KATV , virtual channel 7 (UHF 22 digital channel), is an ABC-affiliated television station licensed to Little Rock, Arkansas, USA. The station is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group. The KATV Studio is located on Main and East 4th Streets in Downtown Little Rock, and its transmitter is located in Shinall Mountain, near the Chenal Valley section of town.
On cable, KATV is available on Comcast Xfinity channel 8 in standard definition (CAS Pine Bluff-licensed KASN affiliate is performed on cable channel 7) and 1008 digital channels in high definition.
Video KATV
History
Griffin-Leake Ownership
The station first aired on December 19, 1953. Originally licensed to Pine Bluff, the station was a CBS affiliate with a secondary ABC affiliate. It became a full affiliate of ABC in 1955 after KTHV signed and took the CBS affiliate because KTHS (now KAAY) has a longstanding relationship with CBS Radio; during the late 1950s, the station was also briefly affiliated with the NTA Film Network. KATV was founded by John Toole "J.T." Griffin and James C. "Jimmy" Leake (who also founded the KTUL sister station in Tulsa and the original KWTV relative station in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, the company founded by the former founders will later become Griffin Communications today).
KATV is the oldest continuous television station in Little Rock, beating NBC KARK-TV (channel 4) affiliate nearly five months. Personality in the air at KATV during his early years of operation included the station's first broadcaster, Don Curran; first news director, Bill Hadley; and newscaster Oscar Alagood. News bearers include Bob Donaldson and Lou Oberste. Donaldson then led the film department at the University of Arkansas Medical School for many years, and Oberste will work at the Arkansas Tourism Department. Less than a year after its debut, KATV moved its operations from Pine Bluff to a studio facility located on North Beech Street, near Kavanaugh in Pulaski Heights section of Little Rock that was formerly occupied by KRTV, the failed UHF station that has become the first television station to register in the state of Arkansas. The studios were damaged in a fire that occurred on 31 October 1957.
KATV then moved to a two-story building on 310 West 3rd Street; the first floor is occupied by a furniture store, while the second floor is used as a studio facility for local radio stations and is also housed in the office of an insurance agent. The television station called the building a house for seven years; During this period, in 1959, Robert Doubleday became one of the youngest television station managers in the country at the age of 26. Under Doubleday, KATV became a major competitor in the Little Rock market. (Doubleday remained as KATV manager until 1968, when he was promoted to president of KATV and KTUL Doubleday was replaced in previous positions by general sales manager Thomas Goodgame, who would then move to Tulsa as general manager and eventually become president of Westinghouse Broadcasting.)
The fact that KATV now operates outside of Little Rock instead of the town of Pine Bluff license led to a big fight in federal court with the Federal Communications Commission and the inhabitants of the Pine Bluff area, the station was missing; to date, KATV has maintained a large presence in Jefferson County. KATV initially sent signals from a tower near Jefferson, until the higher tower was built further north at Redfield in 1965.
Single ownership by Leake
In November 1963, Griffin-Leake's interests reached an agreement to buy each of the 25% interest in KWTV held by former Oklahoma Governors Roy J. Turner and Luther Dulaney - who had expanded their interest in Oklahoma City station in August 1962, after RKO General sells its shares in KWTV to address ownership issues related to RKO purchase-swap transactions involving WRC-TV and WRC-AM-FM (now WTEM and WKYS) in Washington, DC, WNAC-TV (now not functioning; previously allocated channels now occupied by WHDH), WNAC-AM (now WRKO) and WRKO-FM (now WWBX) in Boston, WRCV television and radio stations (now KYW-TV and KYW [AM]) in Philadelphia, and Washington- based on WGMS radio stations WWRC surviving AM) - for initial payment of $ 200,000 and title rights for equipment used by KWTV, KTUL and KATV. Turner and Dulaney will then sell equipment, worth $ 2.3 million, to First National Bank of Oklahoma City executives, C.A. Voss and James Kite for $ 3 million. In turn, three Griffin-Leake stations will be folded into one umbrella company under KATV parental license, KATV Inc. (later renamed as Griffin-Leake TV), which will enter into a ten-year equipments lease agreement with Voss and Kite for a total of $ 4.5 million (or $ 37,500 per month). Griffin and Leakes will have appoximately all common voting shares and collectively own 84% of ordinary nonvoting shares in KATV Inc. post-merger, with 10% of the remaining nonvoting interest held by Edgar Bell (who will remain executive vice president and general manager at KWTV).
