KAXT-CD (channel 1) is a low-power, Class A Decades owned-and-operated

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 both

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17t ...

and

San Jose, California San Jose, officially San José (; ; ), is a major city in the U.S. state of California that is the cultural, financial, and political center of Silicon Valley and largest city in Northern California by both population and area. With a 2020 popu ...

, United States, and serving the

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area G ...

. Owned by

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

-based

Weigel Broadcasting Weigel Broadcasting Co. is an American television broadcasting company based in Chicago, Illinois, alongside its flagship station WCIU-TV (Channel 26), at 26 North Halsted Street in the Greektown neighborhood. It currently owns 25 television ...

, it is sister to

Palo Alto Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. The city was es ...

–licensed Heroes & Icons owned-and-operated station KTLN-TV (channel 68). Both stations share studios on Pelican Way in San Rafael, and transmitter facilities on

Mount Allison Mount Allison is a peak of the Diablo Range, located in the East Bay southeast of Fremont, California. Geography Mount Allison is part of a ridge that also includes Mission Peak and Monument Peak. Unlike those other two peaks, Mount Alliso ...

. Due to its low-power status, KAXT-CD's broadcasting radius does not reach all of the San Francisco Bay Area. Because of that, its market affiliation is shared with KICU-TV (channel 36) which broadcasts Decades on its fourth digital subchannel.

History

Early years

Founded May 31, 1989, the station previously broadcast in analog on

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 ...

channel 22 as KAXT-CA, an affiliate of

Spanish-language Spanish ( or , Castilian) is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from colloquial Latin spoken on the Iberian peninsula. Today, it is a global language with more than 500 million native speakers, mainly in the Am ...

religious network Tiempos Finales TV, formerly being an affiliate of TBN from 1990 to 2003, and of Almavision from 2003 to 2006.

Changes

On July 31, 2009, KAXT began

ATSC Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) standards are an American set of standards for digital television transmission over terrestrial, cable and satellite networks. It is largely a replacement for the analog NTSC standard and, like th ...

digital TV transmissions on UHF channel 42, which had been vacated by KTNC-TV. (The previous month, former owner of KTVU/ KICU-TV,

Cox Media Group CMG Media Corporation ( doing business as Cox Media Group) is an American media conglomerate principally owned by Apollo Global Management in conjunction with Cox Enterprises, which maintains a 29% minority stake in the company. The company pri ...

unsuccessfully applied for a license to use the same frequency for a KTVU digital

translator Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''transl ...

.) KAXT's digital transmissions used the call sign KAXT-LD, later KAXT-CD. The station was the first digital television station to broadcast 12 video streams on a standard 6 MHz 19.39 Mbit/s ATSC stream. Using statistical multiplexing technology in the encoders and multiplexer, the system provides variable bit rate compression needed to provide full quality standard definition video across all of the channels with enough bandwidth for radio (audio only) services. ''Broadcast Engineering'' nominated KAXT as Station of the Year for 2009, the first low power television station to receive such a distinction.

Since 2017

The DTV virtual channels between KAXT-LD's channel 22 (RF 42, formerly 22) and KRCB's channel 22 (RF 23) in Cotati had significant overlap that caused a PSIP conflict, allowing KAXT-CD to move to a new virtual channel, Channel 1. KAXT had been operating with a PSIP of Channel 1, at one point with 12 different video program streams and one audio-only channel for a total of 13 virtual channels for a few years until the late 2010s.

agreed to acquire KAXT-CD and KTLN-TV, along with KVOS-TV and KFFV in

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest region o ...

, from OTA Broadcasting in a $23.2 million deal on October 18, 2017. The sale was completed on April 15, 2019."Consummation Notice"
''CDBS Public Access'',

Federal Communications Commission The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisdicti ...

