Flagship (broadcasting)

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, Entercom. iHeartMedia follows a similar model: flagship stations WOR/New York City (which it acquired in 2012) and KFI/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).

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-LP 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:

• CJBC (860 AM) in Toronto (CBC Dominion Network, a secondary English-language AM service)
• CKO in Montréal (a national chain of big-city English-language all-news stations, controlled primarily from Toronto)
• VONF in St. John's, Dominion of Newfoundland (Broadcasting Corporation of Newfoundland – became CBN after Newfoundland and Labrador joined Canada, its rebroadcasters included VOWN in western Newfoundland and VORG radio in Gander)

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.

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 such as Imus in the Morning are simulcast on television (Fox Business Network in this case). Others are simulcasted on XM Satellite Radio and / or Sirius Satellite Radio. Flagship stations of prominent syndicated radio programs currently include:

• Brooke and Jubal in the Morning: KQMV (92.5 FM)/Bellevue, Washington
• Mitch Albom: WJR (760 AM)/Detroit
• Chuck Baldwin: WVTJ (610 AM)/Pensacola, Florida
• Jim Bohannon: WFED (1500 AM)/Washington, D.C.
• Delilah: KSWD (94.1 FM)/Seattle
• Steve Harvey Morning Show: WBLS (107.5 FM)/New York City
• Blair Garner: WKDF (103.3 FM)/Nashville, Tennessee
• Michael Graham: WCRN (830 AM)/Worcester, Massachusetts
• The Grand Ole Opry: WSM (650 AM)/Nashville, Tennessee
• The Sean Hannity Show: WOR (710 AM)/New York City
• Roger Hedgecock: KOGO (600 AM)/San Diego
• Clark Howard: WSB (750 AM) & WSBB (95.5 FM)/Atlanta
• Alex Jones: KLBJ (590 AM)/Austin, Texas
• The Kevin and Bean Show: KROQ (106.7 FM)/Los Angeles
• Lars Larson: KXL (101.1 FM)/Portland, Oregon
• The Tech Guy with Leo Laporte: KFI (640 AM)/Los Angeles (broadcasts from studios in Petaluma, California)
• Mark Levin: WABC (770 AM)/New York City
• Paul McGuire: KBRT (740 AM)/Los Angeles
• Michael Medved: KTTH (770 AM)/Seattle
• Nights with Alice Cooper: KDKB (93.3 FM)/Phoenix, Arizona
• Dennis Prager: KRLA (870 AM)/Los Angeles
• Renfro Valley Gatherin': WRVK (1460 AM)/Mount Vernon, Kentucky
• Rewind with Gary Bryan: KRTH (101.1 FM)/Los Angeles
• Rick and Bubba: WZZK (104.7 FM)/Birmingham, Alabama
• The Randi Rhodes Show: WJNO (1290 AM)/West Palm Beach, Florida
• Rover's Morning Glory: WMMS (100.7 FM)/Cleveland, Ohio
• Orion Samuelson and Max Armstrong: WGN (720 AM)/Chicago
• The Rush Limbaugh Show: WJNO (1290 AM)/West Palm Beach, Florida (originates from a home studio near the station)
• The Ace & TJ Show: WHQC (96.1 FM)/Charlotte, North Carolina
• The Savage Nation: KSFO (560 AM)/San Francisco
• The Bob and Tom Show: WFBQ (94.7 FM)/Indianapolis
• The Free Beer and Hot Wings Show: WGRD-FM (101.5 FM)/Grand Rapids, Michigan
• The Jason Lewis Show: KTLK (100.3 FM)/Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota
• On Air with Ryan Seacrest: KIIS (102.7 FM)/Los Angeles, California

• 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.

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.

¹ East Coast flagships are located in the New York City designated market area (DMA), while the West Coast flagships are located in the Los Angeles area. The CW's Philadelphia and San Francisco stations are considered as the network's flagship since they are directly owned by its parent ViacomCBS despite the presence of stations WPIX 11 in New York and KTLA 5 in Los Angeles, both of whom are holding CW affiliations in the latter two areas (since the network's inception) under the former Tribune Media ownership. As of 2021, KTLA is currently owned by Tribune's successor Nexstar Media Group; WPIX's license is owned by Nexstar's partner company Mission Broadcasting, with Nexstar operating the station under a local marketing agreement.

Meanwhile, Miami stations are also listed for Univision, Telemundo and UniMás (formerly TeleFutura) due to their operations being major production bases for those networks. The Miami area stations for Ion Television are also listed due to their parent company being based out of West Palm Beach; however none of the Ion stations listed originate programming for the national Ion network. MeTV and Heroes & Icons are owned by Weigel Broadcasting in Chicago; Weigel-owned WCIU carries each full network feed as a digital subchannel and KAZA is owned by Weigel and carries MeTV, while WJLP is the network's New York area affiliate, with KVME 20 H&I's Los Angeles affiliate. Heartland, Retro TV and Rev'n are all based in Chattanooga, Tennessee, the home base of WOOT-LD and common owner Reach High Media Group. NewsNet is based in Cadillac, Michigan.

