KATC (channel 3) is a

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 ear ...

Lafayette, Louisiana Lafayette (, ) is a city in the U.S. state of Louisiana, and the most populous city and parish seat of Lafayette Parish, located along the Vermilion River. It is Louisiana's fourth largest incorporated municipality by population and the 234 ...

, United States, affiliated with

ABC ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script known as the alphabet. ABC or abc may also refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Broadcasting * American Broadcasting Company, a commercial U.S. TV broadcaster ** Disney–ABC Television ...

and

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 ...

. Owned by the

E. W. Scripps Company The E. W. Scripps Company is an American broadcasting company founded in 1878 as a chain of daily newspapers by Edward Willis "E. W." Scripps and his sister, Ellen Browning Scripps. It was also formerly a media conglomerate. The company is he ...

, the station has studios on Eraste Landry Road in Lafayette, and its transmitter is located near

Branch, Louisiana Branch is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in Acadia Parish, Louisiana Acadia Parish (french: link=no, Paroisse de l'Acadie) is a parish located in the U.S. state of Louisiana. At the 2020 U.S. census, the population was ...

History

The station began operations on September 19, 1962, and was locally owned by Acadian Television Company. Conventional wisdom suggested it should have signed on as 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 ...

affiliate, but instead it took the ABC affiliation full-time. Previously, ABC had been limited to off-hours clearances on

CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainme ...

affiliate

KLFY-TV KLFY-TV (channel 10) is a television station in Lafayette, Louisiana, United States, affiliated with CBS and owned by Nexstar Media Group. The station's studios are located on Eraste Landry Road in Lafayette, and its transmitter is located in M ...

(channel 10). This was a very unusual move for a then two-station market, especially one of Lafayette's size. Usually, ABC, as the smallest and weakest network, was relegated to secondary status on one or both of the existing stations. However, most of the region could view the full NBC schedule on Lake Charles'

KPLC-TV KPLC (channel 7) is a television station in Lake Charles, Louisiana, United States, affiliated with NBC and The CW Plus. It is owned by Gray Television, which provides certain services to dual Fox/ABC affiliate KVHP (channel 29) under a shared ...

and

Baton Rouge Baton Rouge ( ; ) is a city in and the capital of the U.S. state of Louisiana. Located the eastern bank of the Mississippi River, it is the parish seat of East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana's most populous parish—the equivalent of countie ...

WBRZ-TV WBRZ-TV (channel 2) is a television station in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, United States, affiliated with ABC. The station is owned by the Manship family, who formerly published the Baton Rouge daily newspaper, '' The Advocate'', and is one of a han ...

(the latter now a fellow ABC affiliate), both of which provided at least grade B coverage to much of the market. In contrast, no ABC affiliate even put a grade B signal into the area. Acadian Television apparently figured that if it linked up with ABC, it would not get much local competition. KATC coined the term "Acadiana" in the early 1960s and popularized it throughout south Louisiana. In early 1963, the ABC affiliate received an invoice erroneously addressed to the Acadiana Television Corp.; someone had typed an extra "a" at the end of the word "Acadian." The station started using it to describe the region covered by its broadcast signal. Acadian Television sold the station to

Loyola University New Orleans Loyola University New Orleans is a private Jesuit university in New Orleans, Louisiana New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans

WWL-TV WWL-TV (channel 4) is a television station in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States, affiliated with CBS. It is owned by Tegna Inc. alongside Slidell-licensed MyNetworkTV affiliate WUPL (channel 54). Both stations share studios on Rampart S ...

. In the late 1980s, Loyola divested their broadcast properties, with WWL-TV going to a group of station employees (Rampart Operating Partnership) in 1990 and KATC going to investment firm

Merrill Lynch Merrill (officially Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporated), previously branded Merrill Lynch, is an American investment management and wealth management division of Bank of America. Along with BofA Securities, the investment banki ...

in 1986. In 1993, the station joined other ABC affiliates, including WBRZ in not airing the pilot to '' NYPD Blue''. In 1995, The Evening Post Publishing Company purchased the station through its subsidiary

Cordillera Communications Evening Post Industries is a privately held American media company, based in Charleston, South Carolina, United States. It has been led by four generations of the Manigault family. On August 6, 2013, the company changed its name from the Evening ...

