HISTORY

NewsX is a 24-hour English News MediaNews television channel in India. It is owned and
operated by ITV Network, NewsX is a 24-hour English News MediaNews television channel
in India. It is owned and operated by ITV Network a private limited company under the
management of Kartikeya Sharma. Sharma bought NewsX under the umbrella of his ITV
network in 2012.
Launched on 27 March 2008, the channel is a recipient of national and international
awards. It is owned by Kartikeya Sharma, Chairman and MD, ITV Network and
spearheaded by Editor-in-Chief, Rahul Shivshankar.

28 March 2008 - The channel was launched by the INX Network, which was then
headed by Indrani Mukerjea. NewsX was founded by former STAR India CEO Peter
Mukerjea as part of INX Media. Peter Mukerjea founded INX Media launching news
channel News X, entertainment channel 9X and music channel 9XM. [4][5]

9 January 2009 - NewsX (INX News Pvt Ltd, part of the Peter Mukerjea, Indrani
Mukerjea - owned INX Network) was purchased by Indi-Media Network, a
partnership between the NaiDunia promoter and CEO Vinay Chhajlani and
former Businessworld editor Jehangir S Pochaa. [6]

ScreenShot of NewsX on 20 January 2014

September 2010 - NewsX announced its intention to re-brand as IMN News. [7]

July 2012 - Kartikeya Sharma led ITV Network (Information TV Private Limited)
(India News) acquired News X. [8][9] [10]

NewsX is Indias only free to air English news channel.

ITV Network also owns Hindi news channel India News, four regional news
channels (India News Haryana, India News Madhya Pradesh Chhattisgarh, India News
Rajasthan, India News Uttar Pradesh), weekly English newspaper 'The Sunday
Guardian' and daily Hindi newspaper 'Aaj Samaaj'.

ContraversyControversy
Rahul Shivshankar, the editor-in-chief of the News Channel ran a live commentary on the
unverified doctored video of the JNSU President Kanhaiya Kumar in the JNU incident that
kept the nation in headlines.[11] News X did not tender any apology & continued to air the
story onKanhaiya Kumar & his past incidents. This trial by media invited criticism for the
unverified news story.

Awards

Best Investigative Feature NT Awards 2012. [13]

Film & Television Reporting Ramnath Goenka Awards for Excellence in

Journalism 2010. [14]

Environmental Reporting - Ramnath Goenka Awards for Excellence in Journalism

2010. [14]

News Reporter & Videographer Of the Year 2009 by Indian News Broadcasting
Awards (4 Nominations) [15]

Pioneering Initiatives in Digital Technology 2008 by NT Special Award[16]

Best News/Current Affairs Promo 2008 by Silver Promax Award - Singapore

Management
The channel's management includes:

Kartikeya Sharma Chairman and MD, ITV Network.; [18]

Rahul

Shivshankar

Editor-in-Chief,

NewsX,

formerly

executive

editor

with Headlines Toda

Times Now
Times Now is a 24-hour English news channel in India. It is owned and operated by The
Times Group.
History
The channel was launched in 2006 by Times Global Broadcasting Company Limited, a
joint-venture of The Times Group (Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd.) and Reuters. Sunil Lulla
was hired from the Sony Entertainment Television as CEO. In 2008, Reuters exited the
venture by selling back its 25.82 percent stake in Times Global to BCCL.
Associate journalist
Arnab Goswami is the Editor-in-Chief and news anchor of Times Now. [2]
Hector Kenneth is Director of News Operations. After years as a journalist, he came into
prominence for his reports from the Gaza Strip. Hector began his career in sports.

Maroof Raza is the consultant and strategic affairs expert.

Distribution
Along with the other Times group channels (Zoom, ET Now and Movies Now) Times Now
is distributed by Media Network and Distribution (India) Ltd (MNDIL), which is a joint
venture between The Times Group and Yogesh Radhakrishnan, a cable and satellite
industry veteran, under the brand Prime Connect

Introduction of Prime time

Television is one of the major mass media of the United States. As of 2011, household
ownership of television sets in the country is 96.7%, [1] and the majority of households have
more than one set, with approximately 114,200,000 American households owning at least
one television set as of August 2013.[2] The peak ownership percentage of households with at
least one television set occurred during the 199697 season, with 98.4% ownership. [3]

As a whole, the television networks that broadcast in the United States are the largest and
most distributed in the world, and programs produced specifically for U.S.-based networks
are the most widely syndicated internationally.[4] Due to a recent surge in the number and
popularity of critically acclaimed television series during the 2000s and the 2010s to date,
many critics have said that American television is currently undergoing a modern golden
age.

Television channels and networks[edit]

In the United States, television is available via broadcast (also known as "over-the-air")
the earliest method of receiving television programming, which merely requires
anantennaantenna and an equipped internal or external tuner capable of picking up
channels that transmit on the two principal broadcast bands, very high frequency (VHF)
and ultra high frequency (UHF), in order to receive the signal and four conventional
types of multichannel subscription television: cable, unencrypted
air"), direct-broadcast

satellite

tesatellites

satellite ("free-to-

television and IPTV (internet

protocol

television). There are also competing video services on the World Wide Web, which have
become an increasingly popular mode of television viewing since the late 2000s, particularly
with younger audiences as an alternative or a supplement to the aforementioned traditional
forms of viewing television content.
Individual broadcast television stations in the U.S. transmit on either VHF channels 2
through 13 or UHF channels 14 through 51. During the era of analog television, broadcast
stations transmitted on a single universal channel; however due to the technical
complexities of the present digital television standard, most stations now transmit
physically on an RF channel (or "minor channel") that is mapped to a virtual channel (or
"major channel"), which with some exceptions typically differs from their physical
allocation and corresponds to the station's former analog channel. The UHF band
originally spanned from channels 14 to 83, though the Federal Communications
Commission (FCC) has twice rescinded the high-end portions of the band from television
broadcasting use for emergency and other telecommunications purposes in 1983 (when

channels 70 to 83 were removed) and 2009 (when channels 52 to 69 were removed by

mandate at the completion of the transition from analog to digital television).
As in other countries, television stations require a license to broadcast legally (which any
prospective broadcaster can apply for through the FCC) and must comply with certain
requirements

(such

as

those

involving

programming

of public

affairs and educational interest, and regulations prohibiting the airing of indecent content)
in order to retain it; the FCC's Board of Commissioners maintains oversight of the renewal
of existing station licenses approaching their expiration, with individuals or groups who
wish to oppose the granting of a renewal to a licensee based on any disagreement over rule
compliance or any other issues inclined to contest it for consideration of revocation. Overthe-air and subscription television networks, however, are not required to file for a license
to operate.
Over-the-air and free-to-air television do not necessitate any monthly payments, while
cable, direct broadcast satellite and IPTV services require monthly payments that vary
depending on the number of channels that a subscriber chooses to pay for in a particular
package. Channels are usually sold in groups (known as "tiers"), rather than singularly (or
on an a la carte basis). Most conventional subscription television services offer a limited
basic (or "lifeline") tier, a minimum base package that includes only broadcast stations
within the television market where the service is located, and public, educational, and
government access (PEG) cable channels; in many smaller markets, this tier may offer
stations from adjacent markets that act as default network affiliates for areas not served by
a local affiliate of one or more of the major broadcast networks; however, since the digital
television transition in the late 2000s, these have been replaced in some cases by digital
subchannels that have agreed to provide a particular network's programming within the
local market.
Elevated programming tiers commonly start with an expanded basic package, offering a
selection of subscription channels intended for wide distribution (primarily those that
launched between the 1970s and the 1990s); since the upspring of digital cable and satellite
television during the mid- and late 1990s, additional channels with more limited
distribution are offered as add-ons to the basic packages through separate tiers, which are

commonly organized based on the programming format of the channels sold in the tier. A la
carte subscription services in the U.S. are primarily limited to pay television (more
commonly known as "premium") channels that are offered as add-ons to any
programming package that a customer of a multichannel video

programming

distributor (also known as a cable or satellite "system" or "provider") can subscribe to for
an additional monthly fee.
Broadcast television[edit]
Main articles: Terrestrial television and List of United States over-the-air television networks
The United States has a decentralized, market-oriented television system, particularly in
regard to broadcast television. The nation has a national public television service known as
the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). Local media markets have their own television
stations, which may either be affiliated with or owned and operated by a television
network. Stations may sign affiliation agreements with one of the national networks for the
local rights to carry their programming; these contracts can last anywhere from one to ten
years, although such agreements often last on average between four and six years. Except
in very small markets with a limited number of commercial stations (generally, fewer than
five), affiliation agreements are usually exclusive: for example, if a station is affiliated with
NBC, it consequently would not air programs from ABC, CBS or other networks.
Arrangements in which television stations carried more than one network on its main
signal (which often resulted in some network programs being not being cleared to air
locally by the station, thereby limiting their national carriage and resulting in viewers
having to rely on an out-of-market station receivable in their area that airs the locally preempted show through an affiliation with that same network in order to see it) were more
common between the 1940s and the 1960s, although some arrangements continued as late
as 2010. Today, programming from networks other than that with which the station
maintains a primary affiliation are usually carried over digital sub-channels, which
increasingly since the mid-2000s, have allowed one of the major broadcast networks to
expand their national coverage to markets where they would have previously either had to
settle for a secondary affiliation with a full-power television station (which maintain
transmitting power as high as 1,000 kilowatts and outputs a signal extending as far as 80

miles (130 km) from the transmitter site), or an exclusive or primary affiliation with a lowpower station with more limited signal coverage (which maintain a reduced transmitting
power not exceeding 100 kilowatts, with a more limited signal radius covering an area 30
60 miles (4897 km) from the transmitter).
However unlike in other countries, to ensure local presences in television broadcasting,
federal law restricts the amount of network programming that local stations can run. Until
the 1970s and 1980s, local stations supplemented network programming with a sizeable
amount of their own locally produced shows, which encompassed a broad content spectrum
that included variety, talk, music and sports programming. Today however, many (though
not all) stations produce only local news programs, and in some cases, public affairs
programs (most commonly, in the form of news and/or political analysis shows); the
remainder of their schedules are filled with syndicated programs, or material produced
independently and sold to individual stations in each local market.
The method of most commercial stations those that rely, at least partly, on advertising for
revenue acquiring programs through distributors of syndicated content to fill time not
allotted to network and/or local programming differs from other countries worldwide
where networks handle the responsibility of programming first-run and syndicated
programs, whereas their partner stations are only responsible for the programming of local
content. The international programming model is used in the U.S. by some smaller
networks and multicast services, which are more cost-effective for their affiliate stations
since they require little to no acquired or locally produced programming to fill airtime at
the local level.
Major broadcast networks[edit]
See also: Big Three television networks, Fourth television network, and Dayparting
The five major U.S. broadcast television networks are NBC, CBS, the American
Broadcasting Company (ABC), the Fox Broadcasting Company (generally known simply as
Fox) and The CW. The first and elder three (which are colloquially known as the "Big
Three") began as radio networks: NBC and CBS respectively began operations in 1924 and
1927, while ABC was spun off from NBC to Edward J. Noble in 1943 as the Blue
Network during FCC inquiries over NBC's dominant share of the American radio market,

