KLTV

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KLTV
Tyler / Longview / Jacksonville, Texas
Branding	KLTV 7
Slogan	Caring, Committed, Proud
Channels	7 (VHF) analog, 10 (VHF) digital
Affiliations	ABC
Owner	Raycom Media
Founded	1954
Call letters meaning	"L" stands for Lucille Buford, a member of the station's founding family. It can also mean Longview.
Former affiliations	CBS/NBC
Website	www.kltv.com

KLTV is a television station in Tyler, Texas, USA. It is an ABC network affiliate, and it broadcasts its analog signal on VHF channel 7 and digital signal on channel 10. It has been the dominant station in the market for most of its history, and news broadcasts on the station routinely garner several times the number of viewers of its nearest competitor.

The station's studios were located near Highway 31 and Loop 323 going towards Interstate 20 in Tyler, until the late 1990s, when they moved their studio facilities to downtown Tyler, near the Smith County Courthouse.

Contents 1 History 2 Tower Collapse 3 Recovery After the Collapse 4 Ratings 5 See also 6 External links

[edit] History

KLTV went on the air on October 15, 1954, and shared affiliation time with ABC, CBS, and NBC until the late 1980s. It was owned originally by Buford Television, which was owned by Lucille Buford. Buford owned the station until the early 1990s, when it was sold to TV-3, Inc., and later to Liberty Corporation before Liberty sold their stations to Raycom Media.

The station's most well known slogan is "Proud of East Texas", a slogan it has carried since 1985. The slogan is also used by its sister station KTRE-TV.

Its northeast Texas coverage area includes Longview, Texas and Jacksonville, Texas. Owned by Raycom Media, the station also operates and produces newscasts for KTRE, a satellite station in Lufkin.

KLTV installed their digital tower on September 23, 2005, and started broadcasting in high-definition over-the-air (ch. 10) and on SuddenLink cable channel 720 on December 14, 2005. KLTV is the second East Texas station to broadcast in HD. They also started airing the "StormTracker 24/7 Weather Channel" -- running 24-hour temperatures, weather conditions, and the StormTracker 7 Live Doppler Network for all of East Texas (available on SuddenLink cable channel 247).

KLTVDT 7.1 (10) ABC-HD 720p DD5.1

KLTVWX 7.2 (10) Stormtracker 24/7 Weather

KLTV 7.3 (10) ABC-SD 480i (Simulcast of KLTV analog)--Soon to be The Tube Music Network

[edit] Tower Collapse

At approximately 7:30 am on Friday, February 3, 2006, KLTV's 1,078 ft. broadcast transmitter tower at Red Springs, about ten miles north of Tyler, near the city of Hawkins, collapsed, taking both KLTV's analog and digital over-the-air signals off the air, leaving cable customers of Cox Cable Communications as the only customers who could receive the station. The outage also affected the feed of the station to DirecTV and Dish Network.

Within 13 hours of the collapse, KLTV re-established analog broadcasts at reduced power from its former station and transmitter location in eastern Tyler. A new Harris transmitter was brought in the day after the collapse, allowing resumption of high-power broadcasts from the Tyler site, though from a tower slightly less than half the height of the destroyed tower. This allowed the viewing area to see Super Bowl XL on analog channel 7.

Digital broadcasts resumed from the Tyler site several days later.

In addition, Tyler Christian radio station KVNE-FM was also knocked off as a result of the collapse. The station is broadcasting at 500 watts from a temporary location. On February 7, KVNE held a one-day fundraiser to raise a goal of $70,000 to put the station back on at high-power. The station raised more than $80,000 in their 15-hour campaign.

No injuries were reported, and the cause of the tower collapse is currently under investigation.

[edit] Recovery After the Collapse

KLTV has restored their analog OTA signal from their original tower at Highway 31 and Loop 323 in Tyler, near their original studio site, along with their signals to DirecTV and Dish Network and the feeds to all Tyler-Longview area cable companies. Their analog transmitter equipment was undamaged, and was supplemented at the original tower site with a newer transmitter, however their Over-the-Air High Definition and Digital TV transmission equipment was a total loss. The HD signal has been fully restored from the Tyler location as of February 10, 2006.

KLTV is estimating, as of February 4, 2006, that it will take between three and six months to restore full service to all viewers.

[edit] Ratings

In a June 2006 article, the Longview News-Journal reported, "In the May ratings from Nielsen Media Research, KLTV continued its dominance of the area television market, with an estimated 70,000 East Texas households tuning in to its 10 p.m. newscast. KETK was second with about 12,000 viewers, and KYTX was watched by an estimated 9,000 viewers." [1]

[edit] See also

• Circle 7 logo

[edit] External links

• KLTV Homepage
• Query the FCC's TV station database for KLTV