1994–1996 United States broadcast television realignment
Between 1994 and 1996, a wide-ranging realignment of television network affiliations took place in the United States as the result of a multimillion-dollar deal between the Fox Broadcasting Company and New World Communications, announced on May 23, 1994. Unprecedented in the broadcast industry, the deal resulted in twelve stations owned by, or in the process of being purchased by New World, switching network affiliations to Fox over the course of a two-year period when existing contracts expired. These stations were long-standing affiliates of the traditional "Big Three" television networks—CBS, NBC, and ABC—in some of the country's largest markets, with the majority having been aligned with CBS individually for over 40 years.
The major impetus for the changes was to allow Fox to improve its local affiliate coverage after having successfully outbid CBS for broadcast rights to the National Football Conference (NFC), which the National Football League (NFL) awarded to the fledgling network in December 1993. The alliance started a domino effect of similar deals between the other networks and their affiliates, mainly to shore up existing affiliate bases and, in the case of CBS, to recoup lost affiliates; CBS signed a critical pact with Westinghouse Broadcasting that resulted in Westinghouse's parent company purchasing CBS outright. The switches took place throughout the United States between September 1994 and September 1996, with one additional switch taking place in February 1997, in markets ranging in size from Atlanta, Georgia, to Miles City, Montana. In the case of four markets, CBS and NBC exchanged owned-stations between each other, with one market seeing their CBS and NBC-owned stations swap both channel positions and transmitters. The complexities of these deals saw the "Big Three" affiliates in two markets, Baltimore and Denver, exchange networks with each other, but the Fox affiliate was unchanged. In total, these constitute some of the most sweeping and expansive changes in American television history.
As a result of this realignment, Fox ascended to the status of a major television network, comparable in influence to CBS, NBC, and ABC. Multiple New World-owned stations (which Fox purchased outright in 1996) struggled to adjust to their new affiliations, but many ultimately recovered with news-intensive schedules and were buoyed by Fox's success in prime time, particularly throughout the 2000s. CBS was most impacted among the "Big Three" networks, consigned to UHF stations with high channel numbers in markets like Milwaukee, Detroit and Cleveland, but started to recover in the late 1990s by claiming the American Football Conference (AFC) rights from NBC. Fox Sports, particularly the NFL on Fox, has won acclaim since its 1994 launch for innovations in game presentation, and the network's aggressive bidding in 1993 signaled long-term trends both in American television and professional sports.
Additional affiliation deals between the traditional "Big Three" networks and station group operators took place between 1994 and 1997: