Reverse compensation, in

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

broadcasting, is the practice of a commercial

television station A television station is a set of equipment managed by a business, organisation or other entity such as an amateur television (ATV) operator, that transmits video content and audio content via radio waves directly from a transmitter on the earth's s ...

paying a

television network A television broadcaster or television network is a telecommunications network for the distribution of television show, television content, where a central operation provides programming to many television stations, pay television providers or ...

in exchange for being permitted to affiliate with that network. The word "reverse" refers to the historical practice of networks paying stations to compensate them for the airtime networks use to run network

advertisement Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a Product (business), product or Service (economics), service. Advertising aims to present a product or service in terms of utility, advantages, and qualities of int ...

s during their programming. Reverse compensation first appeared in the 1990s, with

The WB Television Network The WB Television Network (shortened to The WB, stylized as "THE WB", and nicknamed the "Frog Network" and/or "The Frog" for its former mascot Michigan J. Frog) was an American television network that ran from 1995 to 2006. It launched on br ...

receiving reverse compensation from several stations. In 2001,

San Jose, California San Jose, officially the City of San José ( ; ), is a cultural, commercial, and political center within Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area. With a city population of 997,368 and a metropolitan area population of 1.95 million, it is ...

station

KNTV KNTV (channel 11), branded NBC Bay Area, is a television station licensed to San Jose, California, United States, serving the San Francisco Bay Area. It is owned and operated by the NBC television network through its NBC Owned Television Sta ...

agreed to pay $362 million over ten years to become the

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast. It is one of NBCUniversal's ...

affiliate for the

Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a region of California surrounding and including San Francisco Bay, and anchored by the cities of Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose. The Association of Bay Area Governments ...

market, the largest such agreement to date. Shortly after, NBC bought KNTV when the station's owner ran into financial difficulty. The practice played a role in the 2006 affiliation drives of two newly announced networks,

The CW Television Network The CW Network, LLC (commonly referred to as The CW or simply CW) is an American commercial broadcast television network which is controlled by Nexstar Media Group through a 75% ownership interest. The network's name is derived from the first ...

and

MyNetworkTV MyNetworkTV (stylized as mynetworkTV; unofficially abbreviated MNT or MNTV) is an American commercial broadcast television syndication service and former television network owned by Fox Corporation, operated by its Fox Television Stations ...

. The CW reportedly demanded reverse compensation from affiliates for an arguably proven, but still low-rated, prime time schedule; MyNetworkTV made no such demand and also allowed stations to keep more ad time than a traditional network would. As a result, several stations that seemed to be good candidates to become CW affiliates, including most WB- and UPN-affiliated

Sinclair Broadcast Group Sinclair, Inc., doing business as Sinclair Broadcast Group, is a publicly traded American telecommunications conglomerate that is controlled by the descendants of company founder Julian Sinclair Smith. Headquartered in the Baltimore suburb o ...

stations, announced affiliations with MyNetworkTV instead, though in cases where Sinclair had market duopolies, eventually relented and affiliated the second stations with The CW before their launch. Pappas Telecasting and

Tribune Company Tribune Media Company, also known as Tribune Company, was an American multimedia conglomerate headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Through Tribune Broadcasting, Tribune Media was one of the largest television broadcasting companies, owning 39 ...

, the two major station groups which did carry The CW, both filed for bankruptcy protection in 2008. Tribune, which operated the largest group of CW affiliates at the time of the network's launch, removed the network name from its stations' branding for a few years, until management changes returned the network branding to most of their affiliates.Tonight's Top Story on Tribune's TV Stations: Its Bankruptcy Filing
Brian Stelter,

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

, December 8, 2008 In

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

, CTV attempted to move from a traditional network affiliation contract to a reverse compensation model in the early 2000s, which played a role in the disaffiliation of CHAN-TV in

Vancouver Vancouver is a major city in Western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the cit ...

British Columbia British Columbia is the westernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Situated in the Pacific Northwest between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains, the province has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that ...

and

CJON-TV CJON-DT (channel 21), branded on-air as NTV (short for Newfoundland Television), is an independent television station in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, owned by Newfoundland Broadcasting Company Ltd. The station's studios ar ...

in St. John's,

Newfoundland and Labrador Newfoundland and Labrador is the easternmost province of Canada, in the country's Atlantic region. The province comprises the island of Newfoundland and the continental region of Labrador, having a total size of . As of 2025 the populatio ...

from the network.

References

{{reflist Television terminology