KXVO (channel 15) 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 ...
in
Omaha, Nebraska
Omaha ( ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Nebraska and the county seat of Douglas County. Omaha is in the Midwestern United States on the Missouri River, about north of the mouth of the Platte River. The nation's 39th-largest cit ...
, United States, airing programming from the digital multicast network
TBD
To be announced (TBA), to be confirmed (TBC), to be determined or decided or declared (TBD), and other variations, are placeholder terms used very broadly in event planning to indicate that although something is scheduled or expected to happen, a ...
. It is owned by Mitts Telecasting Company LLC, which maintains 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 ...
(LMA) with 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 ...
, owner of dual
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 ...
/
CW affiliate
KPTM
KPTM (channel 42) is a television station in Omaha, Nebraska, United States, affiliated with Fox and The CW. It is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, which provides certain services to TBD outlet KXVO (channel 15) under a local marketing agreeme ...
(channel 42), for the provision of certain services. Both stations share studios on Farnam Street in Omaha, while KXVO's transmitter is located on Pflug Road, south of
Gretna and
I-80
Interstate 80 (I-80) is an east–west transcontinental freeway that crosses the United States from downtown San Francisco, California, to Teaneck, New Jersey, in the New York metropolitan area. The highway was designated in 1956 as one o ...
.
History
KXVO signed on the air on June 10, 1995 as an affiliate of
The WB
The WB Television Network (for Warner Bros., or the "Frog Network", for its former mascot, Michigan J. Frog) was an American television network launched on broadcast television on January 11, 1995, as a joint venture between the Warner Bros. ...
, which debuted nationally almost five months earlier on January 11 of that year; the station was originally owned by
Cocola Broadcasting
Cocola Broadcasting is a broadcasting company based in Fresno, California. Founded in the early 1980s by Valley broadcasting veteran Gary Cocola, Cocola owns two full-power digital television stations KGMC in Fresno and KKJB in Boise, along with ...
, but was operated by
Pappas Telecasting
Pappas Telecasting Companies was a diversely organized broadcasting company headquartered in Visalia, California, United States. Founded in 1971, it was one of the largest privately held broadcasting companies in the country, with its stations r ...
under a local marketing agreement. In the interim six months, Omaha did have access to The WB via cable and satellite providers through
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
, image_map =
, map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago
, coordinates =
, coordinates_footnotes =
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name ...
-based national
superstation
''Superstation'' (alternatively rendered as "super station" or informally as "SuperStation") is a term in North American broadcasting that has several meanings. Commonly, a "superstation" is a form of distant signal, a terrestrial television, br ...
WGN. Cocola would later sell the station to Mitts Telecasting Company in 2000, which retained the LMA with Pappas.
On January 24, 2006,
CBS Corporation
The second incarnation of CBS Corporation (the first being a short-lived rename of the Westinghouse Electric Corporation) was an American multinational media conglomerate with interests primarily in commercial broadcasting, publishing, and t ...
and
Time Warner
Warner Media, LLC ( traded as WarnerMedia) was an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate. It was headquartered at the 30 Hudson Yards complex in New York City, United States.
It was originally established in 1972 by ...
announced that The WB and
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 ...
would cease broadcasting that September and merge their programming to form a new "fifth" network called
The CW
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the m ...
. The letters represent the first initials of its corporate parents, CBS (the parent company of UPN) and the
Warner Bros. Entertainment
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (commonly known as Warner Bros. or abbreviated as WB) is an American Film studio, film and entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios, Burbank, Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, Califo ...
unit of Time Warner. In April 2006, KXVO announced an affiliation agreement with The CW, which began airing on the station when the network launched on September 18 of that year.
On January 16, 2009, it was announced that several Pappas stations, including sister station KPTM, would be sold to New World TV Group, after the sale received
United States bankruptcy court
United States bankruptcy courts are courts created under Article I of the United States Constitution. The current system of bankruptcy courts was created by the United States Congress in 1978, effective April 1, 1984. United States bankruptcy c ...
approval.
