KMPH-TV (channel 26) 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 eart ...
licensed to
Visalia, California, United States, serving the
Fresno
Fresno () is a major city in the San Joaquin Valley of California, United States. It is the county seat of Fresno County and the largest city in the greater Central Valley region. It covers about and had a population of 542,107 in 2020, maki ...
area as an affiliate of the
Fox network. It is owned by
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, ...
alongside
Sanger-licensed
CW affiliate
KFRE-TV (channel 59). Both stations share studios on McKinley Avenue in eastern Fresno, while KMPH-TV's transmitter is located on Big Baldy Mountain in northwestern
Tulare County.
The station's signal is relayed to the northern part of the market on
low-power Class A translator KMPH-CD (originally KMPH-LD from 2007 to 2011), channel 17, licensed to
Merced and
Mariposa, with transmitter on Mount Bullion. Unlike its parent station, the translator does not broadcast in
high definition.
History
Early years
The station first signed on the air on October 11, 1971; originally operating as an
independent station (though it ran
ABC,
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
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 Entertainm ...
shows that the local affiliates passed on at times as well), it was the first television station founded by the Pappas brothers, Mike, Pete and Harry, through their company, Pappas Television. The brothers already owned radio stations
KGEN (1370 AM) and
KBOS (94.9 FM) in
Tulare, KMPH's original city of license. The station's original studios were located on Mooney Boulevard in Visalia.
The funding for KMPH came from general manager Harry Pappas' plan of having hundreds of investors each investing a small amount of money that was needed to construct the station, rather than having one investor providing all the capital; as a result, the Pappas brothers had a combined ownership stake of only 30.5%, with the other 69.5% controlled by other investors.
KMPH carried
Operation Prime Time programming at least in 1978. That year, Harry Pappas formed a new company,
Pappas Telecasting, to buy full control of the station for $3.1 million.
In 1979, KMPH changed its city of license from Tulare to Visalia.
That same year, the station began producing tape delay broadcasts of
Fresno State Bulldogs football 1984's
NCAA v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma decision that brought more freedom for teams to have their games on TV, brought about a handful of road games being telecast live. In 1986, live home games were added to the schedule.
Soon after signing on, KMPH had passed
KAIL
Kail () is an '' Ortsgemeinde'' – a municipality belonging to a ''Verbandsgemeinde'', a kind of collective municipality – in the Cochem-Zell district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It belongs to the ''Verbandsgemeinde'' of Kaisersesch.
G ...
(then on channel 53, now on channel 7) as the leading independent in the Central Valley. KAIL went dark in 1973 but returned to the air in 1976 as a very low budget operation initially running mostly religion but would gradually build into a major player. Throughout the early to mid-1980s, KMPH was one of the top independent stations in the country. The station could be received up to from Visalia.
Since 1988
Pappas signed an affiliation deal with Fox for KMPH to become an affiliate of the network in 1988;
the agreement also covered sister stations
WHNS in
Greenville, South Carolina and
KPTM 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 ...
. At the time, Fresno and Omaha were the only two top-100 markets without a Fox affiliate.
KMPH remains a Fox affiliate to this day; both it and NBC affiliate
KSEE (channel 24) were the only two stations in Fresno that were unaffected by the 1985 network swap involving ABC and CBS between
KFSN-TV (channel 30) and KJEO (channel 47, now
KGPE) and the later launches of
The CW
''The'' () is a grammatical Article (grammar), article in English language, English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite ...
and
MyNetworkTV
MyNetworkTV (unofficially abbreviated MyTV, MyNet, MNT or MNTV, and sometimes referred to as My Network) is an American commercial broadcast television syndication service and former television network owned by Fox Corporation, operated by its ...
in September 2006. The station relocated its operations from its original studio in Visalia to its current facility on McKinley Avenue in Fresno in the early 1990s.
Ownership change
On May 10, 2008, thirteen Pappas stations, including KMPH, filed for
Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. As a result of the bankruptcy, Pappas Telecasting Companies was given until February 15, 2009 to sell these stations to other owners. On January 16, 2009, Pappas announced that most of the stations, including KMPH, would be purchased by New World TV Group (no relation to the similarly named
New World Communications, which switched most of its stations to Fox between September 1994 and July 1995), 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.
On April 2, 2009, Pappas
laid off 22 employees involved with the KMPH/KFRE duopoly. New World TV Group formed a new holding company known as the Titan TV Broadcast Group (unrelated to the similarly named smaller-market radio station owner Titan Broadcasting), which completed its purchase of most of the Pappas stations involved in the bankruptcy on October 15, 2009.
Titan announced the sale of KMPH-TV, KFRE-TV and most of the company's other stations 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, ...
on June 3, 2013.
