Flagship (broadcasting)

In broadcasting, a flagship (also known as a flagship station or key station) is the broadcast station which originates a television network, or a particular radio or television program that plays a key role in the branding of and consumer loyalty to a network or station. This includes both direct network feeds and broadcast syndication, but generally not backhauls. Not all networks or shows have a flagship station, as some originate from a dedicated radio or television studio.

The term derives from the naval custom where the commanding officer of a group of naval ships would fly a distinguishing flag. In common parlance, "flagship" is now used to mean the most important or leading member of a group, hence its various uses in broadcasting. The term flagship station is primarily used in TV and radio in the United States and Canada, while the term key station (キー局, kī kyoku) is primarily used in TV in Japan (and formerly in the United States).

Examples

Lotteries

Shows

Networks

Events

Radio

A flagship radio station is the principal station from which a radio network's programs are fed to affiliates.

Network

In the United States, traditional radio networks currently operate without flagship stations as defined in this article. Network operations and those of the local owned-and-operated or affiliated stations in the same city are now separate and may come under different corporate entities.

In the U.S., CBS News Radio produces programming for distribution by Skyview Networks, but local stations WCBS and WINS in New York City and KNX (and formerly KFWB) in Los Angeles are operated separately from the network radio news operation, under a separate company with common shareholders, Audacy, Inc. iHeartMedia follows a similar model: flagship stations WOR in New York City (which it acquired in 2012) and KFI in Los Angeles are both operated mostly separately from its syndication wing, Premiere Networks (Premiere does produce some limited programming, including The Jesus Christ Show, The Tech Guy and Handel on the Law, through KFI). Premiere's The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show uses WLAC as a flagship station, as Clay Travis is based in Nashville.

WWRL in New York City was an affiliate of the now-defunct Air America Radio and carries some of its programs (along with those from other distributors) but is separately owned and operated and does not produce any programs for the network. Originally, Air America Radio leased WLIB (also in New York City) as its flagship station; the station was completely automated and produced no local programming. The network would later lease WZAA in Washington, D.C., as its lone self-operated station.

Fox Sports Radio's flagship station is KLAC in Los Angeles, with which it merged operations in 2009. SB Nation Radio is flagshipped at KGOW in Houston; one of its predecessors, Sporting News Radio, was previously flagshipped at WIDB (now WNTD) in Chicago. CBS Sports Radio is nominally flagshipped at WFAN (although that station does not produce programming for the network). ESPN Radio has no true flagship station, as it operates out of ESPN headquarters in Bristol, Connecticut; Windsor Locks-licensed WUCS (owned by iHeartMedia) serves as its de facto flagship, serving ESPN's home market of Hartford.

Nash FM, a country music network, is nominally flagshipped at WKDF in Nashville, Tennessee; its classic-leaning counterpart Nash Icon is flagshipped at WSM-FM in the same city. MeTV FM, a classic oldies/soft rock network, is flagshipped at WRME-LD in Chicago, the home base of its owner, television broadcaster Weigel Broadcasting. The Satellite Music Network networks were flagshipped at a cluster of stations in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex during their existence; KMEO, for example, served as the flagship for Unforgettable Favorites. CloudCast is flagshipped at KZOY in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, with much of its programming voicetracked from WGWE in Little Valley, New York.

Former flagship stations for now-defunct networks in American radio's "Big Four" era of the 1940s–1980s were:

NBC Red Network
  • WNBC (660 AM; now WFAN), New York City
  • WYNY (97.1 FM; now WQHT), New York City
  • KNBR (680 AM), San Francisco
  • KYUU (99.7 FM; now KMVQ-FM), San Francisco
Mutual Broadcasting System
  • WOR (710 AM), New York City
  • WGN (720 AM), Chicago
  • KHJ (930 AM), Los Angeles

In Canada, current CBC/Radio-Canada flagships are CBLA-FM (99.1) in Toronto, which broadcasts in English, and CBF-FM (95.1) in Montréal, which broadcasts in French. Both are former AM clear channel operations which have moved to FM.

Former flagship stations for now-defunct networks were:

While CJBC remains on-air on its original frequency, it is now an owned-and-operated station of the French-language Radio-Canada network.

The CKO network's Toronto frequency was re-issued to CBL (as CBLA-FM 99.1) but the namesake CKO (AM) flagship in Montréal is silent; the frequency remains vacant.

