City of license

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A city of license or community of license, in American and Canadian broadcasting, is the community that a radio station or television station is officially licensed to serve by that country's broadcast regulator.

While this has become far less meaningful over the decades, stations are still required to post their public file somewhere within the city, and to cover the entire city with their signal (the transmitter itself can be some distance away), along with listing the city in their idents, sometimes with the primary (if the TV station primarily serves another city, for example, American television station WOIO is licensed to Shaker Heights, Ohio, but identifies as "WOIO - WOIO DT Shaker Heights - Cleveland", as Cleveland is a larger city and the station primarily serves Cleveland) or secondary cities (If the station is licensed in the primary city served, on occasion the station will list a second city next to it, for example, American television station WTVT, licensed to Tampa, Florida, its primary city, identifies as "WTVT/WTVT-DT Tampa/St. Petersburg", as St. Petersburg is another major city in the market.) There is no longer any requirement to carry any programs relevant to the particular community. Accordingly, stations licensed to smaller communities in major metropolitan markets often target their programming toward the whole market rather than their official home community. Often, even the studio facilities are moved to the larger urban centre. (For instance, the Canadian radio station CFNY is licensed to Brampton, although its studio and transmitter facilities are located in downtown Toronto.)

This may, at times, lead to confusion — while media directories normally list broadcast stations by their legal community of license, audiences often disregard (or may even be entirely unaware of) the distinction.

The "city" has also become more relaxed to mean community, often including the unincorporated areas around it which share the city as a mailing address. This sometimes leads to inconsistencies, such as the licensing of one metro Atlanta station to unincorporated Mableton, but the refusal to license another to Sandy Springs, which is one of the largest cities in the state, and was at the time unincorporated only due to political reasons in the Georgia General Assembly. The FCC's reason, in part, was that Sandy Springs was "not a city", though Mableton is not either.