Re:Re:Re:Wired.com on Reversing Consolidation

[Garrett Wollman <wollman@lcs.mit.edu>]

<<On Fri, 10 Jan 2003 00:59:39 -0500, "A. Joseph Ross" <lawyer@attorneyross.com> said:

> Now here's an interesting question.  If WFAA-WBAP no longer has
> those call letters

The share-time arrangement split up by the early seventies, with WBAP
taking sole possession of 820 Fort Worth, and WFAA likewise 570
Dallas.  WBAP still has that callsign, under Disney ownership; it's
the ABC-I news/talker in town.  (Back in the day, WBAP was co-owned
with the Fort Worth /Star-Telegram/[1] under legendary anti-Dallas
bigot Amon Carter.)  WFAA (570 Dallas) became KLIF after long-time
owner A.H. Belo sold it.  WFAA-TV remains to this day under Belo
ownership (with the /Dallas Morning News/).

If Belo for some inexplicable reason got back into the radio business,
it would be possible for them to have a station in Dallas with the
WFAA callsign.  That they should sell their top-rated station in their
home market is equally improbable.  (The nearest Belo property to our
area is, of all things, the /Providence Journal/; the nearest TV
property is Hampton, Va.  Not surprisingly, they are *huge* in Texas.)

The old WBAP-TV (5 Fort Worth) is now KXAS and is owned by an NBC/LIN
partnership.  The other major newspaper in town, /The Dallas Times
Herald/, owned KRLD (1080) and KRLD-TV (4 Dallas).  The former is now
an Infinity news-talker going up against WBAP, and the latter is now
Fox O&O KDFW.  Historically, 820 (regardless of which station was
operating) and 5 were NBC, 570 and 8 were ABC, and 1080 and 4 were
CBS.  When Fox acquired KDFW in the New World deal in 1994 (the one
that set off numerous affiliation swaps across the country), CBS
television ended up on the only other V in the market, Gaylord-owned
independent KTVT (11 Fort Worth), which they later purchased outright.

I'm thinking that DFW may be the largest market that the old ABC
owned radio but not television.

-GAWollman

[1] Known to some as the /Startlegram/.  (These would be the same
people who revel in the Omaha /Weird Herald/, the San Jose /Murky
News/, and the delightful /Moberly Monitor-Index and Evening Democrat/
(no punning required).)