KWKB

KWKB is a television station that broadcasts on digital channel 25 and is the CW affiliate for Eastern Iowa. KWKB is licensed to Iowa City, but its studios and transmitter are located north of West Branch. KWKB serves the greater Eastern Iowa area including Iowa City, Cedar Rapids, Waterloo, and Dubuque. (Its signal also reaches the Quad Cities, but cable television systems in that area carry KGCW instead.)

History

KWKB signed on the air August 30, 1999. It carried the full WB and Kids' WB lineups. Syndicated programs on KWKB include Family Feud, The Wendy Williams Show, The Jerry Springer Show as well as reruns of Friends, My Name Is Earl and How I Met Your Mother.

From September 5, 2006 to September 16, 2011, KWKB was affiliated with both The CW as a primary network and MyNetworkTV as a secondary network. When KNVA in Austin, Texas became a sole CW affiliate in October 2009 after carrying MyNetworkTV as a secondary affiliation, KWKB became the only station in the country to have carried the full CW and MyNetworkTV lineups including The CW's Saturday morning children's block Toonzai (although CW affiliates KCWI in Des Moines, WLMT in Memphis, Tennessee and KXVO in Omaha carried WWE SmackDown from MyNetworkTV until that show moved to cable channel Syfy in October 2010).

Until September 16, 2011, KWKB aired MyNetworkTV programming from 9-11 p.m., immediately following CW programming. The satellite feeds for MyNetworkTV and The CW are actually aired at the same time, so MyNetworkTV programming was recorded and broadcast two hours after it is played by other MyNetworkTV affiliates. However, as of September 19, 2011, KWKB dropped MyNetwork TV in favor of syndicated fare. This briefly left the Cedar Rapids market one of two markets in Iowa without an affiliate for the network until October 3, when Des Moines's This TV affiliate KDMI re-affiliated with the network (as a secondary affiliation) after it had initially dropped it in 2009. However, as of October 2011, KCRG-TV 9.2 is carrying the MyNetworkTV programming service, however, that station is airing the service's programming from 12:05am-2:05am. KWKB was the last CW-affiliated station that carried MyNetworkTV on the same feed as The CW.

KWKB 20.2

In February 2011, KWKB began carrying the Antenna TV network on its .2 subchannel. Antenna TV is one of the nation's retro television networks. Antenna TV is owned and operated by Tribune Broadcasting, based in Chicago.

External links

• Station's web site
• AntennaTV
• Query the FCC's TV station database for KWKB
• BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on KWKB-TV