KQUP (channel 24) is a
religious television station
Religious broadcasting, sometimes referred to as faith-based broadcasts, is the dissemination of television and/or radio content that intentionally has religious ideas, religious experience, or religious practice as its core focus. In some coun ...
in
Pullman, Washington
Pullman is the most populous city in Whitman County, located in southeastern Washington within the Palouse region of the Pacific Northwest. The population was 32,901 at the 2020 census, and estimated to be 32,508 in 2022. Originally founded as ...
, United States, serving the
Spokane
Spokane ( ) is the most populous city in eastern Washington and the county seat of Spokane County, Washington, United States. It lies along the Spokane River, adjacent to the Selkirk Mountains, and west of the Rocky Mountain foothills, south ...
television market
A media market, broadcast market, media region, designated market area (DMA), television market area, or simply market is a region where the population can receive the same (or similar) television and radio station offerings, and may also incl ...
as an
owned-and-operated station
In the broadcasting industry, an owned-and-operated station (frequently abbreviated as an O&O) usually refers to a television or radio station owned by the network with which it is associated. This distinguishes such a station from an network af ...
of the
Daystar Television Network
The Daystar Television Network commonly known as Daystar Television or just Daystar, is an American evangelical Christian-based religious television network owned by the Word of God Fellowship, founded by Marcus Lamb in 1993. Daystar is headqu ...
. The station's main transmitter is located atop
Tekoa Mountain. A
low-power broadcast translator
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 ...
, KQUP-LD (channel 14), serves as a supplement to KQUP for coverage of Spokane and
Coeur d'Alene, Idaho
Coeur d'Alene ( ; ) is a city and the county seat of Kootenai County, Idaho, United States. It is the most populous city in North Idaho and the principal city of the Coeur d'Alene Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 54,628 at th ...
.
Equity Media Holdings
Equity Media Holdings Corporation was a broadcasting company based in Little Rock, Arkansas, that owned and operated television stations across the United States. Prior to March 30, 2007, the company was known as Equity Broadcasting, a name late ...
built KQUP in 2004 after significant delays. By way of the Spokane translator and cable, in 2002, it replaced
KSKN
KSKN (channel 22) is a television station in Spokane, Washington, United States, affiliated with The CW. It is owned by Tegna Inc. alongside CBS affiliate KREM (channel 2). The two stations share studios on South Regal Street in the Southgate ...
as the
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, ...
affiliate in Spokane until switching to the
Retro Television Network
Retro TV (stylized as retrotv), formerly known as Retro Television Network, is an American broadcast television network owned by Get After It Media. The network mainly airs classic television sitcoms and drama series from the 1950s through t ...
at the start of 2006. Equity entered bankruptcy reorganization in 2008; the station lost RTN programming in 2009 as the result of a contract dispute with the network and was then sold at auction to Daystar.
History
A construction permit for channel 24, originally assigned the call sign KBGC, was awarded in 1998, but it was not for years that the station began broadcasting as intended. The construction of KQUP was fraught with difficulties. Equity had hoped to start broadcasting at full power by September 1, but by that time, only K47EJ, a translator in
Coeur d'Alene (the present KQUP-LD), was ready.
Consequently, the vast majority of cable and broadcast viewers lost UPN programming. Doug Krile, Equity's corporate public relations director, told the ''
Lewiston Morning Tribune
''The Lewiston Morning Tribune'' is an independently owned newspaper in the northwestern United States, located in Lewiston, Idaho. Founded in 1892, it serves eight counties in north-central Idaho and south eastern Washington, the southern por ...
'' in late September, "This was not the timetable everything was supposed to be operating on."
Equipment delays, including the shipping of a transmitter from Italy to the United States, and lease negotiations with
Washington State University
Washington State University (WSU, or colloquially Wazzu) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Pullman, Washington, United States. Founded in 1890, WSU is also one of the oldest Land-grant uni ...
for use of a tower held up completion of the facility. As an interim solution, KSKN contracted with UPN to air ''
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
''Buffy the Vampire Slayer'' is an American supernatural fiction, supernatural drama television series created by writer and director Joss Whedon. The concept is based on the Buffy the Vampire Slayer (film), 1992 film, also written by Whedon, a ...
