1987 logo of Fox Television Stations

The Fox Television Stations are a group of television stations located within the United States which are owned-and-operated by the Fox Broadcasting Company, a subsidiary of the News Corporation. FTS also produces the Fox program COPS. They also co-syndicated Double Dare and Finders Keepers in the late 80's.

History

Fox Television Stations was formed in April 1986 after the acquisition of the Metromedia-owned independent stations by the 20th Century Fox film studio, at the time jointly owned by Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, and Denver-based billionaire Marvin Davis. These stations would later become the basis of the Fox television network, which launched in October 1986. Not long after the Metromedia deal was made, Murdoch purchased Davis's shares and News Corporation assumed complete control of 20th Century Fox.

Initially FTS was a semi-autonomous unit in which News Corporation owned over 99 percent of the equity but only 24 percent of the voting power; the balance was held personally by Murdoch.¹ Federal Communications Commission regulations of that era prohibited foreign interests or non-American citizens from controlling more than 25 percent of an FCC-licensed broadcast station. Though News Corporation was still based in Australia, the firm first got around this hurdle when Murdoch became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1985. The quirk was removed permanently when News Corporation reincorporated in the U.S. in 2004.² The Fox network itself and affiliated cable channels were not affected by these regulations.

Starting with the original six stations, Fox Television Stations gained the bulk of its group through two large transactions: the 1997 purchase of New World Communications, succeeding a 1993 business deal between the two companies which led to all of New World's stations switching from other networks to Fox during 1994-95; and the 2001 acquisition of the Chris-Craft/United group, which gave Fox ownership of several stations then affiliated with the UPN network, and also created several duopolies (two stations in the same market owned by the same company).

The Fox-owned UPN affiliates were not included in the UPN/WB merger, which was announced on January 24, 2006. Soon after, these stations removed references to UPN from their on-air branding and websites. On February 22, 2006, Fox Television Stations announced that all of their non-Fox outlets will be charter affiliates of a new service known as MyNetworkTV [1], which commenced operations on September 5, 2006. 5-6 Days Earlier, the UPN quietly went off the air in those markets, with the other affiliates airing the network until it's seemingly abrupt closure on September 18th.

See also: Fox affiliate switches of 1994, 2006 United States broadcast TV realignment

Controversial executives

In 1992, Stephen Chao was named President of Fox News. A short ten weeks later, Rupurt Murdoch fired him immediately after Chao gave a speech on “The Threat to Democratic Capitalism Posed by Modern Culture” at a Fox management conference which Chao hired a model to strip naked to illustrate his point that network standards were not keeping pace with modern day experience.³

List of Fox owned-and-operated stations

Currently, a total of 27 stations, consisting of 17 Fox stations and 10 MyNetworkTV stations.

Notes:
1) ** -- Indicates a former Metromedia station and/or an original Fox-owned station from the network's inception in 1986;
2) ++ -- Indicates a station owned by New World Communications prior to its acquisition by News Corporation in 1997;
3) ¤¤ -- Indicates a station owned by Chris-Craft Industries prior to its acquisition by News Corporation in 2001.

Footnotes

1. ^ FCC Order 01-209, exhibit 'B'
2. ^ FCC Order 06-122
3. ^ http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,311013,00.html

Former Fox-owned stations

Footnotes:

• ¹ WCVB-TV was included in the original sale of the Metromedia stations to News Corporation, but was spun-off in a separate, concurrent deal to the Hearst Corporation as part of a right of first refusal related to that station's 1982 acquisition by Metromedia.

On a side note, in between the events of Fox acquiring its original charter affiliates and the New World affiliation agreement, only WTXF, WFXT, KDVR, WOFL, KSTU and WOGX were already affiliated with Fox when they were acquired much later on.

External links

• Official listing of FTSG stations