The FCC approved the sale on September 19, and the sale was officially finalized on October 3, 2013. With the completion of the sale, KMPH was reunited with Bakersfield Fox affiliate, KBFX-CD, which formerly operated as a repeater of KMPH, but was sold by Pappas in 2005 and had been acquired by Sinclair as part of its merger with
Fisher Communications
Fisher Communications was a media company in the United States. Based in Seattle, Washington, the company primarily owned a number of radio and television stations in the Western United States. It was the last company in the Seattle area to own ...
earlier in 2013.
Programming
Syndicated programs broadcast by KMPH-TV include ''
The Wendy Williams Show
''The Wendy Williams Show'' (often shortened to ''Wendy'') is an American syndicated talk show created and hosted by Wendy Williams, and produced by Wendy Williams Productions, along with Perler Productions. The show is distributed by Debmar- ...
'', ''
The People's Court
''The People's Court'' is an American arbitration-based reality court show, featuring an arbitrator handling small claims disputes in a simulated courtroom set. Within the court show genre, it is the first of all arbitration-based reality sty ...
'', ''
Modern Family
''Modern Family'' is an American family sitcom television series created by Christopher Lloyd and Steven Levitan for the American Broadcasting Company. It ran for 11 seasons, from September 23, 2009, to April 8, 2020. It follows the lives of th ...
'', ''
The Big Bang Theory
''The Big Bang Theory'' is an American television sitcom created by Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady, both of whom served as executive producers on the series, along with Steven Molaro, all of whom also served as head writers. It premiered on C ...
'', and ''
Family Feud
''Family Feud'' is an American television game show created by Mark Goodson. It features two families who compete to name the most popular answers to survey questions in order to win cash and prizes.
The show has had three separate runs, th ...
''.
In 2003, KMPH stopped carrying Fox's children's program block
4Kids TV; the block, which normally aired on Saturdays, was moved to sister station KFRE-TV and aired on that station on a
tape delay on Sunday mornings (this resulted in KFRE carrying children's blocks from two major networks, as it already carried The WB's
Kids' WB
Kids' WB (stylized as Kids' WB!) was an American children's programming service and brand of The WB that aired on the network from September 9, 1995, to September 16, 2006. The block moved to The CW (a result of the merger of Time Warner's The W ...
block). KMPH was one of the few Fox charter affiliates to have dropped the network's children's programming; beginning in the mid-1990s, Fox gave its affiliates (after several stations that switched to the network between 1994 and 1995 that were owned by New World Communications opted not to carry the lineup) the option to pre-empt
Fox Kids programming and arrange for another local station to carry the block, a practice continued until the end of the 4Kids TV's run. KFRE continued to carry 4Kids TV until the block was discontinued by Fox on December 28, 2008 due to a dispute with the block's lessee
4Kids Entertainment; KMPH has also declined to carry Fox's Saturday morning infomercial block ''
Weekend Marketplace
''Weekend Marketplace'' is a two-hour block of paid programming airing on Fox that debuted on January 3, 2009, replacing the 4Kids TV cartoon block due to the termination of the network's time lease agreement with 4Kids Entertainment. The block, ...
'', which instead airs on KFRE in 4Kids TV's former Sunday morning timeslot on the station.
News operation
KMPH-TV presently broadcasts 34½ hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with 6½ hours each weekday and one hour each on Saturdays and Sundays); in addition, the station produces the lifestyle program ''Around the Valley'', which airs weekdays at 11:00 a.m. prior to its midday newscast.
In 1978, KMPH launched its news department and began producing a nightly primetime newscast Monday through Friday; ''The 10 O'Clock News''. Originally the station sourced its national news from the ITN Satellite News Service and API Wire Services to augment its own local news coverage, primarily split between the cities of Visalia and Fresno and the surrounding communities. In late 1979, KMPH launched a short-lived midday newscast, ''The Midday Edition'', which was cancelled after nine months. Later, in the early 1980s, the station's newscast was expanded to Saturdays. In early 1982, KMPH, launched a weekly
newsmagazine
A news magazine is a typed, printed, and published magazine, radio or television program, usually published weekly, consisting of articles about current events. News magazines generally discuss stories, in greater depth than do newspapers or n ...
show, ''The Sunday Edition'', which occupied the 10 p.m. timeslot on Sunday nights; it was cancelled a year later. ''The 10 O'Clock News'' went on to become the longest-running primetime newscast in the Fresno market. On October 6, 2003, KMPH debuted a three-hour weekday morning newscast, titled ''Great Day''; that same date, the station also launched a half-hour midday newscast at 11:30 a.m. In the spring of 2007, ''Great Day'' was expanded to five hours, running from 5-10 a.m.
