Universal Stations Group

Universal Stations Group is an American-owned Filipino division of NBCUniversal that oversees television stations operated in the Philippines and the production company that produces English-language Filipino syndicated newscast Universal News. While billing itself as an owned-and-operated company of NBCUniversal, it is owned by a Filipino trust fund linked to the company. NBCUniversal does not directly own any broadcast outlet in the Philippines because of the restrictions imposed by the 1987 Constitution to media ownership, prohibiting any, including minority, ownership of broadcast and print media.
== Branding background ==
The name "Universal" pertains to movie studio Universal Pictures. USG and NBCOTS president Valari Staab said the naming scheme was to prevent confusion and litigation from the locally-based Nation Broadcasting Corporation (NBC), owned by the PLDT Beneficial Trust Fund.
== History ==
=== NBC's timeline ===
In the Philippines, the Radio Corporation of America teamed up with the National Broadcasting System (NBS), the then-fledgling broadcasting business of Severino Salvacion Sr., to begin with RCA's many ventures to bring television to the former American colony.
When NBS started experimenting its television service in the late 1940s, RCA also began its own ventures into broadcasting in the country, and it opened the DYNB stations—AM 570, later merged with DYCJ, and channel 4, now D-4-NB-TV but still calls itself "DYNB" at idents—in Cebu as NBS affiliates on both radio and television.
In the 1970s, RCA placed its broadcast properties in a Filipino-run retirement trust fund controlled by RCA stockholders amid new laws requiring full Filipino ownership in media.
In 1983, RCA was sued by the Storer Broadcasting Company, owner of then-VGC affiliate DYCP-TV (later an SBN owned-and-operated station, currently inactive), over its announcement of purchasing 49% of the broadcast network. Storer argued RCA is slowly monopolizing English-language networks, citing its minority stake in NBS. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of RCA, citing that unlike RCA's ownership of the Montecarlo-Salvacion media empire, which controls all NBS broadcast assets, RCA's part-acquisition of VGC only pertained to the television network, but Storer had a win due to the preliminary injunction that RCA won't switch affiliations of DYNB-TV to VGC unless the network halts its contract with DYCP; DYCP was later acquired by Davao-based Southern Broadcasting Network and VGC ultimately moved to channel 4, by then owned by General Electric under a blind trust.
=== The Smiths (1971-1993) ===
The group started on May 15, 1971 as a blind trust and shell company for Baltimore native Julian Sinclair Smith's Chesapeake Television Corporation to be able to operate television stations in the Philippines, coinciding with the signing-on of then-independent station DWTS-TV in La Trinidad, Benguet.