'' and ''
WWE SmackDown
''WWE SmackDown'', also known as ''Friday Night SmackDown'' or simply ''SmackDown'', is an American professional wrestling television program produced by WWE. It airs Live television, live every Friday at 8 p.m. Eastern Time (ET) on USA Netwo ...
'' from January 2003 through the end of the television season.
KQUP was added to the main
Comcast
Comcast Corporation, formerly known as Comcast Holdings,Before the AT&T Broadband, AT&T merger in 2001, the parent company was Comcast Holdings Corporation. Comcast Holdings Corporation now refers to a subsidiary of Comcast Corporation, not th ...
cable system in Spokane on May 1, 2003,
but the Pullman transmitter was relocated to another site and was not activated until April 19, 2004.
KQUP dropped UPN for
Retro TV
Retro TV (stylized as retrotv), formerly known as Retro Television Network, is an American terrestrial television, broadcast television network owned by Get After It Media. The network mainly airs classic television sitcoms and drama series f ...
on January 1, 2006; Rod Hall, the general manager, told ''
The Spokesman-Review
''The Spokesman-Review'' is a daily broadsheet newspaper based in Spokane, Washington, the city's sole remaining daily publication. It has the third-highest readership among daily newspapers in the state, with most of its readership base in ...
'', "In the long term, we just felt that UPN's shows were not ideally suited for the Spokane market."
The station also aired
Spokane Shock
The Spokane Shock were a professional indoor American football team based in Spokane, Washington, that played their home games at the Spokane Veterans Memorial Arena. The team was initially a member of arenafootball2 (af2), the Shock won divis ...
arena football.
On January 4, 2009, a contract conflict between Equity—which had filed the month before for
Chapter 11 bankruptcy
Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code ( Title 11 of the United States Code) permits reorganization under the bankruptcy laws of the United States. Such reorganization, known as Chapter 11 bankruptcy, is available to every business, w ...
—and RTN—which had been sold to
Luken Communications
Get After It Media LLC, formerly known as Luken Communications and Reach High Media Group, is a privately owned American broadcast holding company, based in Chattanooga, Tennessee
Chattanooga ( ) is a city in Hamilton County, Tennessee, U ...
in 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 Hamilton County, Tennessee, United States, and its county seat. It is located along the Tennessee River and borders Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the south. With a population of 181,099 in 2020, it is Tennessee ...
, with individual customized feeds to non-Equity-owned affiliates to follow on a piecemeal basis. KQUP lost its RTN affiliation immediately.
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
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) finalized the
DTV allotment plan on April 21, 1997, the station did not receive a companion channel for a digital
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 ...
. Instead, at the end of the digital TV conversion period for full-service stations, KQUP would have been required to turn off its
analog signal
An analog signal (American English) or analogue signal (British and Commonwealth English) is any continuous-time signal representing some other quantity, i.e., ''analogous'' to another quantity. For example, in an analog audio signal, the ins ...
and turn on its
digital signal
A digital signal is a signal that represents data as a sequence of discrete values; at any given time it can only take on, at most, one of a finite number of values. This contrasts with an analog signal, which represents continuous values; ...
(called a "
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 ...
"). Equity owned a significant number of such stations, and its financial condition meant that it owned a significant number of stations that needed digital conversion; the company warned the FCC that court approval and financing would be required to finance this conversion. The station shut down analog broadcasting from Pullman on June 12, 2009.
At auction on April 16, 2009, Daystar bought KQUP. KQUP-LP began airing Daystar programming that August, but the full-power KQUP digital signal did not sign on until January 2010.
On December 6, 2017, KQUP applied to move its transmitter to the
KREM tower on Krell Hill southeast of Spokane. The application was withdrawn on April 2, 2021, after it was determined that the station would not put a city-grade signal over Pullman from the proposed site.
Subchannels
The stations' signals 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— ...
:
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kqup
2004 establishments in Washington (state)
Pullman, Washington
Television channels and stations established in 2004
QUP
QUP