The LMA between KXVO and KPTM continued after the deal was finalized.
Titan TV Broadcast Group announced the sale of most of its stations, including KPTM and the LMA with KXVO (which remained under Mitts Telecasting ownership after the sale), to 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 ...
on June 3, 2013.
Sinclair announced the closing of the sale on October 3.
From 2009 until 2018, KXVO also served the state capital,
Lincoln
Lincoln most commonly refers to:
* Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865), the sixteenth president of the United States
* Lincoln, England, cathedral city and county town of Lincolnshire, England
* Lincoln, Nebraska, the capital of Nebraska, U.S.
* Lincol ...
, located from Omaha, with broadcast and cable coverage even though Lincoln is located in a different market. It had been carried on cable in the eastern portion of the Lincoln–
Hastings
Hastings () is a large seaside town and borough in East Sussex on the south coast of England,
east to the county town of Lewes and south east of London. The town gives its name to the Battle of Hastings, which took place to the north-west ...
–
Kearney market since its inception, even after Lincoln received its own WB/CW affiliate, KCWL-TV (which carried the
WB 100+ and
CW Plus
CW may stand for:
Science and technology
* centiwatt (cW), one hundredth of a watt
* Cω, a programming language
* CW complex, a type of topological space
* Carrier wave, in radio communications
* CodeWarrior, an integrated development environm ...
services), and remained on most Lincoln cable systems in lieu of the national CW Plus feed (which was carried in the western portion of the market) after KCWL became Fox affiliate
KFXL-TV
KFXL-TV, virtual channel 51 (ultra high frequency, UHF digital terrestrial television, digital channel 15), is a Fox Broadcasting Company, Fox-network affiliate, affiliated television station city of license, licensed to Lincoln, Nebraska, United ...
. In October 2018, after
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 ...
-owned
KCWH-LD
KCWH-LD (channel 18) is a low-power television station in Lincoln, Nebraska, United States, affiliated with The CW Plus. It is owned by Gray Television alongside CBS affiliate KOLN (channel 10) and its semi-satellite KGIN (channel 11) in Grand I ...
in Lincoln (through The CW Plus) took over that market's CW affiliation, KXVO was dropped from Lincoln's
Spectrum
A spectrum (plural ''spectra'' or ''spectrums'') is a condition that is not limited to a specific set of values but can vary, without gaps, across a continuum. The word was first used scientifically in optics to describe the rainbow of colors i ...
system, with KCWH replacing it on channel 15.
On March 29, 2022, KXVO filed to begin broadcasting in ATSC 3.0. The existing subchannels are planned to be moved to KPTM, KMTV, and KETV to provide coverage for current ATSC 1.0 receivers pending agreements with Scripps and Hearst respectively for KMTV and KETV.
Newscasts
The station was originally branded "All Entertainment, All the Time", and news was a low priority as
KPTM
KPTM (channel 42) is a television station in Omaha, Nebraska, United States, affiliated with Fox and The CW. It is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, which provides certain services to TBD outlet KXVO (channel 15) under a local marketing agreeme ...
built out its news department for their own station. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, KXVO aired 60-second "news updates" from KPTM during the 6 p.m. hour that promoted the latter's 9 o'clock newscast. In 2001, KXVO had begun to plan to carry a 5:30 p.m. newscast from KPTM to compete with the national newscasts. After the
terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001
The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial ...
and the resulting economic downturn, those plans were put on hold and eventually abandoned. In the days following the September 11 attacks, though, KXVO aired continuous news coverage from
CNN Headline News
HLN is an American basic cable network. Owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, the network primarily carries true crime programming.
The channel was originally launched on January 1, 1982 by Turner Broadcasting as CNN2 (later renamed Headline News ...
.
In December 2005, the station debuted a half-hour 10 p.m. newscast called ''The KXVO 15 10 O'Clock News'', which was produced by KPTM (this time competing with Omaha's Big Three stations); that April, former
MTV
MTV (Originally an initialism of Music Television) is an American cable channel that launched on August 1, 1981. Based in New York City, it serves as the flagship property of the MTV Entertainment Group, part of Paramount Media Networks, a di ...
