KNHL (channel 5) 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

Hastings, Nebraska Hastings is a List of cities in Nebraska, city in and the county seat of Adams County, Nebraska, Adams County, Nebraska, United States. The population was 25,152 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the List of cities in Neb ...

, United States, affiliated with

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 ...

. It is a full-power

satellite A satellite or an artificial satellite is an object, typically a spacecraft, placed into orbit around a celestial body. They have a variety of uses, including communication relay, weather forecasting, navigation ( GPS), broadcasting, scient ...

of Lincoln-based KCWH-LD (channel 18) which is owned by

Gray Media 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 ...

. As KHAS-TV, it formerly served as the

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 for the western side 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 ...

. KNHL is a

sister station In broadcasting, sister stations or sister channels are radio or television stations operated by the same company, either by direct ownership or through a management agreement. Radio sister stations will often have different formats, and somet ...

to NBC affiliate KSNB-TV (channel 4) in

York York is a cathedral city in North Yorkshire, England, with Roman Britain, Roman origins, sited at the confluence of the rivers River Ouse, Yorkshire, Ouse and River Foss, Foss. It has many historic buildings and other structures, such as a Yor ...

and

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 ...

affiliates KOLN/KGIN (channels 10 and 11) in Lincoln and Grand Island. KNHL's transmitter is located on US 281 north of Hastings. In 2014, Gray acquired

Hoak Media Hoak Media Corporation was a broadcast media company based in Dallas, Texas. Hoak once owned eighteen television stations (including satellites), all in medium and small-markets, mostly in the Great Plains states and Colorado. Hoak Media was e ...

; as it already owned the three aforementioned stations (KOLN/KGIN and KSNB) in the same market, it planned to sell KHAS to the shell company Excalibur Broadcasting and operate KHAS under a

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 ...

agreement (SSA). As a result of growing FCC scrutiny towards " virtual duopolies", Gray instead let KHAS fall silent on June 13, 2014, and its programming and news operation were relocated to KSNB-TV, pending a sale of KHAS-TV to a minority owned broadcaster, Legacy Broadcasting. In September 2018, Gray agreed to purchase KNHL.

History

KNHL was founded in 1956 as KHAS-TV by a group of local investors headed by Fred A. Seaton, publisher of the '' Hastings Tribune'' newspaper and Secretary of the Interior during the

Eisenhower Administration Dwight D. Eisenhower's tenure as the 34th president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 1953, and ended on January 20, 1961. Eisenhower, a Republican from Kansas, took office following his landslide victor ...

. It took its calls from KHAS radio, which Seaton had founded in 1940. In 1967, it was one of the first stations in the area to acquire color broadcasting equipment. The Seaton family owned KHAS-TV until 1997, when it was sold to Dick Shively and Ulysses Carlini Sr., owners of North Platte TV stations KNOP-TV and K11TW, operating the three stations under the name Greater Nebraska Television. In 2005, Greater Nebraska Television sold the stations to

. The station's studio was located north of Hastings on US 281. The transmitter tower was located next to the studio. KHAS-TV was formerly rebroadcast on

translator station A broadcast relay station, also known as a satellite station, relay transmitter, broadcast translator (U.S.), re-broadcaster (Canada), repeater (two-way radio) or complementary station (Mexico), is a broadcast transmitter which repeats (or tran ...

K14IY in Holdrege; this translator went dark in 2009. KHAS-TV was later also carried on K02HJ in Ord and K35AL analog channel 35 in

Lexington, Nebraska Lexington is a city in Dawson County, Nebraska, United States. The population was 10,348 at the 2020 census, making it the 16th most populous city in Nebraska. It is the county seat of Dawson County. Lexington is located in southern Nebraska, ...

. All three translators broadcast an analog signal. K35AL formerly carried programming from sister station KNOP-TV but Lexington is in the Lincoln–Hastings–Kearney market while North Platte is a separate market. Both local and national programming on KHAS was carried in high definition. Starting around 2004, KHAS began branding itself as a full-market NBC station, challenging the long-standing status of

Omaha Omaha ( ) is the List of cities in Nebraska, most populous city in the U.S. state of Nebraska. It is located in the Midwestern United States along the Missouri River, about north of the mouth of the Platte River. The nation's List of United S ...

WOWT WOWT (channel 6) is a television station in Omaha, Nebraska, United States, affiliated with NBC and owned by Gray Media. The station's studios are located at the Kiewit Plaza on Farnam Street near downtown Omaha, and its transmitter is locate ...

as the default NBC affiliate in the capital. It identified as "Hastings/Kearney/Grand Island/Lincoln" on-air and on its Website. It was also available on the Lincoln

DirecTV DirecTV, LLC is an American Multichannel television in the United States, multichannel video programming distributor based in El Segundo, California. Originally launched on June 17, 1994, its primary service is a digital Satellite television, s ...

and

Dish Network DISH Network L.L.C., often referred to as DISH, an abbreviation for Digital Sky Highway, is an American provider of satellite television and IPTV services and wholly owned subsidiary of EchoStar Corporation. The company was originally establ ...

feeds as the local NBC station, boosting its potential audience to over 700,000 people across Nebraska and

Kansas Kansas ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Nebraska to the north; Missouri to the east; Oklahoma to the south; and Colorado to the west. Kansas is named a ...

. In June 2012, KHAS and other Hoak-owned stations were pulled from

after they failed to renew a carriage agreement. The refusal to renew reportedly surrounds Dish Network's "Hopper"

digital video recorder A digital video recorder (DVR), also referred to as a personal video recorder (PVR) particularly in Canadian and British English, is an electronic device that records video in a digital format to a disk drive, USB flash drive, SD memory card, SS ...

and its controversial commercial-skipping feature ''AutoHop''which has also led to complaints from the major U.S. television networks.