. In 2003, the station started broadcasting in

stereo Stereophonic sound, or more commonly stereo, is a method of sound reproduction that recreates a multi-directional, 3-dimensional audible perspective. This is usually achieved by using two independent audio channels through a configuration ...

. KATC continued to use its transmitter for its analog signal located south of

Crowley, Louisiana Crowley (Local pronunciation: ) is a city in, and the parish seat of, Acadia Parish in the U.S. state of Louisiana. At the 2020 United States census, Crowley had a population of 11,710. Crowley is the principal city of the Crowley micropolitan ...

until the mandated digital date of June 12, 2009. KATC is also an alternate ABC affiliate for Lake Charles and

Southwest Louisiana Southwest Louisiana (SWLA) is a five-parish area intersecting the Acadiana and Central Louisiana regions in the U.S. state of Louisiana. It is composed of the following parishes (counties): Allen, Beauregard, Calcasieu, Cameron, Jefferson Dav ...

. That area did not have an ABC affiliate of its own until August 31, 2017, when

Fox Foxes are small to medium-sized, omnivorous mammals belonging to several genera of the family Canidae. They have a flattened skull, upright, triangular ears, a pointed, slightly upturned snout, and a long bushy tail (or ''brush''). Twelv ...

affiliate

KVHP KVHP (channel 29) is a television station in Lake Charles, Louisiana, United States, affiliated with Fox and ABC. It is owned by American Spirit Media, which maintains a shared services agreement (SSA) with Gray Television, owner of dual NBC/ ...

launched an ABC-affiliated subchannel on DT2. KATC, due to its strong signal can also be seen in most of the Baton Rouge region. Cordillera announced on October 29, 2018 it would sell most of its stations, including KATC, to the

. The sale was completed on May 1, 2019. Upon completion of the sale, KATC became Scripps' first station in the state of Louisiana.

Newscasts

The station produces local news and talk programming, with such shows as ''Good Morning Acadiana'', ''Friday Night Football'' and "hard-news" newscasts that air weekdays at 5, 6, and 10 p.m., Saturdays at 6 and 10 p.m., and on Sundays at 5:30 and 10 p.m. On April 16, 2012, KATC began broadcasting its local newscasts in

high definition High definition or HD may refer to: Visual technologies *HD DVD, discontinued optical disc format *HD Photo, former name for the JPEG XR image file format *HDV, format for recording high-definition video onto magnetic tape * HiDef, 24 frames-pe ...

. The station also debuted a brand new logo, graphics package and new set and redesigned newsroom. Historically, KATC was a very distant runner-up to KLFY. Although its various owners have always poured significant resources into its news department, KATC was hamstrung by KLFY's seven-year head start. In the 2000s, KATC began to achieve traction in the ratings against KLFY by recruiting talent from KLFY's news staff. In turn, KLFY was undergoing numerous ownership and programming changes, largely jettisoning the ''Eyewitness News'' format it had used during much of its history.

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 ...

: Prior to June 14, 2010, KLWB (channel 50) was Lafayette's CW affiliate. It had since moved to KATC 3.2.

Grit Grit, Grits, or Gritty may refer to: Food * Grit (grain), bran, chaff, mill-dust or coarse oatmeal * Grits, a corn-based food common in the Southern United States Minerals * Grit, winter pavement-treatment minerals deployed in grit bins * ...

was added by former owner Cordillera on June 28, 2016. Court TV and Bounce were added after Scripps purchased KATC. Court TV on its initial launch May 8, 2019 and Bounce March 5, 2021 (which gives every TV market in Louisiana the network).

Analog-to-digital conversion

KATC shut down its analog signal, over

VHF Very high frequency (VHF) is the ITU designation for the range of radio frequency electromagnetic waves (radio waves) from 30 to 300 megahertz (MHz), with corresponding wavelengths of ten meters to one meter. Frequencies immediately below VH ...

channel 3, 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 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 ...

channel 28. 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 A ...

, digital television receivers display the station's

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' ...

as its former VHF analog channel 3.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Katc (Tv) ABC network affiliates Grit (TV network) affiliates Court TV affiliates Bounce TV affiliates Television channels and stations established in 1962 ATC (TV) Acadia Parish, Louisiana 1962 establishments in Louisiana E. W. Scripps Company television stations