KAXT-CD (channel 1) is a low-power, Class A television station licensed to both

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

and

San Jose, California San Jose, officially the City of San José ( ; ), is a cultural, commercial, and political center within Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area. With a city population of 997,368 and a metropolitan area population of 1.95 million, it is ...

, United States, broadcasting the digital multicast network

Catchy Comedy Catchy Comedy, formerly known as Decades, is an Americans, American Digital terrestrial television, digital broadcast television network owned by Weigel Broadcasting. The network, which is mainly carried on the digital subchannels of television ...

to the

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a List of regions of California, region of California surrounding and including San Francisco Bay, and anchored by the cities of Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose, California, S ...

. It is owned and operated by Weigel Broadcasting alongside

Palo Alto Palo Alto ( ; Spanish language, Spanish for ) is a charter city in northwestern Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a Sequoia sempervirens, coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. Th ...

–licensed Heroes & Icons outlet KTLN-TV (channel 68). The two stations share studios on Pelican Way in San Rafael, and transmitter facilities on Mount Allison. 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 Catchy Comedy on its fourth digital subchannel.

History

Early years

Founded May 31, 1989, the station previously broadcast in analog on UHF channel 22 as KAXT-CA, an affiliate of

Spanish-language Spanish () or Castilian () is a Romance languages, Romance language of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family that evolved from the Vulgar Latin spoken on the Iberian Peninsula of Europe. Today, it is a world language, gl ...

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 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 p ...

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 ''trans ...

.) 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 Statistical multiplexing is a type of digital communication link sharing, sometimes abbreviated as STDM. It is very similar to dynamic bandwidth allocation (DBA). In statistical multiplexing, a communication channel is divided into an arbitrary num ...

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. In 2016, San Jose Councilman Ash Kalra filed a

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

complaint against the station, alleging that various Vietnamese-language subchannels had run a large volume of advertisements for opponent Madison Nguyen in the 27th State Assembly District election without disclosing it in the station's public files, as required by the FCC.

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

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

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, 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'',

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

Programming

Until 2019, KAXT broadcast an

electronic program guide Electronic programming guides (EPGs) and interactive programming guides (IPGs) are menu-based systems that provide users of television, radio, and other media applications with continuously updated menus that display scheduling information fo ...

, 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 ( ; ) is a city situated on the southern edge of Monterey Bay, on the Central Coast (California), Central Coast of California. Located in Monterey County, California, Monterey County, the city occupies a land area of and recorded a popu ...

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

Cantonese Cantonese is the traditional prestige variety of Yue Chinese, a Sinitic language belonging to the Sino-Tibetan language family. It originated in the city of Guangzhou (formerly known as Canton) and its surrounding Pearl River Delta. While th ...

Christian A Christian () is a person who follows or adheres to Christianity, a Monotheism, monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus in Christianity, Jesus Christ. Christians form the largest religious community in the wo ...

* Diya TV – 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 Public-access television (sometimes called community-access television) is traditionally a form of non-commercial mass media where the general public can create content television programming which is Narrowcasting, narrowcast through cable tele ...

(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 1120 (channel 1.13) * Retro TV – 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. The main geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East China Sea, East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocea ...

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

(channel 1.1)

Subchannel

References

{{Weigel Broadcasting AXT-CD Catchy Comedy affiliates AXT-CD 1990 establishments in California Television channels and stations established in 1990 Television in San Jose, California Weigel Broadcasting Companies based in San Rafael, California