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The 1994 United States broadcast television realignment consisted of a series of events, primarily affiliation switches between television stations, that resulted from a multimillion-dollar deal between the Fox Broadcasting Company (commonly known as simply Fox) and New World Communications, a media company that – through its broadcasting division – owned several VHF television stations affiliated with major networks, primarily CBS. The major impetus for the changes was to improve local coverage of the fledgling network's new National Football League television package. As a result of various other deals that followed as a result of the affiliation switches, most notably the buyout of CBS by Westinghouse, the switches constituted some of the most sweeping 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 the Big Three television networks (CBS, NBC and ABC). Nearly 70 stations in 30 media markets throughout the United States changed affiliations starting in September 1994 and continuing through September 1996, which – along with the concurrent January 1995 launches of The WB Television Network (a joint venture between Time Warner, the Tribune Company and the network's founding chief executive officer, Jamie Kellner) and the United Paramount Network (UPN) (founded by Chris-Craft/United Television, through a programming partnership with Paramount Television), both of which affiliated with certain stations that lost their previous network partners through the various affiliation agreements – marked some of the most expansive changes in American television history. ==NFL on Fox== (詳細はRupert Murdoch – chief executive officer of News Corporation, the then-corporate parent of the Fox Broadcasting Company – had wanted a major-league sports presence for his network. Murdoch thought that landing a live sports broadcasting package would elevate Fox to the level of ABC, CBS and NBC, the other commercial broadcast networks in the United States at the time. In 1987, the NFL rejected a bid by Fox to acquire the rights to ''Monday Night Football'', then the league's crown-jewel program, from ABC. Six years later on December 17, 1993, Fox stunned the sports and television worlds by reaching a four-year, $1.58 billion contract with the NFL effective with the 1994 season to televise games involving teams in the National Football Conference (NFC) – a package that had been owned by CBS since 1956, fourteen years prior to the merger of the NFL and the American Football League (AFL) that resulted in the two leagues' teams respectively being divided between the NFC and the American Football Conference (AFC) – as well as Super Bowl XXXI. CBS, then run by the cost-cutting Laurence Tisch, had reportedly bid only $290 million to retain the rights to the NFC television package and was unwilling to even approach the price of the Fox offer. At the time of Fox's bid, some of its owned-and-operated stations (except those in New York City, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. and Salt Lake City) and most of its affiliates were UHF stations that transmitted at a lower radiated power than its VHF counterparts. As Fox put together its new sports division to cover the NFL, it sought to affiliate with VHF stations (broadcasting on channels 2 to 13) that had more established histories, and carried more value with advertisers. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「1994 United States broadcast TV realignment」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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