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KULR-TV (channel 8) 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
Billings, Montana Billings is the most populous Lists of populated places in the United States, city in the U.S. state of Montana, with a population of 117,116 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Located in the south-central portion of the state, i ...
, 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 owned by the
Cowles Company The Cowles Company is an American diversified media company based in Spokane, Washington. The company owns and operates ''The Spokesman-Review'' in Spokane, founded in 1894, and owned the ''Spokane Daily Chronicle'' until it was shut down in 19 ...
. The station's studios are located on Overland Avenue in the Homestead Business Park section of Billings, and its transmitter is located on Coburn Hill southeast of downtown. KULR-TV was the second TV station on the air in Billings; it began broadcasting as KGHL-TV, co-owned with KGHL radio, on March 15, 1958. The station was renamed KULR-TV in 1963 when it was separated from the radio stations. It was an ABC affiliate from 1969 to 1987, when it returned to NBC. KULR-TV was purchased by
Max Media Max Media is a company that owns radio stations throughout the United States. It is based in Virginia Beach, Virginia. History Max Media was founded in 2001. Prior to this, some of the company's management had run the TVX Broadcast Group from 1 ...
in 2004 and by Cowles in 2013. Since the late 1980s, its newscasts have been a distant second-place finisher to
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 ...
.


History

The first channel 8 construction permit was awarded on November 21, 1952, to the Rudman-Hayutin Television Company, a consortium of two oil producers. M. B. Rudman surrendered other permits he owned with Hayutin in
North Dakota North Dakota ( ) is a U.S. state in the Upper Midwest, named after the indigenous Dakota people, Dakota and Sioux peoples. It is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba to the north and by the U.S. states of Minneso ...
in September 1953 in order to concentrate on the proposed Billings station, but after the company failed to respond to a letter from 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) inquiring as to progress in construction, the FCC canceled the permit in March 1954.


KGHL-TV: Early years

The Midland Empire Broadcasting Company, owner of Billings radio station KGHL (790 AM), applied to the FCC in September 1955 for channel 8. The FCC granted the application on November 23, but it stayed the grant after
KOOK-TV 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 studios ...
(channel 2), the city's other TV station, protested to the commission. In August, FCC hearing examiner James D. Cunningham recommended a grant of the Midland Empire application, noting that while the addition of a second station would cause some economic damage to KOOK-TV, the Billings market could sustain two stations. The FCC lifted the stay on construction of KGHL-TV on April 19, 1957. Midland Empire Broadcasting Company officials announced they would begin construction immediately on studios co-located with the radio station on Broadway. However, the company instead decided to build new facilities on North 30th Street to house both stations; the KGHL-TV transmitter was also built southeast of Billings. KGHL-TV began broadcasting on March 15, 1958, as an affiliate of NBC.


KULR-TV

Midland Empire Broadcasting sold KGHL-AM-TV to Crain-Snyder Television in 1962; Crain-Snyder immediately spun KGHL radio off to
George C. Hatch George C. Hatch (December 16, 1919, in Erie, Pennsylvania – August 30, 2009, in Salt Lake City, Utah) was an American businessman who owned several communications businesses and helped pioneer cable television. He was a founder of Western M ...
, retaining KGHL-TV. It was decided to let the older radio station keep the KGHL call letters; On January 1, 1963, coinciding with the change in ownership, KGHL-TV became KULR-TV; both halves of the newly split operation made plans to leave the 30th Street site, with channel 8 relocating to studios at the transmitter site on Coburn Hill. KULR also added a secondary affiliation with
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 ...
in 1963. Paul Crain, one of the two principals in Crain-Snyder Television, died at the age of 43 in 1964. Two years later, Crain-Snyder sold KULR-TV to the Harriscope Broadcasting Corporation, which owned KFBB-TV in Great Falls and KTWO-TV in
Casper, Wyoming Casper is a city in and the county seat of Natrona County, Wyoming, United States. Casper is the List of municipalities in Wyoming, second-most populous city in the state after Cheyenne, Wyoming, Cheyenne, with the population at 59,038 as of th ...
; the FCC approved of the $350,000 purchase in March 1967. Harriscope agreed in 1967 to change the primary network affiliation for KULR-TV and KFBB-TV in Great Falls to ABC at the end of each station's existing affiliation contract; KULR's switch took effect January 1, 1969, at which point NBC was relegated to secondary status. Even though it was a primary ABC affiliate, ABC's evening network newscast was not aired until 1971, when Harriscope began airing the ABC and NBC evening newscasts on KULR-TV and KTWO-TV in Casper. By later in the 1970s, KTVQ had first call rights to NBC shows, with KULR-TV having secondary choice; in 1979, KTVQ aired 10 prime time shows from NBC and KULR another five. In 1980, some NBC programs moved to the newly built KOUS-TV (channel 4), though it was not until 1982 that NBC had a primary affiliate again in Billings. KULR-TV announced in 1983 that the station would relocate to a new building in the Homestead Business Park that would provide upgraded technical facilities and twice the space for its 40 employees; the structure was completed in 1984.


