KFSN-TV

KFSN-TV
Fresno, California
United States
Branding ABC 30 (general)
ABC 30 Action News (newscasts)
Slogan Number One in Central California
Live, local, latebreaking
Channels Digital: 30 (UHF)
Virtual: 30 (PSIP)
Affiliations
Owner Disney/ABC
(KFSN Television, LLC)
First air date May 10, 1956 (1956-05-10)
Call letters' meaning FreSNo
Former callsigns KFRE-TV (1956–1971)
Former channel number(s)
  • Analog:
  • 12 (VHF, 1956–1961)
  • 30 (UHF, 1961–2009)
  • Digital:
  • 9 (VHF, until 2009)
Former affiliations CBS (1956–1985)
Transmitter power 260 kW
Height 625 metres (2,051 feet)
Facility ID 8620
Transmitter coordinates 37°4′37.4″N 119°26′4.6″W / 37.077056°N 119.434611°W / 37.077056; -119.434611
Licensing authority FCC
Public license information: Profile
CDBS
Website abc30.com

KFSN-TV, channel 30, is an ABC owned-and-operated television station located in Fresno, California, United States. The station is owned by ABC Owned Television Stations, a unit of the Disney-ABC Television Group division of The Walt Disney Company. KFSN-TV maintains studio and office facilities located on G Street in downtown Fresno; its transmitter is located on Bear Mountain, near Meadow Lakes, California.

History

After the Federal Communications Commission's four-year-long freeze on awarding television station licenses was lifted in 1952, two radio stations – KARM (1430 AM, now KYNO) and KFRE (940 AM, now KFIG) competed for the construction permit to operate a station on channel 12, the sole VHF allocation given to Fresno. KFRE won the permit,[1] and the station first signed on the air on May 10, 1956 as KFRE-TV.[2] It is the third-oldest television station in the Fresno market and upon signing on, KFRE-TV took the CBS affiliation from KJEO (channel 47, now KGPE).[3][4]

The KFRE stations were acquired by Triangle Publications in 1959.[5] On February 17, 1961, KFRE-TV reluctantly moved to UHF channel 30 to make Fresno an all-UHF market under orders from the FCC. It was known by the term deintermixture, the move was made for the purpose of leveling the playing field and eliminating the potential of unfair competition between the VHF and UHF bands.[6] A similar situation occurred in nearby Bakersfield where that city's lone VHF station, KERO-TV on channel 10, moved to UHF channel 23 in 1963.[7] The move of KFRE-TV to channel 30 opened up channel 12 for use by KCOY-TV in Santa Maria, which went on the air in 1964.

Triangle began its exit from broadcasting in 1971, and sold the KFRE stations to Capital Cities Communications.[8][9] The new owners sold off the AM and FM radio stations as a condition of the purchase[10] and kept the television station, changing its call letters to KFSN-TV in April 1971 (the KFRE-TV calls are now used on Fresno's CW affiliate on channel 59; that station is unrelated to the current KFSN-TV).

On March 18, 1985, Capital Cities announced it would purchase ABC.[11] Nearly six months later, on September 9, 1985, KFSN-TV traded network affiliations with KJEO and became an ABC affiliate.[12] The transaction was finalized on January 3, 1986, making channel 30 an ABC owned-and-operated station. In 1996, the Walt Disney Company acquired Capital Cities/ABC.

Five current syndicated programs on KFSN are shared with most of the other ABC-owned stations: Live! with Kelly (produced by sister station WABC), Rachael Ray, Jeopardy!, Wheel of Fortune and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.

Digital television

Digital channels

The station's digital channel is multiplexed:

Channel Video Aspect PSIP Short Name Programming[13]
30.1 720p 16:9 KFSN-HD Main KFSN-TV programming / ABC
30.2 KFSN-LW Live Well Network
30.3 480i 4:3 KFSN-AW Laff

On April 27, 2009, KFSN began carrying Live Well Network on a new second digital subchannel digital subchannel; a standard definition simulcast was carried on digital subchannel 30.3 until it was replaced with Laff on April 15, 2015. KFSN-TV serves as the production facility for two programs seen on the Live Well Network, Motion and My Family Recipe Rocks.

KFSN-DT3 is expected to lose its affiliation with Laff in the near future due an affiliation agreement between Nexstar Broadcasting Group, owner of CBS affiliate KGPE, and Katz Broadcasting, owners of Laff.[14]

Analog-to-digital conversion

KFSN-TV shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 30, at noon on June 12, 2009, the official date in which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition VHF channel 9 to UHF channel 30.[15][16]

News operation

KFSN-TV presently broadcasts 39½ hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with 6½ hours on weekdays and 3½ hours each on Saturdays and Sundays); in regards to the number of hours devoted to news programming, it is the highest local newscast output among the broadcast television stations in the Fresno market. Unlike most ABC affiliates in the Pacific Time Zone, the station does not broadcast a 5:30 p.m. newscast on weekdays, opting to fill the half-hour with ABC World News (as a result of that program airing one hour earlier that other ABC stations in the time zone, KFSN airs an extension of its 6:00 p.m. newscast in World News's recommended 6:30 timeslot). In addition, the station produces the public affairs program Valley Focus, which airs Sunday mornings at 10:00 a.m.