VJ and reality show host
Brian McFayden
Brian McFayden (born October 1, 1976) is an American television personality. He has worked as an MTV News anchor and an MTV VJ. He worked at KGW, the NBC affiliate station in Portland, Oregon, from December 2016 to October 2017.
Biography
M ...
was hired to anchor the program, only to leave the show for
Current TV
Current TV was an American television channel which broadcast from August 1, 2005, to August 20, 2013. Prior INdTV founders Al Gore and Joel Hyatt, with Ronald Burkle, each held a sizable stake in Current TV. Comcast and DirecTV each held a smalle ...
a few months later. In late August 2006, comedian and Second City Training Center alumnus Matt Geiler was tapped to anchor ''The KXVO 15 10 O'Clock News'', which by that time would become a hybrid of news content (provided by the KPTM staff) and
sketch/
improv comedy
Improvisational theatre, often called improvisation or improv, is the form of theatre, often comedy, in which most or all of what is performed is unplanned or unscripted: created spontaneously by the performers. In its purest form, the dialogue, a ...
. One prime example of this era occurred on the
Halloween
Halloween or Hallowe'en (less commonly known as Allhalloween, All Hallows' Eve, or All Saints' Eve) is a celebration observed in many countries on 31 October, the eve of the Western Christian feast of All Saints' Day. It begins the observanc ...
2006 edition, when Geiler, for a pre-taped end-of-show segment, donned a black
unitard
A unitard is a skintight, one-piece garment with long legs and sometimes long sleeves, usually stopping at the wrists and ankles. It differs from a leotard which does not have long legs. The leotard is also usually considered a more feminine cloth ...
and foam
jack-o'-lantern
A jack-o'-lantern (or jack o'lantern) is a carved lantern, most commonly made from a pumpkin or a root vegetable such as a rutabaga or turnip. Jack-o'-lanterns are associated with the Halloween holiday. Its name comes from the reported phenomen ...
and danced in front of a
green screen
Chroma key compositing, or chroma keying, is a visual-effects and post-production technique for compositing (layering) two images or video streams together based on colour hues ( chroma range). The technique has been used in many fields to r ...
image of a cemetery. Though ''The KXVO 15 10 O'Clock News'' was cancelled in April 2007, the "Pumpkin Dance" has had a lasting life as a seasonal
viral video
A viral video is a video that becomes popular through a viral process of Internet sharing, typically through video sharing websites such as YouTube as well as social media and email.Lu Jiang, Yajie Miao, Yi Yang, ZhenZhong Lan, Alexander Haupt ...
and
meme
A meme ( ) is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme. A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural i ...
thanks to its uploading to
YouTube
YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...
by a KXVO producer after its original airing and the video's subsequent discovery later in the decade by
BuzzFeed
BuzzFeed, Inc. is an American Internet media, news and entertainment company with a focus on digital media. Based in New York City, BuzzFeed was founded in 2006 by Jonah Peretti and John S. Johnson III to focus on tracking viral content. Ken ...
,
Huffington Post
''HuffPost'' (formerly ''The Huffington Post'' until 2017 and sometimes abbreviated ''HuffPo'') is an American progressive news website, with localized and international editions. The site offers news, satire, blogs, and original content, and ...
, and other websites.
"The Story Behind The Greatest Halloween Video Ever In The History Of The Internet"
from Studio360, 10/30/2014
Technical information
Subchannels
The station's ATSC 1.0 channels are carried on the 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 ...
digital signals of other Omaha television stations:
In October 2008, KAZO-LP
KAZO-LP, UHF analog channel 57, was a low-power Azteca America- affiliated television station licensed to Omaha, Nebraska, United States. The station was owned by Pappas Telecasting. It was also formerly rebroadcast on KCAZ-LP channel 57 in Colu ...
dropped TuVision and became dark
Darkness, the direct opposite of lightness, is defined as a lack of illumination, an absence of visible light, or a surface that absorbs light, such as black or brown.
