Television in the United States Gray Television, whose 131 stations cover mostly smaller metropolitan areas reaching only 10% of the population. The five major U.S. broadcast television networks are the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), CBS (formerly known as the Columbia Broadcasting System), the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), the Fox Broadcasting Company (Fox) and the CW Television Network. The first and elder three (which are colloquially known as the "Big Three") began as radio networks: NBC and CBS respectively began operations in 1924 and 1927, while ABC was spun off from NBC to Edward J. Noble in 1943 as the Blue Network during FCC inquiries over
Pamal Broadcasting Pamal Broadcasting Pamal Broadcasting, Ltd. is a family-owned radio group with twenty-three stations in medium-to-small markets in the Northeast. Based in the Albany suburb of Latham, New York, Pamal Broadcasting was founded in 1986 as Albany Broadcasting Company, when business man James J. Morrell entered broadcast ownership with the purchase of WFLY and WPTR from Five States Tower Company, a Poughkeepsie, NY based broadcasting company that also owned radio stations WPDH and WEOK in the mid-Hudson valley. The Pamal name, a portmanteau of the names of Morrell's children, was adopted in 1996 though each cluster uses a unique name (such