Product Code Database
A television broadcaster or television network is a telecommunications network for the distribution of television show, where a central operation provides programming to many television stations, pay television providers or, in the United States, multichannel video programming distributors. Until the mid-1980s, broadcast programming on television in most countries of the world was dominated by a small number of terrestrial networks. Many early television networks such as the BBC, CBC, PBS, PTV, NBC or ABC in the US and in Australia evolved from earlier radio networks.
In North America in particular, many television networks available via cable television and satellite television are branded as "channels" because they are somewhat different from traditional networks in the sense defined above, as they are singular operations – they have no affiliates or component stations, but instead are distributed to the public via cable or direct-broadcast satellite providers. Such networks are commonly referred to by terms such as "specialty channels" in Canada or "cable channel" in the U.S.
A network may or may not produce all of its own programming. If not, production companies (such as Warner Bros. Television, Universal Television, Sony Pictures Television and TriStar Television) can distribute their content to the various networks, and it is common that a certain production firm may have programs that air on two or more rival networks. Similarly, some networks may import television programs from other countries, or use archived programming to help complement their schedules.
Some stations have the capability to interrupt the network through the local insertion of television commercials, station identifications and . Others completely break away from the network for their own programming, a method known as regional variation. This is common where small networks are members of larger networks. The majority of commercial television stations are self-owned, even though a variety of these instances are the property of an owned-and-operated television network. The commercial television stations can also be linked with a noncommercial educational broadcasting agency. Some countries have launched national television networks, so that individual television stations can act as common repeaters of nationwide programs.
On the other hand, television networks also undergo the impending experience of major changes related to cultural varieties. The emergence of cable television has made available in major media markets, programs such as those aimed at American bi-cultural Latinos. Such a diverse captive audience presents an occasion for the networks and affiliates to advertise the best programming that needs to be aired.
This is explained by author Tim P. Vos in his abstract A Cultural Explanation of Early Broadcast, where he determines targeted group/non-targeted group representations as well as the cultural specificity employed in the television network entity. Vos notes that policymakers did not expressly intend to create a broadcast order dominated by commercial networks. In fact, legislative attempts were made to limit the network's preferred position.
As to individual stations, modern network operations centers usually use broadcast automation to handle most tasks. These systems are not only used for programming and for video server playout, but use exact atomic time from Global Positioning Systems or other sources to maintain perfect synchronization with upstream and downstream systems, so that programming appears seamless to viewers.
The largest television network in the United States, however, is the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), a non-profit, publicly owned, non-commercial educational service. In comparison to the commercial television networks, there is no central unified arm of broadcast programming, meaning that each PBS member station has a significant amount of freedom to schedule television shows as they consent to. Some public television outlets, such as PBS, carry separate digital subchannel networks through their member stations (for example, Georgia Public Broadcasting; in fact, some programs airing on PBS were branded on other channels as coming from GPB Kids and PBS World).
This works as each network sends its signal to many local affiliated television stations across the country. These local stations then carry the "network feed", which can be viewed by millions of households across the country. In such cases, the signal is sent to as many as 200+ stations or as little as just a dozen or fewer stations, depending on the size of the network.
With the adoption of digital television, television networks have also been created specifically for distribution on the digital subchannels of television stations (including networks focusing on classic television series and films operated by companies like Weigel Broadcasting (owners of Movies! and Me-TV) and Nexstar Media Group (owners of Rewind TV and Antenna TV), along with networks focusing on music, sports and other niche programming).
Cable and satellite providers pay the networks a certain rate per subscriber (the highest charge being for ESPN, in which cable and satellite providers pay a rate of more than $5.00 per subscriber to ESPN). The providers also handle the sale of advertising inserted at the local level during national programming, in which case the broadcaster and the cable/satellite provider may revenue sharing. Networks that maintain a home shopping or infomercial format may instead pay the station or cable/satellite provider, in a brokered carriage deal. This is especially common with low-power television stations, and in recent years, even more so for stations that used this revenue stream to finance their conversion to digital broadcasts, which in turn provides them with several additional channels to transmit different programming sources.
As radio prospered throughout the 1920s and 1930s, experimental television stations, which broadcast both an audio and a video signal, began sporadic broadcasts. Licenses for these experimental stations were often granted to experienced radio broadcasters, and thus advances in television technology closely followed breakthroughs in radio technology. As interest in television grew, and as early television stations began regular broadcasts, the idea of networking television signals (sending one station's video and audio signal to outlying stations) was born. However, the signal from an electronic television system, containing much more information than a radio signal, required a broadband transmission medium. Transmission by a nationwide series of radio relay towers would be possible but extremely expensive.
Researchers at AT&T subsidiary Bell Telephone Laboratories patented coaxial cable in 1929, primarily as a telephone improvement device. Its high capacity (transmitting 240 telephone calls simultaneously) also made it ideal for long-distance television transmission, where it could handle a frequency band of 1 MHz." Coaxial Cable", Time, 14 October 1935. German television first demonstrated such an application in 1936 by relaying televised telephone calls from Berlin to Leipzig, away, by cable. Television in Germany, Berlin, 1936.