In January 2006, KMPH began to produce a half-hour 11:00 p.m. newscast for sister station KFRE-TV; the newscast was unable to compete against the established late evening newscasts on KFSN-TV, KSEE and KGPE and was canceled the following year in February 2007, due to low ratings. On September 30, 2009, KMPH-TV became the second television station in the Fresno market (after KFSN, which made the upgrade in April 2007) to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in
high definition. It was the first television station in the market to provide news video from the field in true high definition, as KMPH upgraded its
ENG vehicles, satellite truck, studio and field cameras and other equipment in order to broadcast news footage from the field in high definition, in addition to segments broadcast from the main studio.
KMPH has produced newscasts for
KPTM 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 ...
since the early 2010s, interspersing live reporters from the Omaha market with studio anchors in Fresno.
In July 2014, ''
Politifact'' reported that KMPH, in a news story, claimed that the implementation of the
Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act had increased the average emergency room wait time in California to five hours. Its reporting was deemed inaccurate, as it was based on statistics released by the
California HealthCare Foundation
Based in Oakland, California, the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF) is an independent, nonprofit philanthropy that focuses on improving the health care system for the people of California, especially low-income Californians. The organiz ...
in 2012, and not from after the implementation of the Affordable Care Act.
Notable current on-air staff
*
Kopi Sotiropulos – anchor
Notable former on-air staff
*
Vic "The Brick" Jacobs – sportscaster (now at
KLAC
KLAC (570 AM) is a commercial sports radio station licensed to Los Angeles, California, serving Greater Los Angeles and much of surrounding Southern California. Owned by a joint venture between iHeartMedia, Inc. and the Los Angeles Dodgers b ...
radio in
Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, largest city in the U.S. state, state of California and the List of United States cities by population, sec ...
)
*
Lloyd Lindsay Young – weathercaster (later at
WWOR-TV in
Secaucus, New Jersey)
Technical information
KMPH-TV 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 ...
:
KMPH-CD subchannel
In October 2009, KMPH began carrying
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 f ...
on
digital subchannel 26.2. On October 31, 2015,
Comet
A comet is an icy, small Solar System body that, when passing close to the Sun, warms and begins to release gases, a process that is called outgassing. This produces a visible atmosphere or coma, and sometimes also a tail. These phenomena ...
began airing on 26.3.
On October 1, 2019, KMPH-DT2 became an affiliate of
Dabl
Dabl () is an American lifestyle-oriented digital multicast television network owned by the CBS Media Ventures subsidiary of Paramount Global.
The company's formerly-owned other subchannel network, Decades, through CBS News and Stations was l ...
, replacing This TV.
Analog-to-digital conversion
KMPH-TV shut down its analog signal, over
UHF channel 26, on June 12, 2009, the official date in which full-power television in the United States
transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 28.
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 AT ...
, 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 UHF analog channel 26.
Out of market coverage
KMPH-TV's focus is on the San Joaquin Valley and Central California. The station's signal is receivable as far way as the
Bakersfield area; however, local Fox affiliate and
sister station KBFX-CD
KBFX-CD (channel 58) is a low-power, Class A television station in Bakersfield, California, United States, affiliated with the Fox network. It is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group alongside CBS affiliate KBAK-TV (channel 29). Both stations sh ...
(itself once a KMPH repeater) is the only Fox station carried by
cable
Cable may refer to:
Mechanical
* Nautical cable, an assembly of three or more ropes woven against the weave of the ropes, rendering it virtually waterproof
* Wire rope, a type of rope that consists of several strands of metal wire laid into a hel ...
providers in the Bakersfield
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, an ...
. Through its translator, KMPH-TV's signal extends northward to Merced, Mariposa and the southern
Sierra Nevada, and sometimes can be received in
Monterey County for those who live just north of
King City. KMPH-TV has been received over the air sometimes in eastern
Kern County
Kern County is a county located in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 909,235. Its county seat is Bakersfield.
Kern County comprises the Bakersfield, California, Metropolitan statistical area. The county sp ...
(
Ridgecrest) and
San Luis Obispo
San Luis Obispo (; Spanish for " St. Louis the Bishop", ; Chumash: ''tiłhini'') is a city and county seat of San Luis Obispo County, in the U.S. state of California. Located on the Central Coast of California, San Luis Obispo is roughly hal ...
.
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kmph-Tv
Fox network affiliates
Dabl affiliates
Comet (TV network) affiliates
MPH-TV
Sinclair Broadcast Group
Pappas Telecasting
Television channels and stations established in 1971
1971 establishments in California
Companies that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2008