KFSN has dominated the local news ratings in the San Joaquin Valley for decades, dating back to its pre-ABC-merger years as a CBS affiliate. Its 5 p.m. newscast, Live at Five frequently attracts more viewers than all other area stations combined. The station's newscasts are not branded Eyewitness News, nor does it use the Gari Media Group-composed "Eyewitness News" music package, like most of ABC's other owned-and-operated stations. Instead, KFSN retains the Action News branding made famous at Philadelphia sister station WPVI-TV, when the format debuted on that station in 1970. KFSN also used the original version of 615 Music's "News One" music package from 1994-2014, also used at the time by San Francisco sister station, KGO-TV.

In 2003, the station began pooling resources with sister stations KABC-TV in Los Angeles and KGO-TV to hire a full-time reporter and photographer to staff a Sacramento bureau following Arnold Schwarzenegger's election as Governor during the 2003 California recall election; the Sacramento bureau was shut down in September 2013.[17] On April 23, 2007, beginning with the 5 p.m. newscast, KFSN-TV became the seventh ABC owned-and-operated station to begin broadcasting their local newscasts in high definition (following its sister stations KABC-TV, WPVI-TV, WABC-TV in New York City, WLS-TV in Chicago, KGO-TV in San Francisco and KTRK-TV in Houston) and updated its news branding to ABC 30 Action News HD.

On September 12, 2011, KFSN launched an hour-long 4:00 p.m. newscast, which replaced The Oprah Winfrey Show.[18] This follows the trend of the four other sister stations (WABC-TV, WPVI-TV, KGO-TV and WTVD in Durham, North Carolina) that started their own 4:00 p.m. newscast after Oprah ended its syndication run. On January 7, 2013, KFSN began producing a half-hour 10:00 p.m. newscast for MyNetworkTV affiliate KAIL-TV (channel 7); the program, titled ABC 30 Action News Live at 10:00,[19] ended in July 2014.

Notable former on-air staff

References

  1. ↑ "Lee breaks stalemate, KFRE gets Fresno Vhf." Broadcasting - Telecasting, January 16, 1956, pg. 67.
  2. ↑ "KFRE-TV Fresno goes on the air." Broadcasting - Telecasting, May 14, 1956, pg. 9.
  3. ↑ "KFRE-TV joins CBS-TV." Broadcasting - Telecasting, March 12, 1956, pg. 84.
  4. ↑ "KFRE-TV to join CBS-TV." Broadcasting - Telecasting, May 7, 1956, pg. 88.
  5. ↑ "Changing Hands." Broadcasting, November 24, 1958, pg. 96
  6. ↑ "KFRE-TV moves to uhf; backed deintermixture." Broadcasting, February 20, 1961, pg. 44.
  7. ↑ "Vhf-to-uhf change approved for KERO-TV." Broadcasting, November 19, 1962, pg. 78.
  8. ↑ "Capcities buys 9 Triangle outlets." Broadcasting, February 16, 1970, pg. 9.
  9. ↑ "Last minute clearance for Capcities." Broadcasting, March 1, 1971, pp. 19-20.
  10. ↑ "Part of Capcities package comes in." Broadcasting, July 13, 1970, pg. 36.
  11. ↑ "Capcities + ABC" and "FCC approval of CapCities/ABC deal likely." Broadcasting, March 25, 1985, pp. 31-34.
  12. ↑ "In brief." Broadcasting, August 19, 1985, pg. 96
  13. ↑ RabbitEars TV Query for KFSN
  14. ↑ "Bounce TV, Grit, Escape, Laff Multicast Deal Covers 81 Stations, 54 Markets". Broadcasting & Cable. June 15, 2016. Retrieved July 16, 2016.
  15. ↑ "DTV Tentative Channel Designations for the First and Second Rounds" (PDF). Retrieved 2012-03-24.
  16. ↑ CDBS Print
  17. ↑ at ABC Stations Eliminate Last Political Reporters in San Francisco Bay Area, TVSpy, September 4, 2013.
  18. ↑ KFSN to Launch 10 p.m. Newscast on KAIL, TVSpy, January 7, 2013.
  19. ↑ KFSN Set to Replace ‘Oprah’ With 4 p.m. Newscast, TVSpy, August 25, 2011.
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