AT&T laid the first L-carrier coaxial cable between New York City and Philadelphia, with automatic repeater every , and in 1937 it experimented with transmitting televised motion pictures over the line." Television 'Piped' From New York to Philadelphia ," Short Wave & Television, February 1938, pp. 534, 574–575. Bell Labs gave demonstrations of the New York–Philadelphia television link in 1940 and 1941. AT&T used the coaxial link to transmit the Republican National Convention in June 1940 from Philadelphia to New York City, where it was televised to a few hundred receivers over the NBC station W2XBS (which evolved into WNBC) as well as seen in Schenectady, New York via W2XB (which evolved into WRGB) via off-air relay from the New York station. GOP Convention of 1940 in Philadelphia, UShistory.org.
NBC had earlier demonstrated an inter-city television broadcast on 1 February 1940, from its station in New York City to another in Schenectady, New York by General Electric relay antennas, and began transmitting some programs on an irregular basis to Philadelphia and Schenectady in 1941. Wartime priorities suspended the manufacture of television and radio equipment for civilian use from 1 April 1942 to 1 October 1945, temporarily shutting down expansion of television networking. However, in 1944 a short film, "Patrolling the Ether", was broadcast simultaneously over three stations as an experiment.
AT&T made its first postwar addition in February 1946, with the completion of a cable between New York City and Washington, D.C., although a blurry demonstration broadcast showed that it would not be in regular use for several months. The DuMont Television Network, which had begun experimental broadcasts before the war, launched what Newsweek called "the country's first permanent commercial television network" on 15 August 1946, connecting New York City with Washington.Weinstein, David (2004). The Forgotten Network: DuMont and the Birth of American Television Temple University Press: Philadelphia, p. 16-17. . Not to be outdone, NBC launched what it called "the world's first regularly operating television network" on 27 June 1947, serving New York City, Philadelphia, Schenectady and Washington." Beginning," Time, 7 July 1947. Baltimore and Boston were added to the NBC television network in late 1947. DuMont and NBC would be joined by CBS and ABC in 1948.
In the 1940s, the term "chain broadcasting" was used when discussing network broadcasts,"The Impact of the FCC's Chain Broadcasting Rules". The Yale Law Journal, 60(1) (1951): 78–111 as the television stations were linked together in long chains along the East Coast. But as the television networks expanded westward, the interconnected television stations formed major networks of connected affiliate stations. In January 1949, with the sign-on of DuMont's KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh, the Midwest and East Coast networks were finally connected by coaxial cable (with WDTV airing the best shows from all four networks). By 1951, the four networks stretched from coast to coast, carried on the new microwave radio relay network of AT&T Long Lines. Only a few local television stations remained independent of the networks.
Each of the four major television networks originally only broadcast a few hours of programs a week to their affiliate stations, mostly between 8:00 and 11:00 p.m. Eastern Time, when most viewers were watching television. Most of the programs broadcast by the television stations were still locally produced. As the networks increased the number of programs that they aired, however, officials at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) grew concerned that local television might disappear altogether. Eventually, the federal regulator enacted the Prime Time Access Rule, which restricted the amount of time that the networks could air programs; officials hoped that the rules would foster the development of quality local programs, but in practice, most local stations did not want to bear the burden of producing many of their own programs, and instead chose to purchase programs from independent producers. Sales of television programs to individual local stations are done through a method called "broadcast syndication", and today nearly every television station in the United States obtains syndicated programs in addition to network-produced fare.
Late in the 20th century, cross-country microwave radio relays were replaced by fixed-service satellites. Some terrestrial radio relays remained in service for regional connections.
After the failure and shutdown of DuMont in 1956, several attempts at new networks were made between the 1950s and the 1970s, with little success. The Fox Broadcasting Company, founded by the Rupert Murdoch-owned News Corporation (now owned by Fox Corporation), was launched on 9 October 1986 after the company purchased the television assets of Metromedia; it would eventually ascend to the status of the fourth major network by 1994. Two other networks launched within a week of one another in January 1995: The WB Television Network, a joint venture between Time Warner and the Tribune Company, and the United Paramount Network (UPN), formed through a programming alliance between Chris-Craft Industries and Paramount Television (whose parent, Viacom, would later acquire half and later all of the network over the course of its existence). In September 2006, The CW was launched as a "merger" of The WB and UPN (in actuality, a consolidation of each respective network's higher-rated programs onto one schedule); MyNetworkTV, a network formed from affiliates of UPN and The WB that did not affiliate with The CW, launched at the same time.
Only three national over-the-air television networks are currently licensed by the CRTC: government-owned CBC Television (English) and Ici Radio-Canada Télé (French), French-language private network TVA, and APTN, a network focused on Indigenous peoples in Canada. A third French-language service, Noovo (formerly V), is licensed as a provincial network within Quebec, but is not licensed or locally distributed (outside of carriage on the digital cable of pay television providers) on a national basis.