KATV has been using the Circle 7 logo since 1965, a logo traditionally associated in time with ABC-owned and operated stations, and was one of the first network affiliates to have used logos (as designed by G. Dean Smith in 1962). The use of the Circle 7 logo by KATV even preceded the Circle 7 variant used by the Allbritton WJLA-TV main station in Washington, DC from 1977 to switch to the standard version in 2001. However, unlike WJLA and most O & amp; Os, previously For Sinclair's purchase, KATV paired the ABC logo with Circle 7 sparingly, usually on a logo bug on the screen where Circle 7 includes standard ABC bugs. KATV also first put Circle 7 in the box in the 1990s; WJLA now uses this version as well, although no station uses it consistently (KATV stopped putting the Circle 7 logo in the square in September 2008). The station moved its operations to the Worthen Bank Building in downtown Little Rock in October 1970, after Worthen emptied the building and moved to a newly built building in the downtown district.
In April 1969, TV Griffin-Leake announced that they would split their holdings into two separate companies. Leake - which has moved from being a minority partner of 3.5% in KATV to a half-owner as a result of previous investor divestation - retains ownership of KATV, KTUL, Ponca City, cable television operator based in Oklahoma, Cable TV Co. and controls 80% interest in construction permits for Fajardo, Puerto Rico WSTE (now WORO-DT) TV station, while Griffin retains KWTV ownership under license of Century Communications Co. (the Griffin company will eventually return to Arkansas in September 1985, when NBC affiliated KPOM-TV purchased [now Fox KFTA-TV affiliate] at Fort Smith of Ozark Broadcasting Company; Griffin will sell KPOM and Rogers satellite stations signed in October 1989, KFAA-TV [now KNWA-TV], to Nexstar Broadcasting Group - KATV rival KARK-TV owner - in September 2003.)
Allbritton Ownership
On November 3, 1982, Leake Industries sold KATV and KTUL to Allbritton Communications based in Washington, D.C. in an all-cash transaction of $ 80 million; the sale received FCC approval on 14 February 1983.
In February 1999, KATV aired an ad for Walt Disney Pictures' animated film First Movie Doug during a network broadcast of ABC Doug from Disney . Almost eight years later, in 2007, the FCC imposed a $ 8,000 fine on KATV for violating the provisions of the Children's Television Act that classified commercial broadcasts that featured characters from children's programs broadcast on television as long program advertisements. KATV appealed the fine, claiming the error was caused by a last-minute insert order from ABC. However, it lost in appeal in April 2010.
The station's transmitter towers at Redfield collapsed on January 11, 2008, while the workers were adjusting the male cable (the tower was also used by the Arkansas Educational Television Network for analog signals from KETS flagship stations (channel 2), whose analog signals remained off-air until June 13 2008, when a temporary analog antenna is installed in Redfield's Clear Channel Broadcasting Tower, where its digital transmitter is derived). The KATV analog signal remains on the air for two weeks, until it builds a temporary transmitter facility from an additional tower on Mt. Shinall used by CBS affiliate KTHV (channel 11). Currently, Equity Media Holdings based in Little Rock initially helps to restore KATV signals to cable providers and satellite areas by delivering their digital signals over KWBF's third digital sub-channel (channel 42, now KARZ-TV and owned by Nexstar Media Group) originally as a 42.3 digital channel in standard definition, then mapped back as a 7.1 digital channel and upgraded to high definition.
