KFXL-TV
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KFXL-TV (channel 51) 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 earth's s ...
in
Lincoln, Nebraska Lincoln is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Nebraska. The city covers and had a population of 291,082 as of the 2020 census. It is the state's List of cities in Nebraska, second-most populous city a ...
, United States, serving as the Fox affiliate for southern and central Nebraska, including
Hastings Hastings ( ) is a seaside town and Borough status in the United Kingdom, borough in East Sussex on the south coast of England, east of Lewes and south east of London. The town gives its name to the Battle of Hastings, which took place to th ...
, Kearney, and Grand Island. The station is owned by the
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 the Nebraska Television Network (NTV), the ABC affiliate for the western portion of the Lincoln–Hastings–Kearney
market Market is a term used to describe concepts such as: *Market (economics), system in which parties engage in transactions according to supply and demand *Market economy *Marketplace, a physical marketplace or public market *Marketing, the act of sat ...
, and is also broadcast as a
subchannel In broadcasting, digital subchannels are a method of transmitting more than one independent program stream simultaneously from the same digital radio or television station on the same radio frequency channel. This is done by using data compressi ...
of the NTV stations in Kearney, Hayes Center, and McCook. The two stations share studios on Nebraska Highway 44 in Axtell, about south of Kearney; KFXL-TV's transmitter is located on Yankee Hill Road in southeast Lincoln. Five applicants sought channel 51 in Lincoln, with World Broadcasting, a subsidiary of the ''
Omaha World-Herald The ''Omaha World-Herald'' is a daily newspaper in the midwestern United States, the primary newspaper of the Omaha-Council Bluffs metropolitan area. It was locally owned from its founding in 1885 until 2020, when it was sold to the newspaper ...
'' newspaper, emerging as the permittee in 2003. KFXL-TV went on the air in 2006 as KOWH, an affiliate of
The WB The WB Television Network (shortened to The WB, stylized as "THE WB", and nicknamed the "Frog Network" and/or "The Frog" for its former mascot Michigan J. Frog) was an American television network that ran from 1995 to 2006. It launched on ter ...
. Pappas Telecasting, the then-owner of NTV, provided services. It was earmarked to switch to
The CW The CW Network, LLC (commonly referred to as The CW or simply CW) is an American commercial broadcast television network which is controlled by Nexstar Media Group through a 75% ownership interest. The network's name is derived from the firs ...
and changed its
call sign 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 unique identifier for a transmitter station. A call sign can be formally as ...
to KCWL-TV. In June 2009, KCWL-TV simultaneously converted from analog to digital broadcasting and from The CW to Fox, gradually replacing KTVG-TV and KSNB-TV as the Fox affiliate. Pappas acquired the station outright in 2014 before KFXL and NTV were sold at auction to Sinclair in 2015. The station airs a weeknight 9 p.m. newscast produced by NTV.


History


Establishment and WB/CW affiliation

In 1996, World Broadcasting, Incorporated, a subsidiary of the ''
Omaha World-Herald The ''Omaha World-Herald'' is a daily newspaper in the midwestern United States, the primary newspaper of the Omaha-Council Bluffs metropolitan area. It was locally owned from its founding in 1885 until 2020, when it was sold to the newspaper ...
'' newspaper, applied to the
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) seeking approval to build a station on channel 51 in Lincoln. It expected to involve Pappas Telecasting in the operation of the new station. The two open
ultra high frequency 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 ...
(UHF) channels in Lincoln, channels 45 and 51, had each received multiple applications. In the case of channel 51, World Broadcasting was competing with Anthony J. Fant, who at the same time was in the process of selling the Nebraska Television Network (NTV) to Pappas. By 1999, the field of applicants for channel 51 had grown to five with David M. Comisar, Prime Broadcasting Company, and Lincoln 51 LLC filing proposals. The FCC granted World Broadcasting the construction permit in 2003, three years after the five applicants had reached a joint settlement agreement; the FCC at one point had dismissed World's application on technical grounds related to interference to new Class A stations but reinstated the application. World then intended to transfer the license to CFM Communications, a company owned by Carol Miller, which would contract with Pappas for construction, sales, and programming services. The FCC initially approved the deal in 2005, over the objections of
Gray Television Gray Media, Inc., doing business as Gray Television, is an American publicly traded television broadcasting company based in Atlanta. Founded in 1946 by James Harrison Gray as Gray Communications Systems, the company owns or operates 180 statio ...
(owner of the region's CBS affiliate, KOLN/KGIN). Gray believed that Pappas would continue to exercise ''de facto'' control over the station under CFM ownership. However, weeks later, the FCC rescinded this approval. This occurred after Mitts Telecasting, owner of Pappas-managed KXVO in Omaha, filed with the FCC the transcript of a deposition made by Miller in a lawsuit involving CFM and Mitts. In a letter, the head of the FCC Media Bureau's Video Division noted, " e sworn statements made by Ms. Miller in her deposition raise serious questions regarding the truthfulness of representations made in CFM's application to acquire Lincoln roadcasting, a subsidiary holding the channel 51 permitfrom World roadcasting. KFXL signed on June 26, 2006, as KOWH, an affiliate of
The WB Television Network The WB Television Network (shortened to The WB, stylized as "THE WB", and nicknamed the "Frog Network" and/or "The Frog" for its former mascot Michigan J. Frog) was an American television network that ran from 1995 to 2006. It launched on br ...
. The station derived its call sign from the ''World-Herald''; the newspaper outsourced most of the station's operations to Pappas, which provided marketing, sales and programming services to the station. Before KOWH signed on, The WB was seen either via KXVO in Omaha or a cable-only WB 100+ station, "KWBL", which Pappas operated alongside NTV. KOWH also used the WB 100+ service. (This article uses the much older "WeB" name for WB 100+.) Five months before KOWH's sign-on, The WB and UPN had announced that they would close and form
The CW Television Network The CW Network, LLC (commonly referred to as The CW or simply CW) is an American commercial broadcast television network which is controlled by Nexstar Media Group through a 75% ownership interest. The network's name is derived from the first ...
. Pappas had obtained the affiliation for KOWH by the time it signed on, and to reflect this affiliation, the station changed its call sign to KCWL-TV on August 1, 2006. KCWL operated as a member of
The CW Plus The CW Plus is a secondary national broadcast television broadcast syndication, syndication service feed of The CW, whose controlling stake of 75% is owned by Nexstar Media Group, with Paramount Global and Warner Bros. Discovery holding their ow ...
, successor of The WB 100+. On September 1, 2006, KCWL was added to the primary cable system in Lincoln,
Time Warner Cable Time Warner Cable Enterprises LLC was an American cable television company. Before it was acquired by Charter Communications on May 18, 2016, it was ranked the second largest cable company in the United States by revenue behind only Comcast, o ...
, on channel 18 in their low basic cable tier. Because it was granted an original
construction permit Planning permission or building permit refers to the approval needed for construction or expansion (including significant renovation), and sometimes for demolition, in some jurisdictions. House building permits, for example, are subject to bu ...
after the FCC finalized the
digital television Digital television (DTV) is the transmission of television signals using Digital signal, digital encoding, in contrast to the earlier analog television technology which used analog signals. At the time of its development it was considered an ...
allotment plan on April 21, 1997, the station did not receive a companion digital channel. It was thus required to flash-cut to a digital signal when analog broadcasting formally ended on June 12, 2009.