Currently, licensed national or provincial networks must be carried by all cable providers (in the country or province, respectively) with a service area above a certain population threshold, as well as all satellite providers. However, they are no longer necessarily expected to achieve over-the-air coverage in all areas (APTN, for example, only has terrestrial coverage in parts of northern Canada).
In addition to these licensed networks, the two main private English-language over-the-air services, CTV and Global, are also generally considered to be "networks" by virtue of their national coverage, although they are not officially licensed as such. CTV was previously a licensed network, but relinquished this license in 2001 after acquiring most of its affiliates, making operating a network license essentially redundant (per the above definition).
Smaller groups of stations with common branding are often categorized by industry watchers as television systems, although the public and the broadcasters themselves will often refer to them as "networks" regardless. Some of these systems, such as CTV 2 and the now-defunct E!, essentially operate as mini-networks, but have reduced geographical coverage. Others, such as Omni Television or the Crossroads Television System, have similar branding and a common programming focus, but schedules may vary significantly from one station to the next. Citytv originally began operating as a television system in 2002 when CKVU-DT in Vancouver started to carry programs originating from CITY-DT in Toronto and adopted that station's "Citytv" branding, but gradually became a network by virtue of national coverage through expansions into other markets west of Atlantic Canada between 2005 and 2013.
Most local television stations in Canada are now owned and operated directly by their network, with only a small number of stations still operating as affiliates.
When the advent of UHF broadcasting allowed a greater number of television channels to broadcast, the BBC launched a second channel, BBC Two (with the original service being renamed BBC One). A second national commercial network was launched Channel 4, although Wales instead introduced a Welsh-language service, S4C. These were later followed by the launch of a third commercial network, Channel 5. Since the introduction of digital television, the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 each introduced a number of digital-only channels. Sky Limited operates a large number of channels, as does UKTV.
Still, the 2000s saw a rise of several independent television networks such as REN (its coverage increased vastly allowing it to become a federal network), Petersburg – Channel Five (overall the same), the relaunched 2×2. The Russian television market is mainly shared today by five major companies: Channel One, Russia 1, NTV, TNT and CTC.
Other networks include Band, Record, SBT, RedeTV!, TV Cultura, and TV Brasil.
The first commercial networks in Australia involved commercial stations that shared programming in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and later Perth, with each network forming networks based on their allocated channel numbers: TCN-9 in Sydney, GTV-9 in Melbourne, QTQ-9 in Brisbane, NWS-9 in Adelaide and STW-9 in Perth together formed the Nine Network; while their equivalents on VHF channels 7 and 10 respectively formed the Seven Network and Network 10. Until 1989, areas outside these main cities had access to only a single commercial station, and these rural stations often formed small networks such as Prime Television. Beginning in 1989, however, television markets in rural areas began to aggregate, allowing these rural networks to broadcast over a larger area, often an entire state, and become full-time affiliates to one specific metropolitan network.
As well as these free-to-air channels, there are others on Australia's Pay television network Foxtel.
New Zealand also has several privately owned television networks with the largest being operated by MediaWorks. MediaWorks' flagship network is TV3, which competes directly with both TVNZ broadcast networks. MediaWorks also operates a second network, FOUR, which airs mostly imported programmes with children's shows airing in the daytime and shows targeted at teenagers and adult between 15 and 39 years of age during prime time. MediaWorks also operates a timeshift network, TV3 + 1, and a 24-hour music network, C4.
All television networks in New Zealand air the same programming across the entire country with the only regional deviations being for local advertising; a regional news service existed in the 1980s, carrying a regional news programme from TVNZ's studios in New Zealand's four largest cities, Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin.
In the 1960s, the service operated at the time by the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation was four separate television stations – AKTV2 in Auckland, WNTV1 in Wellington, CHTV3 in Christchurch and DNTV2 in Dunedin – which each ran their own newscast and produced some in-house programmes, with other shows being shared between the stations. Programmes and news footage were distributed via mail, with a programme airing in one region being mailed to another region for broadcast the following week. A network was finally established in 1969, with the same programmes being relayed to all regions simultaneously. From the 1970s to the 1990s, locally produced programmes that aired on TV One and TV2 were produced out of one of the four main studios, with TVNZ's network hub based in Wellington. Today, most locally produced programmes that are aired by both TVNZ and other networks are not actually produced in-house, instead they are often produced by a third party company (for example, the TV2 programme Shortland Street is produced by South Pacific Pictures). The networks produce their own news and current affairs programs, with most of the content filmed in Auckland.
New Zealand also operates several regional television stations, which are only available in individual markets. The regional stations will typically air a local news programme, produce some shows in-house and cover local sports events; the majority of programming on the regional stations will be imported from various sources.
Unlike the United States, where networks receive programmes produced by various production companies, the two largest networks in the Philippines produce all of their prime time programmes. Other networks adopt block-time programming, which uses programming arrangements similar to the relationship between a U.S. network and station.
|
|