although the ABC television network would not reach viewership and distribution parity
with NBC and CBS until the late 1960s. Fox is a relative newcomer that began operation on
October 6, 1986 with a limited schedule of late-night programming (the network would
launch a weekend-only prime time lineup seven months later on April 9, 1987), although it
is built upon the remnants of the former DuMont Television Network, an earlier attempt at
a "fourth network" that operated from January 1948 to August 1956.
The CW was created in September 2006 when CBS Corporation and Time Warner decided
to merge the respective programming assets of the United Paramount Network (UPN)
and The WB, both of which launched in January 1995, with The CW also drawing from the
latter's broadcast and cable assets and scheduling model [7] (The WB's online assets
remained separate, although its former web domain which was revamped as
a streaming service was shut down in December 2013 and replaced with a promotional
website for Warner Bros. Television programs). All in all, the U.S. broadcasting landscape
dramatically evolved towards a conglomeratization of players an effect also
called concentration of media ownership, which describes the narrowing of competition in
modern television broadcasting.
Weekday schedules on ABC, CBS, and NBC affiliates tend to be similar, with programming
choices sorted by daypartsday parts (Fox does not air network programming outside of
prime time other than sports programming that airs on weekends and, on fairly rare
occasions, weekdays). Typically, these begin with an early-morning national newscast (such
as ABC's America This Morning), followed by a local morning news program; these are
typically followed by a network morning program (such as NBC's Today ), which usually
mixes news, weather, lifestyle segments, interviews and music performances.
Network daytime schedules consist of talk shows and soap operas, although one network
CBS still carries game shows (a handful of other game shows otherwise air in
syndication); local newscasts may air at midday timeslots. Syndicated talk shows are shown
in the late afternoon, followed by additional local newscasts in the early evening time
period. ABC, CBS and NBC offer network news programs each evening, generally airing at
6:30 or 7:00 p.m. in the Eastern Time Zone (5:30 or 6:00 p.m. in other areas), however
these are sometimes subject to pre-emption on weekends and select holidays due to sports

programming that overlaps into the time slot, either because the event is scheduled to occur
later in the day or extends beyond the set time block (due to regulations imposed by sports
leagues, particularly as a result of the infamous 1968 "Heidi Bowl" telecast in which NBC
interrupted a National Football League (NFL) game between the New York Jets and
the Oakland Raiders to air a made-for-television film in its scheduled time slot due to a
failure in communications between network executives, most televised sporting events are
required to be broadcast until their completion). Local newscasts or syndicated programs
fill the "prime access" hour or half-hour (7:00 to 8:00 p.m. in the Eastern and Pacific Time
Zones, 6:30 to 7:00 p.m. in other areas), and lead into the networks' prime time schedules,
which are the day's most-watched three hours of television. The traditional prime time
schedule runs from 8:00 to 11:00 p.m. in the Eastern and Pacific Time Zones and 7:00 to
10:00 p.m. elsewhere, although this varies depending on the network and the day: the four
major networks program an additional hour (running from 7:00 to 8:00 p.m. Eastern and
Pacific,

6:00

to

7:00 p.m.

elsewhere)

on

Sunday

evenings

(many Spanish

language broadcast networks also program this additional hour to begin their prime time
lineups on all seven nights of the week); Fox, The CW and My Network TV, in contrast, do
not carry any programming during the 10:00/9:00 p.m. hour and leave that hour for their
affiliates to provide programming of their own.
Typically, family-oriented comedy programs led in the early part of prime time, although in
recent years, reality television programs (such as Dancing with the Stars and American
Idol), and more adult-oriented scripted programs both comedies and dramas have
largely replaced them. Later in the evening, drama series of various types (such
as NCIS,Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Grey's Anatomy) air. Sunday is the mostwatched night on American television, with many of TV's most popular shows airing on
that night.[8]Viewership tends to then decline throughout the week, culminating in the
lowest ratings being registered on Friday and Saturday night; most broadcast networks
abandoned the programming of first-run scripted fare on Saturdays by 2004, in favor of
sports, newsmagazines and burn-offs and reruns of other prime time series; however firstrun scripted programming continues to air on Fridays, being mixed in with newsmagazines
and/or reality series, depending on the network.

Networks, however, pay special attention to Thursday night, which is the last night for
advertisers of weekend purchases such as cars, movie tickets and home video rentals to
reach large television audiences. Throughout the 1990s, NBC called its own Thursday night
lineup "Must See TV", and during that decade, some of the country's most watched
television shows aired on Thursday nights (several of which aired on NBC), before the reemergence of Sunday as the top night of prime time programming in the 2000s. [9]
At the end of prime time, another local news program is broadcast, usually followed
by late-night interview shows (such as The Late Show with Stephen Colbert or The Tonight
Show). Rather than sign off in the early pre-dawn hours of the morning (as was standard
practice until the early 1970s in larger markets and until the mid-1980s in smaller ones),
television stations now fill the time with syndicated programming, reruns of prime time
television shows or late local newscasts (the latter becoming less common since the early
2000s), or 30-minute advertisements, known as infomercials, and in the case of CBS and
ABC, overnight network news programs. On some stations, syndicated programming may
fill timeslots where local newscasts would traditionally air, either due to the station not
programming news in certain time periods or because it does not operate a news
department; similarly, local news programs in the late evening hours may air during the
final hour of prime time (10:00 p.m. in the Eastern and Pacific Time Zones and 9:00 p.m. in
all others) and/or during the morning commute period (7:00 to 9:00 or 10:00 a.m. in all
time zones), usually on stations affiliated with networks other than those classified as part
of the "Big Three" (ABC, NBC and CBS) and those without a network affiliation.
Saturday mornings usually feature network programming aimed at children (traditionally
these mainly consisted of animated cartoons and in some cases, live-action scripted series
and even game shows targeted at the demographic, although live-action lifestyle, science
and wildlife programs have become the norm for the timeslot since 2009, while animated
series have primarily been relegated to non-commercial and non-English language
networks), while Sunday mornings include a form of public affairs program known as
theSunday morning talk shows (which maintain a "week-in-review" format that focuses
primarily on political and socioeconomic issues, and if a particular program's format is
more fluid in regards to topical content, other news stories of major interest). Both of these
help fulfill stations' legal obligations, respectively to provide educational children's

programs(through a law passed in 1990 known as the Children's Television Act, which
requires stations to carry a minimum of three hours of programs featuring content
benefiting the educational needs of youth each week) and public service programming.
Sports and infomercials (and on some stations, syndicated feature film packages) can be
found on weekend afternoons, followed again by the same type of prime-time shows aired
during the week.

Other over-the-air commercial television[edit]

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this
article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be
challenged and removed. (February 2014) (Learn how and when to remove this
template message)
From 1956 to 1986, all English-language television stations that were not affiliated with the
Big Three networks were "independent," airing only syndicated and some locally produced
programming to fill their daily schedules. Many independent stations still exist in the U.S.,
usually historically broadcasting on the UHF band; however the number of them had
drastically decreased (especially within individual markets) after 1995 due to the formation
of newer broadcast networks that were created to compete against the four established
competitors. Syndicated shows, often reruns of television series currently in or out of
production and movies released as recently as three years prior to their initial syndication
broadcast, take up much of their schedules.
However, in October 1986, the Fox Broadcasting Company was launched as a challenge to
the Big Three networks, with six independent stations that News Corporation (which
acquired the 20th Century Fox the year before) had acquired from Metromedia as its
cornerstone charter outlets, along with many independents owned by other companies.
Thanks largely to the success of shows like The Simpsons, Beverly Hills, 90210 and The XFiles, as well as the network's acquisition of rights to show games from the National

Football League's National Football Conference arm in December 1993,[10] Fox has
established itself as a major player in broadcast television. However, Fox differs from the
three older networks in that it does not air daily morning and nightly news programs or
have network-run daytime or weeknight late night schedules (though late night shows do
air on Saturday nights, and beforehand, the network made previous failed attempts at late
night programming on Monday through Friday evenings between 1986 and 1993). Its
nightly prime-time schedule runs only two hours long on Monday through Saturdays and
three hours on Sundays (something the network intentionally did to sidestep FCC
regulations for television networks in effect at Fox's launch), and some of its major market
affiliates used to broadcast on UHF before the digital transition (several affiliates though
broadcast on VHF pre-transition, primarily as a result of affiliation deals with former
longtime Big Three affiliates owned by now-defunct station groups New World
Communications and SF Broadcasting that it signed after acquiring the NFL rights).
Many of its affiliates in mid-size and small markets outsource news production to Big
Three affiliates rather produce their own newscasts, and its flagship stations in New York
Cityand Los Angeles do not include the network's name within their callsigns (Fox's
owned-and-operated stations in New York City and Los Angeles instead use the respective
call signs WNYW and KTTV; the WFOX-TV and KFOX-TV calls are respectively used by
Fox affiliates in Jacksonville, Florida and El Paso, Texas). Fox's only scheduled news
program is Fox News Sunday, which it airs on Sunday mornings; special news coverage on
the network comes from the staff of its sister cable network Fox News Channel (which
launched in August 1996, around the same time as its affiliate video service Fox NewsEdge),
though not every affiliate carries breaking news bulletins from Fox News outside of prime
time presidential addresses, and national and international events of utmost urgency. Most
of Fox's affiliates now have local newscasts (only a small number of affiliates, mainly based
in larger markets, carried news programming prior to the mid-1990s), often scheduled
during the final hour of prime time an hour earlier than newscasts seen on major
network stations at which time they compete with network dramas, rather than other
local newscasts (although some news-producing Fox stations also carry newscasts in the
traditional late news time period), and for one to three additional hours in the morning that
overlap with morning news programs on ABC, NBC and CBS.

Three new networks launched in the 1990s: within six days of each other in January
1995, The WB (which was originally formed as a venture between Time Warner, Tribune
Broadcasting which made the majority of its independent stations principal charter
affiliates of the network and former Fox executive Jamie Kellner, who served as The
WB's original chief executive officer)[11] and UPN (created as a programming partnership
between Chris-Craft Industries/United Television and Paramount Television, which had
been acquired the year prior by Viacom, which would gain full ownership of UPN five
years after the network's launch) were launched primarily to compete against Fox,
targeting the same younger demographic (teenagers and young adults 12 to 34) that
network had built its success upon during the first half of the decade. In August 1998,
Paxson Communications (now Ion Media Networks) launched Pax TV to counterprogram
the four larger networks as well as The WB and UPN, with a focus on family-oriented
original and acquired programming; due to underperforming viewership in its initial
format, Pax relaunched as i: Independent Television (focusing more on reruns and movies
aimed at a broader audience) in July 2005 and then as Ion Television in September 2007.
On September 18, 2006, Time Warner and CBS Corporation shut down The WB and UPN
to launch a "merger" of those networks, The CW;

[7][12]

meanwhile, two weeks earlier on

September 5, News Corporation created MyNetworkTV, originally intended to replace

UPN programming on Fox-owned stations that were affiliated with the latter network.[13] [14]
The CW broadcasts ten hours a week of programming in prime time, all airing only on
Monday through Fridays (the network maintained a three-hour evening lineup on Sundays
from 2006 to 2009, when that time was turned over to its affiliates), and five hours on
Saturday mornings (its children's program block may bleed into the afternoon hours on
weekends on a few stations due to other locally scheduled programs). The CW is the only
major network that operates a fully programmed alternate feed for smaller markets, The
CW Plus (a successor to The WB's group of cable-only affiliates, The WB 100+ Station
Group, which launched in September 1998 to provide the network's programming to markets
where it would otherwise not be able to gain adequate over-the-air coverage), which, as a costeffective method that reduces programming responsibilities on prospective affiliate stations, fills
airtime not occupied by CW network programming with syndicated programs and infomercials;

The CW Plus is distributed via digital subchannel and cable-only affiliates, making it also one
of the only networks that has local affiliates that do not broadcast over-the-air. [15][16] [17]
MyNetworkTV originally started as a conventional network with a format primarily
consisting of English language telenovelas; however, after experiencing continued low
ratings for its prime time-exclusive schedule (even after several programming revamps that
followed over the next three years after the initial format faltered), it converted into a
"broadcast syndication service" in September 2009, adopting a format made up of reruns
of series originally aired on other networks for ten hours a week on Monday through
Fridays.

