KUCW

KUCW is the CW-afifliated television station for the state of Utah that is licensed to Ogden. It broadcasts a high definition digital signal on UHF channel 48 from a transmitter on Farnsworth Peak. Owned by High Plains Broadcasting, the station is operated through joint sales and shared services agreements by Newport Television, LLC. This makes it sister to ABC affiliate KTVX and the two share studios on West 1700 South in Salt Lake City along I-215. Syndicated programming on KUCW includes: King of Queens, Everybody Loves Raymond, That '70s Show, and Tyra.

KUCW may air programs as an alternate ABC affiliate whenever KTVX cannot do so, such as during breaking news. The station also broadcasts NBC programming that the network’s affiliate, KSL-TV, declines to air. The owner of that channel, Bonneville International, is part of the media division of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. A socially conservative religious organization, the LDS Church is known to decline to air some of NBC's programming such as Saturday Night Live and the short-lived series Coupling.

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 local marketing agreements (LMAs) in 1998, 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.

License history

On May 24, 1983, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) granted an original construction permit to build a full-power television station on UHF channel 30 to serve the city of Ogden and the Salt Lake City 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 1985. It began operations in October 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 the network during midday hours in mid-1987. By 1988, KOOG was programming HSN eighteen 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 while Miracle Rock Church added about an hour per day of religious programming to the schedule and continued to air HSN approximately fifteen hours a day. In January 1995, KOOG became a WB affiliate and added prime time programming from the network. The following September, it also added cartoons from Kids' WB. Paxson Communications, having recently failed to complete an agreement to acquire 50% of station KZAR-TV in Provo (later KUWB now KUPX), agreed to acquire KOOG 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 hich was 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 system in Logan. Paxson filed a complaint with the FCC at the end of December but their petition was unsuccessful. ^[2] In February 1998, KOOG 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 this channel. ^[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 on 30 and KUWB channel 16 of Provo became KUPX on 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 (having bought out Roberts Broadcasting's interests) and Paxson consummated the agreement and took full ownership of 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, daytime 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) 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.

On January 24, 2006, The WB and UPN announced that they would end broadcasting and merge. The new combined network would be called The CW. The letters would represent the first initial of its corporate parents: CBS (the parent company of UPN) and the Warner Bros. unit of Time Warner. The sale of KUWB from ACME Communications to Clear Channel became contingent on the ability of the channel to secure the CW affiliation. ^[4] It was able to get this 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, Clear Channel obtained the call letters KUCW and placed them on a Coos Bay, Oregon satellite of 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 this channel to coincide with the official launch of The CW. On November 16, Clear Channel announced that it would be selling all of its television stations, including KUCW and KTVX, ^[7] after being bought by private equity firms. On April 20, 2007, Clear Channel entered into an agreement to sell its entire television station group to Providence Equity Partners. ^[8] Providence Equity formed a new holding company, Newport Television, for the station group. The deal closed on March 14, 2008.

In May, Newport agreed to sell KUCW and five other stations to High Plains Broadcasting due to an ownership conflict with Univision Communications (of which Providence Equity holds a 19% stake in). ^[9] The sale closed on September 15, 2008. ^[10] Newport retained control of the station via joint sales and shared services agreements. ^[9] On October 12, 2009, KUCW announced that it had agreed to air Utah State University football as well as men's and women's basketball games. This agreement will run through the 2012-2013 academic year. ^[11] Back on October 19, 1960, a full-service educational television station called KWCS began broadcasting licensed to Ogden on analog channel 18. This shut down sometime in the 1970s. Some have linked that station to KOOG-TV 25 years later but the FCC does not as they issued a separate original construction permit for KOOG in 1983. ^[12]

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 on analog 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 because its CEO and co-founder, Jamie Kellner, was co-founder of The WB and was its CEO at that time. KZAR changed call letters to KUWB in February 1998 and the intellectual unit moved over to analog 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.

Digital television

On April 3, 1997, the FCC adopted its Sixth Report and Order establishing digital television service allotments.^{[13] [14]} 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, 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. ^[15]

As a result of the FCC ruling, KUWB-DT was reallocated from UHF channel 17 to 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. On June 12, 2009, the station shut off its analog transmitter and began to broadcast exclusively in digital. In April 2011, KUCW 30.2 started airing the digital sub-channel The Country Network^[16]

Newscasts

Although KUCW has been a sister station to KTVX since April 2006, it did not air newscasts produced by that station until September 2010, when it added a two-hour extension of Good Morning Utah from 7 until 9 a.m., as well as a 9 p.m. newscast. In addition, KUCW began airing a local entertainment show weekday mornings at 9 on September 7 called The Daily Dish. ^[17] The 9 p.m. newscast ended on December 9, 2011 due to low ratings.^[18]

Good Morning Utah
(weekday mornings 7 to 9)

• Anchors:
  • Dan Plante
• Weather:
  • Glenn Willey
• Reporter:
  • Brian Carlson

The Daily Dish
(weekday mornings 9 to 10)

• Host:
  • Nicea Degering

KUCW features additional personnel from KTVX. See that article for a complete listing.

Translators

The station extends its coverage throughout the entire state of Utah plus parts of Arizona, Idaho, Nevada, and Wyoming using a network of more than 35 translator television stations listed below. As a result of the June 2009 transition to digital television, a couple of these channels have made the switch as well. However, only full-powered television stations were required to make the change.

References

External links

• KUCW "CW 30"
• KTVX "ABC 4"
• Query the FCC's TV station database for KUCW