Human vision is unable to distinguish colors in conditions of very low lum ...
; Azteca América
Azteca América (, sometimes shortened to Azteca) is an American Spanish-language free-to-air television network owned by INNOVATE Corp., which acquired the network from the Azteca International Corporation subsidiary of TV Azteca.
Headquartered ...
programming moved to KXVO 15.2 in Omaha and KMEG
KMEG (channel 14) is a television station in Sioux City, Iowa, United States, affiliated with the digital multicast network Dabl. It is owned by Waitt Broadcasting, which maintains a shared services agreement (SSA) with Sinclair Broadcast Group, ...
14.2 in Sioux City, Iowa
Sioux City () is a city in Woodbury and Plymouth counties in the northwestern part of the U.S. state of Iowa. The population was 85,797 in the 2020 census, making it the fourth-largest city in Iowa. The bulk of the city is in Woodbury County, ...
. Around this time, analog transmissions on KAZO-LP temporarily ceased, though the analog channel 57 signal was again seen on the air in October 2009. KAZO-LP shut down permanently later in fall 2009 and was no longer listed on KXVO-DT2 station IDs. By spring 2010, KMEG-DT2 had been spun off from KXVO-DT2 to have its own local feed in the Sioux City area. KXVO-DT2 is carried on DirecTV
DirecTV (trademarked as DIRECTV) is an American multichannel video programming distributor based in El Segundo, California. Originally launched on June 17, 1994, its primary service is a digital satellite service serving the United States. It ...
's local station package in the Omaha area as KAZO 57. Dish Network
DISH Network Corporation (DISH, an acronym for DIgital Sky Highway) is an American television provider and the owner of the direct-broadcast satellite provider Dish, commonly known as Dish Network, and the over-the-top IPTV service, Sling TV. A ...
does not carry the station. Cox had previously carried KAZO-LP on analog channel 68, but dropped it in 2007 when the station became a TuVision affiliate, and did not restore the local signal when it switched back to Azteca América in 2008. Until the addition of Estrella TV
Estrella TV () is an American Spanish-language broadcast television network owned by the Estrella Media subsidiary of HPS Investment Partners, LLC. The network primarily features programs, the vast majority of which are produced by the network ...
on KPTM-DT3 in June 2010, Azteca América was the only Spanish-language network available over-the-air in Omaha. Sometime in late 2013 or early 2014, Azteca was dropped in favor of This TV
This TV (also known as This TV Network and alternately stylized as thisTV) is an American free-to-air television network owned by Allen Media
Broadcast Networks, LLC, part of the Allen Media Group division of Entertainment Studios. Originally fo ...
.
In 2017, the KXVO sub-channel lineup all changed. Sinclair's TBD
To be announced (TBA), to be confirmed (TBC), to be determined or decided or declared (TBD), and other variations, are placeholder terms used very broadly in event planning to indicate that although something is scheduled or expected to happen, a ...
replaced This TV on 15.2. Sinclair's action channel Charge! replaced Grit on 15.3. On September 6 of that year, 15.4 began broadcasting with Stadium
A stadium ( : stadiums or stadia) is a place or venue for (mostly) outdoor sports, concerts, or other events and consists of a field or stage either partly or completely surrounded by a tiered structure designed to allow spectators to stand o ...
.
On September 20, 2021, the TBD affiliation moved to the main channel, replacing The CW (which move its affiliation to KPTM-DT3 on that day). On that day, the Stadium affiliation move from DT4 to DT2, and took the subchannel dark.
ATSC 3.0 lighthouse
Analog-to-digital conversion
KXVO shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 15, on June 12, 2009, as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television.[List of Digital Full-Power Stations](_blank)
The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 38, using 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 AT ...
to display KXVO'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 15 on digital television receivers.
References
External links
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kxvo
Television stations in Omaha, Nebraska
Charge! (TV network) affiliates
TBD (TV network) affiliates
Stadium (sports network) affiliates
Sinclair Broadcast Group
Television channels and stations established in 1995
1995 establishments in Nebraska
ATSC 3.0 television stations