KXTV

KXTV

Sacramento/Stockton/Modesto, California United States
City	Sacramento, California
Branding	ABC 10 (general) ABC 10 News (newscasts)
Slogan	Imagine Better. California Spirit
Channels	Digital: 10 (VHF) Virtual: 10 (PSIP)
Affiliations	.1: ABC .2: Justice Network .3: Heroes & Icons
Owner	Tegna Media (KXTV, LLC)
First air date	March 20, 1955 (1955-03-20)
Call letters' meaning	X = Roman numeral 10 (for channel number) TV
Former callsigns	KBET-TV (1955–1959)
Former channel number(s)	Analog: 10 (VHF, 1955–2009) Digital: 61 (UHF, until 2009)
Former affiliations	CBS (1955–1995)
Transmitter power	28.6 kW
Height	611.9 meters (2,008 ft)
Facility ID	25048
Transmitter coordinates	38°14′24″N 121°30′3″W / 38.24000°N 121.50083°W / 38.24000; -121.50083
Licensing authority	FCC
Public license information:	Profile CDBS
Website	www.abc10.com

KXTV, virtual channel and VHF digital channel 10, is an ABC-affiliated television station located in Sacramento, California, United States. The station is owned by Tegna, Inc. KXTV maintains studio facilities located on Broadway, just south of Business Loop 80 at the south edge of downtown Sacramento, and its transmitter facility (which is shared with KOVR, channel 13) is located in Walnut Grove.

History

The station first signed on the air on March 19, 1955 as KBET; it was owned by the locally based Sacramento Telecasters. The station originally operated an affiliate of CBS. The station's original studio facilities were 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 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.

As a CBS affiliate, the station preempted 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.

Switch to ABC

KXTV's logo until 2015.

On March 6, 1995, KXTV switched its affiliation to ABC, in a swap with KOVR (channel 13), 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. The station continued to preempt 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 Saturday morning cartoons, it began airing the block in its entirety in the fall of 1995. 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. (Pacific Time) timeslot back to its affiliates in 2003.

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.

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). 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).

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]

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, in coincidence 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.

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 that 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.

Digital television

Digital channels

The station's digital channel is multiplexed:

In 2006, KXTV began carrying a 24-hour weather service on digital subchannel 10.2, which was an affiliate of The Local AccuWeather Channel. On August 23, 2011, the Disney-ABC Television Group signed an affiliation agreement with KXTV to carry Live Well Network, which replaced The Local AccuWeather Channel on 10.2.^[8]

KXTV produces Friday Night Football highlights and Jonathan Mumm's "California Postcard" segments in high definition. The station's talk show, Sacramento & Company produced a special presented in high definition called The Future Is HDTV on News10 in 2009, about the FCC-mandated transition from analog to digital television broadcasts, and showcased HD programs from ABC and the syndication market.

Analog-to-digital conversion

In 1999, KXTV began broadcasting its digital signal on UHF channel 61. KXTV 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.^[9] 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. ^[10] As of May 27, 2016 the UHF channel 36 translator has not been put into service.

Programming

Syndicated programming seen on KXTV includes Jeopardy!, Wheel of Fortune, Right This Minute, Inside Edition, and The Ellen DeGeneres Show among others. 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 (airing for an hour on weekday mornings at 9 a.m., 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.

News operation

KXTV presently broadcasts 36 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with five hours on weekdays and three hours on Saturday and 3.0 hours on 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.^[11] In-studio segments are presented in HD, while the remote field footage is broadcast in upconverted 16:9 widescreen standard definition.

Notable former on-air staff

• Kiran Chetry (now with CNN)
• Dana Howard (1992–2010, now with the State of California)
• Dana Jacobson (last with ESPN and now with CBS Sports Radio)

Out-of-market carriage

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

References

External links

• Official website
• Query the FCC's TV station database for KXTV
• BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on KXTV-TV