KATV analog signals remain at Comcast in the Little Rock area after collapse as it receives the station via live feed from major KATV studios, even though the HD feed is initially disrupted; Comcast also delivers KATV signals to other cable and satellite providers. KATV finally received FCC approval to build a new tower on Mt. Shinall, where other major network affiliates of Little Rock (and both current reserve signals from KATV) are located. Licenses for station analog signals continue to reference the Redfield tower as a transmitting site while the station was broadcasted analogue from the temporary site at Shinall Mountain, as well as digitally above the subchannel of KWBF. KATV began transmitting its digital signals from a new facility located on Mount Shinall on February 1, 2009.
Acquisition by Sinclair Broadcast Group
On July 29, 2013, Allbritton announced that it will sell seven television stations, including KATV, to Hunt Valley, Maryland-based Sinclair Broadcast Group for $ 985 million, to center the company's operations exclusively on its political news site Politico. The sales management process was held for almost a year, however, when Sinclair attempted to address ownership issues involving stations already operated in three markets (WTTO/WDBB and WABM in Birmingham, Alabama, WMMP in Charleston, South Carolina, and WHP-TV and WLYH-TV in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania) and Albritton's station that puts Sinclair in conflict with FCC regulations on local station ownership (WBMA/WCFT/WJSU, WCIV and WHTM, respectively), in particular with respect to the LMA that the 1999 Commission's Decision that an agreement made after November 5, 1996 covering the program of more than 15% of station broadcasting days shall be calculated against the ownership limit for the broker's license from the brokerage station. (The sale of one of the affected Allbritton properties to a separate buyer is not an option for Sinclair, as Allbritton wants his station to be sold together to limit the tax rate the company pays out of accrued results, is expected to be much higher if the group is sold little by Sinclair sold most of the conflict outlets to Howard Stirk Holdings with the pretense that he would not enter into an operational agreement with Sinclair.)
After nearly a year's delay, Sinclair's agreement to acquire Allbritton was approved by the FCC on July 24, 2014, and finished on August 1, 2014. As a result of Allbritton's purchase, KATV acquired a new sister station in a nearby market: fellow ABC KDNL-TV affiliate at St. Louis, CBS affiliate, KRCG at Columbia-Jefferson City, Missouri; Fox Affiliate WZTV, CW affiliate, WNAB, and LMA partner affiliated with MyNetworkTV, WUXP-TV in Nashville, Tennessee; and Fox affiliate KBSI and LMA partner affiliated with MyNetworkTV, WDKA in Cape Girardeau, Missouri.
Maps KATV
Digital television
Digital channels
Digital channel of this station multiplexing:
Subchannel history
In 2005, KATV launched KATV News Now, a 24-hour news and news channel that broadcasts re-broadcast and simulcast KATV news programs; it competes directly with the same service "THV2" KTHV. Until the collapse of the KATV Redfield tower, KATV News Now is performed on a 7.2 digital sub-channel; this service continues to be available for streaming on station websites, having remained online even after the collapse of the tower, and has since been restored to Comcast's digital cable service in Little Rock.
KATV then launched a 24-hour weather channel called "AccuWeather 24/7" on the 7.3 digital sub-channel in 2010, affiliated with the Local AccuWeather Channel. On August 23, 2011, the Disney-ABC Television Group announced an affiliation agreement with KATV to bring Live Well Network's live-based digital broadcasting network; the network replaces AccuWeather 24/7 on the 7.3 digital sub-channels. In turn, male-oriented Grit takes place in late 2014/early 2015.
7.2 station sub-channels are starting to bring sporting events from the American Sports Network with their first broadcast on August 30, 2014.
Analog-to-digital conversion
KATV turned off its analog signal, via VHF 7 channel, on June 12, 2009, the official date on which a full-power television station in the United States switched from analog to digital broadcasting under federal mandate. Fixed station digital signal in pre-transition UHF channel 22. Through the use of PSIP, the digital television receiver displays the station virtual channel as the previous VHF analog channel 7.