Syndication

For syndicated radio programs, it refers to the originating station from which a program is fed by satellite or other means to stations nationwide, although the show may also originate elsewhere or from a home studio via an ISDN line. Some programs are simulcast on television, while others are simulcasted on XM Satellite Radio and / or Sirius Satellite Radio. Flagship stations of prominent syndicated radio programs currently include:

Examples

  • WXRK (92.3 FM) in New York City was the flagship station of The Howard Stern Show from 1985 until 2005. The show is now on Sirius Satellite Radio Channel 100 (a.k.a. Howard 100).
  • WOR (710 AM) in New York City was the flagship station of the syndicated programs of Joy Browne, Jay Severin, Bob Grant, The Dolans and Joey Reynolds produced in-house with its own network; the network was shut down after Buckley Broadcasting sold the station.
  • WGN (720 AM) in Chicago was considered the originating station for Paul Harvey's News and Comment and The Rest of the Story for the ABC Radio Network.
  • KABC (790 AM) in Los Angeles was the home base of Larry Elder until the show ended its run in 2009. That show now originates from KRLA.
  • WABC had been the original flagship of The Rush Limbaugh Show before Limbaugh moved to West Palm Beach, Florida and a subsidiary of Clear Channel Communications began distributing the program.
  • KNEW was the flagship of The Savage Nation from 2003 to 2009.
  • WNBC and WFAN were the flagships of Imus in the Morning from 1971 to 2007. He was dropped after his controversial remarks about the Rutgers University women's basketball team but picked up by WABC later that year; that station served as flagship until he retired in 2018.
  • KPTK (1090 AM) in Seattle was the flagship of Ron Reagan's syndicated show on Air America Media before the network went bankrupt. It was one of the few shows on the network that did not originate from the network's New York City studios.
  • WWVA (1170 AM) flagshipped the Wheeling Jamboree from 1933 until the late 2000s. It later moved to WKKX in 2009, then owned-and-operated station WWOV-LP in 2014, before cutting back from a weekly show to three episodes per year in 2016.

Sports

Main articles: List of current NFL announcers, List of current National Hockey League broadcasters, List of current Major League Baseball broadcasters, List of current Major League Soccer commentators, and List of current National Basketball Association broadcasters

In sports broadcasting, the flagship radio station is the sports team's primary station in the team's home market that produces game broadcasts and feeds them to affiliates. For example, WJZ-FM is the radio flagship station of the Baltimore Orioles baseball team, which feeds Orioles' games to 20 stations in Maryland and adjacent states.

Television

A flagship television station is the principal privately owned television station of a television network in the United States, Canada, Brazil, Japan, Mexico, Australia and the Philippines.

In the late 1920s, network owned-and-operated stations (or "O&O") for radio in New York City began producing live entertainment and news programs, fed by telephone lines to affiliates. These eventually were dubbed flagship stations.

Entrance to Comcast Building, New York City, home of WNBC, flagship station of NBC

When television networks were formed in the United States in the late 1940s and grew during the early 1950s, network-owned stations in New York City became the production centers for programs originating on the East Coast, feeding affiliates of ABC, CBS, and NBC in the eastern three-fourths of the country. Stations in Los Angeles similarly started producing programs on the West Coast, feeding affiliates in the Pacific Time Zone, Alaska and Hawaii. Consequently, the networks' New York City stations became known as the "East Coast flagships" of their respective networks and the networks' Los Angeles stations became known as the "West Coast flagships".

However, before the 1950s, San Francisco was also considered a West Coast flagship market for the networks, with much of the CBS and NBC network's West Coast news programming originating from that city. This is seen the calls of CBS's KCBS (AM) being based in their original city of San Francisco instead of Los Angeles (the use of KCBS-TV in Los Angeles only dates back to 1984), while KNBR (which was subsequently sold to another party by NBC in 1987) was formerly known as KNBC before the network moved those calls to KRCA-TV in Los Angeles in 1962.

ABC, CBS and NBC are headquartered in New York City, which is the largest television market in the U.S., so their respective radio and television stations in that market are considered the overall network flagship stations. As programming schedules increased and modern technology improved transmission to affiliates, the networks set up operations centers in New York City (for the East Coast feed) and Los Angeles (for the West Coast feed). Los Angeles is the second largest television market in the U.S., and traditional home to the motion picture industry and its pool of popular talent, one of the reasons the radio networks set up operations there in the 1930s and 1940s (just as the medium of television was starting to take off).

This arrangement is reversed for the Fox Broadcasting Company. When Fox was launched in 1986, its network operations center was (and still is) based in Los Angeles. However, Fox's parent company, Fox Corporation (which spun off its broadcasting properties in July 2013 into the separate 21st Century Fox, then that company spun off many of its film and cable assets to Disney in 2019), is headquartered in New York City, along with its news division. Fox-owned WNYW in New York City is considered the network's overall flagship, while sister station KTTV in Los Angeles is considered a second flagship station.