, Retrieved 18 April 2019. By 2018, most of KAXT's Vietnamese-language subchannels had moved to

KSCZ-LD KSCZ-LD, virtual channel 16 (UHF digital channel 23), is a low-powered television station licensed to San Jose and San Francisco, California, United States. It broadcasts mostly Vietnamese-language programming from atop Mount Allison in uninc ...

Programming

Until 2019, KAXT broadcast an electronic program guide, shopping channels, and several channels of ethnic news, entertainment, and religious programming. Several subchannels were produced locally, while the remainder were simulcasts. KAXT is the only television station in the United States that broadcasts on virtual channel 1.

Former affiliations

Since its transition to digital broadcasting, KAXT has broadcast a wide variety of programming, both local and syndicated: * TV – family-oriented Spanish-language programming (channel 1.4) * Cool Music Radio – audio simulcast (channel 1.14) * Coastal Television Network – tourism-focused channel based in

Monterey, California Monterey (; es, Monterrey; Ohlone: ) is a city located in Monterey County on the southern edge of Monterey Bay on the U.S. state of California's Central Coast. Founded on June 3, 1770, it functioned as the capital of Alta California under b ...

(channel 1.5) * Colours TV – multicultural programming (channel 1.6) * Corner Store – informercials (channel 1.9) * Creation TV

Cantonese Cantonese ( zh, t=廣東話, s=广东话, first=t, cy=Gwóngdūng wá) is a language within the Chinese (Sinitic) branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages originating from the city of Guangzhou (historically known as Canton) and its surrounding a ...

Christian Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words ''Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρι� ...

Diya TV Diya TV is an American broadcast television network that was founded in 2009 by Ravi Kapur, an award-winning journalist, and is based in San Francisco, California. It is the widest distributed Asian American owned and themed television network ...

– South Asian programming (variously channels 1.2 and 1.5, now on KTSF 26.2) * FAN – Filipino programming (channel 1.8) * Vietnamese-language programming (channel 1.11, now on KSCZ 16.1) * i2TV – public-access television (channel 1.8) * KCTV/TVHS – Taiwanese programming (channel 1.9) * – audio simulcast of Christian programming (channel 1.15) * My Family TV – family-oriented programming (variously channels 1.2, 1.6, and 1.7) * NetV Vietnamese- and English-language programming (channel 1.12, now on KSCZ 16.16) * Vietnamese-language programming (channel 1.6, now on KSCZ 16.6) * – Spanish

(channel 1.10) * PeanutTV – real estate listings (channel 1.12) * Vietnamese-language programming (channel 1.5, now on KSCZ 16.5) * Radio – audio simulcast of

KZSJ KZSJ (1120 kHz) is a commercial AM radio station licensed to San Martin, California. It has a radio format of music and talk in Vietnamese and Korean, serving San Jose and the Santa Clara Valley. The station is currently owned by Bustos Media. ...

1120 (channel 1.13) *

Retro TV Retro TV (stylized as retrotv), formerly known as Retro Television Network, is an American broadcast television network owned by Get After It Media. The network mainly airs classic television sitcoms and drama series from the 1950s through ...

– classic sitcoms (channel 1.2) * SKDTV – South Korean programming (channel 1.7) * TheCoolTV – music videos (variously channels 1.1 and 1.12, now on KTLN 68.2) * U Channel Chinese/

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the no ...

ese programming (channel 1.9, now on KSCZ 16.9) * Vietnamese-language programming (channel 1.3, now on KSCZ 16.8) * Vietface TV – Vietnamese-language programming (channel 1.8, now on KSCZ 16.4) * Vietoday – Vietnamese-language programming (channel 1.6, now on KTSF 26.5) * VieTop Vietnamese-language programming (channel 1.7, now on KSCZ 16.7) * What's On electronic program guide (channel 1.1)

Subchannel

References

External links

* {{Weigel Broadcasting AXT-CD Decades (TV network) affiliates Low-power television stations in the United States 1990 establishments in California Television channels and stations established in 1990 AXT Television in San Jose, California Weigel Broadcasting Companies based in San Rafael, California