Out-of-market trains
KATV mainly serves the central part of Arkansas. During the analog era, many parts of the state as well as the western half of the midwestern Bolivar and Coahoma region of Mississippi can receive KATV signals. KATV is also performed on cable systems in these areas, including Greenville, Cleveland, Clarksdale, Drew and Harrison.
On July 6, 2004, Spectacular-E Spectacular-E spectacular high opening allowed Mike Bugaj to receive KATV in Enfield, Connecticut, 1,176 km (1,893 km) from Little Rock.
News operations
KATV currently broadcast 31 ½ hours of locally produced news broadcast every week (with 5 ½ hours on weekdays, three hours on Saturday and one hour on Sunday); in addition, the station produces a business and political discussion program on Sunday Speaking Business and Politics, hosted by Roby Brock (a program broadcasted on Fox TV KLRT-TV (channel 16) from its debut in 2000 to moved to KATV on March 2, 2014). KATV is currently one of only two television stations in the Little Rock market (with CBS affiliate KTHV, who debuted on a Saturday morning news broadcast in April 2010) that carries a news broadcast on a Sunday morning, the station has produced Saturday edition Channel 7 News Daybreak since 1992; KATV does not currently air a news program on Sunday morning.
The political scientist and the Arkansas poll, Jim Ranchino, who has appeared on the station as a commentator during elections since 1972, died of a heart attack while waiting to offer election commentary on KATV on November 7, 1978. Ranchino is a professor at Ouachita Baptist University and ally of Bill Clinton, who was elected governor of Arkansas on the night when Ranchino collapsed and died in the studio.
From 2001 to 30 June 2005, KATV re-broadcast the working week at 6:00 and 10:00 pm. news broadcast on Pax TV's KYPX affiliate (channel 49, now KMYA-DT's Me-TV affiliate) under a news-sharing agreement, which was terminated due to a decision by Paxson Communications (now Ion Media Networks) to terminate a news-sharing agreement with a major affiliate network on the market it has a Pax station, because of its financial and rebranding issues as i: Independent Television (now Ion Television). KATV is one of several television stations affiliated to a network other than NBC to participate in news sharing agreements with Pax TV stations.
On September 20th, 2010, KATV expanded its morning business news broadcast to 2½ hours, moving its start time to 4:30 in the morning. On September 10, 2011, KATV became the fourth (and final) television station in the Little Rock market to start broadcasting local news broadcasts in high definition (KTHV became the first station in the market to produce high definition news releases in December 2010, and KARK and KLRT both started producing news broadcasts in HD in April 2011, making the transition within five days of each other).
Leading former on-air staff
- Paul Eells - sporting director and "Voice of the Razorbacks" (1978-2006; died July 31, 2006, possibly due to an injury he suffered from a car accident on Interstate 40 near Russellville)
- Kristin Fisher, reporter now on Fox News Channel
- Greg Hurst - news carrier/reporter (later at WABC, KHOU, now at WREG)
- Missy Irvin - former news editor; member of the current Republican Senate of Arkansas
- Rob Johnson (newsreader) - (now on WBBM-TV)
- Julie Mayberry - co-host Dawn morning news; Member of the Republican Arkansas House of Representatives since 2015 from Pulaski and Saline districts
- Anne Pressly - news anchor/reporter (died in October 2008 due to an attack by an intruder in his Little Rock home, the assassin was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment without parole)
- Susan Roesgen - anchor/reporter (1990s-2000s)
- David Shuster - reporter (1994-1996)
- Nancy Snyderman - medical reporter (1984)
- Kate Sullivan - newscaster/reporter (2000-2006)
References
External links
- Official website
- FCC TV station data request for KATV
- BIAfn's Media Web Database - Information on KATV-TV
- Profile of KATV Station & amp; Public Inspection Files
- KATV Staff Contact Information
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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