KPAX-TV (channel 8) 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 ...

Missoula, Montana Missoula ( ; fla, label=Salish language, Séliš, Nłʔay, lit=Place of the Small Bull Trout, script=Latn; kut, Tuhuⱡnana, script=Latn) is a city in the U.S. state of Montana; it is the county seat of Missoula County, Montana, Missoula Cou ...

, United States, affiliated with

CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainmen ...

and

The CW Plus The CW Plus is a secondary national programming service feed of The CW that is fully controlled and 75% owned by Nexstar Media Group, with Paramount Global and Warner Bros. Discovery each owning a 12.5% stake in the network. It is intended primar ...

. Owned by the

E. W. Scripps Company The E. W. Scripps Company is an American broadcasting company founded in 1878 as a chain of daily newspapers by Edward Willis "E. W." Scripps and his sister, Ellen Browning Scripps. It was also formerly a media conglomerate. The company is he ...

, it is part of the

Montana Television Network The Montana Television Network (MTN) is a statewide network of CBS affiliates in the U.S. state of Montana. It also includes one NBC station. All but one of these stations are owned by the E. W. Scripps Company. Five of the full-powered MTN stati ...

, a statewide network of CBS-affiliated stations. KPAX-TV's studios are located on West Central Avenue in Missoula, and its transmitter is located on TV Mountain north of the city. KAJJ-CD (channel 18) in

Kalispell Kalispell (, Montana Salish: Ql̓ispé, Kutenai language: kqayaqawakⱡuʔnam) is a city in, and the county seat of, Flathead County, Montana, United States. The 2020 census put Kalispell's population at 24,558. In Montana's northwest region, ...

operates as a low-power, Class A

semi-satellite A broadcast relay station, also known as a satellite station, relay transmitter, broadcast translator (U.S.), re-broadcaster (Canada), repeater (two-way radio) or complementary station (Mexico), is a broadcast transmitter which repeats (or tran ...

of KPAX-TV; known on-air as KAJ, it broadcasts the same schedule as KPAX, but with local commercials and news segments. To comply with the requirements of its Class A license, KAJJ also produces its own weeknight 5:30 and 10 p.m. newscasts with a separate anchor, which premiered in 2010.

History

The signal of

KXLF-TV KXLF-TV (channel 4) is a television station in Butte, Montana, United States, affiliated with CBS and The CW Plus. Owned by the E. W. Scripps Company, it is part of the Montana Television Network, a statewide network of CBS-affiliated stations. K ...

Butte __NOTOC__ In geomorphology, a butte () is an isolated hill with steep, often vertical sides and a small, relatively flat top; buttes are smaller landforms than mesas, plateaus, and tablelands. The word ''butte'' comes from a French word mea ...

had been received in Missoula since 1958, when a translator was set up in the Rattlesnake Valley, but KXLF-TV itself was approved to set up a translator station in Missoula in December 1965, at the same time that KMSO-TV of Missoula was allowed to build a translator in Butte, which began broadcasting in February 1966. Garryowen Butte TV, the licensee of KXLF-TV, applied to build a full-power satellite of the station for Missoula on October 15, 1969, and the

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) approved on December 23. KPAX-TV went on the air in two phases: provisionally from a tower on May 9, 1970, and from its full, 257,000-watt facility on June 5. In January 1977, work was carried out to build a Missoula studio on Regent Street in a former television and appliance store to begin the production of local news and commercials in the city. The year before, KXLF-KPAX had become a primary

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 ...

affiliate, with CBS being shared with KGVO-TV/KTVM-TV in the Missoula and Butte areas. In 1984, Sample sold the MTN stations to SJL, Inc. for $20 million. The network became exclusively affiliated with CBS that year; as a result, the airing of ABC programs in Missoula and Butte moved to the Eagle Communications network (KECI, KTVM, and KCFW), which signed an affiliation agreement with the network to air it alongside NBC. MTN was split two years later when the stations outside

Billings Billings is the largest city in the U.S. state of Montana, with a population of 117,116 as of the 2020 census. Located in the south-central portion of the state, it is the seat of Yellowstone County and the principal city of the Billings Metrop ...

, including KPAX-TV, were sold to

Evening Post Publishing Company Evening Post Industries is a privately held American media company, based in Charleston, South Carolina, United States. It has been led by four generations of the Manigault family. On August 6, 2013, the company changed its name from the Evening ...

, through its

Cordillera Communications Evening Post Industries is a privately held American media company, based in Charleston, South Carolina, United States. It has been led by four generations of the Manigault family. On August 6, 2013, the company changed its name from the Evening ...

subsidiary, for $24 million in 1986. The hybrid local-state news format that had been used at MTN since 1971 was abolished, with each station beginning to produce full-length local newscasts. While MTN was changing owners, a low-power TV station was going on the air at Kalispell. Owned by Thom Curtis and Daniel Coon of Billings, stockholders in KOUS-TV in Hardin, K18AJ made its debut on July 10, 1985, and primarily aired programming from the

Satellite Program Network Satellite Program Network (SPN) was a satellite and cable television network that broadcast in the United States from 1979 to 1989. Following a name change to Tempo Television in 1986, it was bought by NBC and relaunched as CNBC in 1989. History ...

. It went silent in mid-1988 and was sold to KPAX-TV, returning to the air in November as a translator with local commercials. In addition, a news reporter was stationed full-time in the Kalispell area; separate evening newscasts have been produced since 2000 for Kalispell. The call sign was altered to KAJJ-CA in 2011 and KAJJ-CD in 2012. KECI-TV with KCFW in Kalispell generally had the lead in local news in the Missoula market until KPAX-TV surpassed it in 1993, aided by the defection of anchor Jill Valley from KECI. The station began producing a local morning newscast in 1996.

Notable former on-air staff

Christine Clayburg Christine Clayburg (born May 26, 1973, in Paso Robles, California) is an American television meteorologist who also has done some acting, directing and screenwriting. Beginning as a Geology major at Sacramento State University, she became known ...

– meteorologist

Technical information

Subchannels

The station's digital signal is

multiplexed In telecommunications and computer networking, multiplexing (sometimes contracted to muxing) is a method by which multiple analog or digital signals are combined into one signal over a shared medium. The aim is to share a scarce resource - a ...

Translators

Analog-to-digital conversion

KPAX-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 8, 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 remained on its pre-transition VHF channel 7. Through the use of

PSIP The Program and System Information Protocol (PSIP) is the MPEG (a video and audio industry group) and privately defined program-specific information originally defined by General Instrument for the DigiCipher 2 system and later extended for the A ...

, digital television receivers display the station's

virtual channel In most telecommunications organizations, a virtual channel is a method of remapping the ''program number'' as used in H.222 Program Association Tables and Program Mapping Tables to a channel number that can be entered via digits on a receiver's ...

as its former VHF analog channel 8.

References

External links

Official KPAX-TV websiteOfficial KAJJ-CD websiteCW 8.2
{{EWS CORP Montana Television Network CBS network affiliates The CW affiliates Grit (TV network) affiliates Ion Television affiliates Court TV affiliates Television channels and stations established in 1970

PAX-TV Ion Television is an American broadcast television network owned by the Katz Broadcasting subsidiary of the E. W. Scripps Company. The network first began broadcasting on August 31, 1998, as Pax TV, focusing primarily on family-oriented entert ...

1970 establishments in Montana E. W. Scripps Company television stations