn’t even receive for the first several decades of TV history.

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So, how were those market boundaries decided?

• Business decisions in the early days of TV largely determined which smaller cities would be paired together.
• Larger TV markets usually win border counties because they have more stations, thus attracting a larger combined audience.
• Historic viewing patterns became locked in place, first by limited channel capacity on cable and then by regulations limiting importation of out-of-market signals on cable and satellite.

Do you have a question about broadcasting? Email [email protected] and I’ll do my best to find an answer!