Shutdown and sale

On November 20, 2013,

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 ...

announced it would purchase Hoak Media in a $335 million deal. As Gray already owned

KOLN KOLN (channel 10) and KGIN (channel 11) are television stations licensed respectively to Lincoln and Grand Island, Nebraska, United States, serving as the CBS affiliates for southeastern and central Nebraska. Owned by Gray Media and jointly b ...

/KGIN, KHAS was to be sold to Excalibur Broadcasting and operated by Gray under 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 ...

. However, in the wake of heightened FCC scrutiny of local marketing agreements, on June 11, 2014, KHAS-TV announced it would leave the air at midnight on June 13 and NBC programming would be moved to KSNB-TV and the digital subcarrier of KOLN/KGIN. KHAS would then be sold off to minority interests, which under this arrangement would allow the station to return to the air on the conditions that the new owner operate the station independently (under minority, female and/or non-profit ownership) and not make any partnerships or sharing arrangements with other broadcasters. On August 27, 2014, Gray announced that it would sell KHAS-TV along with KAQY, KNDX, and KXND to Legacy Broadcasting, a new broadcasting company controlled by Sherry Nelson and daughter Sara Jane Ingram. On December 1, 2014, the call letters became KNHL. The sale was completed on December 15. Legacy returned KNHL to the air June 6, 2015 as an affiliate of the SonLife Broadcasting Network. On May 21, 2018, Gray agreed to acquire KNHL from Legacy Broadcasting for $475,000; in filing for FCC approval of the purchase in September 2018, Gray proposed to operate the station as a satellite of KSNB-TV. In connection with the sale, Gray began leasing KNHL's third digital subchannel on September 1, 2018, to simulcast KCWH-LD, Gray's Lincoln-based CW affiliate (through

); the affiliation formally launched on October 1. The sale of the station was approved on February 12, 2019. The sale was completed on March 1, reuniting KNHL with many of its former Hoak Media sisters. Upon completion of the sale, KNHL was converted into a satellite station of KSNB-DT1, KSNB-DT2, and KSNB-DT3 (on 5.2, 5.1, and 5.4, respectively) and KCWH-LD1 (on 5.3). Through the utilization of updated

multiplexer In electronics, a multiplexer (or mux; spelled sometimes as multiplexor), also known as a data selector, is a device that selects between several Analog signal, analog or Digital signal (electronics), digital input signals and forwards the sel ...

equipment, NBC and CW+ programming is being aired in high definition on 5.2 and 5.3, respectively (although in

720p 720p (720 lines progressive) is a progressive HD signal format with 720 horizontal lines/1280 columns and an aspect ratio (AR) of 16:9, normally known as widescreen HD (1.78:1). All major HD broadcasting standards (such as SMPTE 292M) includ ...

for both HD feeds; the KSNB-DT1 simulcast is downconverted from the native

1080i In high-definition television (HDTV) and video display technology, 1080i is a video display format with 1080 lines of vertical resolution and Interlaced video, interlaced scanning method. This format was once a standard in HDTV. It was particular ...

resolution of the NBC network), with MyNetworkTV and MeTV programming on 5.1 and Ion Television programming on 5.4 airing in 16:9

standard definition Standard-definition television (SDTV; also standard definition or SD) is a television system that uses a resolution that is not considered to be either high or enhanced definition. ''Standard'' refers to offering a similar resolution to the ...

News operation

KHAS-TV produced 16 hours of local news per week, with 3 hours each weekday and 30 minutes on Saturday and Sunday. Newscasts aired weekdays at 6 and 11:30 a.m., weeknights at 5 and 6 p.m., and seven nights a week at 10 p.m. Upon the station going dark on June 13, 2014, the entire news operation moved to KSNB-TV.

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— ...

: In September 2005, KHAS-TV began operating NBC Weather Plus (known as "News 5 Weather Plus") on digital subchannel 5.2 and until 2008, it was the only Hoak Media-owned NBC affiliate to carry the network when it was dropped due to

NBCUniversal NBCUniversal Media, LLC (abbreviated as NBCU and Trade name, doing business as NBCUniversal or Comcast NBCUniversal since 2013) is an American Multinational corporation, multinational mass media and Show business, entertainment conglomerate (comp ...

's purchase of

The Weather Channel The Weather Channel (TWC) is an American pay television television channel, channel owned by Weather Group, LLC, a subsidiary of Allen Media Group. The channel's headquarters are located in Atlanta, Georgia. Launched on May 2, 1982, the channel ...

. In September 2010, KHAS-TV digital subchannel 5.2 switched from a standard-definition simulcast to

This TV This TV (also known as This TV Network and alternately stylized as thisTV) was an American free-to-air television network owned by Allen Media Broadcast Networks, LLC, part of the Allen Media Group division of Entertainment Studios. Originally ...

. It identified locally as "This Nebraska". On November 1, 2013, KHAS replaced This TV with Cozi TV.

Analog-to-digital conversion

KNHL (as KHAS-TV) shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 5, on December 1, 2008. The station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition

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 to VHF channel 5. Due to Nebraska's cold winter weather, the station elected to make the transition early rather than on the national February 17, 2009, analog shutoff date. The digital signal on channel 5 is one of only 48 full-power stations in the United States to broadcast digitally using a low-VHF/Band I channel.

References

External links

Nebraska Broadcasting Association profile of Fred A. Seaton
{{DEFAULTSORT:Knhl 1956 establishments in Nebraska Court TV affiliates The CW affiliates Gray Media Ion Television affiliates Start TV affiliates Television channels and stations established in 1956

NHL The National Hockey League (NHL; , ''LNH'') is a professional ice hockey league in North America composed of 32 teams25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. The NHL is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Cana ...