Fox Broadcasting Company

• 1. Introduction

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  Fox Broadcasting Company launched on the 9th of October 1986, with a comedian, a late-night talk show, and a gamble that would reshape American television. Joan Rivers stepped onto the set of The Late Show as the network's first host, and in that moment, three established giants -- ABC, CBS, and NBC -- had a genuine rival for the first time in decades. The odds were long. More than 85% of Fox's affiliates broadcast on UHF frequencies, the weaker signal band that most Americans struggled to receive clearly. The studios and advertising community largely dismissed it as a novelty. What followed was anything but. How did a network that could barely reach a quarter of the country's households eventually beat all three major networks in total viewership? And how did one singing competition change the economics of American prime time forever? Those are the questions at the heart of this story.

• 2. Barry Diller's Long Game

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  Barry Diller had tried to build a fourth television network once before, and it ended before a single broadcast. The Paramount Television Service of 1977 was canceled prior to its premiere. Diller left Paramount carrying a specific frustration: he wanted to make his own programs, not cater endlessly to ABC, CBS, and NBC. "I want to make our own things and put them on the air," he said in 1983. He joined 20th Century Fox, and the machinery for a new attempt began to move. In March 1985, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation paid $255 million for a 50% stake in TCF Holdings, the parent company of 20th Century Fox. Two months later, News Corporation agreed to pay $2.55 billion to acquire six independent television stations from the broadcasting company run by John Kluge, called Metromedia. Those six stations -- in New York City, Washington D.C., Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago, and Dallas -- together reached 22% of American households. Radio personality Clarke Ingram would later note that Fox was, in a sense, a linear descendant of the defunct DuMont Television Network, since Metromedia itself had been formed when DuMont spun off its two remaining owned-and-operated stations. The former DuMont Tele-Centre in Manhattan even became the Fox Television Center. In December 1985, Murdoch paid a further $325 million to buy out his original partner, Marvin Davis, acquiring the remaining equity in TCF Holdings. The FCC approved the Metromedia purchase in March 1986, and the call letters of the New York and Dallas outlets were changed to WNYW and KDAF respectively. Diller was later acknowledged, including by the New York Times in October 1986, as the architect of the network his "current obsession" was building.

• 3. The UHF Underdog

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  Fox survived where DuMont had failed partly because it exploited a legal technicality with precision. By programming just under the number of hours the FCC defined as a full network, Fox was treated as a large station group rather than a broadcast network during its early years. That exemption freed it from the Financial Interest and Syndication Rules that bound its rivals, allowing additional revenue streams closed off to ABC, CBS, and NBC. DuMont, by contrast, had faced a ban on acquiring additional television stations during an era when the FCC capped ownership at five stations nationwide. Fox launched when cable had largely neutralized the UHF disadvantage: cable carriage placed UHF stations on an equal footing with VHF stations in most markets, so viewers no longer needed expensive converters to receive a degraded signal. Still, Fox had to accept second-tier independent stations in cities like Denver, Phoenix, and St. Louis when the more established local independents declined affiliation. In smaller markets not served by any over-the-air Fox affiliate, the network launched a cable-only feed called Foxnet on the 6th of June 1991. By 1992, Foxnet had reached 1.3 million subscribers. Fox discontinued Foxnet in September 2006 as digital subchannels and additional over-the-air affiliates finally rendered it unnecessary.

• 4. Sunday Night and The Simpsons

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  the 5th of April 1987 was the date Fox expanded into prime time, launching its Sunday night lineup with two premieres: the sitcom Married... with Children and the sketch comedy series The Tracey Ullman Show. Network president Jamie Kellner scheduled the premieres to rebroadcast twice that same evening, reasoning that viewers could sample Fox without missing 60 Minutes, Murder She Wrote, or the 8 o'clock movies. Drama 21 Jump Street and comedies Mr. President and Duet filled out the Sunday schedule over the following weeks. On the 11th of July 1987, Fox added a Saturday night lineup anchored by the supernatural series Werewolf. The early years were uneven: two Saturday comedies, Karen's Song and Down and Out in Beverly Hills, were canceled before the network's first full fall season even began. The Late Show's failure led to an unsuccessful replacement, The Wilton North Report, and a failed negotiation with comedian Arsenio Hall -- who went on to develop his own syndicated show for Paramount. The turnaround arrived at the start of the 1989-90 television season. The Simpsons, an animated series that had originated as shorts on The Tracey Ullman Show, debuted as a midseason replacement and ranked at a three-way tie for 29th place in the Nielsen ratings before becoming a breakout hit -- the first Fox series to crack the Top 30. At 36 years as of 2025, it remains the longest-running American sitcom, the longest-running American animated program, and the longest-running American scripted primetime series. Also in 1989, Fox introduced Cops and America's Most Wanted; both would become Saturday night staples for more than two decades. Michigan homemaker Terry Rakolta's boycott of Married... with Children after a 1989 episode backfired spectacularly on her campaign: it drove viewer interest up sharply and propelled the show to an 11-season run as the network's longest-running live-action sitcom.

