The Fox Broadcasting Company (often shortened to Fox and stylized in all caps as FOX) is an American commercial broadcast television network owned by Fox Corporation and headquartered in New York City, with additional offices at the Fox Broadcasting Center in New York and the Fox Television Center in Los Angeles. Launched as a competitor to the Big Three television networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) on October 9, 1986, Fox went on to become the most successful attempt at a fourth television network. It was the highest-rated free-to-air network in the 18–49 demographic from 2004 to 2012 and 2020 and became the most-watched American television network in total viewership during the 2007–08 season.
Fox and its affiliated companies operate many entertainment channels in international markets, but these do not necessarily air the same programming as the U.S. network. Most viewers in Canada have access to at least one U.S.-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.
Fox is named after what was then called 20th Century Fox—during that time, its original film studio had its hyphen between "Century" and "Fox" removed once it was purchased by Rupert Murdoch's Australian conglomerate News Corporation a couple of years prior, but its corporate sibling would split in 2013 as its own entertainment conglomerate known as 21st Century Fox, before being acquired by The Walt Disney Company in 2019—and indirectly for producer William Fox, who founded one of the film studio's predecessors, Fox Film prior to the 1935 merger. Fox is a member of the North American Broadcasters Association and the National Association of Broadcasters.