Switch to Fox

On June 3, 2009, Pappas Telecasting announced that KCWL would drop its CW affiliation upon the shutdown of the analog transmitter, leaving the Lincoln–Hastings–Kearney market without an over-the-air CW station. The station turned off its analog signal on June 9. When it returned as a digital-only station on June 12, it did so as Fox affiliate KFXL-TV, airing the same programming as KTVG-TV (channel 17) and KSNB-TV (channel 4). The primary Fox affiliate on Lincoln cable systems was Pappas-owned KPTM in Omaha, though KSNB-TV also operated two analog translators in Lincoln and had been added to the Time Warner Cable lineup in 2003 because of its secondary carriage of UPN programming. Steve Harry, general manager of NTV/KFXL, stated that the move was made to increase viewership of his station due to most viewers in Lincoln choosing KXVO, which Time Warner Cable had continued to carry, for CW programming. It also had been a longstanding ambition of Pappas, since the late 1990s, to build a full-power Fox station in Lincoln. KPTM continued to be carried in high definition by Time Warner Cable until 2012. The launch of KFXL kickstarted a year in which Fox programming moved from all of its prior major transmitters. The new KFXL was added as a subchannel to the two high-power NTV stations, KHGI-TV in Kearney and KWNB-TV in Hayes Center. KSNB-TV and its Lincoln translators left the air on December 1, 2009, after Pappas terminated the time brokerage agreement with KSNB-TV owner Colins Broadcasting Corporation; KTVG-TV left the air on April 5, 2010. On June 9, 2010, KFXL-TV was purchased from the ''World-Herald'' by T. Stanley Trapp of
Visalia, California Visalia ( ) is a city in the agricultural San Joaquin Valley of California. The population was 141,384 as per the 2020 census. Visalia is the fifth-most populous city in the San Joaquin Valley, the 38th most populous in California, and 183 ...
, in a $300,000 deal first reached in December 2006 but not approved until March 30, 2010. Originally broadcast on channel 51, KFXL-TV received approval to switch to channel 15 in 2012 as part of a proposed facility improvement. Channel 51 was already being sunsetted to reduce interference to telecommunications users. While an upgrade of the signal to the maximum power of 1,000 kW was originally proposed, this was changed to a small power increase (to 21.5 kW) before a license to cover the channel change was requested in November 2014. Trapp agreed to sell the station to Pappas outright for $300,000 on October 30, 2014; in the filing with the FCC, Pappas stated that KFXL's signal did not significantly overlap the signal of KHGI-TV. In August 2015, the liquidating trust for Pappas announced that it was soliciting bids for a bankruptcy auction of the company's central Nebraska stations, which took place on October 27, 2015. Of the four companies that participated in the auction,
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 ...
emerged as the winning bidder and announced on November 4, 2015, that it had agreed to purchase NTV and KFXL for $31.25 million. The sale was completed on May 1, 2016. The tower in north Lincoln that housed KFXL-TV's antenna collapsed on October 20, 2017. Reduced-power operation from a new site began on January 12, 2018.


Newscasts

KFXL airs a 9 p.m. newscast produced by NTV.


Subchannels


References


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Kfxl-Tv 2006 establishments in Nebraska Fox Broadcasting Company affiliates Mass media in Lincoln, Nebraska Sinclair Broadcast Group Roar (TV network) affiliates Television channels and stations established in 2006 FXL-TV