KQCD-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 ...

Dickinson, North Dakota Dickinson is a city in and the county seat of Stark County, North Dakota, United States. The population was 25,679 at the 2020 census. Dickinson is home to the Ukrainian Cultural Institute, which has a museum and holds events year round for the ...

, United States, affiliated with

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...

and

Fox Foxes are small to medium-sized, omnivorous mammals belonging to several genera of the family Canidae. They have a flattened skull, upright, triangular ears, a pointed, slightly upturned snout, and a long bushy tail (or ''brush''). Twelve sp ...

. The station is owned by

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 ...

, and maintains a

news bureau A news bureau is an office for gathering or distributing news. Similar terms are used for specialized bureaus, often to indicate a geographic location or scope of coverage: a ‘Tokyo bureau’ refers to a given news operation's office in Tokyo; ' ...

and advertising sales office on 21st Street East in Dickinson; its transmitter is located near South Heart, North Dakota. KQCD-TV is part of the four-station

NBC North Dakota NBC North Dakota is a network of four television stations that serve most of central and western North Dakota, along with parts of South Dakota and Montana. All four stations are dual NBC/Fox affiliates, and the flagship station is KFYR-TV in Bis ...

regional network of NBC affiliates in central and western North Dakota, originating from flagship station

KFYR-TV KFYR-TV (channel 5) is a television station in Bismarck, North Dakota, United States, affiliated with NBC and Fox. Owned by Gray Television, the station has studios on North 4th Street and East Broadway Avenue in downtown Bismarck, and its trans ...

(channel 5) in Bismarck. The NBC North Dakota network relays NBC network and other programming from KFYR-TV across central and western North Dakota, as well as bordering counties in Montana and

South Dakota South Dakota (; Sioux language, Sioux: , ) is a U.S. state in the West North Central states, North Central region of the United States. It is also part of the Great Plains. South Dakota is named after the Lakota people, Lakota and Dakota peo ...

. The four stations along with fellow NBC affiliate

KVLY-TV KVLY-TV (channel 11) is a television station in Fargo, North Dakota, United States, affiliated with NBC. It is owned by Gray Television alongside Horace-licensed low-power dual CBS/ CW+ affiliate KXJB-LD (channel 30). Both stations share stud ...

in Fargo often share news stories.

Master control Master control is the technical hub of a broadcast operation common among most over-the-air television stations and television networks. It is distinct from a production control room (PCR) in television studios where the activities such as switc ...

and some internal operations of KQCD are based at KFYR-TV's facilities on North 4th Street and East Broadway Avenue in downtown Bismarck. The four stations are counted as a single unit for ratings purposes. Though identifying as a separate station in its own right, KQCD-TV is 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 KFYR-TV in Bismarck. While it airs separate commercials and legal identifications, for most of the day it airs a time-shifted feed of KFYR-TV in

Mountain Time The Mountain Time Zone of North America keeps time by subtracting seven hours from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) when standard time ( UTC−07:00) is in effect, and by subtracting six hours during daylight saving time ( UTC−06:00). The cloc ...

. Most of the station's coverage area, including Dickinson itself, is in the Mountain Time Zone, and its

prime time Prime time or the peak time is the block of broadcast programming taking place during the middle of the evening for a television show. It is mostly targeted towards adults (and sometimes families). It is used by the major television networks to ...

schedule starts at 6 p.m. rather than the usual 7 p.m. for its sister stations.

History

KQCD-TV debuted on January 25, 1980. It was the last station in what was then known as the Meyer Television Network to sign on, and has always been a semi-satellite of KFYR-TV. It replaced K07HN, a low-powered translator of KFYR-TV that had served the area since around 1967. Until KQCD's sign-on, KDIX-TV (channel 2, now

KXMA-TV KXMA-TV (channel 2) is a television station in Dickinson, North Dakota, United States, airing programming from The CW Plus and CBS. The station is owned and operated by The CW's majority owner, Nexstar Media Group, and maintains a news bureau and ...

) aired a few NBC programs in off-hours. Longtime owner Marietta Meyer Ekberg sold her broadcast holdings in 1997, with the television stations going to Sunrise Television Corporation. Sunrise sold them to The Wicks Group of Companies of

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

Hoak Media Hoak Media Corporation was a broadcast media company based in Dallas, Texas. Hoak once owned eighteen television stations (including satellites), all in medium and small-markets, mostly in the Great Plains states and Colorado. Hoak Media was e ...

bought KFYR-TV, KMOT, KUMV, and KQCD in July 2006, as well as

in Fargo and

KSFY KSFY-TV (channel 13) is a television station in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, United States, affiliated with ABC and The CW Plus. It is owned by Gray Television alongside dual NBC/ Fox affiliate KDLT-TV (channel 46). Both stations share studios in ...

