ABC, CBS, NBC Affiliates with no local news?

cpalmer2k

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Oct 18, 2013
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Just curious.. I know there are lots of small market affiliates out there. Are there any so called pass through affiliates of the big three left that air network programming but no local news?
 
There 2 stations in Montana that has no local news is owned by Nexstar.

Forgot what the call letter was.

That's about what I know of it, but might some more out there. :)
 
WWNY in Watertown, NY is the only channel that has local news in that DMA. The ABC affiliate uses news from Syracuse, 75 miles away. It doesn't help that the FOX and NBC affiliates are LP transmitters. There is a number of subchannels that could be watched, if they were full power. They only transmit about 35 miles maximum. The DMA is quite large, so some people are SOL. So far, no ATSC 3.0 on the horizon.
 
KDNL-TV 30, the ABC network affiliate for St. Louis, Missouri, is one of the best examples of an ABC station in a large market which has the handicap of not providing local news during their broadcast day, instead, opting for syndicated and local programming to pad out the schedule outside of the likes of Good Morning America, The View, ABC News with David Muir, Shark Tank, 20/20 and their prime time network schedules...it is one of two ABC affiliates to currently air The Simpsons, the other one being WAWV-TV 38 in Evansville, Indiana!

ABC in St. Louis never really recovered from the 1995 switch, when their former affiliated station, KTVI 2, made the jump to the Fox network. They tried to start a newscast in the late 1990s, but it failed due to low ratings by 2001...

There was also the hullabaloo concerning KDNL-TV 30 losing the Fox Kids childrens' block to a conservative religious station owned by the New Life Church of St. Louis, KNLC-TV 24 (KPLR-TV 11 declined, citing they didn't have enough room for the Power Rangers, since their hands were tied with their charter affiliation status with The WB), who opted to replace the commercial breaks during shows like the Power Rangers or Batman with religious interstitials with subjects questionable in nature to be airing during the secular programming that Fox Kids provided, a move which rankled the executives at Fox so much, that KNLC-TV 24 was revoked of their license to air Fox Kids programming after one year, moving it over to KTVI 2.