Fox Television Stations
television station division of Fox
Fox Television Stations, LLC (FTS) is a group of television stations in the United States owned-and-operated by Fox Corporation. It owns LiveNOW from Fox, Fox Local, and Fox Soul. It also oversees the MyNetworkTV syndication service and has a half-interest in the Movies! digital sub-channel network, which is shared with Weigel Broadcasting.
History
Foundations
The Fox Broadcasting Company's foundations were laid in March 1985 through News Corporation's $255 million purchase of a 50% interest in TCF Holdings, the parent company of the 20th Century Fox film studio. In May 1985, News Corporation, a media company owned by Australian publishing magnate Rupert Murdoch that had mainly served as a newspaper publisher at the time of the TCF Holdings deal, agreed to pay $2.55 billion to acquire independent television stations in six major U.S. cities from the John Kluge-run broadcasting company Metromedia: WNEW-TV (now WNYW) in New York City, WTTG in Washington, D.C., KTTV in Los Angeles, KRIV in Houston, WFLD in Chicago, and KRLD-TV (now KDAF) in Dallas. A seventh station, ABC affiliate WCVB-TV in Boston, was part of the original transaction but was spun off to the Hearst Broadcasting subsidiary of the Hearst Corporation in a separate, concurrent deal as part of a right of first refusal related to that station's 1982 sale to Metromedia.
Because Metromedia, originally known as Metropolitan Broadcasting at its founding, was spun off from the failed DuMont Television Network, radio personality Clarke Ingram has suggested that the Fox network is a revival or at least a linear descendant of DuMont. The former Metromedia stations WNEW-TV (originally known as WABD) and WTTG were two of the three original owned-and-operated stations of the DuMont network, and the former base of DuMont's operations, the DuMont Tele-Centre in Manhattan, eventually became the present-day Fox Television Center.
On December 31, 1986, WXNE-TV in Boston (later renamed WFXT on January 19, 1987), became the seventh Fox-owned property, and the first to be acquired separately from News Corporation's 1986 purchase of Metromedia's six television stations.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Fox Television Stations” as television station division of Fox. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the places & architecture register because the source frames it as television station division of Fox. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5476982. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1985, 1982, 1986 and 1987.
Modern boundaries and familiar names can conceal earlier jurisdictions or structures that do not align with the present site. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.
- Historic place names
- Jurisdictional context
- Routes into maps and plans
Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Fox Television Stations”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Fox Television Stations primary sources, Fox Television Stations archive and Television research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Fox Television Stations”?
- Which earlier names or jurisdictions may reveal additional records?
- Which authority defined the place, boundary or structure at the relevant date?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Fox Television Stations” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.