WDKA (channel 49) 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

Paducah, Kentucky Paducah ( ) is a home rule-class city in and the county seat of McCracken County, Kentucky. The largest city in the Jackson Purchase region, it is located at the confluence of the Tennessee and the Ohio rivers, halfway between St. Louis, Miss ...

, United States, serving as the

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 ...

affiliate for

Western Kentucky Western Kentucky is the western portion of the U.S. state of Kentucky. It generally includes part or all of several more widely recognized regions of the state. ;Always included * The Jackson Purchase, the state's westernmost generally recogniz ...

Purchase Purchasing is the process a business or organization uses to acquire goods or services to accomplish its goals. Although there are several organizations that attempt to set standards in the purchasing process, processes can vary greatly between ...

region,

Southern Illinois Southern Illinois, also known as Little Egypt, is the southern third of Illinois, principally along and south of Interstate 64. Although part of a Midwestern state, this region is aligned in culture more with that of the Upland South than the Mi ...

and Southeastern

Missouri Missouri is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking 21st in land area, it is bordered by eight states (tied for the most with Tennessee): Iowa to the north, Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee to the east, Arkansas t ...

, and Northwest Tennessee. It is owned by the Community News Media subsidiary of

Standard Media Standard Media Group is an American broadcast and digital media company based in Nashville, Tennessee. Standard Media was founded by Deborah A. McDermott, who serves as the company's CEO. Previously, McDermott was the chief operating officer of ...

alongside

Cape Girardeau, Missouri Cape Girardeau ( , french: Cap-Girardeau ; colloquially referred to as "Cape") is a city in Cape Girardeau and Scott Counties in the U.S. state of Missouri. At the 2020 census, the population was 39,540. The city is one of two principal citi ...

–licensed

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 ...

affiliate KBSI (channel 23). Both stations share studios on Enterprise Street in Cape Girardeau, while WDKA's transmitter is located in Vienna, Illinois. In addition to its own digital signal, WDKA is

simulcast Simulcast (a portmanteau of simultaneous broadcast) is the broadcasting of programmes/programs or events across more than one resolution, bitrate or medium, or more than one service on the same medium, at exactly the same time (that is, simulta ...

standard definition Standard-definition television (SDTV, SD, often shortened to standard definition) is a television system which uses a resolution that is not considered to be either high or enhanced definition. "Standard" refers to it being the prevailing sp ...

on KBSI's second digital subchannel (23.2) from a transmitter north of Cape Girardeau in

unincorporated Unincorporated may refer to: * Unincorporated area, land not governed by a local municipality * Unincorporated entity, a type of organization * Unincorporated territories of the United States, territories under U.S. jurisdiction, to which Congress ...

Cape Girardeau County Cape Girardeau County is located in the southeastern part of the U.S. state of Missouri; its eastern border is formed by the Mississippi River. At the 2020 census, the population was 81,710. The county seat is Jackson, the first city in the US ...

History

WDKA began broadcasting on June 5, 1997. It was a

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 pr ...

affiliate broadcasting an

analog Analog or analogue may refer to: Computing and electronics * Analog signal, in which information is encoded in a continuous variable ** Analog device, an apparatus that operates on analog signals *** Analog electronics, circuits which use analog ...

signal on UHF channel 49. In 2000, WDKA switched affiliations with low-powered station

WQTV-LP WQWQ-LD (channel 9) is a low-power television station in Paducah, Kentucky, United States, affiliated with MeTV. It relays the fourth digital subchannel of Cape Girardeau, Missouri–licensed dual CBS/ CW affiliate KFVS-TV (channel 12) w ...

(licensed to Murray, Kentucky) and repeater WQWQ-LP to become 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 terrestrial television, broadcast television on January 11, 1995, as a joint venture be ...

. In September 2006, The WB and UPN merged to become

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 WQTV-LP was announced to become The CW affiliate for Paducah in advance of the merger. As a result, WDKA became affiliated with MyNetworkTV when it launched on September 5. On August 30, 2014, WDKA became a charter affiliate of Sinclair's ad-hoc syndicated television network, the

American Sports Network American Sports Network (ASN) was a sports brand owned by the U.S. television station owner Sinclair Broadcast Group through its Sinclair Networks subsidiary. Formed in July 2014, the multicast network component of ASN produced broadcasts of sp ...

. ASN provided

Ohio Valley Conference The Ohio Valley Conference (OVC) is a collegiate athletic conference which operates in the Midwestern and Southeastern United States. It participates in Division I of the NCAA; the conference's football programs compete in the Football Cham ...

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular court, compete with the primary objective of shooting a basketball (approximately in diameter) through the defender's h ...

and Conference USA football and basketball games to the station's viewers. The ASN's programming content replaced

Southeastern Conference The Southeastern Conference (SEC) is an American college athletic conference whose member institutions are located primarily in the South Central and Southeastern United States. Its fourteen members include the flagship public universities o ...

football and basketball broadcasts from

ESPN Plus ESPN+ is an American over-the-top subscription video streaming service available in the United States, owned by Disney Media and Entertainment Distribution, in partnership with ESPN Inc., which is a joint venture between The Walt Disney Com ...

-oriented SEC TV, which was run from 2009 until 2014, which was discontinued because of the launch of the pay TV-exclusive

SEC Network The SEC Network is an American multinational sports network owned by ESPN Inc., a joint venture between The Walt Disney Company (which operates the network, through its 80% controlling ownership interest) and Hearst Communications (which holds ...

. On March 3, 2016, WDKA Acquisition Corporation (owned by Paul T. Lucci) filed to sell WDKA to Sinclair's subsidiary WDKA Licensee, LLC. Sinclair bought the station for $1.9 million. The sale was completed on September 1, 2017.

Subchannel history

WDKA-DT2

WDKA-DT2 previously aired

TheCoolTV TheCoolTV was a digital broadcast television network and online music video " jukebox" streaming service owned by Cool Music Network, LLC of Lawrence, Kansas. History As a digital broadcast television network Launched in March 2009, the netw ...

from 2010 until August 31, 2012. It went silent for two years before becoming a GetTV affiliate in Summer 2014. On February 28, 2017, WDKA-DT2 became affiliated with an action-based network Charge! with GetTV moving to 49.4. On that day, GetTV was relocated to a DT4 subchannel.

WDKA-DT3

As a part of a deal involving several Sinclair-owned stations similar to the earlier deal between Sinclair and TheCoolTV, WDKA-DT3 was added to carry

The Country Network The Country Network is an American cable, streaming and broadcast television network that specializes in broadcasting country music videos and exclusive original music-based content; its playlist of videos extends from the 1990s through the pres ...

on September 18, 2010. The Country Network changed its name and was rebranded to ZUUS Country on June 1, 2013. In 2016, ZUUS Country was rebranded to The Country Network. On February 28, 2017, WDKA-DT3 became affiliated with the

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 ...

network.

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

WDKA shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 49, on February 17, 2009, the original target date in which full-power television stations in the United States were to transition from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate (which was pushed back to June 12, 2009). The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 50. 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 49.

Spectrum reallocation

In October 2019, WDKA reallocated its digital signal onto UHF channel 25 as a result of the station's participation in the FCC's spectrum incentive auction.

References

External links

WDKA channel 50KBSI "Fox 23"
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wdka Paducah, Kentucky MyNetworkTV affiliates Charge! (TV network) affiliates TBD (TV network) affiliates Stadium (sports network) affiliates Dabl affiliates Television channels and stations established in 1997 Television stations in the Paducah–Cape Girardeau–Harrisburg market 1997 establishments in Kentucky