Dix, Max, and Cowles ownership

Harriscope sold KULR-TV and KTWO-TV in Casper to Dix Communications in 1986 for $12.2 million. At a time when NBC was stronger than ABC, in January 1987, KULR initiated an affiliation switch to NBC, with KOUS-TV picking up ABC; the switch took effect that August. Dix also was early to begin digital broadcasting from its stations despite their small market size, with KULR-DT beginning operations on May 6, 2002. Dix Communications sold KULR-TV, along with KFBB-TV in Great Falls, to
Max Media Max Media is a company that owns radio stations throughout the United States. It is based in Virginia Beach, Virginia. History Max Media was founded in 2001. Prior to this, some of the company's management had run the TVX Broadcast Group from 1 ...
on June 16, 2004, for $12.25 million. Dix chairman Robert Dix said that the sale made sense, as KULR and KFBB were the company's last two television stations. On September 30, 2013, the
Cowles Company The Cowles Company is an American diversified media company based in Spokane, Washington. The company owns and operates ''The Spokesman-Review'' in Spokane, founded in 1894, and owned the ''Spokane Daily Chronicle'' until it was shut down in 19 ...
announced that it would acquire Max Media's Montana television station cluster (comprising KULR and ABC affiliates KWYB 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 ...
, KFBB-TV in Great Falls, KHBB-LD in Helena and KTMF in
Missoula Missoula ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Missoula County, Montana, Missoula County, Montana, United States. It is located along the Clark Fork River near its confluence with the Bitterroot River, Bitterroot and Blackfoot River (Montana), ...
) for $18 million. The sale was completed on November 29.


News operation

KULR-TV was the traditional news leader in Billings prior to the late 1980s, having something of an edge in ratings surveys as early as the late 1970s. The station was on top for most of the 1980s, sometimes attracting twice as many or more households as channel 2, which analysts attributed to the more folksy approach taken by "Straight 8" in comparison with KTVQ's newscasts and the popularity of anchorman and news director Dave Rye. KULR did have the market's first female news co-anchor, Chris Chesrown, and it was the first station in the state to maintain a full-time state capital reporter in Helena. Future Montana senator
Conrad Burns Conrad Ray Burns (January 25, 1935 – April 28, 2016) was an American politician and lobbyist who served as a United States Senator from Montana from 1989 to 2007. He was only the second Republican popularly elected to represent Montana in the ...
worked for KULR-TV as a farm broadcaster in the 1980s. However, changes at KTVQ were eventually successful in unseating KULR. In 1984, a major overhaul of MTN's regional network news format shifted the center of the network from Great Falls to Billings. Ratings started to climb, though it was not until KTVQ replaced unpopular anchorman Dean Phillips with Montana native Gus Koernig that it surpassed KULR-TV in viewership. Rye departed channel 8 in 1990 and successfully ran for the Montana State Senate, returning to KULR after the legislature's 1993 session. Rye's return failed to restore KULR to ratings leadership as KTVQ continued to hold a two-to-one viewership advantage for its newscasts. In 2001, the station realigned its early evening newscasts from one local program at 5:30 p.m. to separate 5 and 6 p.m. half-hours, by which time the 5:30 newscast was being beaten three-to-one by KTVQ. In October 2022, its newscasts were rebranded as ''NonStop Local'' as part of a group-wide rebranding by Cowles.


Notable former on-air staff

* Monica Gayle – weekend anchor/reporter, later at
CBS News CBS News is the news division of the American television and radio broadcaster CBS. It is headquartered in New York City. CBS News television programs include ''CBS Evening News'', ''CBS Mornings'', news magazine programs ''CBS News Sunday Morn ...


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 February 2009, the four commercial stations in the Billings market were refused FCC permission to end analog broadcasts and operate as digital-only effective on the originally-scheduled February 17, 2009, date.


Translators

KULR-TV is broadcast by separately owned
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. KYUS-TV became a satellite of KULR-TV under a time brokerage agreement on May 1, 1998. The original agreement expired after ten years; KYUS-TV now broadcasts KULR-TV's programming under a series of informal agreements, receiving no payment and keeping no advertising income. Although the station generates no revenue of its own, Marks continues to operate it as a public service. In addition, KULR-TV is rebroadcast on translators across Montana and several communities in Wyoming: * Ashland: K10AC-D * Bridger, etc.: K35JW-D * Broadus: K06AA-D * Cody, WY: K25OV-D * Colstrip: K09OY-D, K26OX-D * Columbus: K24FL-D *
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 ...
: K21MA-D * Forsyth: K14RV-D, K31NW-D, K33MC-D * Harlowton: K13BE-D * Howard: K34OB-D * Hysham: K13PO-D * Meeteetse, WY: K17KC-D * Miles City: K06FE-D * Rosebud, etc.: K10QZ-D * Roundup: K31PY-D * White Sulphur Springs: K07NU-D


References


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Kulr-Tv 1958 establishments in Montana Cowles Company NBC affiliates Television channels and stations established in 1958 ULR-TV