KNBN (channel 21) 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 ...

Rapid City, South Dakota Rapid City is the county seat of Pennington County, South Dakota, United States. It is located on the eastern slope of the Black Hills in western South Dakota and was named after Rapid Creek (South Dakota), Rapid Creek, where the settlement deve ...

, United States, affiliated with

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 ...

and

MyNetworkTV MyNetworkTV (stylized as mynetworkTV; unofficially abbreviated MNT or MNTV) is an American commercial broadcast television syndication service and former television network owned by Fox Corporation, operated by its Fox Television Stations ...

. Owned by

Forum Communications Company Forum Communications Company is an American multimedia and technology company headquartered in Fargo, North Dakota. With multiple online and print news brands throughout Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin, Forum Communications of ...

, the station maintains studios on South Plaza Drive in Rapid City, and its transmitter is located on Cowboy Hill west of downtown.

History

In March 1996, KEVN-TV's owner, Blackstar, announced plans to affiliate the longtime NBC outlet for the Rapid City area 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; Fox held an equity stake in Blackstar. This presented the possibility that Rapid City would be left without an NBC affiliate. Locally based Rapid Broadcasting, whose president Gilbert Moyle had been a part-owner of KEVN from 1973 to 1985, bought low-power TV station K24AM, a primarily Christian outlet which had broadcast since the mid-1980s, and increased its transmitter power. It also obtained the NBC affiliation for Rapid City for the low-power outlet, all with a month to go. KNBN-LP (channel 24, later KKRA-LP) officially launched July 15, the date that KEVN switched to Fox, and immediately appeared on local cable systems (including channel 10 in Rapid City). KNBN launched without a local news presence. In December 1996, it began producing news cut-ins during ''

Today Today (archaically to-day) may refer to: * The current day and calendar date ** Today is between and , subject to the local time zone * Now, the time that is perceived directly, present * The current, present era Arts, entertainment and m ...

''. A full news service debuted September 22, 1997, as ''NewsCenter1'', airing at 6 and 10 p.m. nightly; the early evening time slot contrasted with KOTA and KEVN, who presented their main news at 5:30. By the time that newscast had debuted, KNBN-LP—call sign and programming—had moved from the channel 24 station to channel 27 in Rapid City with a translator on channel 31 in Lead; the next year, KKRA became an affiliate of

Pax TV Ion Television (referred to on-air as simply Ion) is an American terrestrial television, broadcast television network and Free ad-supported streaming television, FAST television channel owned by the Scripps Networks subsidiary of the E. W. Scri ...

. The channel 27 and 31 construction permits had been held by the Plaza Boulevard Wesleyan Church. Rapid Broadcasting had been one of 11 applicants seeking to obtain a full-power license on channel 21. The passage of the

Telecommunications Act of 1996 The Telecommunications Act of 1996 is a United States federal law enacted by the 104th United States Congress on January 3, 1996, and signed into law on February 8, 1996, by President Bill Clinton. It primarily amended Chapter 5 of Title 47 of ...

and

Balanced Budget Act of 1997 The Balanced Budget Act of 1997 () was an omnibus legislative package enacted by the United States Congress, using the budget Reconciliation (U.S. Congress), reconciliation process, and designed to balance the federal budget by 2002. This act w ...

forced 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) to scrap the

comparative hearing The comparative hearing process was used by the United States Federal Radio Commission from 1927 to 1934 and its successor, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), from 1934 to 1994 for the evaluation of mutually exclusive applications for b ...

process and led to the auction of the assignment in September 1999. Rapid made the winning bid, holding off four other hopefuls, notably including

Sunbelt Communications Company Intermountain West Communications Company (formerly Sunbelt Communications Company) was an American telecommunications company, formerly owned by James E. Rogers (1938–2014), that remains as the licensee company for a number of local televisio ...

. KNBN began broadcasting at full power on channel 21 on May 14, 2000. On August 14, 2024, it was announced KNBN (and KWBH-LD) would be sold to

Fargo, North Dakota Fargo is the List of cities in North Dakota, most populous city in the U.S. state of North Dakota and the county seat of Cass County, North Dakota, Cass County. The population was 125,990 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, which was e ...

–based

, which owns former sister station KSFL-TV in

Sioux Falls Sioux Falls ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of South Dakota and the 117th-most populous city in the United States. It is the county seat of Minnehaha County and also extends into northern Lincoln County. The population was 192 ...

. The sale was completed on October 2.

News operation

KNBN presently broadcasts 16 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with three hours each weekday and a half-hour each on Saturdays and Sundays).

Technical information

Subchannels

The signals of KNBN and KWBH-LD are

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

* Gillette, WY *

Lead Lead () is a chemical element; it has Chemical symbol, symbol Pb (from Latin ) and atomic number 82. It is a Heavy metal (elements), heavy metal that is density, denser than most common materials. Lead is Mohs scale, soft and Ductility, malleabl ...

* 25

Rapid City Rapid City is the county seat of Pennington County, South Dakota, United States. It is located on the eastern slope of the Black Hills in western South Dakota and was named after Rapid Creek, where the settlement developed. It is the second-mo ...

* 27 Rapid City

Analog-to-digital conversion

KNBN shut down its analog signal, over

UHF 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 ...

channel 21, on February 1, 2009, and "

flash-cut A flash cut, also called a flash cutover, is an immediate change in a complex system, with no phase-in period. In the United States, some telephone area codes were split or overlaid immediately, rather than being phased in with a permissive di ...

" its digital signal into operation on channel 21.FCC 387 DTV transition status report 2008/05/08
/ref> The "flash-cut" was necessary as the station had its 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 ...

granted after the FCC finalized the DTV allotment plan on April 27, 1997; as a result, the station did not have a companion channel for a digital signal.

References

External links

* {{Forum Communications 2000 establishments in South Dakota Forum Communications Company MyNetworkTV affiliates NBC affiliates Television channels and stations established in 2000 NBN