KXTV

KXTV, virtual and VHF digital channel 10, is an ABC-affiliated television station licensed to Sacramento, California, United States. The station is owned by Tegna Inc. KXTV's studios are located on Broadway, just south of U.S. Highway 50 at the south edge of downtown Sacramento, and its transmitter is located in Walnut Grove.

KXTV
Sacramento–Stockton–Modesto, California
United States
CitySacramento, California
ChannelsDigital: 10 (VHF)
Virtual: 10 (PSIP)
BrandingABC 10 (general)
ABC 10 News (newscasts)
SloganWe Stand For You
Programming
Affiliations
Ownership
OwnerTegna Inc.
(KXTV, LLC)
History
First air dateMarch 20, 1955 (1955-03-20) (65 years ago) as KBET-TV
Former call signsKBET-TV (1955–1959)
Former channel number(s)
  • Analog:
  • 10 (VHF, 1955–2009)
  • Digital:
  • 61 (UHF, 1999–2009)
Former affiliations
  • Analog/DT1:
  • CBS (1955–1995)
  • DT2:
  • The Local AccuWeather Channel (2006–2011)
  • Live Well Network (2011–2015)
  • DT3:
  • Heroes & Icons (2016–2018)
Call sign meaningX = Roman numeral 10 (for channel number)
TV
Technical information
Licensing authorityFCC
Facility ID25048
ERP28.6 kW
HAAT611.9 m (2,008 ft)
Transmitter coordinates38°14′24″N 121°30′7″W
Translator(s)36 (UHF) Sacramento
Links
Public license informationProfile
LMS
Websitewww.abc10.com

History

The station first signed on the air on March 19, 1955 as KBET, owned by the locally based Sacramento Telecasters. It was the second of three VHF stations in the Sacramento market, signing on six months behind KOVR and six months ahead of KCRA-TV (channel 3); it is also the longest serving station licensed to Sacramento, as KOVR is licensed to Stockton. Originally operating as a CBS affiliate, KBET maintained studio facilities located on 7th Avenue in South Sacramento. McClatchy Newspapers, owner of the Sacramento Bee newspaper, and Sacramento Telecasters had long fought over the channel 10 construction permit before the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and ultimately in federal court.[1] In 1959, Sacramento Telecasters sold the station to Corinthian Broadcasting and its call letters were changed to the current KXTV (the "X" representing the Roman numeral for its channel number, 10). In 1968, The station moved to its present location at 400 Broadway in downtown Sacramento. Corinthian became part of Dun & Bradstreet in 1971. The A.H. Belo Corporation bought all of Dun & Bradstreet's television stations (except for WISH-TV in Indianapolis and WANE-TV in Fort Wayne, Indiana, which went to LIN Broadcasting) in February 1984.

ABC affiliate
KXTV's logo until 2015.

On March 6, 1995, KXTV switched its affiliation to ABC, in a swap with KOVR, which joined CBS. With the move, KXTV became the third station in Sacramento to affiliate with ABC; KCCC-TV (channel 40, channel now occupied by KTXL) was the market's original affiliate from 1953 until it shut down in 1957, when the network moved to KOVR.

In 1999, Belo traded KXTV to the Gannett Company in exchange for fellow ABC affiliate KVUE in Austin, Texas. This marked a re-entry into the Sacramento market for Gannett, who briefly owned KOVR during the late 1950s. When Gannett finalized its acquisition of Belo on December 23, 2013, KXTV was reunited with several of its sister stations for the first time in 14 years, and became a sister station to KVUE in Austin for the first time.

Around the first week of October 2012, Gannett entered a dispute against Dish Network regarding compensation fees and Dish's AutoHop commercial-skip feature on its Hopper digital video recorders. Gannett ordered that Dish discontinue AutoHop on the account that it is affecting advertising revenues for KXTV. Gannett threatened to pull all of its stations (KXTV among them) should the skirmish continue beyond October 7 and Dish and Gannett fail to reach an agreement.[2][3] The two parties eventually reached an agreement after extending the deadline for a few hours.[4]

On June 29, 2015, Gannett's broadcasting division split from the newspaper division and renamed its broadcasting and digital divisions under the Tegna Inc. name (KXTV was included in the transaction to Tegna).[5]

On August 30, 2015, KXTV changed its on-air branding to "ABC10," retiring the "News10" moniker.[6]

Digital television

Digital channels

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:

Channel Video Aspect PSIP Short Name Programming[7]
10.1720p16:9KXTVMain KXTV programming / ABC
10.2480iTrue CrimeTrue Crime Network
10.31080iBounceBounce TV
10.4480iQuestQuest

KXTV began broadcasting its digital signal on UHF channel 61 in 1999. The station shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 10, on June 12, 2009, as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television.[8] The station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition UHF channel 61, which was among the high band UHF channels (52-69) that were removed from broadcasting use as a result of the transition, to its analog-era VHF channel 10. On March 18, 2014, KXTV applied for a digital fill-in translator on UHF channel 36. The translator will serve the immediate part of the city.[9] However, this translator has not currently been put into service.

