From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Look up flagship in
Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

A flagship station is the principal station of a television network in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.^[1] The term is also used in radio broadcasting (see radio flagship stations).

The phrase derives from the naval term flagship, referring to the custom where the commanding officer of a group of naval ships would fly a distinguishing flag on his vessel. Thus, "flagship" in common parlance has come to mean the most important or leading member of a group.

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

Entrance to GE Building, New York, home of WNBC-TV, the 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. Conseqently, the networks' New York 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."

ABC, CBS, and NBC are headquartered in New York, which is the largest television market in the U.S., so their respective New York stations 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 (for the East Coast feed) and Los Angeles (for the West Coast feed).

When Fox Broadcasting Company (or "FOX") launched in 1987, it set up only one network operations center, in Los Angeles. However, News Corporation, the FOX parent, is headquartered in New York. Its New York O&O, WNYW, is considered the network's overall flagship while KTTV in Los Angeles is considered the FOX West Coast flagship.

The former flagship stations of the old WB network, WPIX in New York and KTLA-TV in Los Angeles, are now the flagship stations of The CW Television Network, which began on September 18, 2006.

The term is also used for stations that operate satellite stations in other cities. For example, KSNW in Wichita, Kansas is the flagship station of the Kansas State Network, a chain of NBC affiliates in western Kansas.

• Zaikyō kī kyoku (Flagship stations of Japan)

1. ^ Jorge Delgado Named President and General Manager of Univision Flagship Station KMEX and Telefutura Station KFTR. Univision (February 13, 2002). Retrieved on 2007-10-31.