KBFX-CD (channel 58) is a low-power, Class A television station in

Bakersfield, California Bakersfield is a city in and the county seat of Kern County, California, United States. The city covers about near the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley, which is located in the Central Valley region. Bakersfield's population as of th ...

, United States, affiliated with the

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 ("brush"). Twelve species ...

network. It is owned by

Sinclair Broadcast Group Sinclair, Inc., doing business as Sinclair Broadcast Group, is a publicly traded American telecommunications conglomerate that is controlled by the descendants of company founder Julian Sinclair Smith. Headquartered in the Baltimore suburb o ...

alongside

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

affiliate KBAK-TV (channel 29). The two stations share studios on Westwind Drive west of Downtown Bakersfield; KBFX's transmitter is located atop Breckenridge Mountain. In addition to its own digital signal, KBFX-CD is

simulcast Simulcast (a portmanteau of "simultaneous broadcast") is the broadcasting of programs or events across more than one resolution, bitrate or medium, or more than one service on the same medium, at exactly the same time (that is, simultaneously) ...

in high definition on KBAK's second digital subchannel (58.2) from the same transmitter site.

History

KBFX signed on November 1, 1990, as K58DJ, a low-powered relay

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 ...

of KMPH,

Fresno Fresno (; ) is a city in the San Joaquin Valley of California, United States. It is the county seat of Fresno County, California, Fresno County and the largest city in the greater Central Valley (California), Central Valley region. It covers a ...

's Fox affiliate. It changed its

call letters In broadcasting and radio communications, a call sign (also known as a call name or call letters—and historically as a call signal—or abbreviated as a call) is a Identifier, unique identifier for a transmitter station. A call sign can be fo ...

to KMPH-LP in 1995. Later, the Fox network wanted to include a new separate affiliate station for the Bakersfield market; as a result, in 1998, channel 58 was relaunched as KBFX-LP. Among the features on the new station was a KBAK-produced 10 p.m. newscast, ''Fox 58 News @ 10''. It was so successful that KBAK's then-owner Westwind Communications bought the station in 2005 from KMPH's owners, Pappas Telecasting. On August 6, 2007, Westwind Communications announced the sale of KBAK and KBFX-CA to

Fisher Communications Fisher Communications, Inc. was a media company in the United States. Based in Seattle, Washington, the company primarily owned a number of radio and television stations in the Western United States. It was the last company in the Seattle area ...

Seattle Seattle ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Washington and in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. With a population of 780,995 in 2024, it is the 18th-most populous city in the United States. The city is the cou ...

, with the sale closing on January 1, 2008. KBFX58

On February 28, 2010,

Bright House Networks Bright House Networks, LLC also simply known as Bright House, was an American telecom company. Prior to its purchase by Charter Communications, it was the tenth-largest multichannel video service provider and the 6th largest cable internet provi ...

(now

Spectrum A spectrum (: spectra or spectrums) is a set of related ideas, objects, or properties whose features overlap such that they blend to form a continuum. The word ''spectrum'' was first used scientifically in optics to describe the rainbow of co ...

) announced that KBFX would be carried in Tehachapi on cable channel 6. In January 2011, KBFX began airing its local news in high definition. Fisher Communications announced on April 11, 2013, that it would be acquired by

, pending

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 ...

(FCC) approval. The deal was completed on August 8, 2013. On October 3, 2013, Sinclair announced the completion of the sale of four stations owned by Titan TV Broadcast Group, including KMPH, which reunites KBFX as sister-stations for the first time in eight years. KBFX is the only Bakersfield television station to never change its affiliation, having always been a Fox affiliate.

Technical information

Subchannels

The station's 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— ...

: The analog signal went off the air in August 2010. KBFX just recently launched their new digital transmitter on RF channel 29. This signal carried This TV on its subchannel, which maps to virtual channel 29-2. The station's 29.2 subchannel was an initial affiliate of the American Sports Network with its first broadcast on August 30, 2014.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Kbfx-Cd 1990 establishments in California Comet (TV network) affiliates Fox Broadcasting Company affiliates BFX Pappas Telecasting Sinclair Broadcast Group Television channels and stations established in 1990 BFX-CD