KUCW
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| KUCW | |
|---|---|
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| Ogden/Salt Lake City, Utah | |
| Branding | CW 30 |
| Channels | Analog: 30 (UHF) |
| Affiliations | The CW |
| Owner | Newport Television, LLC (sale pending to High Plains Broadcasting, Inc.; Newport Television will continue to operate the station thereafter) |
| First air date | 1985 |
| Call letters’ meaning | Utah's CW |
| Former callsigns | KOOG-TV (1985-1998) KUWB (1998-2006) |
| Former affiliations | independent (1985-1995) The WB (1995-2006) |
| Transmitter Power | 1486 kW (analog) 200 kW (digital) |
| Height | 1242 m (analog) 1257 m (digital) |
| Facility ID | 1136 |
| Transmitter Coordinates | |
| Website | www.cw30.com |
KUCW is a full-service television station licensed to Ogden, Utah and serving the Salt Lake City market as the CW television affiliate. The station broadcasts in analog on UHF channel 30, in digital on UHF channel 48 and is rebroadcast statewide on a network of translator stations. Founded May 24, 1983, the station is owned by Newport Television of Kansas City, Missouri. The transmitter for KUCW is located on Farnsworth Peak, west of Salt Lake City.
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[edit] History
There are two methods of accounting the station's history: by license and by "intellectual unit", which is the combination of a station's call letters, programming, network affiliation and staff. As the result of 1998 Local Marketing Agreements (LMAs), which launched a process that culminated in a station swap in 1999, KUCW's license history differs from its intellectual unit history prior to April 21, 1998.
[edit] License history
On May 24, 1983, the FCC granted an original construction permit to build a full-power television station on UHF channel 30 to serve the city of Ogden, Utah, and the Salt Lake City television market. The new station, owned by Ogden Television, Inc., originally identified under its application number, 830121KH, but took the call letters KOOG-TV in September. It began operations in October 1985, and was licensed on January 16, 1986. Originally, the station’s format was general entertainment, airing cartoons, old movies, drama shows and classic sitcoms. In early 1986 the station began airing Home Shopping Network (HSN) programming overnights and added Home Shopping during midday hours in mid-1987. By 1988, the station was programming HSN 18 hours a day and general entertainment six hours a day.
Ogden Television, Inc. went into receivership in 1993, and the station was sold to Miracle Rock Church in a deal finalized in March 1994. Ogden Television was programming approximately eight hours of general entertainment per day; Miracle Rock Church added about an hour per day of religious programming to the schedule, and continued to air HSN approximately 15 hours a day. In January 1995, KOOG-TV became a WB Television Network affiliate and added prime time programming from The WB. The following September, they also added cartoons from Kids' WB. Paxson Communications, having recently failed to complete an agreement to acquire 50% of Provo station KZAR-TV (later KUWB, now KUPX), agreed to acquire KOOG-TV in 1996, and the station dropped HSN in favor of Paxson's inTV infomercial network. The sale was finalized in June 1997, and the station continued to air programming from The WB. Almost immediately, Paxson began pursuing a television station swap with KZAR-TV, at the time wholly owned by Roberts Broadcasting. The swap proposal was documented in an August 1997 transfer of control agreement between Roberts Broadcasting and ACME Communications.[1] At the same time, Paxson was involved in a dispute with Sonic Cable Television of Utah, trying to secure must-carry coverage on Sonic's cable system in Logan, Utah. Paxson filed a complaint with the FCC at the end of December, but their petition was unsuccessful.[2]
In February 1998, KOOG-TV became KUPX, airing inTV during the daytime, WB programming during prime time, and The Worship Network overnight. On April 20, 1998, Paxson entered into an agreement with Roberts Broadcasting and ACME Communications in which each station would acquire the other's assets, but WB programming would remain on channel 30.[3] To expedite the process, the parties immediately entered into LMAs, whereby the stations would swap call signs and would begin to operate each other's stations until the FCC could approve the assignments of license. The following day, the stations executed the LMAs. KUPX channel 30 of Ogden became KUWB 30 and KUWB channel 16 of Provo became KUPX 16. Paxson continued to own the Ogden station, now KUWB, but operated the new Provo station, KUPX. Meanwhile, Roberts and ACME continued to own KUPX, but operated KUWB. Upon assuming operations at KUWB, ACME dropped the infomercial and religious programming and replaced it with classic television series and shows.
