WNKJ-TV
| Hopkinsville, Kentucky-Clarksville, Tennessee United States | |
|---|---|
| City | Hopkinsville, Kentucky |
| Channels | Analog: 51 (UHF) |
| Affiliations | Defunct |
| Owner | Doxa Communications, Inc. |
| First air date | October 1983 [1] |
| Last air date | 1985 |
| Former affiliations | Independent (1983–1986) [2] |
WNKJ-TV was a television station that was licensed to and located in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, US. The station was owned by Doxa Communications, Inc. WNKJ-TV broadcast an analog signal on UHF channel 51. The studios were originally located at 1100 East 18th Street in downtown Hopkinsville.
History
The station signed on the air as an independent station in October 1983. [1] Except for W64BR, a low-powered translator of Kentucky Educational Television (KET) affiliate WKMA-TV, it was the first television station ever to sign on in the Hopkinsville area. W43AG, which at the time was under ownership of the Kentucky New Era newspaper, signed on the air more than one month later. Hopkinsville was and still is considered to be in the Nashville, Tennessee media market, and only the Nashville area’s big three television stations (e.g. WKRN, WSMV and WTVF), along with Madisonville-based WLCN (later WAZE-TV), provided the best-quality signal coverage at the time of WNKJ’s existence. ABC affiliate WBKO in Bowling Green, Kentucky had also been providing at least Grade B signal coverage in the Christian County area as Hopkinsville was as far west as that signal can reach.
The station’s programming lineup consisted of religious programs, old sitcoms, a few movies and cartoons in barter syndication.
In spite of a powerful terrestrial signal with 254,700 watts worth of effective radiated power, due to poor viewership, the station went dark in 1985. The station’s broadcasting license was surrendered to the FCC in 1986, and it was canceled indefinably as per the rule that if a station was silent for more than one calendar year, the station surrenders the broadcast license. This made W43AG (later WKAG-CA) the sole locally based television station in Hopkinsville until it went off the air in 2011.
Post-existence
In the early 1990s, another television station was also slated to go on the air on UHF channel 51 under a different licensee, with the callsign of WKKT-TV. The licensee, which filed an application with the FCC in 1988, never made it to the air, at least according to Broadcasting Yearbooks from 1988 to 1993.