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KHMT (channel 4) 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 ...
licensed to Hardin, Montana, United States, serving as 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 ...
affiliate for the Billings area. It is owned by
Mission Broadcasting Mission Broadcasting, Inc. is a television station group that owns 29 full-power television stations in 26 markets in the United States. The group's chair is Nancie Smith, the widow of David S. Smith, who founded the company in 1996 and died in 2 ...
, which maintains joint sales and
shared services Shared services is the provision of a service by one part of an organization or group where that service had previously been found in more than one part of the organization or group. Thus the funding and resourcing of the service is shared and the ...
agreements with
Nexstar Media Group Nexstar Media Group, Inc. is an American publicly traded media company with headquarters in Irving, Texas, Midtown Manhattan, and Chicago. The company is the largest television station owner in the United States, owning 197 television station ...
, owner of dual
ABC ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script. ABC or abc may also refer to: Arts, entertainment and media Broadcasting * Aliw Broadcasting Corporation, Philippine broadcast company * American Broadcasting Company, a commercial American ...
/ CW affiliate KSVI (channel 6), for the provision of certain services. The two stations share studios on South 24th Street West in Billings; KHMT's transmitter is located in unincorporated southeastern Yellowstone County (southeast of Indian Arrow). Mid-Rivers Communications (based in Circle, Montana) carries KHMT on
cable Cable may refer to: Mechanical * Nautical cable, an assembly of three or more ropes woven against the weave of the ropes, rendering it virtually waterproof * Wire rope, a type of rope that consists of several strands of metal wire laid into a hel ...
in
Glendive, Montana Glendive is a city in and the county seat of Dawson County, Montana, United States, and home to Dawson Community College. Glendive was established by the Northern Pacific Railway during the building of the railroad line. The town of Glendive is ...
(the smallest DMA in the U.S. according to Nielsen), as that market has no local Fox affiliate of its own.


History

The station signed on November 26, 1980, as KOUS-TV, owned by a company that shared two stockholders with
KYUS-TV KYUS-TV (channel 3) is a television station in Miles City, Montana, United States, broadcasting to eastern Montana from a transmitter northwest of the city. It operates as a full-time satellite of KULR-TV in Billings. The station is separately ...
(channel 3) in Miles City. In 1982, KOUS became a primary
NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast. It is one of NBCUniversal's ...
affiliate, which Billings lacked at the time; while the station already carried some NBC programming, it had primarily been an
independent station An independent station is a broadcast station, usually a television station, not affiliated with a larger broadcast television network, network. As such, it only broadcasts broadcast syndication, syndicated programs it has purchased; brokered pr ...
. Since 1968, NBC had largely been relegated to secondary clearances on
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
KTVQ KTVQ (channel 2) is a television station in Billings, Montana, United States, affiliated with CBS. Owned by the E. W. Scripps Company, it is part of the Montana Television Network, a statewide network of CBS-affiliated stations. KTVQ's studi ...
(channel 2) and ABC affiliate
KULR-TV KULR-TV (channel 8) is a television station in Billings, Montana, United States, affiliated with NBC and owned by the Cowles Company. The station's studios are located on Overland Avenue in the Homestead Business Park section of Billings, and i ...
(channel 8)—as was
PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educat ...
until 1984. Billings was one of the last markets in the nation to receive full service from all three networks. In 1984, the ownership of KOUS and KYUS was formally consolidated when KOUS' owners bought KYUS for $200,000; afterward, KYUS, which had been a separate station, became a satellite of KOUS. This created an instance of a satellite station older than its parent, as KYUS signed on in 1969. In 1987, NBC chose to move its affiliation from KOUS-TV to KULR-TV (which had been a primary affiliate of the network from 1958 to 1968) effective that August; at that time, the stations swapped affiliations, and channel 4 picked up KULR's former ABC affiliation. That September, KOUS' programming began to be simulcast in
Bozeman Bozeman ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Gallatin County, Montana, United States. The 2020 United States census put Bozeman's population at 53,293, making it Montana's fourth-largest city. It is the principal city of the Bozeman, Montan ...
on new station KCTZ. Shortly afterward, the station's owner changed its name from KOUS-TV, Inc. to Big Horn Communications. KOUS-TV's tower was located east of Billings, which resulted in difficult reception in portions of the city; as a result, in 1987, the station established a translator, K25BP channel 25, in Billings. Big Horn subsequently obtained a
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 ...
for channel 6 in Billings (a channel that was originally intended to be used on a noncommercial basis in Miles City before being reallocated to Billings). On January 8, 1993, KOUS-TV signed off from channel 4, and the KOUS intellectual unit moved to channel 6 as KSVI, which inherited KOUS' ABC affiliation. KOUS' satellite stations, KYUS-TV and KCTZ, immediately became satellites of KSVI; translator K25BP also began to carry channel 6's programming. (KYUS is now a satellite of KULR-TV, while KCTZ is now KBZK, a satellite of
KXLF-TV KXLF-TV (channel 4) is a television station in Butte, Montana, United States, affiliated with CBS. Owned by the E. W. Scripps Company, it is part of the Montana Television Network (MTN), a statewide network of CBS-affiliated stations. KXLF-TV's ...
in
Butte In geomorphology, a butte ( ) is an isolated hill with steep, often vertical sides and a small, relatively flat top; buttes are smaller landforms than mesas, plateaus, and table (landform), tablelands. The word ''butte'' comes from the French l ...
.) The following year, Big Horn sold the channel 4 license to the National Indian Media Foundation, which entered into a
local marketing agreement In North American broadcasting, a local marketing agreement (LMA), or local management agreement, is a contract in which one corporation, company agrees to operate a radio station, radio or television station owned by another party. In essence, it ...
with KSVI. The agreement allowed channel 4 to resume broadcasting August 16, 1995, as Fox affiliate KHMT, operating from the same tower it had used as KOUS. Under the foundation's ownership, KHMT claimed to be the only full power television station to have 100 percent Native American ownership; the station was also the first primary Fox affiliate in Montana. Between 1991 and 1994,
Foxnet Foxnet was a national cable programming service of the Fox Broadcasting Company (known simply as Fox) that was owned by the Fox Entertainment Group division of News Corporation. The service, which operated (in its original form) from June 6, 1991 ...
served as the network's cable-only affiliate for the Billings market; this ended when KSVI became a secondary affiliate of Fox, which lasted for approximately one year. By 1997, KHMT had added a secondary affiliation with
UPN The United Paramount Network (UPN) was an American broadcast television network that operated from 1995 to 2006. It was originally a joint venture between Chris-Craft Industries (later sold to News Corporation)'s subsidiary, United Television, ...
, shared with KSVI; this continued until that network shut down in 2006. Wolf Mountain Broadcasting, the subsidiary of the National Indian Media Foundation that became the station's licensee in 1997, sold KHMT to VHR Broadcasting in 2002. In 2003, Mission Broadcasting acquired the station from VHR; the sale coincided with the merger of Quorum Broadcasting (which by then owned KSVI) with Nexstar.


