Advertising for Windham County businesses.

Nielsen places Windham County in the Hartford–New Haven television market, the 32nd-largest in the United States at 1,060,910 TV households (2024–25 Local Television Market Universe Estimates). The county is its northeast corner. That produces a quiet arbitrage: broadcast is priced and bought at market level, so a Putnam gallery or a Killingly manufacturer buys exactly the same statewide reach as an advertiser in Hartford — while competing locally against a fraction of the businesses.

It is one of the few places in Connecticut where a small advertiser is punching with the same weapon as a large one. Spots run on the Connecticut stations — NBC Connecticut (WVIT 30), FOX 61 (WTIC), WTNH 8 and WFSB — and reach households across the state, including the Hartford-area and Boston-suburb visitors who drive the county's antique and arts trade. For visit-driven retail, that out-of-county reach is the point rather than a side effect.

The Ad Share Program is what makes it affordable at this scale. Non-competing Connecticut businesses pool into shared commercial inventory, splitting the cost while each keeps its own spots in the rotation — which is how a business in Connecticut's least-populated county ends up on network television at all. OTT streaming on Roku, Hulu, ESPN and Pluto adds ZIP-level targeting when the goal is the immediate trade area rather than the visitor.

Production runs out of our Southington green-screen studio, 50 to 65 minutes away, or on location along Route 6 and Putnam's antique row when the place is the point. Rich Conway brings 25 years of Connecticut broadcast, and the same team writes, shoots, edits, buys the media and reports — which matters more in an underserved county, where the alternative is usually assembling three vendors who have never worked here.

One correction worth making, because it costs Windham businesses money: Connecticut broadcast does not reach the Boston suburbs. Those households are in the Boston market, which is separate and far larger. A schedule sold as reaching "the northeast" reaches Connecticut. Where Massachusetts and Rhode Island visitors matter to your trade — and for Putnam's antique row they often do — that audience is covered with ZIP-targeted OTT and social, not with a Connecticut television buy.