In 2006, when The WB and UPN merged to form The CW, Philadelphia station WPSG and San Francisco station KBCW (now KPYX) were designated as the network's de facto East Coast and West Coast flagships, respectively, due to CBS owning half of The CW's controlling shares at the time. New York's affiliate WPIX and Los Angeles' affiliate KTLA did not have such status since the network's inception, as Tribune Media (who had a minority stake in The WB) opted not to have any controlling interest with The CW, by selling off its share of The WB; instead, to secure the affiliation across most of the former WB affiliates they owned at the time. Nexstar Media Group then bought Tribune in 2019; however, it had to sell off WPIX to the E. W. Scripps Company to prevent breaching the required market ownership cap set by the FCC for each broadcaster. Two years after WPIX returned to Nexstar control through partner company Mission Broadcasting, the Irving, Texas-based media firm announced that it would buy 75% of CW's shares in August 2022. With the purchase completion announced on October 3, 2022, both WPIX and KTLA formally became flagship stations for the first time. However, as part of the Nexstar agreement, Paramount was given a right with the transaction to disaffiliate all eight of their CW affiliates, which was exercised on May 5, 2023. By the time of the disaffiliations on September 1, Nexstar repatriated The CW affiliations onto their MyNetworkTV affiliates in Philadelphia, San Francisco and Tampa–St. Petersburg, announced the purchase of Detroit station WADL through affiliate company Mission Broadcasting, and signed long-term agreements with Hearst Television, Gray Television and Sinclair Broadcast Group.


Network

United States

Network East Coast flagship
(New York)1 		West Coast flagship
(Los Angeles)1
NBC WNBC 4
WCAU 10 (Philadelphia)1 		KNBC 4
CBS WCBS-TV 2 KCBS-TV 2
ABC WABC-TV 7 KABC-TV 7
Fox WNYW 5 KTTV 11
The CW WPIX 11 KTLA 5
MyNetworkTV WWOR-TV 9 KCOP-TV 13
PBS2 WNET 13/WLIW 21
WGBH 2/WGBX 44 (Boston)
WETA 26 (Washington D.C.)
WHYY 12 (Philadelphia)
WQED 13 (Pittsburgh) 		KOCE 50/KCET 28/KLCS 58
KQED 9/KQET 25/KQEH 54 (San Francisco)
Ion Television WPXN-TV 31
WPXM-TV 35 (Miami) 		KPXN-TV 30
Telemundo WNJU 47
WSCV 51 (Miami)1
 KVEA 52
KSTS 48 (San Francisco)
Estrella TV WASA-LD 24
WGEN-TV (Miami)1 		KRCA 62
Univision WXTV-DT 41
WLTV-DT 23 (Miami)1 		KMEX-DT 34
UniMás WFUT-DT 68
WAMI-DT 69 (Miami)1 		KFTR-DT 46
CTN WCLF 22 (Tampa) none
Antenna TV
Rewind TV 		WGN-TV 9 (Chicago) none
MeTV
MeTV Plus
Heroes & Icons
Story Television
Catchy Comedy
Movies!
Start TV 		WJLP 33 (MeTV)
WZME 43 (MeTV Plus)
WBBM-TV 2 (Start TV; Chicago)
WFLD 32 (Movies!; Chicago)
WCIU-TV 26 (Chicago)1 		KAZA-TV 54 (MeTV)
KHTV-CD 6 (MeTV Plus)
KSFV-CD 27 (Satellite of KVME-TV 20) (Heroes & Icons)
KPOM-CD 14 (Catchy Comedy)
KTLN-TV 68 (Heroes & Icons; San Francisco)
KAXT-CD 1 (Catchy Comedy; San Francisco)
True Crime Network
Quest
Twist 		WXIA-TV 11 (Atlanta)1 none
Comet
Charge!
TBD
The Nest 		WBFF 45 (Charge!; Baltimore)1
WNUV 54 (Comet/The Nest; Baltimore)
WUTB 24 (TBD; Baltimore)		 none
Circle WSMV-TV 4 (Nashville)1 none
Retro TV
Heartland
Rev'n 		WOOT-LD 6 (Chattanooga)1 none
NEWSnet WMNN-LD 26 (Cadillac)1 none
Almavision WEYS-LD 54 (Miami, Florida) KTAV-LD 35
CTVN WPCB-TV 40 (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) none
Daystar KDTN 2 (Denton/Dallas, Texas) none
Family WHME-TV 46 (South Bend, Indiana) none
3ABN W15BU-D 15 (Johnston City, Illinois) none
TCT WTCT 27 (Marion, Illinois)
WACP 4 (Philadelphia)		 KDOC-TV 56 (Los Angeles)
KTNC-TV 42 (San Francisco)
TBN WTBY-TV 54 KTBN-TV 40