In broadcasting, a trimulcast is a cluster of three radio and/or television stations and/or translators that play the same feed. Normally this is done in order to have full coverage of a certain area. Some stations use this technique to provide rimshot coverage into a major market by broadcasting on the outskirts from three different locations, or combine multiple low power television stations in an attempt to provide the equivalent coverage of one full-power station.
KBPI/KBPL/K300CP cover the Colorado Interstate 25 corridor on 107.9 FM; in 2024, KBPL broke away from the trimulcast and introduced local hosts and a separate playlist, although it still uses the KBPI branding and shares some of its hosts with its parent station.[3][4]
In 1996, WCFT-TV/WJSU-TV formed a television trimulcast in the Anniston/Birmingham/Tuscaloosa, Alabama area to replace WBRC as the market's ABC affiliate when it switched to Fox. Allbritton Communications had acquired the full-powered WCFT in Tuscaloosa and entered into a local marketing agreement with WJSU in Aniston to serve as a simulcast covering the region.[5] at the time Nielsen regarded all three cities as separate media markets—meaning that they were both considered out-of-market stations in Birmingham, and thus ineligible to be counted in local ratings. As a workaround, WBMA-LP was added to the arrangement to form the trimulcast, and classified as the originating station for WCFT and WJSU; the stations' on-air branding suggested otherwise, using WCFT and WJSU's channel numbers as "ABC 33/40".[6][7]
