KWBM (channel 31) is a religious television station licensed to Harrison, Arkansas, United States, serving the Springfield, Missouri area as an

owned-and-operated station In the broadcasting industry, an owned-and-operated station (frequently abbreviated as an O&O) usually refers to a television or radio station owned by the network with which it is associated. This distinguishes such a station from an affiliate ...

of the Daystar Television Network. It is the only full-power television station in the Springfield market that is licensed in Arkansas. KWBM's offices are located on Enterprise Avenue in southeast Springfield, and its transmitter is located in rural

Taney County Taney County is a county located in the southwestern portion of the U.S. state of Missouri. As of the 2020 census, the population was 56,066. Its county seat is Forsyth. It is included in the Branson, Missouri, Micropolitan Statistical Area. ...

, just northeast of

Forsyth Forsyth may refer to: Places Oceania * Forsyth Island, Queensland, Australia, one of the West Wellesley Islands (aka Forsyth Islands) * Forsyth Island, Tasmania, Australia * Forsyth Island (New Zealand), in the outer Marlborough Sounds of South Isl ...

History

The station first signed on the air on January 26, 2001; it originally served as the market's affiliate of The WB. The station was founded by the

Equity Broadcasting Corporation Equity Media Holdings Corporation was a broadcasting company based in Little Rock, Arkansas that owned and operated television stations across the United States. Prior to March 30, 2007, the company was known as Equity Broadcasting, a name later ...

. Prior to the station's sign-on, southwestern Missouri residents could only receive WB network programs on cable and satellite through Chicago-based superstation WGN, which carried WB programming nationally from the network's launch on January 11, 1995; the network was unavailable in the market between the period when WGN dropped WB programming in October 1999 and KWBM launched. The station formerly operated two low-power translator stations: KBBL-LP (channel 56) in Springfield (which adopted the calls on July 14, 2006; coincidentally, the KBBL calls were used fictionally as the radio station in the fictional town of

Springfield Springfield may refer to: * Springfield (toponym), the place name in general Places and locations Australia * Springfield, New South Wales (Central Coast) * Springfield, New South Wales (Snowy Monaro Regional Council) * Springfield, Queenslan ...

on the animated series '' The Simpsons''), and KNJE-LP (channel 58) in Aurora. On January 24, 2006, the Warner Bros. unit of Time Warner and CBS Corporation announced that the two companies would shut down The WB and UPN and combine the networks' respective programming to create a new "fifth" network called The CW. One month later on February 22, 2006, News Corporation announced the launch of a new "sixth" network called MyNetworkTV, which would be operated by Fox Television Stations and its syndication division Twentieth Television. Equity refused in full to affiliate their stations with The CW due to the network's carriage costs, handing the affiliation to UPN affiliate K15CZ (channel 15); KWBM thus became the market's MyNetworkTV affiliate when the network launched on September 5, 2006. On December 8, 2008, Equity Media Holdings filed for Chapter 11

bankruptcy Bankruptcy is a legal process through which people or other entities who cannot repay debts to creditors may seek relief from some or all of their debts. In most jurisdictions, bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor ...

protection; it then began to sell off its television station properties. KWBM was sold to at auction to religious broadcaster Daystar (through its Word of God Fellowship subsidiary) in early 2009; the MyNetworkTV affiliation later moved to upstart station KRBK (channel 49; now a

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''). Twelv ...

affiliate) when that station launched on August 1, 2009.

Technical information

Subchannels

The station's digital signal is multiplexed: Daystar leased the second and third subchannels of KWBM to

Nexstar Media Group Nexstar Media Group, Inc. is an American publicly traded media company with headquarter offices in Irving, Texas; Midtown Manhattan; and Chicago, Illinois. The company is the largest television station owner in the United States, owning 197 te ...

(formerly Koplar Communications) to extend the signal coverage of Fox affiliate KRBK, which until 2018 did not cover Springfield proper with its main signal licensed to Osage Beach, Missouri. What would usually be channel 31.2 instead remapped as a virtual channel to KRBK's channel 49.1. KWBM also broadcast KRBK's MeTV subchannel as 49.2. This arrangement ended in 2020 with the launch of the Daystar Español channel on KWBM-DT2. KRBK has since moved to the Fordland antenna farm.

Analog-to-digital conversion

Because it was granted an original

construction permit Planning permission or developmental approval refers to the approval needed for construction or expansion (including significant renovation), and sometimes for demolition, in some jurisdictions. It is usually given in the form of a building perm ...

after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) finalized the DTV allotment plan on April 21, 1997,Final Digital TV (DTV) Channel Plan from FCC97-115
/ref> the station did not receive a companion channel for its

digital signal A digital signal is a signal that represents data as a sequence of discrete values; at any given time it can only take on, at most, one of a finite number of values. This contrasts with an analog signal, which represents continuous values; at ...

. Instead, at the end of the digital conversion period for full-power television stations, On June 12, 2009, KWBM would have been required to turn off its

analog signal An analog signal or analogue signal (see spelling differences) is any continuous signal representing some other quantity, i.e., ''analogous'' to another quantity. For example, in an analog audio signal, the instantaneous signal voltage varies c ...

and turn on its digital signal (called a "

flash-cut A flash cut, also called a flash cutover, is an immediate change in a complex system, with no phase-in period. In the United States, some telephone area codes were split or overlaid immediately, rather than being phased in with a permissive dia ...

") almost one month later on July 3. The termination of KWBM's analog signal resulted in the station being dropped from satellite providers

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 ...

and DirecTV, due to the lack of unique local programming from the main Daystar national feed, and a revocation of the station's retransmission consent agreement after the sale from Equity to Daystar. Mediacom, Suddenlink and Charter Spectrum continue to receive a direct satellite feed of the station, and Daystar maintains carriage of the station on those systems via must-carry declaration. KBBL-LP and KNJE-LP, as low-power stations, were not required to cease analog transmissions upon the 2009 transition deadline, but were required to move their channel positions as their channel allocations were among the high band UHF channels (52–69) that were removed from broadcasting use as a result of the transition. These stations were not sold to Daystar as part of its purchase of KWBM. The FCC cancelled KNJE-LP's license on August 6, 2010 and deleted the KNJE-LP call sign from its database; KBBL is currently dark with a construction permit to build digital transmitter facilities on UHF channel 24.

References

External links

{{Daystar stations Daystar (TV network) affiliates Television channels and stations established in 2001 2001 establishments in Arkansas WBM WBM