KHQA-TV (channel 7) is a
television station
A television station is a set of equipment managed by a business, organisation or other entity, such as an amateur television (ATV) operator, that transmits video content and audio content via radio waves directly from a transmitter on the earth ...
licensed to
Hannibal, Missouri, United States, serving the
Quincy, Illinois
Quincy ( ), known as Illinois's "Gem City", is a city in and the county seat of Adams County, Illinois, United States, located on the Mississippi River. The 2020 census counted a population of 39,463 in the city itself, down from 40,633 in 2010. ...
–Hannibal, Missouri–
Keokuk, Iowa
Keokuk is a city in and a county seat of Lee County, Iowa, United States, along with Fort Madison. It is Iowa's southernmost city. The population was 9,900 at the time of the 2020 census. The city is named after the Sauk chief Keokuk, who is ...
market
Market is a term used to describe concepts such as:
* Market (economics), system in which parties engage in transactions according to supply and demand
* Market economy
*Marketplace, a physical marketplace or public market
Geography
*Märket, a ...
as an affiliate of
CBS and
ABC
ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script known as the alphabet.
ABC or abc may also refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Broadcasting
* American Broadcasting Company, a commercial U.S. TV broadcaster
** Disney–ABC Television ...
. The station is owned by the
Sinclair Broadcast Group
Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc. (SBG) is a publicly traded American telecommunications conglomerate that is controlled by the descendants of company founder Julian Sinclair Smith. Headquartered in the Baltimore suburb of Cockeysville, Maryland, t ...
, and maintains studios on South 36th Street in Quincy; its transmitter is located northeast of the city on Cannonball Road near
I-172
Interstate 172 (I-172) is a spur route from I-72 entirely within the US state of Illinois. The highway runs north from its start outside of Hannibal, Missouri, to about west of Fowler. At U.S. Route 24 (US 24), I-172 becomes I ...
.
History
KHQA went on-the-air September 23, 1953. The station was originally owned by
Lee Enterprises
Lee Enterprises, Inc. is a publicly traded American media company. It publishes 77 daily newspapers in 26 states, and more than 350 weekly, classified, and specialty publications. Lee Enterprises was founded in 1890 by Alfred Wilson Lee and is b ...
of
Davenport, Iowa
Davenport is a city in and the county seat of Scott County, Iowa, United States. Located along the Mississippi River on the eastern border of the state, it is the largest of the Quad Cities, a metropolitan area with a population of 384,324 and a ...
along with the ''
Hannibal Courier-Post'' and WTAD radio (
AM 930 and FM 99.5, now
WCOY). Despite the common ownership, Lee was unable to use the WTAD-TV calls because
Federal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisdiction ...
(FCC) rules of the time did not allow stations to share common base callsigns if they were licensed in different cities. While licensed to Hannibal (hence accounting for the "H" in its callsign, as well as its callsign beginning with a "K"), its studios have long been located across the
Mississippi River
The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it f ...
in Quincy; the station signed on after the FCC allowed a station to base its main studio outside its city of license.
Channel 7 received its
DuMont transmitters on July 27, 1953. They arrived on the same truck as the transmitters for future rival
WGEM-TV
WGEM-TV (channel 10) is a television station licensed to Quincy, Illinois, United States, serving the Quincy, Illinois–Hannibal, Missouri–Keokuk, Iowa market as an affiliate of NBC, The CW Plus, and Fox. Owned by Gray Television, it is a si ...
(channel 10). The two stations' crews raced to be the first television station in the Tri-State. Ultimately, WGEM-TV won the race, signing on September 4, more than two weeks before channel 7.
KHQA has always been a primary CBS affiliate, although it had a secondary affiliation with
DuMont between 1953 and 1956. The station shared secondary ABC affiliation with
WGEM-TV
WGEM-TV (channel 10) is a television station licensed to Quincy, Illinois, United States, serving the Quincy, Illinois–Hannibal, Missouri–Keokuk, Iowa market as an affiliate of NBC, The CW Plus, and Fox. Owned by Gray Television, it is a si ...
(channel 10) in the 1960s. KHQA also aired a number of
UPN
The United Paramount Network (UPN) was an American broadcast television network that launched on January 16, 1995. It was originally owned by Chris-Craft Industries' United Television. Viacom (through its Paramount Television unit, which prod ...
programs during late-night hours between 1995 and 2006. Lee sold the ''Courier-Post'' in 1969, but held onto its Quincy broadcasting cluster until December 1986 when the company sold KHQA to A. Richard Benedek, whose television holdings eventually became
Benedek Broadcasting
Benedek Broadcasting was a television broadcasting company, who owned and operated 22 network-affiliated television stations throughout the United States, all affiliated with major television networks, serving mainly small and medium-size markets. ...
. The radio stations were sold to Eastern Broadcasting. At the time of the sale, KHQA was the smallest station in Lee's TV portfolio.