[18][19][20]

Ion broadcasts 24 hours a day, seven days a week (though only eighteen

hours of its schedule each day consist of entertainment programming, with infomercials
and religious programming making up the remainder of the schedule), making the Ion
network the largest English-language commercial television network to be totally
responsible for its affiliates' programming. Ion differs from other commercial networks in
that the majority of its stations are owned-and-operated by its parent company with very
few affiliates, and it is distributed exclusively via cable and satellite in markets where the
network does not have a local station; Ion was the last of the seven conventional English
language commercial broadcast networks to expand into distribution via digital
multicasting, having relied entirely on cable and satellite distribution in markets where it
otherwise could not maintain a primary affiliation until 2014, when it began accepting
subchannel-only affiliates through deals with Telemundo Station Group and Media
General.
Digital multicast services[edit]
With the digital television transition, which was completed in two phases in February and
June 2009, the use of digital multicasting has given breed to various networks created for
distribution on these multiplexed feeds of new and existing stations. However, for the most
part, very few of these networks have been able to gain a national reach on parity with
many of the conventional commercial and non-commercial networks, in part due to the fact
that many stations transmit high definition programming on their main feed in 1080i,
which requires a bit rate less compartmentalized for allowing more than one multicast feed
(which are generally transmitted in standard definition) without risking diminished picture

quality; some alternately transmit their main feed in 720p, which favors multiplexing of
more than two sub channels at a time (ATSC 3.0, which began development around the
time of the 2009 transition with FCC consideration to replace the current ATSC 1.0 as the
technological standard for digital television expected to occur in 2016, utilizes improved
compression technology able to fit additional sub channels on a single programming stream
as well as allowing for the transmission of high definition content in the 4K resolution
format).
Retro Television Network was among the first networks to be produced specifically for the
digital television market; Equity Broadcasting created the network in 2005, originally
relying mostly on public domain series before expanding to a broader library of licensed
reruns. RTN's initial success was dented by its owner's financial collapse and further
difficulties pertaining to its successor, current owner Luken Communications. The most
popular and widely distributed network that uses digital sub channels as its primary form
of distribution is MeTV, a classic television network originally launched by station
owner Weigel Broadcasting in 2003 as a programming format on one of its flagship
television stations in Chicago, WFBT-CA (now WWME-CD), and evolved into a national
network in November 2010;[21] Me-TV now has affiliations with primary channels in a
number of markets (WJLP in the New York City market, KJWP in Philadelphia and
Delaware, WBBZ-TV in Buffalo). Both MeTV and its most prominent rival, Tribune
Broadcasting-owned Antenna TV,[22] popularized the format for multicasting that relies on
archived programming. This TV (also part-owned by Tribune and co-founded by Weigel
with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) used a similar format, focusing on older as well as some
relatively recent feature films;[23] it helped to spawn similar movie-oriented broadcast
networks such as Movies! (a joint venture between Weigel and Fox Television Stations,
which relies primarily on films from the library of the latter's sister film studio, 20th
Century Fox) and GetTV (which mainly airs films from the library of owner Sony Pictures
Entertainment). [24][25]
Demographically focused networks were created during the 2010s; Bounce TV was
launched in September 2011 by Martin Luther King III and Andrew Young, featuring a
broader

general

entertainment

format

aimed

at African

American adults.[26] Katz

Broadcasting, owned by Bounce executive Jonathan Katz, launched two gender-focused

networks with specific formats in August 2014 Grit (aimed at men with a lineup heavy on
western and action films) and Escape (aimed at women and featuring mystery and true
crime programs) and a genre-based network in April 2015, Laff (featuring a mix of
comedic feature films and sitcoms).[27] Luken Communications is the largest operator of
subchannel networks by total number (which are largely carried on low-power outlets),
which in addition to the Retro Television Network include among others Tuff
TV, Heartland, Rev'n, PBJand The Family Channel.
Other subchannel-based networks include those that also rely on archived programming
such as Buzzr (a network focusing of game shows sourced from the programming library of
owner Fremantle Media) and Comet (launched by the Sinclair Broadcast Group and
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in October 2015, focusing on science fiction series and films
sourced from the MGM library), and networks which do not completely if at all rely on
archived scripted programming Ion Life (a network carried on Ion Television stations,
which mainly airs lifestyle and home improvement programming), WeatherNation TV (an
independently owned 24-hour weather network which features subchannels as part of its
multiplatform distribution model), TheCoolTV and ZUUS Country (which rely on music
videos).
In smaller cities and rural areas, the major broadcast networks may also rely on digital
subchannels to be seen in these areas, as the market may not be populous enough to
support a financially independent station for each network.
Broadcast television in languages other than English[edit]
Several Spanish language broadcast (as well as cable) networks exist, which are the most
common form of non-English television broadcasts. These networks are not as widely
distributed over-the-air as their English counterparts, available mostly in markets with
sizeable Latino and Hispanic populations; several of these over-the-air networks are
alternatively fed directly to cable, satellite and IPTV providers in markets without either
the availability or the demand for a locally based owned-and-operated or affiliate station.
The largest of these networks, Univision, which launched in 1986 as a successor to the
Spanish International Network (which debuted in September 1962, with Spanish language
independent stations KMEX-TV in Los Angeles and KCOR-TV (now KWEX-DT) in San

Antonio, Texas as its charter stations), has risen to become the fifth highest-rated television
network in the U.S. (behind NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox) and is the dominant Spanish
language network in the U.S., with its ratings having risen to levels where it has beaten at
least one of its English language competitors since the late 1990s; although the network
originally featured programming content from a variety of distributors, the network now
relies mainly on programs sourced from Mexico's dominant broadcaster, Televisa (which
has maintained partial ownership of Univision's corporate parent on and off throughout its
history) as well as domestically produced programming. Its major competition
is Telemundo, a sister network of NBC (which acquired Telemundo in 2001) and was
considered

an

also-ran

to

company NBCUniversal began

Univision
heavily

until

investing

the
in

late
its

2000s,

news

and

when

parent

entertainment

programming; unlike Univision, the majority of Telemundo's programming is produced

specifically for the network and in addition to carrying the traditional programming
format for Spanish language broadcasters (which typically incorporates telenovelas,
variety series, news, sports and films imported from Latin American countries), also
includes dubbed versions of American feature film releases.
Other popular Spanish-language broadcast networks are Univision-owned UniMs, which
was launched in January 2002 and is aimed at a younger Hispanic demographic; Azteca,
the

American

version

of

Mexico's Azteca networks,

which

debuted

in

July

2001; MundoMax, originally a sister network to the English language Fox network, which
was

launched

in

August

2012

by Fox

International

Channels and Colombian broadcaster RCN Television (which assumed full ownership of
the network in May 2015); and independent networksEstrella TV (which began as a
programming format on Liberman Broadcasting's Spanish language independent stations
in the early 2000s and eventually launched nationally in September 2009, featuring a
traditional lineup of Latino-focused programming largely produced by Liberman)
and LATV (which originated in 2002 as a programming format onKJLA in Los Angeles
before becoming a national network in September 2007, and focuses mostly on unscripted
music, talk and variety programs).
French language programming is generally limited in scope, with some locally produced
French and creole programming available in the Miami area (serving refugees from Haiti)

and Louisiana, along with some locales along the heavily populated Eastern Seaboard.
Francophone areas near the eastern portion of the Canada-United States border generally
receive television broadcasts presented in the language from French Canadian networks
(such as Ici Radio-Canada Tl and TVA), which are widely available over-the-air and on
cable in those areas.
Many large cities also have television stations that broadcast programming in various
Asian languages (such as KTSF in San Francisco and KYAZ in Houston), especially after
the digital television transition, which has allowed some smaller stations in areas with
heavy populations of Asian immigrants and American natives of Asian origin fluent in one
of that continent's indigenous languages to carry such programming either as primary
channel or subchannel affiliations.
There have also been a few local stations that have broadcast programming in American
Sign Language, accompanied by English closed captioning. Prior to the development of
closed captioning, it was not uncommon for some public television programs to incorporate
ASL translations by an on-screen interpreter. An interpreter may still be utilized for the
deaf and hard-of-hearing community for on-air emergency broadcasts (such as severe
weather alerts given by local governments) as well as televised press conferences by local
and state government officials accompanied by closed captioning.
Non-commercial television[edit]
Public television has a far smaller role in the United States than in most other countries.
The federal government, through the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
(NASA), does operate NASA TV (three channels featuring information on the space
program and other educational programming) for public consumption, but only distributes
that service via satellite and the Internet and not through terrestrial outlets; the United
States Department of Defense produced the Pentagon Channel (later renamed DoD News
Channel),

military

news

outlet

that

operated

from

2004

to

2015.

In

addition, Broadcasting Board of Governors content (the most well-known being Voice of
America) has been available to U.S. consumers since the partial repeal of the SmithMundt
Act in 2013; VOA and its sister outlets are likewise restricted to shortwave and Internet
broadcasts.

The Public Broadcasting Service is the largest public television broadcaster in the United
States, originating

in

October 1970

as

the

successor of National

Educational

Television(which was established in 1954). Unlike the commercial networks, PBS does not
officially produce any of its own programming; instead, individual PBS stations (most
notably,WNET in Newark, New Jersey/New York City, WGBH-TV in Boston and WETATV in Washington, D.C.), station groups and affiliated producers create programming and
provide these through PBS to other affiliates. While it does provide a base slate of
programming to its member stations (which is limited to roughly thirteen hours a week of
programming in prime time, airing on Sunday through Fridays with fewer programs on
Thursday and Friday evenings, as well as daytime children's programming during the
morning and afternoon), PBS does not schedule all programs it supplies in set time slots,
giving its members leeway in scheduling these programs in time slots of their choosing.
Like the six conventional English language broadcast networks, its member stations handle
the responsibility of programming time periods where programming supplied by the
service is not broadcast, which are filled by cultural and public affairs programming of
relevance to their market or region of service, and syndicated programs of various genres.
Most (but, by no means, all) public television stations are members of PBS, sharing
programs such as Sesame Street, NOVA and Masterpiece Theatre. Although many PBS
stations operate individually, a number of states such as Wisconsin , Maryland ,
Minnesota , Oklahoma and South Carolina have state-owned public broadcasting
authorities that operate and fund all public television stations in their respective states. The
Alabama

Educational

Television

Commission,

licensee

for

the

nine

stations

comprising Alabama Public Television, was established by the Alabama Legislature in

1953. In January 1955, WCIQ on Mount Cheaha began operation as the nation's ninth
non-commercial television station. Four months later in April 1955 with the sign-on of
WBIQ in Birmingham, Alabama became the first state in the country with an educational
television network. Alabama Public Television was a model for other states in the nation
and for television broadcasters in other countries. 25 other states copied Alabama's system
of operation to provide service through multiple, linked television stations, using full-power
satellite stations and (in some cases) low-power translators to relay the originating station's
programming to other areas. Similar state networks have also been created by commercial

broadcasters to relay network programming throughout portions or even the entirety of a

state.
The federal government does subsidize non-commercial educational television stations
through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The income received from the
government

is

insufficient

to

cover

expenses

and

stations

rely

on corporate

sponsorships and viewer contributions (including from private benefactors) to finance their
operations and programming production. Various public television outlets albeit not on
all individual PBS member and independent public broadcasting stations and PBS member
networks simultaneously hold pledge drives two to four times per year, which account for
a decent portion of the non-government-subsidized income through public and private
contributions.
American public television stations air programming that commercial stations do not offer,
such as educational (including cultural and arts) and public affairs programming. There
are also a number of syndicators dealing exclusively or primarily with public broadcast
stations, both PBS and independent public television stations (most prominently, American
Public Television). Additionally, there are a number of smaller networks feeding
programming to public stations including World, MHz Worldview (both of which feature
news, documentary and discussion programs) and Create (focusing on lifestyle, travel,
cooking and how-to programs) primarily through digital multicasting; the German
public broadcaster Deutsche Welle has also provided blocks of programming to a variety of
affiliates in the U.S., and increasingly feeds from other national broadcasters have been
distributed through digital subchannels belonging to public stations in the U.S. New York
City's municipally-owned broadcast service, NYCTV, creates original programming that
airs in several markets. Few cities have major municipally-owned stations.
Many religious broadcast networks and stations exist, also surviving on viewer
contributions and time leased to the programming producers; the two most prominent are
the Trinity Broadcasting Network, which was founded in 1973 by Paul and Jan Crouch as a
part-time ministry that leased programming time on KBSA (now UniMs owned-andoperated station KFTR-DT) in the Los Angeles exurb of Ontario, California, before moving
to KLXA-TV (now KTBN-TV) in Fontana, which it began purchasing time on the