News operation

KOUS-TV first started a news operation in 1982; this newscast was short-lived and was eventually canceled. As KHMT, another news operation, shared with sister station KSVI, was launched on April 18, 2002; after 18 months, the newscasts were canceled in September 2003, following Nexstar taking control of the stations. Though the news operation had won Montana Broadcasters Association and
Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American not-for-profit organization, not-for-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association, and produces news reports that are dist ...
awards during its run, it was not successful in the ratings: KHMT's prime time newscast reportedly pulled in only 3 percent viewing shares, putting it behind KTVQ and KULR in a distant third. At the time, Nexstar said ending the news operation would mean the difference between a profit and a loss. Local officials were also thrown off by KHMT reporters, who were aggressive about their news coverage and questioning in a manner not previously known in the state among other news operations.


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— ...
:


Translators

* Billings * Bridger * Colstrip * Dodson *
Emigrant Emigration is the act of leaving a resident country or place of residence with the intent to settle elsewhere (to permanently leave a country). Conversely, immigration describes the movement of people into one country from another (to permanentl ...
* Forsyth * Harlowton, etc. * Livingston *
Malta Malta, officially the Republic of Malta, is an island country in Southern Europe located in the Mediterranean Sea, between Sicily and North Africa. It consists of an archipelago south of Italy, east of Tunisia, and north of Libya. The two ...
* Miles City * Phillips County * Roundup * Saco * Sand Springs * White Sulphur Springs *
Whitewater Whitewater forms in the context of rapids, in particular, when a river's Stream gradient, gradient changes enough to generate so much turbulence that air is trapped within the water. This forms an unstable current that foam, froths, making t ...


Analog-to-digital conversion

KHMT's broadcasts became digital-only, effective June 12, 2009.


References


External links

* {{NXST TV 1980 establishments in Montana Court TV affiliates Fox Broadcasting Company affiliates Ion Television affiliates Laff (TV network) affiliates Nexstar Media Group Television channels and stations established in 1980 HMT