Benedek declared bankruptcy and sold most of its stations to
Gray Television
Gray Television, Inc. is an American publicly traded television broadcasting company based in Atlanta, Georgia. Founded in 1946 by James Harrison Gray as Gray Communications Systems, the company owns or operates 180 stations across the United St ...
in 2002, but KHQA was sold to Chelsey Broadcasting. KHQA and
WHOI in
Peoria became the first two stations owned by the newly formed
Barrington Broadcasting
Barrington Broadcasting Group, LLC, headquartered in Schaumburg, Illinois was an American corporation focused on broadcast television, primarily in middle and small size media markets. Barrington owned or operated via duopoly twenty-four televi ...
in April 2004. In early 1998, KHQA left its longtime home in the Western
Catholic
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
Union building in downtown Quincy. The station moved into a new state-of-the-art facility located on South 36th Street. On August 28, 2007, KHQA announced that a new second digital subchannel would begin carrying ABC for the Tri-States, replacing sister station
KTVO (which had been ABC's affiliate of record in the Quincy market). This was launched on September 30.
On February 28, 2013, Barrington announced that it would exit from broadcasting and sell off its entire group, including KHQA-TV, to
Sinclair Broadcast Group
Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc. (SBG) is a publicly traded American telecommunications conglomerate that is controlled by the descendants of company founder Julian Sinclair Smith. Headquartered in the Baltimore suburb of Cockeysville, Maryland, t ...
.
The sale was completed on November 25.
On February 26, 2020, it was revealed that KHQA would undergo the same transition as Sinclair sister stations
WNWO-TV
WNWO-TV (channel 24) is a television station in Toledo, Ohio, United States, affiliated with NBC. Owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, the station maintains a transmitter on Cousino Road in Jerusalem Township. Its studios are located on South Byrn ...
in
Toledo, Ohio
Toledo ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Lucas County, Ohio, United States. A major Midwestern United States port city, Toledo is the fourth-most populous city in the state of Ohio, after Columbus, Cleveland, and Cincinnati, and according ...
and
WOLF-TV
WOLF-TV (channel 56) is a television station licensed to Hazleton, Pennsylvania, United States, serving Northeastern Pennsylvania as an affiliate of the Fox network. It is the flagship property of locally based New Age Media, LLC, and is co-ow ...
in
Scranton, Pennsylvania, having their newscasts hubbed by another station. News management, production, and anchors would be moved to
WICD
Wicd, which stands for Wireless Interface Connection Daemon, is an open-source software utility to manage both wireless and wired networks for Linux. The project started in late 2006 with the creation of Connection Manager, which eventually becam ...
in
Champaign, Illinois
Champaign ( ) is a city in Champaign County, Illinois, United States. The population was 88,302 at the 2020 census. It is the tenth-most populous municipality in Illinois and the fourth most populous city in Illinois outside the Chicago metropo ...
. Weather and some reporters would be allowed to stay local, with an unspecified number of other employees allowed to move to Champaign. These changes went into effect later in the year.
Technical information
Subchannels
The station's digital signal is
multiplexed:
Before KHQA-DT2 started, sister station
KTVO in
Kirksville, Missouri
Kirksville is the county seat and most populous city in Adair County, Missouri. Located in Benton Township, its population was 17,530 at the 2020 census. Kirksville is home to two colleges: Truman State University and A.T. Still University.
...
had served as the default analog ABC affiliate for the area. KTVO launched a CBS-affiliated second digital subchannel on May 15, 2010 effectively marking the network's return to that station after a 36-year absence. KHQA-DT1 was eventually upgraded from
720p
720p (1280×720 px; also called HD ready, standard HD or just HD) is a progressive HDTV signal format with 720 horizontal lines/1280 columns and an aspect ratio (AR) of 16:9, normally known as widescreen HDTV (1.78:1). All major HDTV broadcast ...
into
1080i
1080i (also known as Full HD or BT.709) is a combination of frame resolution and scan type. 1080i is used in high-definition television (HDTV) and high-definition video. The number "1080" refers to the number of horizontal lines on the screen. ...
.
Analog-to-digital conversion
KHQA-TV shut down its analog signal, over
VHF
Very high frequency (VHF) is the ITU designation for the range of radio frequency electromagnetic waves (radio waves) from 30 to 300 megahertz (MHz), with corresponding wavelengths of ten meters to one meter.
Frequencies immediately below VHF ...
channel 7, 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
UHF
Ultra high frequency (UHF) is the ITU designation for radio frequencies in the range between 300 megahertz (MHz) and 3 gigahertz (GHz), also known as the decimetre band as the wavelengths range from one meter to one tenth of a meter (on ...
channel 29 to VHF channel 7.
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Khqa-Tv
CBS network affiliates
ABC network affiliates
Comet (TV network) affiliates
Television channels and stations established in 1953
1953 establishments in Missouri
Television stations in the Quincy–Hannibal area
Sinclair Broadcast Group