• 5. Winning the NFL

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  Fox had made a play for the NFL as early as 1987, when ABC was slow to renew Monday Night Football. Fox offered the league the same $13 million per game ABC had been paying. The NFL chose to stay with ABC. Six years later, the calculus had shifted. In December 1993, Fox signed a contract to televise National Football Conference games -- which had aired on CBS since 1956 -- beginning with the 1994 season. The Fox bid was $1.58 billion for four years. CBS offered $295 million per year to keep the rights. Fox won. The deal also included the exclusive U.S. television rights to Super Bowl XXXI in 1997. Along with the broadcast rights, Fox lured Pat Summerall, John Madden, Dick Stockton, Matt Millen, James Brown, and Terry Bradshaw away from CBS Sports. The NFL contract was the engine behind a wave of affiliation realignments. On the 23rd of May 1994, Fox agreed to purchase a 20% stake in New World Communications, which agreed in turn to switch the affiliations of twelve stations -- eight CBS affiliates, three ABC affiliates, and one NBC affiliate -- to Fox. That summer, a joint venture called SF Broadcasting purchased four stations from Burnham Broadcasting, adding three former NBC affiliates and one former ABC affiliate to the Fox fold. Fox Television Stations eventually acquired New World outright on the 17th of July 1996, in a $2.48 billion stock purchase, making all twelve former New World stations Fox owned-and-operated properties. In August 2000, Fox added stations owned by Chris-Craft Industries and its subsidiaries BHC Communications and United Television for $5.5 billion, temporarily making Fox Television Stations the largest owner of television stations in the United States.

• 6. American Idol and the Ratings Summit

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  American Idol arrived as the single most dominant program on 21st-century American television, according to the source's own characterization. Its 2003 season finale drew peak audiences of up to 38 million viewers. Double-season average audiences ran around 31 million viewers in 2006 and 2007. Beginning with the 2003-04 season, it became the first reality singing competition to lead the overall seasonal ratings in the United States. It remains the most recent American television program to lead the national prime time ratings while attracting at least 30 million viewers for multiple consecutive seasons. By 2005, Fox had scored its first sweeps victory in total viewership, boosted by its broadcast of Super Bowl XXXIX and the strengths of Idol alongside 24, House, and The O.C. Fox also introduced House as Idol's lead-out on Tuesday nights; House became Fox's first prime time drama to reach the Nielsen Top 10, beginning in 2006. The capstone came at the conclusion of the 2007-08 season on the 21st of May 2008, following the widely acclaimed seventh-season finale of American Idol: Fox outranked CBS as the most-watched television network overall in the United States. Fox is the only non-Big Three network to top the overall Nielsen ratings since measurement began in the 1950-51 season. Idol's dominance held for eleven consecutive years in the Nielsen Top 10, from 2003 to 2013, and included an eight-year streak as the top program in the 18-49 demographic -- the longest such streak in Nielsen's measurement records. The series ran for fifteen seasons before its original run on Fox ended in 2016.

• 7. After the Disney Sale

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  On the 27th of July 2018, 21st Century Fox shareholders agreed to sell most of the company's key assets -- including 20th Century Fox and FX Networks -- to The Walt Disney Company for $71.3 billion. Fox Broadcasting Company, the television stations, and the Fox Sports, Fox News, and Fox Business cable channels were excluded from the sale. Because Disney already owned ABC, acquiring Fox would have violated FCC rules prohibiting a merger between any two of the four major broadcast networks. The remaining entity, officially named Fox Corporation, formally began trading on the 19th of March 2019. With the merger of CBS and Viacom on the 4th of December 2019, Fox became the only major American broadcast network without attachment to any film studio. The network's post-sale programming pivot leaned toward sports and non-scripted content. Fox acquired the NFL's Thursday Night Football package and rights to the FIFA World Cup. The Masked Singer, based on the South Korean format King of Mask Singer, premiered to Fox's highest ratings for a non-scripted premiere without an NFL lead-in since 2011; its first-season finale averaged 11.5 million viewers. Thursday Night Football later moved to Amazon Prime Video, and SmackDown moved to USA Network in September 2024, prompting Fox to fill Friday nights with college football under its contract with the Big Ten Conference. On the 2nd of April 2025, Fox and 20th Television Animation announced a four-season, 15-episode renewal for The Simpsons, Bob's Burgers, and Family Guy, alongside the return of American Dad! -- which had aired on TBS from October 2014 until March 2025 -- marking a full-circle moment for a network whose identity was built on Sunday nights and animation.