KATN,

virtual channel In most telecommunications organizations, a virtual channel is a method of remapping the ''program number'' as used in H.222 Program Association Tables and Program Mapping Tables to a channel number that can be entered via digits on a receiver's ...

2 (

UHF Ultra high frequency (UHF) is the ITU designation for radio frequencies in the range between 300 megahertz (MHz) and 3 gigahertz (GHz), also known as the decimetre band as the wavelengths range from one meter to one tenth of a meter (on ...

digital Digital usually refers to something using discrete digits, often binary digits. Technology and computing Hardware *Digital electronics, electronic circuits which operate using digital signals ** Digital camera, which captures and stores digital ...

channel 18), is an ABC/ Fox/ CW+- affiliated

television station A television station is a set of equipment managed by a business, organisation or other entity, such as an amateur television (ATV) operator, that transmits video content and audio content via radio waves directly from a transmitter on the ea ...

licensed to

Fairbanks, Alaska Fairbanks is a home rule city and the borough seat of the Fairbanks North Star Borough in the U.S. state of Alaska. Fairbanks is the largest city in the Interior region of Alaska and the second largest in the state. The 2020 Census put the p ...

, United States. Owned by

Raleigh, North Carolina Raleigh (; ) is the capital city of the state of North Carolina and the seat of Wake County in the United States. It is the second-most populous city in North Carolina, after Charlotte. Raleigh is the tenth-most populous city in the Sout ...

–based Vision Alaska

LLC A limited liability company (LLC for short) is the US-specific form of a private limited company. It is a business structure that can combine the pass-through taxation of a partnership or sole proprietorship with the limited liability of ...

, the station is operated through a time brokerage agreement (TBA) by Coastal Television Broadcasting Company, LLC.Time Brokerage Agreement (Part 1 of 3) - Federal Communications Commission
/ref>Time Brokerage Agreement (Part 2 of 3) - Federal Communications Commission
/ref>Time Brokerage Agreement (Part 3 of 3) - Federal Communications Commission
/ref> KATN's studios are located in the Lathrop Building on 2nd Avenue in downtown Fairbanks, and its transmitter is located on Cranberry Ridge northeast of the city.

History

KATN debuted on March 1, 1955 as KFAR-TV, and was Fairbanks' second television station after

KTVF KTVF, virtual channel 11 (UHF digital channel 26), is an NBC- affiliated television station licensed to Fairbanks, Alaska, United States. Owned by Atlanta-based Gray Television, it is sister to two low-power stations: primary MeTV and secondary ...

. It became KTTU-TV (no relation to the present-day Tucson, Arizona station) on June 18, 1981 and KATN on August 18, 1984. It is now a part of the ABC Alaska Superstation and was the first TV station in Fairbanks to broadcast in

color Color (American English) or colour (British English) is the visual perceptual property deriving from the spectrum of light interacting with the photoreceptor cells of the eyes. Color categories and physical specifications of color are associ ...

in 1967 (while KTVF was temporarily off the air due to a flood). KFAR/KTTU was primarily an

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...

station with ABC as the secondary network until 1985, when the owners of KIMO (now

KYUR KYUR, virtual channel 13 ( VHF digital channel 12), is a dual ABC/The CW Plus- affiliated television station licensed to Anchorage, Alaska, United States. The station is owned by Vision Alaska LLC; Coastal Television Broadcasting Company LLC, whi ...

) in Anchorage bought the station, changed the call letters (the ATN in KATN stood for Alaska Television Network, a consortium of KATN, KIMO, and

KJUD KJUD, virtual channel 8 ( VHF digital channel 11), is an ABC/ CW+/ Fox- affiliated television station licensed to Juneau, Alaska, United States. The station is owned by Vision Alaska LLC. KJUD's transmitter is located along Douglas Highway in ...

Juneau The City and Borough of Juneau, more commonly known simply as Juneau ( ; tli, Dzánti K'ihéeni ), is the capital city of the state of Alaska. Located in the Gastineau Channel and the Alaskan panhandle, it is a unified municipality and the s ...

), and made KATN the primary ABC affiliate. The station continued carrying NBC programs as a secondary affiliate until KTVF switched from CBS to NBC in 1996, in response to KATN's new ownership. Until the launch of KFXF in 1992, they were Fairbanks' only two commercial network stations. In September 2006, KATN began to show programming from

The CW ''The'' () is a grammatical Article (grammar), article in English language, English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite ...

(via

The CW Plus The CW Plus is a secondary national programming service feed of The CW that is fully controlled and 75% owned by Nexstar Media Group, with Paramount Global and Warner Bros. Discovery each owning a 12.5% stake in the network. It is intended prima ...

) on its digital subchannel. The subchannel is called Fairbanks CW and uses the fictional call letters KWFA (the actual call letters of the subchannel are still KATN).

Smith Media Smith Media, LLC, successor to Smith Television aka Sunrise Television, was a broadcasting group co-based in Los Angeles, California and St. Petersburg, Florida, that formerly owned and operated several television stations across the United Stat ...

sold KATN and the remainder of the "ABC Alaska's Superstation" system to Vision Alaska LLC in 2010. When the sale was completed, on May 13, 2010, Coastal Television Broadcasting Company, LLC entered into a time brokerage agreement with Vision Alaska to operate KATN and sister station KJUD. On October 30, 2017, Fox announced that it would move its Fairbanks affiliation from

KFXF-LD KFXF-LD, virtual channel 7 (UHF digital channel 22), is a low-power primary MeTV and secondary MyNetworkTV- affiliated television station licensed to Fairbanks, Alaska, United States. Owned by Atlanta-based Gray Television, it is a sister station ...

(channel 22) to a subchannel of KATN on November 4.

Technical information

Subchannels

The station's digital signal is

multiplexed In telecommunications and computer networking, multiplexing (sometimes contracted to muxing) is a method by which multiple analog or digital signals are combined into one signal over a shared medium. The aim is to share a scarce resource - a ...

Conversion to digital signal

KATN shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 2, on June 12, 2009, the official date in which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 18. Through the use of

PSIP The Program and System Information Protocol (PSIP) is the MPEG (a video and audio industry group) and privately defined program-specific information originally defined by General Instrument for the DigiCipher 2 system and later extended for the AT ...

, digital television receivers display the station's

as its former VHF analog channel 2.

References

External links

Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Katn 1955 establishments in Alaska ABC network affiliates Ion Television affiliates Television channels and stations established in 1955

ATN ATN is the Sydney flagship television station of the Seven Network in Australia. The licence, issued to a company named Amalgamated Television Services, a subsidiary of John Fairfax & Sons, was one of the first four licences (two in Sydney, two ...