² While the Virginia-based Public Broadcasting Service in the United States does not have an official "flagship" television station, WNET in the New York City area held an official primary role with PBS predecessor, National Educational Television (NET). There cannot be any owned-and-operated stations within the Public Broadcasting Service; individual PBS stations are typically owned by local non-profit groups (such as WPBS-TV), universities (such as KPBS) or state-level entities as part of a state network (such as KETA-TV and WGPB-TV). The system itself is owned collectively by the local PBS member stations. A station's importance to the system is built as much or more on the programming it produces for national distribution (a metric which places WNET as a strong third-place contender behind WGBH in Boston and WETA in Washington, D.C.) instead of local media market size.[2]

In sports broadcasting, the flagship television station is the sports team's primary station in the team's home market that produces NFL preseason telecasts, along with in-season surrounding programming such as team, coach's, and pre-game/post-game shows and feeds them to affiliates. For example, WJBK in Detroit is the flagship station of the Detroit Lions Television Network, which feeds Detroit Lions pre-season football games to six stations in Michigan. However, the "sports flagship television station" is rapidly becoming a thing of the past, with the growing popularity of cable- and satellite-exclusive regional sports networks such as Fox Sports Networks and NBC Sports Regional Networks, which hold exclusive broadcast rights to several teams in their market for Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League and the National Basketball Association.

The National Football League has a different structure, as all games require over-the-air broadcast and the league and teams are generally loathe to use only a local cable broadcaster to distribute preseason and team programming. An anti-siphoning policy is also used by the league in order for local stations to bid for Monday Night Football games for over-the-air distribution when local teams play. Most of the league's teams partner with a local station or regional network of stations, which distributes team programming and weekly analysis shows featuring a team's head coach, with those stations allowed to market as a team's 'official station', often tied into preseason rights. In a lesser arrangement, Major League Baseball teams often name a local broadcast station their official weather forecasting partner and allow them to market as such.

• KTBN 40 in Santa Ana, California – flagship of the Trinity Broadcasting Network
• KDTN 2 in Denton/Dallas, Texas – flagship of the Daystar Television Network
• W15BU-D 15 in Johnston City, Illinois – flagship of Three Angels Broadcasting Network
• WTCT 27 in Marion, Illinois – flagship of Tri-State Christian Television
• KGEB 53 in Tulsa, Oklahoma – flagship of Golden Eagle Broadcasting
• WHME-TV 46 in South Bend, Indiana - flagship of Family Broadcasting Corporation

Canadian network flagship locations vary by language. Most English-language networks eastern flagships are located in Toronto, French-language eastern flagships are located in Montreal, and West Coast flagships (regardless of language) are located in Vancouver. CTV 2, being a secondary system to the main CTV network, maintains its eastern flagship in Barrie (which is on the northwestern fringe of the Toronto market) and West Coast flagship in Victoria (which is on the southwestern fringe of the Vancouver market). CIII-DT-41 had always been considered the flagship station of Global in Toronto despite being a technical satellite station of CIII-DT, which is licensed to Paris, Ontario. However, since July 2009, the CRTC has considered CIII-DT-41 "the originating station" of Global Ontario.[3]

The secondary French-language networks TVA and V are not carried terrestrially in Western Canada, although they are usually available on pay television.

Networks/systems with only one flagship station

As of 2017, Mexico's national networks hold a nationwide virtual channel, thus all of the flagship stations mentioned below in most of the country are on the same channel on the rest of the stations in each network with some exceptions along the American, Guatemalan and Belizean border areas.

• Note - † Multimedios launched XHTDMX-TDT on August 27, 2018 and features limited local news and sports discussion programming on that station for Mexico City, though it continues to receive the majority of its programming from XHAW-TDT in Monterrey, which remains the main flagship for the network.

• Note: All flagship stations are located in Sydney and Melbourne. All SBS stations use the "SBS" callsign. 10 Peach was formerly known as Eleven, with 10 Bold formerly known as One until being re-branded by their new CBS Corporation ownership in late 2018.

Notes

¹ The total number of stations is including the three stations listed in the table.

² There are 13 independent stations in Japan.

Note

¹ Sonshine's main headquarters are in Davao City, but also has a fully owned broadcast building in Metro Manila, thus giving the Manila station equal flagship.

• The popular nationally syndicated program Live with Kelly and Ryan is produced at WABC-TV in New York City.

• Although later produced by Harpo Studios, The Oprah Winfrey Show considered WLS-TV its flagship as the program concept as hosted by Winfrey originated in 1983 as part of WLS's mid-morning show AM Chicago; Oprah was always aired first in the nation at 9 a.m. local time on WLS.
• The popular nationally syndicated show At The Movies was also produced at WLS-TV in Chicago. Successor program Roger Ebert presents At the Movies originated from WTTW in Chicago.
• Until the consolidation of the ITV franchises during the 1990s, the majority of primetime programming on the ITV network originated from a group of franchises known as "The Big Five" (Thames Television, LWT, ATV/Central, Yorkshire, and Granada).
• Starting in 2011, Family Feud had WUPA as its flagship station, as the show was produced at the Atlanta Civic Center; the program would relocate to Los Angeles in 2017 to accommodate Steve.
• The show View from the Bay was produced at KGO-TV in San Francisco and syndicated to ABC owned-and-operated stations and Live Well Network nationwide.