following year after KBSA was sold; it gradually became the most widely
distributed Christian television network in the world with 20 networks (including five in
the United States that are primarily available through multicasting, The Church Channel,
the youth-oriented JUCE TV and Smile of a Child TV, and the Latino-oriented TBN
Enlace USA and TBN Salsa) and several affiliates internationally; and the Daystar
Television Network, founded in 1993 by Marcus and Joni Lamb, when the former's Word
of God Fellowship ministry purchased the license of defunct UHF station KMPX (now an
Estrella TV owned-and-operated station) in Dallas, Texas. Most of their stations are owned
by the television ministries directly or through subsidiary companies (Community
Educational Television and Word of God Fellowship, respectively) used by them to operate
stations that TBN and Daystar cannot own outright due to FCC regulations prohibiting
individual broadcasting companies from owning television stations reaching more than
39% of all U.S. television markets.
Other religious broadcasters include the Three Angels Broadcasting Network, Cornerstone
Television, World Harvest Television (WHT), Hope Channel, Amazing Facts Television,The
Word Network, The Worship Network, Total Christian Television and The Inspiration
Network (INSP). These networks rely mainly on church services or other religious teaching
series for programming, although they also incorporate faith-based children's
programming and at least three such networks TBN, Daystar and Cornerstone Television
also air religious-themed feature-length films. INSP and WHT similar to the Christian
Broadcasting Network (CBN), which owned independent stations that maintained such a
format from the 1960s until 2001 also incorporate secular entertainment programs,
primarily in the form of classic television series.
Cable and satellite television[edit]
Main articles: Cable television in the United States and Satellite television in the United States
While pay television systems existed as early as the late 1940s, until the early 1970s, cable
television only served to distribute distant over-the-air television stations to rural areas not
served by stations that are based locally. This role was reflected in the original meaning of
the CATV acronym, "community antenna TV". In that decade, national networks that
exclusively transmitted via cable and maintained their own individual programming

formats began to launch, while cable system franchises began operating in major cities with
over-the-air television stations. By the mid-1970s, some form of cable television was
available in almost every market that already had over-the-air television service. Today,
most American households receive cable television, and cable networks collectively have
greater viewership than broadcast networks, even though individual programs on most of
the major commercial broadcast networks often have relatively higher viewership than
those seen on cable channels.
Unlike broadcast networks, most cable networks air the same programming nationwide.
Top cable networks include USA Network (which maintains a general entertainment
format),ESPN and Fox Sports 1 (which focus on sports programming), MTV (which
originally focused on music videos when it launched in April 1981, but now largely features
music-related,

original

scripted

and

reality

television

programming), CNN, MSNBC and Fox News Channel (which are dedicated news channels
with some opinion and other feature-driven programming), Syfy (which focuses on science
fiction and fantasy programming), Freeform (which launched in September 1977 as the
CBN Satellite Service, a religious-based cable arm of the Christian Broadcasting Network,
before refocusing on secular family-oriented programming, and since 2001 has also
featured

shows

aimed

mainly

at

teenagers

and

young

adults), Disney

Channel, Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network (which focus on children's programming,

although the latter two run nighttime blocks aimed at a teen and adult audience, Nick at
Nite and Adult Swim), Discovery Channel and Animal Planet (which focus on reality and
documentary programs), TBS (a general entertainment network with a principal focus on
comedy), TNT and FX (also general entertainment networks, with some focus on drama)
and Lifetime (which targets at a female audience, with a mix of television films, and
original and acquired comedy, reality and drama series).
Premium channels cable networks that subscribers have to pay an additional fee to their
provider to receive began launching in the 1970s and initially grew in popularity as it
allowed subscribers to watch movies without time or content editing common with overthe-air television broadcasts of theatrically released feature films and without interruptions
by advertising. The most well known as well as the oldest-existing pay service is Home Box
Office (HBO), which launched on November 8, 1972 with a mix of movies, music and

concert specials; by the late 1990s, HBO began to be known for groundbreaking first-run
series (such as The Larry Sanders Show, The Sopranos and Sex and the City) that were
edgier and more risque in content than those allowed to air on broadcast networks. Other
pay-extra networks launched in subsequent years including Showtime, which launched on
September 16, 1976 with a similar format; and movie-oriented services such as Star
Channel (which launched in April 1973, and later became The Movie Channel in November
1979) and HBO-owned Cinemax (which launched on August 1, 1980, and later became
more known for its late-night softcore pornographic films). Although attempts at such
services

date

back

to

the

1950s, pay-per-view services

(such

as Viewer's

Choice and Request TV) began launching in the mid-1980s, allowing subscribers to
purchase movies and events on a one-time-only basis via telephone; with the advent of
digital cable, interactive technologies allowed pay-per-view selections to be purchased by
remote.
In addition to sports networks that are distributed to a national audience, two other types
of sports-oriented television networks exist; regional sports networks are cable outlets
designed to cover a limited geographic region and metropolitan area which carry events
from professional and collegiate sports teams as well as team-related programs, and sports
news and magazine programs (the most prominent of these are the Fox Sports
Networks, Comcast SportsNet and Root Sports, which comprise multiple networks serving
different regions of the United States; the "national" groups hold local RSN exclusivity in
most areas, though independently owned regional sports networks exist in some regions
served by one of the major groups). Out-of-market sports packages, meanwhile, are
composed of individual multichannel packages broadcasting events from an individual
sport that are carried by regional sports networks, and national and local broadcasters that
hold rights to individual teams or sports leagues; the out-of-market sports package is the
most expensive form of a la carte television service, ranging in price from $50 to $75 per
month.
The national cable television network became possible in the mid-1970s with the launch of
domestic communications satellites that could economically broadcast television programs
to cable operators anywhere in the continental United States (some domestic satellites also
covered Alaska and Hawaii with dedicated spot beams that reached the contiguous states).

Until then, cable networks like HBO had been limited to regional coverage through
distribution over expensive terrestrial microwave links leased from the telephone
companies (primarily AT&T). Satellites were generally used only for international (i.e.,
transoceanic) communications; their antennas covered an entire hemisphere, producing
weak signals that required large, expensive receiving antennas. The first domestic
communications satellite, Westar 1, was launched in 1974. By concentrating its signal on
the continental United States with a directional antenna, Westar 1 could transmit to TVRO
("television receive-only") dishes only a few meters in diameter, well within the means of
local cable television operators. HBO became the first cable network to transmit
programming via satellite in September 1975.

Satellite TV receiver dishes.

Cable system operators now receive programming by satellite, terrestrial optical fiber (a
method used primarily to relay local stations based within metropolitan areas to the
franchise, and acts as a backup for the system operator if a broadcast station's over-the-air
signal is affected by a power outage or other technical malfunction involving the main
transmitter), off the air (a method used to relay broadcast stations to cable franchises in
outlying areas and satellite providers), and from in-house sources and relay it to
subscribers' homes. Usually, local governments award a monopoly to provide cable

television service in a given area. By law, cable systems must include local broadcast
stations in their offerings to customers.
Enterprising individuals soon found they could install their own satellite dishes and eavesdrop on
the feeds to the cable operators. The signals were transmitted as unscrambled analog FM feeds
that did not require advanced or expensive technology. Since these same satellites were also
used internally by the television networks, they could also watch programs not intended for
public broadcast such as affiliate feeds without commercials and/or intended for
another time zone; raw footage from remote news teams; advance transmissions of
upcoming programs; and live news and talk shows during breaks when those on camera
might not realize that anyone outside the network could hear them.
Encrypting was introduced to prevent people from receiving pay content for free, and nearly
every pay channel was encrypted by the mid-to-late 1980s (this did not happen without protest,
such as an incident in which a Florida satellite dealer intecepted the signal of HBOduring a
film telecast in 1986 to transmit a text-based message over color bars objecting to the
network's decision to encrypt its feed). Satellite television also began a digital transition,
well before over-the-air broadcasting did the same, to increase satellite capacity and/or
reduce the size of the receiving antennas; this also made it more difficult for individuals to
intercept these signals. Eventually, the industry began to cater to individuals who wanted to
continue to receive satellite television (and were willing to pay for it) in two ways: by
authorizing the descrambling of the original satellite feeds to the cable television operators,
and with new direct broadcast satellite television services using their own satellites. These
latter services, which began operating in the mid-1990s, offer programming similar to cable
television.
DirecTV and Dish Network are the major DBS providers in the country, with 20 and 14
million customers respectively as of February 2014.[28] Meanwhile, the major cable
television providers are Comcast with 22 million customers, Time Warner Cable with 11
million, and Cox Communications, Charter Communications, AT&T U-verse and Verizon
FiOS with five to six million each.
Although most networks make viewers pay a fee to receive their programming, some networks
broadcast using unencrypted feeds. After broadcast television switched to a digital infrastructure,

new channels became available on unencrypted satellites to bring more free television to
Americans; some of these are available as a digital subchannel to local broadcasters, this reason
may be for the expensive costs of the DVB-S equipment. NASA TV, Pentagon Channel,
Antenna TV, This TV, TheCoolTV and the Retro Television Network (through its affiliates)
are examples, international news channels like NHK World, France 24, i24news and Al
Jazeera English until the launch of Al Jazeera America are commonly watched this way as
a result to the lack of availability on cable, DBS and IPTV.
Some cable providers use interactive features built into set-top boxes leased to their
subscribers to distribute video on demand services within their internal networks. Many
providers of subscription television services both networks and system operators also
have TV Everywhere services, which usually mix the video on demand model with
livestreaming capabilities (allowing viewers to watch broadcasts from over-the-air
networks and stations, and cable channels in near real-time), but require password and
username authentication through participating pay television providers.
Internet services[edit]
IPTV is similar to a cable subscription, but instead of the set-top box receiving information
via a dedicated wire, video is transmitted over the public Internet or private internet
protocol-based network to a set-top box.
Over-the-top content bypasses multiple system operators entirely, and allows viewing of
programs hosted by independent providers. Internet television began in the 1990s and has
become popular in the 2000s onward, resulting in a trend of cord-cutting the canceling of
cable subscriptions in favor of online content that consumers supplement with either overthe-air broadcasts, DVD rentals or a combination of all three viewing methods. Web
television providers in the United States include Hulu, Netflix (which was originally
structured as a mail-order DVD rental service), MyTV, and many international websites
such as YouTube, Myspace, Newgrounds, Blip and Crackle. Viewers can watch these
programs

from

any web

browser,

computer, laptop, tablet or smartphone. Mobile

whether

television services

on
also

a desktop
include mobile

apps for both traditional and new programming providers, usually optimized for a small
screen and mobile bandwidth constraints. Mobile video is available for direct download or

streaming (usually for a one-time download fee) from the iTunes Store, Google
Play and Amazon Video.
Internet-connected video game consoles and dedicated Smart TV boxes are available that
connect televisions to online video services. These services are marketed as more convenient
for consumers who would otherwise have trouble connecting a computer to a full-size
television and using a web browser to view content. Some televisions have built-in
capabilities; dedicated boxes include Google TV, Apple TV, Roku, Netgear Digital
Entertainer, Amkette EvoTV and formerly the Nexus Q. Devices that require a PC and
television

include Windows

Media

Center

Extender, HP

MediaSmart

Connect, Boxee and Hauppauge MediaMVP.

