KTBY (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 ...
in
Anchorage, Alaska
Anchorage, officially the Municipality of Anchorage, is the List of cities in Alaska, most populous city in the U.S. state of Alaska. With a population of 291,247 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it contains nearly 40 percent of ...
, United States, affiliated with the
Fox network. The station is owned by Coastal Television Broadcasting Company
LLC, which provides certain services to dual
ABC/
CW+ affiliate
KYUR (channel 13) under
joint sales[Joint Sales Agreement - Federal Communications Commission](_blank)
/ref> and shared services
History
Totem Broadcasting was incorporated on January 11, 1980. Within weeks, Tacoma mayor Mike Parker received a call from Totem for the potential of exploiting an unassigned frequency in Anchorage, in a state with several unassigned slots. Parker was consulting with an unnamed group for a VHF station on channel 4. In November, Totem announced that it was going to set up a "family-friendly" television station, with a mix of religious, current affairs and entertainment programming, due to the growth of content with sex and violence available on the market. By this time, Anchorage had grown enough to support 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 ...
alongside the city's three network affiliates. The estimated cost of building the station was of $1.5 million.
KTBY signed on the air on December 2, 1983, with Mike Parker as president, Mike Buck as general manager and Dave Peters II as program director before joining the new Fox network on its launch of October 9, 1986 (being part of a small number of TV stations on the VHF dial not owned by the network to be affiliated with Fox upon its startup), an affiliation which continues today. It was the only Fox station in Alaska until 1992, when KFXF in Fairbanks went on the air; in the late 1980s, it also became the first station in Alaska to broadcast 24 hours a day.
During the 1980s, KTBY was the first Anchorage station to air professional wrestling
Professional wrestling, often shortened to either pro wrestling or wrestling,The term "wrestling" is most often widely used to specifically refer to modern scripted professional wrestling, though it is also used to refer to Real life, real- ...
with any regularity, largely in response to the increase in mainstream interest. Televised wrestling programs were largely absent from Anchorage television, as the programs were traditionally used to promote live events, which have been held only occasionally in Alaska dating back to the 1950s. The station originally aired '' AWA All-Star Wrestling'' (in conjunction with a short-lived attempt on their part to promote events in the market), and later '' World Class Championship Wrestling'' and '' WWF Superstars of Wrestling''.
On August 29, 2007, Coastal Television Broadcasting Company LLC of Cumming, Georgia (led by Bill Fielder), announced its intent to acquire KTBY from Piedmont Television Holdings for $3,242,500. The sale was completed on May 7, 2008.[https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-13-2060A1.doc ]
In June 2010, Coastal Television hired Scott Centers as general manager to manage KTBY and under a shared services agreement, manage Vision Alaska I and Vision Alaska II. This created one of the few instances where a Fox affiliate is the nominal senior partner in an LMA/SSA involving a "Big Three" affiliate. In September 2010, KTBY relocated its master control operations to colocate with Vision Alaska I.
On January 28, 2013, Coastal was notified by the FCC that it had failed to update ownership information for KTBY's antenna structure. The company was fined $4,200 and the information was subsequently updated as a result.
News operation
Until October 1, 2008, KTBY aired a 9 p.m. weeknight newscast produced by then- CBS affiliate KTVA (channel 11, now a Rewind TV affiliate). This production ceased when KTBY began its own news operation.
In April 2020, as a result of impending economic concerns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...
, KTBY and KYUR announced plans to outsource its news production to the national NewsNet service, which began operations one year earlier. All of the stations' newscasts outside of prime time, including ''Good Day Alaska'', were canceled, and the majority of the local staff were laid off. By the end of the month, KYUR's news output had been reduced to a 30-minute newscast at 10 p.m. and KTBY was reduced to an hour-long newscast at 9 p.m. Both of these newscasts are branded as ''NewsNet Alaska'', featuring a brief local news segment produced in Anchorage, with the rest of the broadcast utilizing the NewsNet national feed produced out of Cadillac, Michigan. Despite the reduction in local news, KTBY and KYUR have opted to use the ''NewsNet'' national branding "More News. More Often." in their broadcasts. In 2022, the stations outsourced their news programming to News Hub, which had recently been acquired by Coastal Television, as ''Your Alaska Link News''.
Technical information
Subchannels
The station's signal is multiplexed:
Analog-to-digital conversion
KTBY shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 4, on June 12, 2009, the official date on which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 20,
Translators
*K04JH-D Homer
Homer (; , ; possibly born ) was an Ancient Greece, Ancient Greek poet who is credited as the author of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Despite doubts about his autho ...
*K08KA-D Girdwood
*K09QH-D Kenai, etc.
*K31MD-D Ninilchik
*K33AF-D Kasilof
References
External links
*
{{Coastal TV Broadcasting
1983 establishments in Alaska
Coastal Television
Cozi TV affiliates
Dabl affiliates
Ion Plus affiliates
Fox Broadcasting Company affiliates
Ion Television affiliates
Television channels and stations established in 1983
TBY