Subchannel affiliations

KXTV was one of the first Sacramento market television stations to launch a digital-only broadcast channel on their main feed with the 2006 launch of the Local AccuWeather Channel on digital subchannel 10.2.

In August 2011, the station dropped their AccuWeather affiliation from digital subchannel 10.2 in favor of the new lifestyle channel Live Well Network, which had debuted earlier in the year on Disney-owned ABC stations.[10]

In 2015, KXTV dropped its affiliation as a Live Well Network station. In its place, KXTV began carrying the Gannett-owned Justice Network on 10.2.[11] It added another Gannett-owned digital network, Qwest, in 2017 on digital subchannel 10.4.

In 2016, the station signed an affiliation agreement with Weigel Broadcasting to air Heroes & Icons on digital subchannel 10.3. The affiliation agreement transferred to Hearst-owned KQCA in 2018, leaving KXTV without any programming on 10.3 and creating an unusual gap in the digital subchannel numbering scheme that lasted more than a year. The following year, KXTV-DT3 affiliated with Bounce TV, a network that was already carried on KUVS in the Sacramento–Stockton–Modesto market. While KUVS offers a standard definition feed of Bounce, KXTV's feed is in full 1080i high definition and is received in portions of the Sacramento market where a signal from KUVS, based in Modesto, isn't available.

Programming

From the late 1980s to early 1990s, KXTV produced two nationally syndicated magazine programs: Scratch (which was aimed at young adults) and Pulse (which covered medical news).

On September 12, 2005, KXTV launched a lifestyle and entertainment talk program called Sacramento & Company (now Sac & Co.). It is similar to other locally produced talk programs seen on Gannett stations in other markets, and features segments sponsored by local companies. The program was originally hosted by Kristin Simoes and later by Jodie Moreno, Melissa Crowley and Guy Farris. The station also produces LNT, Morning Blend, Extra Butter, the Toyota Sports Extra and Bartell's Backroads, among others.

As a CBS affiliate, the station preempted or delayed some lower-rated daytime and late night programs (including the 9–10 a.m. morning block in the 1980s and early 1990s), while late night programs were absent from the schedule from the late 1980s until the Late Show with David Letterman debuted in 1993. KXTV also preempted the network's Sunday morning cartoons from the 1960s until the early 1980s. In 1991, KXTV dropped The Price Is Right, due to its heavy syndicated programming lineup. After several months of complaints, KXTV restored the game show to its lineup, but to make room for syndicated programming it was committed to carry, channel 10 subsequently dropped Guiding Light due to low ratings. KXTV also aired The Young and the Restless at 3 p.m., instead of the program's recommended 11 a.m. timeslot beginning in 1994. As a CBS affiliate, KXTV's station ID included an electronic alarm-like version of the CBS "ding" used as the top-of-the-hour time signal on the network's co-owned radio stations and on its hourly radio news updates.

The station continued to preempt or delay network programming as an ABC affiliate: it preempted the half-hour soaps airing in the 12:30 p.m. timeslot (Loving, followed by The City and later Port Charles), at some point running it during the overnight hours. During the station's first six months as an ABC affiliate, KXTV preempted an hour of ABC's Saturday morning cartoons; it began airing the block in its entirety in the fall of 1995. When Bill Maher's talk show Politically Incorrect moved from Comedy Central to ABC in January 1997, KXTV delayed the program to 12:35 a.m. in favor of carrying the then-fledgling Access Hollywood in the 12:05 a.m. time slot.[12] KXTV aired All My Children at 3 p.m. in its early years with ABC (replacing The Young and the Restless in that timeslot with the switch), before moving it to the network's recommended noon slot after the midday newscast moved back one hour from noon to 11 a.m. KXTV has carried the entire ABC schedule since the network gave back the weekday 12:30 p.m. (PT) timeslot back to its affiliates in 2003.

Until the company merged with CBS Television Distribution in 2007, KXTV had first choice on the local rights to all programs distributed by King World. The station currently holds the local syndication rights to King World-turned-CBS properties Inside Edition, Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune (the latter two having aired on KXTV since the mid-1980s as a CBS affiliate). Until 2002, the station also held the local rights to The Oprah Winfrey Show (which later moved to KCRA/KQCA). Other syndicated programs currently airing on KXTV consist of first-run shows such as Rachael Ray, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Daily Blast Live, Sister Circle, and Sports Stars of Tomorrow, along with re-runs of Wipeout, Castle and American Ninja Warrior.

In 2002, KXTV acquired the local rights to Sacramento Kings games, as a result of a contractual dispute between the team's owners, the Maloof family, and longtime broadcaster KMAX-TV (channel 31) due to the station selling ads featuring the team without the Kings' permission. In 2009, the Kings broadcasts moved exclusively to Comcast SportsNet California, with KXTV only carrying games through ABC's broadcast rights to the NBA (which began around the same time that KXTV acquired the local broadcast rights).