Aereo provided a cloud-based digital video recorder service for over-the-air broadcasts,
which it also streamed; although it and the similarly structured FilmOn have run into legal
problems with broadcasters who accused the services of transmitting programs from
broadcast television stations in violation of copyrights. Although Aereo and FilmOn both
stated that their use of "miniature" antennas for transmission of programs to individual
users is legal, following mixed decisions by circuit courts that declared them either legal or
in infringement of copyrights, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in July 2014 that Aereo's
business model had an "overwhelming likeness to cable companies," and its transmission
of local station signals constituted an unauthorized public performance in violation of
copyright rules, forcing Aereo and FilmOn to stop transmitting local stations from several
markets.[29] Aereo eventually suspended operations and filed for bankruptcy in November
of that year, later choosing to auction off its assets and technology; FilmOn however
remains in operation, offering other free-to-air U.S.-based networks in addition to its own
exclusive channels, but was found in contempt by New York district court in July 2014 for
briefly continuing to stream U.S. stations after the Supreme Court ruling.[30][31][32]
Over-the-top subscription services that mirrored cable and TV Everywhere services began
emerging in the mid-2010s. In 2015, Dish Network and Sony respectively launchedSling
TV and PlayStation Vue, cable-style online and mobile streaming services priced at lower
monthly rates than packages offered by traditional pay television system operators that
each include slimmed down tiers of cable and satellite-originated networks from a

relatively limited number of network owners; Sling does not include local broadcast
stations or regional sports networks in an effort to cap programming costs, conversely
PlayStation Vue does carry ABC-, NBC-, CBS- and Fox-affiliated stations in select cities
where the service is available.[33][34][35] Conventional broadcast and cable networks also
launched OTT services during 2014 and 2015 to primarily reach cord-cutters most of
which are younger adults, particularly around college age and to combat online copyright
infringement of their programming including CBS (which launched CBS All Access in
October 2014, featuring both on-demand content and live streams of the network's ownedand-operated stations and affiliates),[36][37] HBO (which in April 2015, launched HBO Now,
an OTT service identical to its TV Everywhere service HBO Go)[38][39] and Showtime (which
launched a VOD/live streaming service of the same name in May 2015).[40][41]
The business of television[edit]

The main characters in Frasierselling U.S. Treasury Bonds.

Over-the-air commercial stations and networks generate the vast majority of their revenue
from advertisements. According to a 2001 survey, broadcast stations allocated 16 to 21
minutes of programming time per hour to commercials. Most cable networks also generate
income from advertisements, although most basic cable networks also receive subscription
fees, which are the other main source of revenue for the cable operators.
However, premium cable networks (such as HBO) do not air commercials; instead, cable
television subscribers must pay an extra fee to receive this type of pay television service.
Networks traditionally allocate a portion of commercial time during their programs
(usually totaling between five and 6 minutes per hour, depending on the length of the
program being aired, sometimes less during sporting events) to their local affiliates, which
allow the local stations to generate revenue. In the same manner, in addition to subscription
fees, cable television providers generate some of their revenue by selling local commercial
time (usually allocating around four minutes per hour) for each advertiser-supported cable
network it carries. However, while much of this time is sold to local and national
advertisers, portions of the allocated commercial time are reserved by network affiliates

and cable providers for in-house advertising (cable providers use some of this time to carry
commercials for their services, which may also include business solutions, residential
telephone and broadband internet services; network affiliates, as do other commercial
broadcast stations, use this reserved time to carry promotions for their programming or
station imaging).
Cable companies are required by the 1992 Cable Television Consumer Protection and
Competition Act to negotiate for retransmission consent, usually paying broadcasters for
the right to carry their signals. This provision, over time, has resulted in problems between
pay television providers and companies that own subscription television services as well as
those own and/or operate over-the-air television stations, as disagreements over terms in
retransmission contracts sometimes arise during negotiations to renew and (occasionally)
strike new agreements to carry certain channels. The carriage disputes that occur because
of these differences typically result in broadcast stations or cable channels being pulled for
a protracted period of time, often due to carriage fee increases that a provider may
consider to be too expensive (since retransmission consent fees are a form of subscriber fee,
any increase in fees that a provider carries will be passed on to the subscriber, which
providers are hesitant to do out of concern that it may result in subscriber defections due to
the resulting rate increases for program packages).
Programmingg[edit]
American television has had very successful programs that have inspired television
networks across the world to develop shows of similar types. Some of these shows are still
on the air and some have maintained decent runs in syndication. Conversely, many
programs produced for U.S. television are also routinely syndicated to broadcasters in
other countries, and a number of popular American programs have been based on shows
that

originated

in

other

countries,

especially

the Netherlands,

the United

Kingdom andCanada.
News[edit]
The major networks all offer a morning news program, with CBS's CBS This Morning,
NBC's Today and ABC's Good Morning America as standard bearers, as well as an early-

evening newscast anchored by the de facto face of the network's news division like Walter
Cronkite and Dan Rather for CBS; Chet Huntley, David Brinkley and Tom Brokaw for
NBC; and Peter Jennings for ABC. Successful news magazines have included 60
Minutes, 20/20 and Dateline

NBC in

prime

time,

and Meet

the

Press, Face

the

Nation and This Week on Sunday mornings.

Local news programming airs on many television stations, with individual markets
supporting as few as two or as many as eight television news operations, depending on the
number od available viewers that live in the market. Most stations originally aired locally
produced newscasts only in evening time periods (usually at 6:00 and 10:00 or 11:00 p.m.
local time) until the 1970s or as late as the mid-1980s on some stations. During that period,
stations began local news programs in the midday and 5:00 p.m. time slots, while morning
newscasts began to become common during the 1980s (first on weekdays, with weekend
morning newscasts launching in many cities beginning in the early 1990s).
Two television stations in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, KYW-TV and WPVI-TV, were the
respective progenitors of two popular news formats that shaped the modern presentation of
television news, Eyewitness News (which had reporters present their stories instead of
having the anchor read them, and became popularized after the format expanded
to WABC-TV in New York City in 1968) and Action News (which placed set time limits on
story packages presented during the program, in order to cover a broader array of
stories). WSVNin Miami also served as a pioneer in local news in 1989, when the station
(which adopted the format in January of that year, after assuming the Fox affiliation from
WCIX (nowWFOR-TV) as a result of a three-way swap resulting from CBS' purchase of
WCIX and NBC's purchase of longtime CBS affiliate WTVJ) originated the "newsintensive" programming format, which in its typical structure which has become
common of Fox affiliates, particularly as a result of affiliation deals signed following the
network's acquisition of NFL rights, as well as certain other stations that are either
affiliated with a non-Big Three network or operate as independent stations in recent years
mixes newscasts in traditional time periods with those in non-traditional ones (most
commonly, in time periods that the major networks fill with national morning and evening
news programs or prime time programming). This format spread to Big Three affiliates in
a modified form during the 2000s and 2010s.

Cable news channels traditionally carry blocks of more generalized news coverage during
the morning and afternoon hours; programs focusing on politics (that are similar in format
to the Sunday morning talk shows) and documentaries typically air on these channels
during prime time and late night, with general news coverage during that time usually
limited to occasional coverage of breaking news events.
Game shows[edit]

On Wheel of Fortune, three people compete against each other to win cash and physical
prizes such as overseas trips.
Daytime television has been home of many popular game shows over the years, particularly
during the 1970s, such as The Price Is Right,Family Feud, Match Game, The Newlywed
Game and Concentration. Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! have found their greatest success
in the early-evening slot preceding primetime. However, game shows that also aired within
prime time had great popularity in the 1950s and 1960s such as What's My Line?, I've Got a
Secret and To Tell the Truth; and again, intermittently, in the 2000s with Who Wants to Be a
Millionaire, The Weakest Link and Deal or No Deal.
The Price Is Right, which has aired on CBS since 1972, and Let's Make a Deal, which was
revived on that same network in October 2009, are the only daytime game shows remaining
on the broadcast networks. Since the mid-1990s, game shows have been commonly found
more in syndication, although the number of syndicated game shows overall has decreased
during the 2000s and 2010s; the highest-rated of these are Jeopardy! and Wheel of
Fortune (which are both distributed by CBS Television Distribution and Sony Pictures
Television, and air together on the same station in some markets), both of which have
consistently ranked among the top ten syndicated programs since they began in the early
1980s, and Family Feud, which has run continuously in daytime syndication since 1999 but

saw its viewership rise rapidly in the early 2010s after more risqu questions and new
host Steve Harvey were installed.
Soap operas[edit]
American daytime soap operas have been running on television for over seven decades.
Currently as of 2016, there are four daytime soap operas in production: ABC's General
Hospital, NBC's Days of Our Lives, and CBS's The Young and the Restless and The Bold and
the Beautiful. Long-running soaps no longer in production include Search for
Tomorrow, Guiding Light, As the World Turns, Another World, One Life to Live and All My
Children.
The soap opera genre experienced a gradual decline beginning in the 1980s due to the
continued migration of women into the workplace, culminating in six soaps being canceled
by NBC, CBS and ABC between 2003 and 2011 (of those, one, Passions, moved to DirecTVowned network The 101 for one additional season after its cancellation by NBC in 2009,
while All My Children and One Life to Live were revived on Hulu for one additional season
in 2013 with those series' second cancellations resulting from a dispute between originating
broadcaster ABC and the production company that acquired them, Prospect Park, over
various issues).
Soap operas have also become common in prime time, which differ from their daytime
counterparts as they utilize the traditional weekly format and maintain a visual style
traditional of other nighttime network series (particularly, nighttime soaps are recorded on
film in a single-camera setup, whereas daytime soaps are shot on multiple cameras that
record the program on videotape). Prime time soaps of note have included Peyton
Place, Dallas, Dynasty, Beverly Hills, 90210, Melrose Place, Revenge and Scandal.
Comedies and dramas[edit]
Comedy programming on American television has been more noted for situation
comedies such as I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners, The Andy Griffith Show, The Dick Van
Dyke Show, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, All in the Family, M*A*S*H, Happy Days, Family
Ties, Cheers, The Cosby Show, Seinfeld, Friends, Frasier, Everybody Loves Raymond, The
King of Queens, How I Met Your Mother, The Big Bang Theory and Modern Family.

However, there have also existed sketch comedy/variety series during prime time such
asTexaco Star Theatre, The Carol Burnett Show and Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In. The
most prominent as well as the longest-running sketch comedy program is Saturday Night
Live, a late-night series which debuted on NBC in November 1975, and has spawned the
careers of many popular comedic actors (such as Chevy Chase, Eddie Murphy, Dennis
Miller and Will Ferrell).
Dramatic series have taken many forms over the years. Westerns such as Gunsmoke (the
longest-running prime time scripted drama series in U.S. television history, having aired
from 1956 to 1976) and Bonanza had experienced their greatest popularity in the 1950s and
1960s. Medical dramas such as Marcus Welby, M.D., St. Elsewhere, ER, House andGrey's
Anatomy have endured success; as well as family dramas such as The Waltons, Little House
on the Prairie and 7th Heaven; and crime dramas such as Dragnet, Hawaii Five-O, Hill
Street Blues, Miami Vice, L.A. Law, 21 Jump Street, Law & Order, JAG, CSI: Crime Scene
Investigation and NCIS.
Dramedy, a term for a television series that mixes elements of comedy and drama, have
seen its popularity grown among viewers, thanks to programs like Ally McBeal, Ugly
Betty,Desperate Housewives, Psych, Glee and Devious Maids.
Television series featuring fantasy and science fiction are also popular with American
viewers, since these programs take elements of comedy, drama, adventure, or a
combination of all of the above. Among the most notable fantasy series in this genre
include Touched By an Angel (centering on angels helping humans in times of personal
crisis), Bewitched(a sitcom centering on a witch adjusting to married life with a mortal
male), Fantasy Island (which was set at a resort where people live out their fantasies, but at
a price), Drop Dead Diva (focusing on a deceased model inhabiting the body of a lawyer)
and Once Upon a Time (centering on fairytale characters that are trapped in the present
day after the enactment of a curse), while Star Trek (which spawned four spin-off series,
two in syndication The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine and two on network
television Voyager and Enterprise between 1987 and 2005), Battlestar Galactica and the
British series Doctor Who rank among the most watched programs in the sci-fi genre.
Reality television[edit]

