KFDF-CD (channel 44) is a low-power, Class A television station in

Fort Smith, Arkansas Fort Smith is the third-largest city in Arkansas and one of the two county seats of Sebastian County. As of the 2020 Census, the population was 89,142. It is the principal city of the Fort Smith, Arkansas–Oklahoma Metropolitan Statistical Area ...

, United States, affiliated with the Spanish-language Estrella TV network. It is owned by Pinnacle Media alongside

Univision Univision () is an American Spanish-language free-to-air television network owned by TelevisaUnivision. It is the United States' largest provider of Spanish-language content. The network's programming is aimed at the Latino public and inclu ...

affiliates KWNL-CD and KXUN-LD. KFDF-CD's transmitter is located on Pernot Road in

Van Buren, Arkansas Van Buren ( ) is the second-largest city in the Fort Smith, Arkansas–Oklahoma Metropolitan Statistical Area and the county seat of Crawford County, Arkansas, United States. The city is located directly northeast of Fort Smith at the Interst ...

. KPBI-CD (channel 31) in Winslow operates as a

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 ''transla ...

of KFDF-CD; this station's transmitter is located on South 56th Street in Springdale.

History

The station began as K46BZ when the

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 jurisd ...

(FCC) issued an original construction permit to Family Media of Ft. Smith to build a low-power television station on UHF channel 46. In October 1988, Family Media transferred the construction permit to Pharis Broadcasting, who brought the station on the air as a

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 and obtained its initial license on March 30, 1990. In the mid-1990s, the FCC began to allow low-power stations to have four-letter callsigns, and in September 1995, the station took the call letters KPBI-LP, for Pharis Broadcasting Inc. In June 1998, claiming displacement, Pharis Broadcasting requested to move the station to

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 VHF ...

channel 10; the FCC granted the request in October 1998. Before finishing the move, Pharis sold KPBI-LP to Equity Broadcasting in a deal finalized in June 2001, along with several other stations. One of those stations was KFDF-LP, at the time operating on channel 32. In September 2001, Equity requested Special Temporary Authority to move KFDF-LP to channel 46, being vacated by KPBI-LP. A month later, Equity switched the two stations' call letters, with the former KPBI moving to channel 10 as UPN affiliate KFDF-CA, and the former KFDF moving to channel 46 as Fox affiliate

KPBI-CA KPBI-CA, UHF analog channel 46, was a low-powered, Class A MyNetworkTV-affiliated television station licensed to Fort Smith, Arkansas. The station was owned by Equity Media Holdings and, like many of Equity's stations, KPBI-CA was controll ...

. Under Equity's ownership, KFDF was controlled remotely via satellite from Equity's headquarters in

Little Rock, Arkansas ( The "Little Rock") , government_type = Council-manager , leader_title = Mayor , leader_name = Frank Scott Jr. , leader_party = D , leader_title2 = Council , leader_name2 ...

, and was relayed in encrypted form via the satellite

Galaxy 18 Galaxy 18 is a Space Systems/Loral (SS/L) 1300-series hybrid communications satellite owned by Intelsat and located in geosynchronous orbit at 123° W longitude, serving the continental United States, Alaska, Hawaii, Mexico, and Canada with 24 ...

(Ku-band transponder 21). This was true of most of the company's stations. KFDF-CA lost its UPN affiliation in September 2006, when the network and

The WB The WB Television Network (for Warner Bros., or the "Frog Network", for its former mascot, Michigan J. Frog) was an American television network launched on terrestrial television, broadcast television on January 11, 1995, as a joint venture be ...

closed and merged to form

The CW Television Network ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in ...

. Equity Broadcasting originally announced that the station would affiliate with

MyNetworkTV MyNetworkTV (unofficially abbreviated MyTV, MyNet, MNT or MNTV, and sometimes referred to as My Network) is an American commercial broadcast television syndication service and former television network owned by Fox Corporation, operated by its ...

, instead of joining The CW, which had no over-the-air affiliate in Fort Smith until April 2008, when ABC affiliate KHBS (channel 40) launched a new CW-affiliated second subchannel. However, after KPBI-CA lost its Fox affiliation to then- NBC affiliate KFTA-TV (channel 24), Equity announced that KPBI-CA would join MyNetworkTV, and KFDF-CA would instead join Retro Television Network once UPN went off the air; KPBI was scheduled to join it once WB goes off the air but joined MyNetworkTV on September 22, 2006. On January 4, 2009, a contract conflict between Equity and Luken Communications (who had acquired RTN from Equity in June 2008), interrupted the programming on many RTN affiliates. As a result, Luken restored a national RTN feed from its headquarters in

Chattanooga, Tennessee Chattanooga ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Hamilton County, Tennessee, United States. Located along the Tennessee River bordering Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia, it also extends into Marion County, Tennessee, Marion County on its west ...

, via SES Americom-owned

satellite A satellite or artificial satellite is an object intentionally placed into orbit in outer space. Except for passive satellites, most satellites have an electricity generation system for equipment on board, such as solar panels or radioiso ...

AMC 9 (83.0°W), with individual feeds to non-Equity-owned affiliates to follow on a piecemeal basis. As a result, KFDF-CA lost its RTN affiliation immediately, though Luken vows to find a new affiliate for RTN in the area.TV Newsday: "Financial Dispute Disrupts RTN Diginet", 1/5/2009.
/ref> After failing to find a buyer at a bankruptcy auction, KFDF was sold to Pinnacle Media in August 2009 (after having initially been included in

Silver Point Finance Silver is a chemical element with the symbol Ag (from the Latin ', derived from the Proto-Indo-European ''h₂erǵ'': "shiny" or "white") and atomic number 47. A soft, white, lustrous transition metal, it exhibits the highest electrical cond ...

's acquisition on June 2 of several Equity stations), with Pinnacle assuming control under a

local marketing agreement In North American broadcasting, a local marketing agreement (LMA), or local management agreement, is a contract in which one company agrees to operate a radio or television station owned by another party. In essence, it is a sort of lease or tim ...

on August 5.

Technical information

Subchannels

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:

Analog-to-digital conversion

As a low-powered station, it is not impacted by the

2009 digital television transition The digital transition in the United States was the switchover from analog to exclusively digital broadcasting of terrestrial television programming. According to David Rehr, then president and CEO of the National Association of Broadcasters, th ...

. On September 25, 2013, the station turned off its analog signal.

Former translators

KKAF-LD 30 (UHF 30) in Fayetteville and KEGW-CD 33 (UHF 33) in Siloam Springs previously rebroadcast KFDF-CD as well, but are now carrying KSJF-CD.

References

External links

Galaxy 18 channel listing (Lyngsat)Archive of KPBI-CA promos from the 1990sArchive of KFDF-CA promos from the 1990s
{{Other Arkansas Stations Equity Media Holdings FDF-CD Television channels and stations established in 1988 Estrella TV affiliates Low-power television stations in the United States