News operation

KXTV presently broadcasts 27 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with four hours each weekday and 3½ hours each on Saturdays and Sundays). Prior to adopting the current ABC 10 News branding in 2015, KXTV's newscasts had successively identified as Shell News, The Big News, Channel 10 News, Newservice 10 (in the 1970s), Eyewitness News (early 1980s), and, most recently, News10 (from 1983–2015, but since 2001 as a branding of the station overall). For the past two decades (dating back to its time as a CBS affiliate), KXTV has been in a distant second place to longtime market leader KCRA-TV (channel 3). In recent years, KXTV's 11 p.m. newscast has frequently finished in last place in total households among all the market's late-evening newscasts (not counting the KCRA-produced 10 p.m. newscast on KQCA-TV, channel 58).

Hank Thornley was the station's first news anchorman (during the Shell News era), from 1955 to 1960. Paul Meeks was the station's first news photographer. In 2007, KXTV debuted Friday Night Football, a weekly sports wrap-up program focusing on high school football games across the California Central Valley during fall season; as part of its high school football coverage, the station's news helicopter flew to various high schools in the area to capture aerial shots of each game. On February 5, 2007, KXTV unveiled the News10 Information Center, which is located in the station's newsroom; News10 Now updates seen on the station are conducted from this area as are stories made available on the station's website.

On December 16, 2009, beginning with its 11 p.m. newscasts, KXTV became the third television station in the Sacramento market (after KCRA and KOVR), and the ninth Gannett-owned station to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition. In-studio segments are presented in HD, while the remote field footage is broadcast in upconverted 16:9 widescreen standard definition.

ABC10 Weather Tower
The ABC10 Weather Tower at day time.
The ABC10 Weather Tower at night time.

The "ABC10 Weather Tower" (formerly "News10 Weather Tower") went into operation on August 24, 2001, coinciding with opening day of the 2001 California State Fair. Construction of the tower was completed on October 11, 2000, but KXTV decided to hold off its launch due to the state's energy crisis occurring near the original dedication date. It was built and designed by Nacht & Lewis Architects, based in downtown Sacramento. KXTV, an anchor facility and active proponent of improvements to the Broadway Street Corridor, elected not to construct a conventional broadcast tower, examples of which may be seen throughout Sacramento.

The proposed design melds the rather demanding engineering requirements for communications towers with sensitivity to the suggestions of the surrounding residents while creating an icon and gateway for the Broadway Corridor. The top of the tower glows with a different color based on the weather conditions or to represent when either the Sacramento Kings or Sacramento Monarchs have won a game.

Color Description
     Yellow Sunny or clear conditions are forecast for tomorrow, but the temperature is not above 100 degrees.
     Green Rain is in the area, but there is no severe weather.
     Blue High winds are in the area, but a severe weather watch has not been issued.
     White Cloudy
     Red The temperatures are above 100 degrees or a severe weather watch or warning has been issued.
     Purple The Sacramento Kings (during the NBA season) have won their latest game.

KXTV is one of two Tegna-owned stations that operate a weather beacon. The other is ABC-affiliated sister station WZZM (channel 13) in Grand Rapids, which operates its beacon at its studios in Walker, Michigan.

As of 2014, the color lighted portion of the weather tower has been removed, making the tower a plain, but decorated, tower.

Notable former on-air staff

Out-of-market carriage

KXTV can be seen on cable television in eastern portions of the San Francisco Bay Area—mostly in Solano County—and in all of Butte County, respectively alongside San Francisco ABC owned-and-operated station KGO-TV and Redding affiliate KRCR.

gollark: What do they taste like? I'm in the ÜK so I've never tried any.
gollark: Wait, would #8 pass if we closed it?
gollark: Huuuuh.
gollark: No. We use base 10 here.
gollark: #8 has votes on it already, and I don't THINK they should retroactively apply.

References
  1. McClatchy Broadcasting Co. v. F.C.C., 239 F.2d 15 (U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit, 1956).
  2. Loose, Ashley (October 5, 2012). "DISH customers may lose Gannett programming, including 12 News KPNX, over AutoHop feature". KNXV-TV. Archived from the original on October 11, 2012. Retrieved October 6, 2012.
  3. Vuong, Andy (October 6, 2012). "Gannett threatening to black out stations in its dispute with Dish". Denver Post. Retrieved October 6, 2012.
  4. Warner, Melodie (October 8, 2012). "Dish, Gannett Reach New Deal". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved October 8, 2012.
  5. "Separation of Gannett into two public companies completed | TEGNA". Tegna. Retrieved 2015-06-29.
  6. "News10 is now the all-new ABC10!". Retrieved 2015-08-31.
  7. "Digital TV Market Listing for KXTV". RabbitEars.Info. Retrieved August 2, 2017.
  8. List of Digital Full-Power Stations Archived 2013-08-29 at the Wayback Machine
  9. Application For Authority To Construct Or Make Changes In A Low Power TV, TV Translator Or TV Booster Station , CDBS Public Access, Federal Communications Commission, Retrieved 18 March 2014.
  10. Live Well Adds 7 Affils, Tops 40% Clearance. TVNewsCheck. August 23, 2011.
  11. Kevin Downey (January 20, 2015). "Justice Network Debuts With John Walsh". TVNewsCheck. NewsCheck Media. Retrieved January 27, 2015.
  12. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 1998-02-07. Retrieved 2020-02-12.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
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