Reality television has long existed in the United States, both played for laughs (such
as Candid Camera and Real People) and as drama (such as COPS and The Real World). A
new variant competition series placing ordinary people in unusual circumstances or in
talent contests, generally eliminating at least one participant per week, exploded in
popularity in turn of the millennium (with shows such as Survivor, Big Brother, The
Amazing Race, American Idol, America's Next Top Model, Dancing with the Stars, The
Bachelorand its spin-off The Bachelorette, So You Think You Can Dance and The Voice).
Talk shows[edit]
The most successful talk show has been the The Tonight Show, particularly during the 30year run of third host Johnny Carson. Tonight ushered in a multi-decade period of
dominance by one network NBC in American late-night programming and paved the
way for many similar programs combining comedy and celebrity interviews, such as The
Merv Griffin Show and Late Night with David Letterman. Despite initial failed attempts
during the late 1980s by Fox as well as the success of The Arsenio Hall Show in syndication
during its first five-year run beginning in 1989, the late-night talk show genre would not
become a more competitive field until the 1990s, when CBS gained a major foothold in the
field with the Late Show with David Letterman; competition in the genre increased even
further as cable networks entered into the genre in the 2000s and 2010s with the rise of
parody news show The Daily Show under host Jon Stewart and newer shows such as The
Colbert Report, Chelsea Lately and Conan.
Daytime talk show hits have included Live! with Kelly and Michael (and its previous
iterations with Regis Philbin as co-host), The Oprah Winfrey Show, Dr. Phil and The Ellen
DeGeneres Show, which run the gamut from serious to lighthearted in topicality and
format; a subset of so-called "trash TV" talk shows such as The Jerry Springer Show, which
hit their peak during the 1990s, also veered into exploitation and titillation. Most daytime
talk programs air in syndication, with various attempts airing on network television to
mixed results (among the more notable network efforts are the female-driven panel talk
shows The View and The Talk).
Children's programming[edit]

Children's television programs are also quite popular. Early ventures into children's
television in the 1950s aired on weekdays with shows such as Howdy Doody, Captain
Kangaroo, "Mr. Wizard", and the Mickey Mouse Club. However children's programing had
experienced its greatest success on Saturday mornings from the 1960s to the early 1990s.
Programs shown during these time periods mainly consisted of animated programming
including classic cartoons (such as Looney Tunes, Tom and Jerry and Woody Woodpecker),
reruns of prime time animated sitcoms (such as The Flintstones and The Jetsons), foreign
acquisitions (such as Astro Boy and Kimba the White Lion), animated adaptations of films
and television series (such as Back to the Future, Ghostbusters, Batman, ALF and Star Trek),
and original programs (such as The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, Scooby-Doo, Fat Albert
and

the

Cosby

Kids, The

Smurfs, Alvin

and

the

Chipmunks, Garfield

and

Friends and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles).

Some locally produced children's programs which often mixed cartoons, special guests
and audience-participation games also became popular in the local markets where they
were broadcast; one of the most popular was the Bozo the Clown franchise, which became
most well known for its Chicago version, which began airing nationally when WGNTVbecame a superstation in October 1978.
However, in 1990, due to concerns regarding commercial advertising and cross-promotion
in children's programs by parental advocacy groups, the Federal Communications
Commission passed the Children's Television Act, legislation that among other provisions
requires all broadcast television networks and stations to air at least three hours of
educational children's programming each week. This has made it much harder for
broadcast stations to profit from children's programs than was possible in previous years,
eventually leading the major broadcast networks to abandon traditional scripted programs
in favor of unscripted educational series with formats appealing to a more generalized
audience to fulfill the requirements; noncommercial networks are exceptions to this new
standard, as PBS in particular has long excelled in providing E/I-compliant children's
programs that mix educational and entertainment content (such as Sesame Street, Mister
Rogers' Neighborhood, Thomas the Tank Engine and Arthur).

Since the mid-2000s, the most popular children's programs (including SpongeBob
SquarePants, Jessie, The

Fairly

OddParents, Hannah

Montana, iCarly, Phineas

&

Ferb,Wizards of Waverly Place and Adventure Time, among others) have been produced for
cable networks such as Disney Channel, Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network that are
targeted at the demographic and only provide educational content voluntarily in which
case, it is primarily aimed at preschool-aged children and relegated to morning hours,
unless incorporated full-time as part of the channel's format, as is the case with the spinoffs of the former two aforementioned networks Disney Junior and Nick Jr. as they are
not bound by the Children's Television Act's guidelines.
Sports[edit]
Main article: Sports in the United States
The broadcasting of sports events is a major component of the American commercial
television industry. Sports tend to draw a large, wealthy audience that can command large
sums of revenue from advertising and subscription fees.
In the early days of television, sports quickly became a fixture of American broadcast
television. It was initially restricted to individual combat sports; professional wrestling (not
yet outed as a staged sport) and boxing were carried on almost every television station and
network. Boxing remained fairly popular until the 1970s or so, until the rise of pay-perview and premium channels led to most of the highest-profile matches leaving broadcast
outlets for subscription television. Boxing, while it still maintains a limited (and rising,
thanks to the efforts of Premier Boxing Champions) presence on American broadcast
television, has declined in popularity since the 1990s with mixed martial arts, a more
broad-based combat sport, rising to take its place. Professional wrestling, meanwhile,
underwent a resurgence in the 1980s as rival businessmen Vince McMahon and Ted
Turner each built national wrestling empires; during the Monday Night Wars of the period,
McMahon's World

Wrestling

Federation and

Turner's World

Championship

Wrestling (WCW) maintained a heated televised rivalry, one that eventually collapsed by
2001, leading to McMahon acquiring the WCW, merging it with the WWF and renaming
the federation World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). WWE maintains a dominant
presence in professional wrestling, with rivals Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA)

and Ring of Honor (ROH) also having a presence on American television (the latter
primarily as a result of its 2011 acquisition by television station owner Sinclair Broadcast
Group).
The major professional sports leagues began regular television broadcasts in the 1950s.
The National Football League (NFL)'s embrace of television broadcasting at the early onset
of the medium helped boost its popularity as a sport, and by the 1960s, the combined
success of NFL and American Football League (AFL) telecasts helped earn professional
football a status as a mainstay of the major television networks. American television pays
the NFL billions of dollars each year to maintain their television rights; theSuper Bowl, in
return, is a cash windfall for the network which airs it as the broadcaster which holds the
rights in a given year (which is rotated annually among the broadcast networks that hold
rights to the league's regular season and playoff games) can make hundreds of millions of
dollars in revenue from advertising sales alone. The National Hockey League (NHL), in
contrast, was much slower to embrace television, due to its initially regional nature and
greater reliance on Canadian television, though it would begin broadcasting its events
nationally on a wider basis after Fox acquired the rights to the league's game broadcasts
in 1995; the NHL has struggled to gain competitive ratings for most of its time on
television. Major League Baseball (MLB) has been televised to some extent on U.S.
television since the inception of the medium, most notably by way of a "Game of the Week"
that has usually aired on Saturdays on various broadcasters since 1954.
College sports have also been a feature of American television. The National Collegiate
Athletic Association (NCAA) restricted television broadcasts of college football, as well as
college basketball, from the early 1950s until 1984. In the latter year, the Supreme Court
struck down the NCAA's collective television contract as a violation of antitrust law,
deregulating the sale of college sports telecasts and allowing individual teams and athletic
conferences to negotiate their own deals with broadcast and cable networks.
Other sports that have maintained a regular presence on U.S. television include auto
racing (NASCAR, in particular, rose rapidly in television popularity in the 1990s;
the IndyCarseries has also had some presence, particularly its signature event,
the Indianapolis 500), professional golf (promintently through the Professional Golfers

Association

of

America[PGA]

and

the United

States

Golf

Association [USGA]), thoroughbred racing (particularly, the Triple Crown) and (until the
1990s) ten-pin bowling. Other sports have been televised through anthology series such
as ABC's Wide World of Sports (that same network would launch a documentary-based
anthology, ESPN Sports Saturday, in 2011), CBS Sports Spectacular and NBC SportsWorld,
sometimes through time-buy arrangements with event organizers.
Sports broadcasts are carried through a number of televised media. Most of the major sports have
some presence on commercial broadcast television, including all NFL regular season and most
playoff games. National cable networks, beginning with ESPN in 1979 (along with its later
sister channels that gradually launched beginning in the 1990s) and later joined by
competitors such as NBCSN and Fox Sports 1, carry packages of assorted major
professional and college sports. The vast majority of MLB, NHL and National Basketball
Association (NBA) games are carried through regional sports networks, however the NFL
only permits preseason games to air on RSNs on a limited basis (the league otherwise
prohibits regular season and playoff games from airing on regional sports networks, but
does permit national cable networks to acquire the rights to air them); the leagues (as well
as the NFL) restrict the broadcast of their sports on regional networks to specific territories
and require any person outside those territories to purchase an out-of-market sports
package to watch the majority of their favored team's games. Regional sports networks can
also provide outlets for minor league sports to broadcast their events. Unlike in some other
countries, public television does not own any sports rights, nor has it ever been a major
factor in sports television.
Imported programming[edit]
While the majority of programs broadcast on American television are produced
domestically, some programs carried in syndication, on public television or on cable are
imported from other countries most commonly, from the primarily English-speaking
countries of Canada and the United Kingdom. PBS in particular, is commonly known for
its broadcasts of British sitcoms (such as Monty Python's Flying Circus, Fawlty
Towers, Keeping Up Appearances and Are You Being Served?), which typically air on its
member stations on weekend evenings (although their scheduling is at the discretion of the

station as these programs are primarily syndicated on the behalf of outside distributors);
PBS was also responsible for bringing the hit period drama Downton Abbey to the U.S. and
for initially popularizing the long-running science-fiction series Doctor Who in the country
(the latter show now airs first-run episodes on BBC America, an outlet launched in 1998
that was specifically designed to bring BBC programming direct to the United States,
although it continues to be syndicated to public television stations and is also syndicated to
commercial digital multicast networks such as the Retro Television Network).
Many of the programs imported from Canada are children's programs originally aired by
channels such as YTV and Family Channel (such as Are You Afraid of the Dark?,Naturally,
Sadie and Life with Derek). However, other Canadian series aimed at adults or more
general audiences have also been syndicated in the United States; one network,Ion Life (a
spin-off of Ion Television), has much of its schedule composed of reruns of sincediscontinued Canadian lifestyle series. Among some of the more well-known Canadian
television series among American viewers include the Degrassi High franchise (which aired
in Canada on CBC Television, with the later incarnation Degrassi: The Next
Generationairing on CTV and presently MuchMusic), Rookie Blue, SCTV Network and The
Red Green Show.
American Spanish-language networks also import much of their programming; for
example, Univision imports much of its programming, especially telenovelas that are
broadcast on the network, from Mexican broadcaster Televisa, and MundoMax distributes
programming from Colombian broadcaster and network owner RCN Television.
The life cycle of U.S. television shows[edit]

The cast of I Love Lucy (L-R): Desi Arnaz, Lucille Ball, Vivian Vance, andWilliam
Frawley. I Love Lucy has spent over 50 years in reruns after it ended in 1957.