Paxson Communications, Roberts Broadcasting and ACME Communications filed formal assignment of license applications in May 1998 and the FCC approved the swap in March 1999. In September 1999, ACME Communications, having bought out Roberts Broadcasting's interests, and Paxson Communications consummated the agreement and took full ownership their respective stations.
In time, KUWB began to cut back on cartoons and classic sitcoms and eventually eliminated them altogether in favor of court shows, and talk and reality shows. Afternoon cartoons disappeared in January 2006, when The WB ended the weekday afternoon Kids’ WB block.
In August 2005, Clear Channel Communications, owner of KTVX channel 4, the ABC affiliate in Salt Lake City, reached an agreement to buy KUWB from ACME Communications. The sale, completed in April 2006, gave Clear Channel a duopoly in the Salt Lake City market.
In January 2006, CBS Corporation and Time Warner, owners of UPN and The WB, respectively, announced that the two networks would shut down in September 2006. In their place, a new network, called The CW, would be created with shows from both UPN and The WB. The sale of KUWB from ACME Communications to Clear Channel became contingent on the ability of KUWB to secure the CW Network affiliation.[4] KUWB was able to get the CW affiliation and the sale of the station was completed. In April, Clear Channel announced plans to affiliate KUWB with The CW,[5], and nearly two weeks later, CW and KUWB announced the official affiliation agreement.[6] In February 2006, Clear Channel had obtained call letters KUCW and placed them on a Coos Bay, Oregon satellite of Clear Channel station KMTR in Eugene, Oregon in anticipation of the acquisition of KUWB. On September 18, 2006, Clear Channel changed the calls of the Coos Bay station to KMCB and moved the KUCW calls to Ogden channel 30, to coincide with the official launch of the CW Network.
On November 16, 2006, Clear Channel announced that it would be selling all of its television stations, including KUCW,[7] after being bought by private equity firms. On April 20, 2007, Clear Channel entered into an agreement to sell its entire television stations group to Providence Equity Partners.[8] Providence Equity formed a new holding company, Newport Television, for the stations group. The deal closed on March 14, 2008. In May of 2008, Newport Television agreed to sell KUCW and five other stations to High Plains Broadcasting, Inc. because of an ownership conflict. However, Newport Television will continue to operate KUCW after the sale is finalized.[9]
[edit] KUWB intellectual unit history prior to the swap
The KUWB intellectual unit began August 22, 1997, when ACME Communications agreed to acquire 49% ownership of Roberts Broadcasting of Salt Lake City, owners of unbuilt station KZAR-TV channel 16 in Provo, with a second agreement to acquire the remaining 51% after the station commenced on-air operations. ACME was founded in 1997 and concentrated on WB affiliations, as its CEO and co-founder, Jamie Kellner, was co-founder of the WB Network and was its CEO at that time. KZAR-TV changed call letters to KUWB in February 1998, and the intellectual unit moved over to channel 30 in April 1998, when ACME Communications and Roberts Broadcasting, co-owners of channel 16, and Paxson Communications, owners of channel 30, agreed to allow each other to manage their stations leading up to the station swap, which was completed in September 1999.
[edit] Programming
In addition to The CW programming schedule, KUCW broadcasts NBC programming that the network’s affiliate , KSL-TV channel 5, declines to air. The owner of KSL-TV, Bonneville International is part of the media division of the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). A socially conservative religious organization, the LDS Church declines to air some of NBC's more risque programming, such as Saturday Night Live and the short-lived series Coupling. KUCW also has edit parts of SNL on November 3 2007 during Kenan Thompson's Barbara Birmingham Scene on Weekend Update also puts a huge cw30 logo over the nbc logo that you can still see.
