Fox Broadcasting Company

Fox Broadcasting Company, LLC (commonly known as Fox; stylized in all caps) is an American commercial broadcast television network serving as the flagship namesake property of Fox Corporation and operated through Fox Entertainment. Fox is based at Fox Corporation's corporate headquarters at 1211 Avenue of the Americas in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, and it hosts additional offices at the Fox Network Center in Los Angeles and at the Fox Media Center in Tempe, Arizona. The channel was launched by News Corporation on October 9, 1986 as a competitor to the Big Three television networks, which are the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), and the National Broadcasting Company (NBC).

Fox has gone on to become the most successful attempt at a fourth television network; it was also the highest-rated free-to-air network in the 18–49 demographic from 2004 to 2012 and 2020 to 2021 and was the most-watched American television network in total viewership during the 2007–08 season. It is a member of the North American Broadcasters Association and the National Association of Broadcasters. Unlike other major commercial broadcast networks, Fox does not have a newscast of its own due to its lack of a news division, and instead relies on its own 24-hour news channels, Fox News, Fox Business Network, and Fox Weather to supply news programming for the network.

Fox and its affiliated companies operate many entertainment channels in international markets, but these do not necessarily air the same programming as the American network. Most viewers in Canada have access to at least one American-based Fox affiliate, either over the air or through a pay television provider, although Fox's National Football League broadcasts and most of its prime time programming are subject to simultaneous substitution regulations for pay television providers imposed by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to protect rights held by domestically based networks.

Like Canada, Fox programming is available in Mexico through free-to-air affiliates in markets located within proximity to the Mexico–United States border whose signals are readily receivable over-the-air in border areas of northern Mexico. In Central America, the Dominican Republic, Peru, Argentina, Venezuela, Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador and the Caribbean, many subscription providers carry either select American-based Fox-affiliated stations or the main network feed from Fox O&Os WNYW in New York City, KTTV in Los Angeles, WTTG in Washington, D.C. or Fox affiliate WSVN in Miami. In addition, the network's programming has been available in the U.S. Virgin Islands since 2011 on WVXF in Charlotte Amalie and Puerto Rico since 2015 from WSJP-LD in San Juan.

20th Century Fox (now known as 20th Century Studios) had been involved in television production as early as 1948. Its television arm was known as TCF Television Productions up until 1958, which produced several syndicated programs. Following the closure of the DuMont Television Network in August 1956, after it became mired in severe financial problems, the NTA Film Network was launched as a new "fourth network". 20th would also produce original content for the NTA network. The film network effort would fail after a few years, but 20th continued to dabble in television through its production arm, such as Perry Mason, Batman and M*A*S*H for the Big Three television networks ABC, NBC, and CBS.

While running Paramount Pictures, Barry Diller attempted to create a fourth television network. The Paramount Television Service of 1977 was canceled before its first broadcast. Paramount produced many programs for the Big Three but catering to their demands "just wore us down", he said in 1983: "I want to make our own things and put them on the air". Diller hoped to create a "mini-network" of independent television stations airing Paramount programs. Unable to achieve his goal at Paramount, Diller joined film studio 20th Century Fox.

In March 1985 News Corporation, a media company owned by Australian publishing magnate Rupert Murdoch that had mainly served as a newspaper publisher, paid $255 million for a 50% interest in TCF Holdings, the parent company of the 20th Century Fox film studio. In May 1985, News agreed to pay $2.55 billion to acquire independent stations in six major U.S. cities from the John Kluge-run broadcasting company Metromedia: WNEW-TV in New York City, WTTG in Washington, D.C., KTTV in Los Angeles, KRIV-TV in Houston, WFLD-TV in Chicago, and KRLD-TV 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 Communications in a separate, concurrent deal as part of a right of first refusal related to that station's 1982 sale to Metromedia. (Two years later, News Corporation acquired WXNE-TV in that market from the Christian Broadcasting Network and changed its call letters to WFXT.)

Radio personality Clarke Ingram suggested that the Fox network is a revival or at least a linear descendant of DuMont, since Metromedia was founded when DuMont spun off its two remaining owned-and-operated stations, WNEW-TV (then known as WABD) and WTTG, as DuMont Broadcasting (it later changed its name to Metropolitan Broadcasting before becoming Metromedia). Additionally, the former base of DuMont's operations, the DuMont Tele-Centre in Manhattan, eventually became the present-day Fox Television Center.