Television production

companies either

commission teleplays for television

pilots or

buy spec scripts. Some of these scripts are turned into pilots for proposed television
programs. The production company markets those they consider commercially viable to
television networks or television distributors for first-run syndication (for example, CBS
Television Distribution distributes Dr. Phil in first-run syndication, because that show is
syndicated it is not carried on a particular network). A few things that a television
network takes under consideration in deciding to order a show is if the show itself is
compatible with the network's target audience, the cost of production, and if the show is
well liked among network executives, and in many cases, test audiences.
Networks sometimes preemptively purchase pilots to prevent other networks from
controlling them and the purchase of a pilot is no guarantee that the network will order
additional episodes. In other cases, the network may be forced to commission the pilot in
order to avoid shouldering monetary penalties if it is not produced. The producers hire a
director and other crew members (in some cases, using staff employed with an existing
series) to work on the pilot; in some cases, if the pilot's concept was pitched by producers
that would not write for the proposed show before a script is drafted, writers may also be
assigned to pen the script and would be given credit as the series' creator(s). Pilots that do
get "picked up" get either a full or partial-season order (starting with an initial order of
between seven and 13 episodes, which may be extended if the program's viewership is
strong during the early run of episodes); the show goes into production, usually
establishing itself with permanent sets. Writers, additional directors and some full-time
crew members are hired, and work begins usually during the late spring and summer
before the fall season-series premieres (shows can also serve as a midseason replacement,
meaning they are ordered specifically to fill holes in a network schedule created by the
failure and cancellation of shows that premiered in the fall; Buffy the Vampire
Slayer and The Office are examples of successful midseason replacements). Unscripted
series have a different stage of development, as the program is generally pitched only as a
concept, often without a pilot being ordered or already produced.
The standard broadcast television season in the United States consists of 22 episodes (which
are typically broadcast over a period of nine months from September to May, depending on
the date on which the program begins its season), although prior to the 1970s, a single

season of a weekly television program consisted of as many as 40 episodes, with few breaks
in the show's airing schedule. Sitcoms may have 24 or more; animated programs may have
more (or fewer) episodes (some are broken up into two 11-minute shorts, often with
separate self-contained storylines, that are folded into a single half-hour episode); cable
networks with original programming seem to have settled on about 10 to 13 episodes per
season, much in line with British television programming, though there are exceptions
(particularly with cable networks specializing in children's programming, which utilize the
network television model of total per-season episode counts, but spread out the episodes
over a single calendar year).
American soap operas air in the afternoon, five days a week, without any significant break
in taping and airing schedules throughout the year. This means that these serials air
approximately 260 episodes a year, making their cast and crew members the busiest in
show business. These shows are rarely, if ever, repeated (unless the network chooses not to
air a new episode on certain major holidays), making it difficult for viewers to "catch up"
when they miss an episode, though the television networks' adoption of online streaming
during the late 2000s has made it easier for viewers to watch recent episodes of a particular
soap. Cable channel SoapNet provided weekly repeats for some broadcasts until it shut
down in December 2013, after which TVGN (now Pop, and originally a television listings
service formerly known under several names including the Prevue Channel) began airing
same-day repeats of some network soaps.
Networks use profits from commercials that run during the show to pay the production
company, which in turn pays the cast and crew, and keeps a share of the profits for itself
(networks sometimes act as both production companies and distributors, though due to
the vertical integration of networks and major media companies since the 1990s,
production arms operated by the broadcast networks have largely been absorbed into the
existing production arms of their corporate parents). As advertising rates are based on the
size of the audience, measuring the number of people watching a network is very
important. This measurement is known as a show or network's ratings. Sweeps months
(which occur in November, February, May, and to a lesser extent July) are important
landmarks in the television season ratings earned during these periods determine

advertising rates until the next sweeps period, therefore shows often have their most
exciting plot developments happen during sweeps.
Shows that are successful with audiences and advertisers receive authorization from the
network to continue production, until the plotline ends (only for scripted shows) or if the
contract expires. Those that are not successful are often quickly told to discontinue
production by the network, known as "cancellation". There are instances of initially lowrated shows surviving cancellation and later becoming highly popular, but these are rare.
For the most part, shows that are not immediately or even moderately successful are
cancelled by the end of November sweeps, if not shortly thereafter or earlier. Usually if a
show is canceled, there is little chance of it ever coming back again especially on the same
network it was canceled from; the only show in the U.S. to ever come back from
cancellation on the same network is Family Guy (which was cancelled by Fox in 2002 and
was revived by the network in 2005 due to the increased popularity of the series through
reruns on cable and DVD releases). However, canceled shows like Scrubs, Southland,
Medium and Wonder Woman have been picked up by other networks, which is becoming an
increasingly common practice; similarly, in the 2010s, some programs cancelled by
traditional television networks like Arrested Development, Community and The Mindy
Project have been picked up or revived by internet television streaming services. It is also
somewhat common for series to continue production for the purpose of completing a DVD
set, even if these episodes will never air on television (these episodes would, in years past, be
"burned off" by airing them in less-prominent time slots).
Once a television series reaches a threshold of approximately 88 to 100 episodes, it becomes
a candidate to enter reruns in off-network syndication. Reruns are a lucrative business for
television producers, who can sell the rights to a "used" series without the expenses of
producing it (though they may have to pay royalties to the affected parties, depending on
union contracts).
Sitcoms are traditionally the most widely syndicated reruns and are usually aired in a fiveday-a-week strip (standardly with two episode "runs", separate sets of episodes of a
particular program that are usually from different seasons, packaged for stations to air
back-to-back or in different time slots), and in most cases, with additional weekend runs

consisting of two (or in some cases, four) additional episodes. Marginally performing shows
tend to last less than three to five years in broadcast syndication, sometimes moving to
cable channels (although rerun packages of some series are sold simultaneously into both
broadcast syndication and cable, and sometimes to more than one cable network) or into
limited-run barter syndication (such as through The Program Exchange) after the end of
their syndication runs, while more widely successful series can have a life in syndication
that can run for decades (I Love Lucy, the first series designed to be rerun, remains popular
in syndication more than 60 years after its 1951 debut).
Cable and digital broadcast networks have provided outlets for programming that either
has outlived its syndication viability, lacks the number of episodes necessary for
syndication, or for various reasons was not a candidate for syndication in the first place.
Popular dramas, for instance, have permanent homes on several basic cable channels, often
running in marathons (multiple episodes airing back-to-back for several hours), and there
are also cable channels devoted to game shows (Game Show Network), soap operas (the
now-defunct SoapNet), Saturday morning cartoons (Boomerang) and even sports
broadcasts (ESPN Classic). Digital broadcast networks specializing in classic television
programming that have become popular since the early 2010s have also served as shortterm or long-term homes for many older series that have not been syndicated in decades or
have ever been aired in reruns. Most reality shows perform poorly in reruns and are rarely
seen as a result, other than reruns of series still in production, on the same network on
which they air (almost always cable outlets), where they air as filler programming.
Regulation[edit]
Broadcast television is regulated by the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC
awards and oversees the renewal of licenses to local stations, which stipulate stations'
commitments to educational and public-interest programming. During the early years of
commercial television, the FCC permitted a single company to own a maximum of five
television stations nationwide (later raised to seven stations in 1984 and then to twelve in
1992), although until the 1960s, very few companies outside of the major broadcast
networks owned multiple stations. Since a change to its media ownership regulations in
1999 that counted television station ownership maximums by a national market percentage

rather than by the number of stations that could be allowed in their portfolio, FCC rules
mandate that the total number of television stations owned by any company can only reach
a maximum of 39% of all markets in the U.S.
Most commercial stations are now owned-and-operated or controlled through outsourcing
agreements by group owners (either independent companies or network-owned subsidiary
groups), with a relatively limited number of companies that remain which own stations in
five or fewer markets; a series of station purchases that have occurred since 2011 (when the
Sinclair Broadcast Group acquired the Four Points Media Group) has concentrated the
number of station owners even further, as a result of increasing competition between overthe-air broadcasters and subscription television outlets as well as to increase leverage in
negotiations with cable and satellite providers for retransmission consent (which since the
early 2000s, has increasingly become a primary form of revenue for broadcast networks,
which have required their affiliates to share a portion of the revenue received by pay
television providers as an additional source of operational revenue).
Outsourcing agreements (known by multiple terms, mainly local marketing agreements
(LMA), shared services agreements (SSA) or joint sales agreements (JSA), albeit with little
differentiation in their structure) have allowed some broadcasting companies to operate
stations that they could otherwise not legally own outright due to in-market ownership
regulations; these arrangements first began in 1991, when the Sinclair Broadcast Group
entered into such an arrangement to run WPTT (now WPNT) in Pittsburgh, after it sold
the station to its manager Edwin Edwards to acquire Fox affiliate WPGH-TV. However, as
companies like Sinclair and the Nexstar Broadcasting Group have used outsourcing as
loopholes around ownership regulations at the expense of independent (and particularly,
minority) ownership, the FCC has made attempts to restrict broadcasters from using them,
passing a rule in April 2014 that disallowed all JSAs in which one company sells 15% of
advertising for another station and required all existing ones to be unwound within five
years (the National Association of Broadcasters backed a provision passed as part of a
November 2015 Congressional budget bill that extended to the time limit to unwind existing
JSAs to ten years).

The FCC also previously barred companies from owning more than one television station
within a single market, unless it operated as a satellite station (a full-power station that
relays programming from its parent station to areas within the market that are not
adequately covered if at all by the main signal) or a low-power station (either one that
maintains its own programming or operates as a translator); however, it eventually allowed
operators of public television stations to sign-on or acquire a second station that did not
repeat the parent's signal (some of which were originally licensed as commercial outlets). In
August 1999, the FCC legalized the common ownership of two commercial stations, known
asduopolies, if one of them is not among the market's four highest-rated, and if there are at
least eight companies that each own full-power stations within the market. While the
parent companies of NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox are not prohibited from owning a second
broadcast network (and all of them, except for ABC, are co-owned with one), an FCC law
known as the "dual-network rule" does disallow a single company from owning two or
more of the major networks.
[42]

The FCC also prohibits the airing of "indecent" material over-the-air between 6:00 a.m.
and 10:00 p.m. Broadcast stations can legally air almost anything they want late at night
and cable networks at all hours. However, nudity and graphic profanity are rare on
American television. Though the FCC gives them leeway to air programs containing
"indecent" material within its designated watershed period, broadcasters are hesitant to do
this, concerned that airing such material would alienate advertisers and encourage the
federal government to strengthen regulation of television content. Premium cable networks
are exceptions, and often air very racy programming at night, though premium channels
often air program content with strong to graphic profanity, violence and nudity in some
cases during the daytime hours. Such content is common on pay television services, as they
are not subjected to FCC regulations and pressure from advertisers, and often require a
subscription to view them. Some networks (such as Playboy TV) are devoted exclusively to
"adult" content, specifically pornographic material, and therefore viewers may find scenes
of simulated or graphic sexual intercourse and nudity on such channels.

Cable television is largely, but not entirely, unregulated. Cable providers must include local
over-the-air stations in their offerings on each system (stations can opt to gain carriage by
seeking a must-carry option) and give them low channel numbers, unless the stations
decide to demand compensation of any sort (through retransmission consent). The systems
cannot carry broadcast network affiliates from other parts of the country (this regulation
has largely been openly ignored in recent years during carriage disputes), however cable
systems can carry stations from nearby markets if there are no local stations affiliated with
one of the major networks (though this is becoming far less common with the shift,
particularly since 2006, towards over-the-air stations carrying one network affiliation on
their main channel and an affiliation with another network on a digital subchannel, thus
allowing these network-affiliated digital subchannels to be carried at least via digital cable).
Cable systems can also air satellite-relayed broadcast stations originating from other areas
of the United States, known as superstations (of which there are currently only five around
the country), which for the most part are often aired in rural areas and may omit network
programming from that station's network affiliation; all superstations, are currently
affiliated with a broadcast television network: WPIX in New York City, KWGNTV in Denver and KTLA in Los Angeles are all affiliated with The CW, and WWORTV in Secaucus, New Jersey and WSBK-TV in Boston are affiliated with MyNetworkTV. A
few of these superstations once had national distribution, carrying a separate feed that
aired different programming than that of the local area feed and even some that also aired
on the local feed that is SyndEx-proof (in other words, syndicated programming to which
the superstation has obtained full signal rights to air nationally); the two most prominent of
these nationally distributed stations were TBS and WGN-TV. TBS, whose former
parentAtlanta station WTCG (now WPCH-TV) became the first "basic cable" network to
be uplinked to satellite in December 1976, had converted its national feed into a
conventional cable channel in October 2007; [43] WGN-TV in Chicago was uplinked in
October 1978; its national feed, WGN America, also converted into a traditional cable
channel in December 2014, when it dropped all remaining WGN-TV programming.
[44]

WWOR-TV also once operated a national feed, which ceased operations in January

1997,[45] before the station regained national superstation status as a satellite-exclusive

service through its New York City feed a few months later.

The FCC has virtually no jurisdiction over the content of programming exclusively
broadcast on cable. As a result, anyone is free to create any number of channels or any sort
of programming whatsoever without consulting the FCC. The only restrictions are on the
ability to secure carriage on cable or satellite (or, failing that, by streaming on Internet
television) and securing the rights to programming. Because of this lack of
restriction, channel drift (the shift of a channel's programming format away from that
which it originally maintained) is much more common in the United States than in other
countries.
Because the United States had relatively weak copyright terms until 1976, a large body of
older television series have lapsed into the public domain and are thus free to redistribute
in any form.