Sioux Falls, South Dakota Sioux Falls () is the most populous city in the U.S. state of South Dakota and the 130th-most populous city in the United States. It is the county seat of Minnehaha County and also extends into Lincoln County to the south, which continues up ...

and its satellite stations. On November 17, 2006, the sale was approved by 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). KQCD picked up

MeTV MeTV, an acronym for Memorable Entertainment Television, is an American broadcast television network owned by Weigel Broadcasting. Marketed as "The Definitive Destination for Classic TV", the network airs a variety of classic television program ...

in April 2013, with an official launch date of May 1, 2013. On November 20, 2013,

announced it would purchase Hoak Media in a $335 million deal. Gray initially planned, through Excalibur Broadcasting, to also acquire Fox affiliate KNDX/KXND for $7.5 million and operate them under a

local marketing agreement In North American broadcasting, a local marketing agreement (LMA), or local management agreement, is a contract in which one company agrees to operate a radio or television station owned by another party. In essence, it is a sort of lease or tim ...

. On March 25, 2014, Prime Cities Broadcasting, owner of KNDX/KXND, requested that the FCC dismiss the sale of that station to Excalibur. This came as a result of increased scrutiny of LMAs by the FCC. Gray would instead acquire the stations' non-license assets, and, upon the closure of the Hoak purchases on June 13, 2014, shut down KNDX/KXND and moved Fox programming to subchannels of KFYR and its satellites.

Programming

Syndicated programming

Syndicated programming on KQCD-TV includes ''

Rachael Ray Rachael Domenica Ray (born August 25, 1968) is an American cook, television personality, businesswoman, and author. She hosts the syndicated daily talk and lifestyle program '' Rachael Ray'', and the Food Network series ''30 Minute Meals'' ...

'', ''

Dateline A dateline is a brief piece of text included in news articles that describes where and when the story was written or filed, though the date is often omitted. In the case of articles reprinted from wire services, the distributing organization i ...

'', and ''

Wheel of Fortune The Wheel of Fortune or ''Rota Fortunae'' has been a concept and metaphor since ancient times referring to the capricious nature of Fate. Wheel of Fortune may also refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Art * ''The Wheel of Fortune'' (Burne-Jo ...

'', among others.

News operation

KQCD once aired partially separate weekday newscasts from KFYR-TV at 6 p.m. and 10 p.m., much like KUMV does today. The first 10 minutes (which included regional news and weather) originated at KFYR, while the remaining 20 minutes were filled by KQCD's own news and sports anchors. All other newscasts originated from KFYR. In 2002, severe cutbacks resulted in KQCD ending its locally focused newscasts. Since then, the only visual evidence that KQCD is a separate station has been its separate commercials and idents. KQCD's news department was reduced to a single reporter, Cebe Schneider. In 2009, she was joined by Adam Powell as bureau chief. Powell and Schneider's stories aired on KFYR's regional newscasts. They were the only reporters based in southwestern North Dakota. However, they were fired in 2012 due to further cutbacks. KQCD still has a single reporter whose stories air on KFYR. The stations occasionally share stories with co-owned KVLY-TV. The five stations simulcast major North Dakota sporting events and statewide political debates under the NBC North Dakota brand name and share certain equipment, such as remote broadcasting vehicles. On April 30, 2012, NBC North Dakota began broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition. The Fox-affiliated subchannel debuted ''West Dakota Fox News at Nine'' during October 2014, originating from KFYR's studios in Bismarck.

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 ...

Analog-to-digital conversion

KQCD-TV shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 7, on February 16, 2009, the day prior to the original date in which full-power television stations in the United States were set to transition from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate (which was later rescheduled for June 12, 2009). The station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition UHF channel 18 to VHF channel 7 for post-transition operations.

Translators

Gray also owned KNDX-LD (channel 38) in Dickinson; this station was acquired alongside the purchase of the non-license assets of KNDX and KXND and thus simulcasts KQCD's Fox-affiliated second subchannel. As of February 4, 2018, KNDX-LD was off the air due to being displaced by

T-Mobile T-Mobile is the brand name used by some of the mobile communications subsidiaries of the German telecommunications company Deutsche Telekom AG in the Czech Republic (T-Mobile Czech Republic), Poland (T-Mobile Polska), the United States (T-Mobile ...

. KNDX-LD had been granted a move to channel 28, but Gray Television surrendered KNDX-LD's license to the FCC on October 20, 2020. The FCC canceled the license the same day.

References

External links

* * {{Gray TV Television channels and stations established in 1980 1980 establishments in North Dakota QCD-TV NBC network affiliates Fox network affiliates MeTV affiliates Circle (TV network) affiliates Gray Television Dickinson, North Dakota