Owned-and-operated station

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In the broadcasting industry, an owned-and-operated station (frequently abbreviated as an O&O) usually refers to a television or radio station owned by the network with which it is associated. This distinguishes such a station from an affiliate, which is independently owned and carries network programming by contract.

The concept of an O&O is clearly defined in the United States and Canada (and to some extent, several other countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, Brazil, Argentina and Japan), where network-owned stations had historically been the exception rather than the rule. In such places, broadcasting licenses are generally issued on a local (rather than national) basis, and there is (or was) some sort of regulatory mechanism in place to prevent any company (including a broadcasting network) from owning stations in every market in the country. In other parts of the world (France, Italy, Spain, Chile, Peru, Uruguay) many television networks were given national broadcasting licenses at launch; as such, they have traditionally been mostly (or entirely) composed of owned-and-operated stations, rendering a separate notion for such a concept redundant.