News x TV Shows
Keeping the channels motto News. Not Noise. intact, NewsX, introduces five new shows,
leading to a complete refurbish of the channels prime time offering. Starting 6pm, the
prime time will bring to its viewers the most diverse, extensive and comprehensive news
programming.

The prime time programming includes the following shows:

1. Prime edition, 6PM, Everyday- The first window into prime time, this show picks up a
story and introduces the first debate of the evening. Interactivity empowers the viewers by
giving them a platform to be heard, through tweets and call-ins.

2. Big story, 7.30PM, Weekday- Like the name symbolizes, Big story breaks through the
clutter and has at its prime focus one or two of the biggest story of the day. There is a
detailed reportage and analysis of each big story to give the viewer a detailed experience.

3. News point, 8PM, Weekday- Derailing competition at 8 pm, News Point breaks an
exclusive story every day. The story is put out and then debated with an expert panel.

4. Capital stories, 8.30PM, Weekday- This pacy and precise show puts the spotlight on state
capitals and metros, highlighting four main stories of the day.

5. Nation @ 9, 9PM, Everyday- Anchored by Editor-in-chief Rahul Shivshankar, this prime

time news bulletin includes the most newsworthy stories of the day. With his expertise,
dynamism and sharpness, Rahul engages the viewers and the opinion leaders in a crisp
debate and brings out every nuance of the key stories of the day.

6. Newshub, 10PM, Everyday- Last 90 minutes of prime time is a comprehensive news

bulletin on all the happenings of the day for the discerning viewers who might miss and
want to catch up with the top stories of the day at one go.

Rahul Shivshankar, Editor-in-chief, NewsX said, "Our prime time programming has always
stood out in the competition and helped us acquire the No. 1 position in prime time. With our
revamped programming, we intend to continue our leadership and make NewsX the one stop
destination for the viewers.

TRP of Newsx and Times now

The news coverage over the JNU anti-India sloganeering by students and the response by
the government and police has polarised news channels like nothing before. At least in my
memory.
The crazy frenzy with which Times Now and NewsX drummed up hysteria would have been
unbelievable had I not seen it myself. I have seen nothing as ridiculous as it, both in
presentation and in the confused point they were making (or not making). It was the arms
race of the absurd. There is no doubt political theatre sells and theatre of the absurd rocks.
This is a game that will be played for TRPs as long as eyeballs determine revenue though
advertising, so no point whining about it. It is as inevitable as the fact that Jersey
Shore and Bigg Boss will get a larger audience than 60 Minutes or Satyamev Jayate. Thats
part of the game and it is fine. What we all need to watch out for is how this starts
impacting us as we frame the reference points for debates especially on freedom of speech
and expression.
Conversations with colleagues, friends and acquaintances we have known and disagreed
with for years are becoming more and more acrimonious on all sides. That, too, is good

from time to time I guess. Aggressive and spirited debate never hurt anyone except when
it does. When there is endorsement of violence or approval of the state clamping down on
people you disagree with or even silently endorsing gross violations of rights by the state,
we wade into dangerous territory. It made me wonder does how we get our news,
information and how big media frames the debate impact our behaviour?
The ubiquitousness of news into our lives will only increase with TV and the Internet.
Going forward, the one thing all across the ideological spectrum (especially news
disseminators) will have to watch out for, is to not wade so far into the hysteria of battle
and stick to ones ideological corner to the point that we end up defending the indefensible.
Once we go down that road it can lead to frightening situations where the most horrific acts
are defended.
The blatant harassment and bullying of a female NDTV reporter (during Anupam Khers
march on tolerance) and now the beating up and intimidation of journalists, faculty and
students at Patiala House is being justified by people who we would consider rational in
less combative times. This is important because history has shown us where that can lead.
I dont want to sound alarmist but I decided to read up a bit on when popular media was
effectively used and actually transformed a society on political ideology. The most extreme
case is Rwanda. I know we are nowhere near that but it is good to keep the extreme case in
mind in case some of our civilised folk start using archaic laws to defend more extreme
forms violence than mere scuffles and arrests.
In 1994, Rwanda witnessed a genocide unlike any other in modern times. Over months
(there was a historical context too) the propaganda machine had slowly made the
conversation so toxic and polarised that relatives and family members were justifying acts
against each other, which in any other situation or time would have left them aghast.
Radio was used effectively to fuel suspicion and discord. It didnt end well. I repeat, I am
not being alarmist and am aware that such a situation is nowhere in the realms of
possibility here in India (Akhlaqs murder by his villagers sparked by a loudspeaker
announcement was a one-off). I use Rwanda to make the point that regular, decent and

rational people defending or participating in horrific acts is not an overnight event. Its a
slow process. We keep pushing the bar of what is acceptable. Defending violent acts against
our peers is the first step. What we have to wait and see is just how far it will go and how
much will be defended. We have already seen Akhlaqs murder being justified by people in
responsible positions.
I quote from this article in the Human Security Centre on the media being used as
propaganda tool Comparisons can be drawn with theories on war propaganda,
particularly the common emphasis on the traitor within[vi]. War propaganda is often
labeled as news, manipulated to further separate agendas[vii]. Sounds familiar? We have
seen the words traitor, anti-national, enemy of the state thrown around way more
casually of late, again very often by non-political people. By people we have grown up with.
How long before you think it will be okay to punch someone maybe you in the face for
that?
Following the RPF invasion, media outlets such as the newspaper Kangura, Radio
Rwanda and in 1993 Radio Mille Collines (RTLM), became tools of mass propaganda.
These media sources portrayed extreme ethnic distinctions, defining Tutsis as the enemy
and Kangura published the infamous Hutu Ten Commandments, a widely circulated,
militant Hutu Power doctrine. Sometimes popular music was mixed with incitement to
murder. Propaganda fuelled hysterical fear of Tutsis and blurred the line between the RPF
and domestic Tutsis.
In the above context consider the frequency of go to Pakistan and Pakistani being
injected into casual parlance. These utterances should not be defended no matter what
your ideology. It is dangerous. Such propaganda legitimised horrific acts by civilians that
no one would otherwise defend or endorse.
Do you see this happening?
Yes, I know we are far from that zone. The only reason I take this example is to illustrate
that being reasonable is not a permanent state of being. I see the spectrum of reasonable

that was crowded in the middle and sparse at the ends getting crowded at the extremes and
sparse in the middle.
Just like Bigg Boss is entertaining, but isnt a place to look for life
lessons, NewsX and Times Now should occupy the same space in political and reality drama.
Hell, give them more viewers if thats what makes the news industry and economy grow,
but be clear what you take from these news channels, especially their prime-time slots.
What we have to watch out for is not to take positions that reflect our news consumption
habits, which amuse us during dinner.
While I find Arnab Goswami and Rahul Shivshankars rants particularly outrageous and
disgusting, and often inflammatory in the anti-national sense that could possibly incite
violence (ironically what they outrage over all the time) it would never be a good thing to
favour any clampdown on them. No matter how repugnant the ramblings of our peers, the
idea of free speech is worth the price. The worst among us must be endured so that the best
among us are not silenced.

Why do people take prime time so seriously

It's not such a bad thing to admit one was wrong. I was. I admit; I was seriously wrong.
Till the other day I was annoyed, nay indignant, at the way discussions were conducted on
TV news hour programmes. I was annoyed that news hour gave me views and no news.
That the views given were along predictable lines. That these views were bellowed out,
several people shouting at once and over each other which, usually, meant bad manners.
And so on.
There was a second thing that used to annoy me. These programmes were hugely popular. In
fact, the more a prime time news hour programme abounded in the blemishes listed
above, the more popular it was. I remember discussing this strange thing with my students
in a citizenship course in Delhi. A bit of plain speaking by a lady scholar made the scales
fall off my eyes.
I dont agree, she protested. After a hard days work, I long to relax. I look forward to the
prime time news hour. This, I had never thought of!
All along, I was looking at it through the coloured glasses of work and gain. I was far too
opinionated to entertain a different and relevant perspective: that of play. All work and no
play makes Jack and Valson dull and dogmatic. Of course, the nation wants to know. But,
even more pressingly, the nation wants to play. Truth to tell, these are times when the need
to play outstrips the need to know.

I have read many descriptions of heaven. Work did not figure in any of them. So, heaven does
not work. Heaven plays. When the Divine incarnated in the form of Krishna, it was leela, or
play. There is a touch of heaven about us. Trailing clouds of glory do we come from God,
who is our home wrote Word-sworth. The need to play is basic to us; for heaven is all
play.
But we have become far too serious! We get serious even with play. So, we fight off-field when
cricketers play and lose on-field. We fight and kill even over amusement. So, the entertainment
industry too has its martyrs.
Think of Lalu Prasads popularity. What do you think its secret is? Ancient wisdom?
Modern statecraft? Literary finesse? No! It is his rustic playfulness. Lalu makes you laugh,
relax. When Lalu speaks, he plays. And he plays most when he flays. It is when Lalu plays
that he is closest to the common man. It is when he is closest to the common man that Lalu
is farthest from the rest of the political class. He is lighthearted about lantern and
alliterative about aloo.
Most people do not know that news channels comprise less than 10% of our TV networks. The
rest are mostly devoted to entertainment, which includes religion. And if you think that news
channels can survive without any entertainment value, you are no better than me, who does not
know Adams from Madams.
We are living in a world of murky competition. Business admits no leisure. People work
themselves to death or into psychiatry wards. Work places are impersonal or hostile. Social
intercourses are stiff. Its as though we are walking through a mine-field all the time. Such a
world excludes leisure and friendship. Play combines both. This was exactly what the lady
scholar was insisting on. I caught it in a flash!
No serious matter

How do news hour programmes of aggressive views on dilatory news promote play?
When spokespersons of various parties slug it out against each other, like mixed martial arts
combatants, the common man, for whose benefit the show is undertaken, is amused. But for
these furiously comic, free-for-all encounters, he would have thought that politics including
governance was a serious and mysterious matter.
There is no other opportunity for him to see for himself that politics too is play. He knows that
these choreographed scenes of ideological browbeating are mere pantomimes for his
entertainment. He knows only too well that the political class hangs together. That, behind the
iron curtains of verbal acrimony, these talking, brawling thespians enjoy an enduring
bonhomie. From TV studios they go home, laughing all the way.
But for this saving knowledge, these programmes that play-act hostility would have hacked
on our nerves. Had we believed these to be real-life scenes of political blood-letting, we
would have switched off, our nerves rattled.
Party spokespersons can fight no-holds-barred in full public view, and not put us off, because we
know and they know that we know they mean no harm and are only jousting with each other
in jest. They are playing with us too. Just that we may relax. And they do such a good job of
it!
But, my point here pertains to my lamentable prejudice. What a world of difference it makes
when we see issues in the right perspective! In one magic moment, I was liberated from
resentment and led to a benign view on an invaluable facility for the poor, harrowed common
man. The nation wants to play!

Conclusion:

It is clear from the analysis that Express news set the public agenda by using gate keeping
techniques on national issues. For doing so, channel was remained out of proportion in
almost all the issues but with wider gap in four issues like democratic process, corruption,
memo gate scandal and NRO. The issue of law n order was covered less to its proportion in
news bulletins. It might be the agenda of media organization or media people at work to
cover the issue rarely in talk shows. Almost all the issues were covered negatively in talk
shows. Slant of most of the issues were remained negative towards government. The issue of
Law n order in Pakistan has been in the news headlines in the media especially for news
channels. 9/11 incident and the birth of Pakistani cable channels took place in the same
year in 2001. The issue of law n order has been more or less in the mainstream media due to
its importance since 2001. Moreover, the issue has roots in the countrys politics, therefore,
the issue depicted regularly in most of medias news outflow. But the news channel did not
discuss this immense important issue in talk shows. The issue has been discussed rare and
with wider gaps. The NRO was presented at rank 6 in news bulletins while it has promoted
as top most issue. The agenda setting and gatekeeping techniques have been applied to
highlight some issues and undermine the others.

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