KUCW may air programs as an alternate ABC affiliate when KTVX is not able to do so such as in an emergency.
[edit] Digital Television
On April 3, 1997, the FCC adopted its Sixth Report and Order, establishing digital television service allotments.[10][11] In the initial allotment, the FCC assigned UHF channel 17 for KZAR-DT, the companion channel to UHF channel 16 in Provo, later to become KUWB-DT. In the station swap, which was initiated in April 1998, the allocation for KUWB-DT was treated as part of the KUWB intellectual unit, and became the companion channel for Ogden UHF channel 30, although channel 17 was still officially assigned to Provo in the Digital Table of Allotments. ACME Communications filed an application for KUWB-DT in November 1998. In July 1999, KUWB and seven other area channels, collectively known as DTV Utah, proposed significant changes to the Salt Lake City market DTV allocations, which were approved by the FCC in May 2000.[12] As a result of the FCC ruling, KUWB-DT was reallocated from UHF channel 17 to UHF channel 48 and its city of license officially moved from Provo to Ogden in the DTV Table of Allotments. The FCC granted a construction permit to build KUWB-DT in October 2001 and ACME Communications applied for a license for the DTV station six months later. The FCC granted the license for KUWB-DT (now KUCW-DT) on October 28, 2002. As of October 2006, KUCW-DT broadcasts one feed, a simulcast of analog station KUCW.
[edit] Other area stations on channel 30
On October 19, 1960, a full-service educational television station called KWCS began broadcasting licensed to Ogden on channel 18. KWCS shut down sometime in the 1970s. Some have linked KWCS to KOOG-TV of 25 years later, but the FCC does not, as they issued a separate original construction permit for KOOG-TV in 1983.[13]
[edit] Translators
KUCW extends its coverage throughout Utah, plus parts of Arizona, Idaho, Nevada and Wyoming, using a network of more than 35 translator television stations listed below.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- CW30's Homepage
- Query the FCC's TV station database for KUCW
- BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on KUCW-TV
[edit] References
- ^ "Member Contribution Agreement", www.secinfo.com, 1997-08-22. Retrieved on 2007-03-20.
- ^ "Memorandum Opinion and Order", FCC CDBS database, 1998-05-06. Retrieved on 2007-03-20.
- ^ "Asset Exchange Agreement", Securities Exchange Commission, 1998-04-20. Retrieved on 2007-03-20.
- ^ "SEC Form 8-K", ACME Communications Inc., 2006-01-30. Retrieved on 2007-03-20.
- ^ J. Eggerton. "Clear Channel Buying KUWB", Broadcasting & Cable, 2006-04-05. Retrieved on 2007-03-20.
- ^ A. Romano. "CW Signs Up Clear Channel Stations", Broadcasting & Cable, 2006-04-19. Retrieved on 2007-03-20.
- ^ E. White. "Group to Buy Clear Channel", Deseret News, 2006-11-17. Retrieved on 2007-03-20.
- ^ Clear Channel Communications (2007-04-20). "Clear Channel Agrees to Sell Television Station Group to Providence Equity Partners". Press release. Retrieved on 2007-04-20.
- ^ Fresno's KGPE has new owner
- ^ "Sixth Report and Order", FCC Engineering and Technology, 1997-04-03. Retrieved on 2007-03-20.
- ^ "Appendix B - DTV Table of Allocations", FCC Engineering and Technology, 1997-04-03. Retrieved on 2007-03-20.
- ^ "Notice of Proposed Rulemaking", FCC CDBS database, 1999-05-19. Retrieved on 2007-03-20.
- ^ "October 19, 1960 in History", www.brainyhistory.com. Retrieved on 2007-03-20.
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