KNHL (channel 5) 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

Hastings, Nebraska Hastings is a city and the county seat of Adams County, Nebraska, United States. The population was 25,152 at the 2020 census. It is known as the town where Kool-Aid was invented by Edwin Perkins in 1927, and celebrates that event with the Ko ...

, United States, affiliated with

The CW Plus The CW Plus is a secondary national programming service feed of The CW that is fully controlled and 75% owned by Nexstar Media Group, with Paramount Global and Warner Bros. Discovery each owning a 12.5% stake in the network. It is intended prima ...

. It is a full-power

satellite A satellite or artificial satellite is an object intentionally placed into orbit in outer space. Except for passive satellites, most satellites have an electricity generation system for equipment on board, such as solar panels or radioi ...

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 ...

-based

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 ...

(channel 18) which is owned by Gray Television. As KHAS-TV, it formerly served as the

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 ...

affiliate for the western side of the Lincoln–Hastings– Kearney

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 ...

. KNHL is a sister station to

York York is a cathedral city with Roman origins, sited at the confluence of the rivers Ouse and Foss in North Yorkshire, England. It is the historic county town of Yorkshire. The city has many historic buildings and other structures, such as a ...

-licensed NBC affiliate KSNB-TV (channel 4) and Lincoln-licensed

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 ...

affiliate

KOLN Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 million inhabitants in the city proper and 3.6 million ...

(channel 10) and its satellite KGIN (channel 11) in Grand Island. KNHL's transmitter is located on

US 281 U.S. Route 281 (US 281) is a north–south United States Numbered Highway. At it is the longest continuous three-digit U.S. Route. The highway's northern terminus is at the International Peace Garden, north of Dunseith, North Dakota, at t ...

north of Hastings. In 2014, Gray acquired

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 ...

; as it already owned the three aforementioned stations (KOLN/KGIN and KSNB) in the same market, it planned to sell KHAS to the shell company Excalibur Broadcasting and operate KHAS under a shared services agreement (SSA). As a result of growing FCC scrutiny towards " virtual duopolies", Gray instead let KHAS fall silent on June 13, 2014 and its programming and news operation were relocated to KSNB-TV, pending a sale of KHAS-TV to a minority owned broadcaster, Legacy Broadcasting. In September 2018, Gray agreed to purchase KNHL.

History

KNHL was founded in 1956 as KHAS-TV by a group of local investors headed by Fred A. Seaton, publisher of the ''

Hastings Tribune The ''Hastings Tribune'' is a newspaper published in Hastings, Nebraska. The newspaper is put out six days a week, excluding Sundays. It serves ten counties in south central Nebraska and north central Kansas.Secretary of the Interior during the

Eisenhower Administration Dwight D. Eisenhower's tenure as the 34th president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 1953, and ended on January 20, 1961. Eisenhower, a Republican from Kansas, took office following a landslide victory ...

. It took its calls from KHAS radio, which Seaton had founded in 1940. In 1967, it was one of the first stations in the area to acquire color broadcasting equipment. The Seaton family owned KHAS-TV until 1997, when it was sold to Dick Shively and Ulysses Carlini Sr., owners of North Platte TV stations

KNOP-TV KNOP-TV (channel 2) is a television station in North Platte, Nebraska, United States, affiliated with NBC. It is owned by Gray Television alongside two low-power stations: CBS affiliate KNPL-LD (channel 10) and Class A Fox affiliate KIIT-CD (c ...

and K11TW, operating the three stations under the name Greater Nebraska Television. In 2005, Greater Nebraska Television sold the stations to

. The station's studio was located north of Hastings on US 281. The transmitter tower was located next to the studio. KHAS-TV was formerly rebroadcast on

translator station 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 ...

K14IY in Holdrege; this translator went dark in 2009. KHAS-TV was later also carried on K02HJ in

Ord Ord or ORD may refer to: Places * Ord of Caithness, landform in north-east Scotland * Ord, Nebraska, USA * Ord, Northumberland, England * Muir of Ord, village in Highland, Scotland * Ord, Skye, a place near Tarskavaig * Ord River, Western Austral ...

and K35AL analog channel 35 in Lexington, Nebraska. All three translators broadcast 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. K35AL formerly carried programming from sister station

but Lexington is in the Lincoln–Hastings–Kearney market while North Platte is a separate market. Both local and national programming on KHAS was carried in high definition. Starting around 2004, KHAS began branding itself as a full-market NBC station, challenging the long-standing status of Omaha's

WOWT WOWT (channel 6) is a television station in Omaha, Nebraska, United States, affiliated with NBC and owned by Gray Television. The station's studios are located on Farnam Street near downtown Omaha, and its transmitter is located on a "tower farm" ...

as the default NBC affiliate in the capital. It identified as "Hastings/Kearney/Grand Island/Lincoln" on-air and on its Website. It was also available on the Lincoln

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. I ...

and Dish Network feeds as the local NBC station, boosting its potential audience to over 700,000 people across Nebraska and

Kansas Kansas () is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its capital is Topeka, and its largest city is Wichita. Kansas is a landlocked state bordered by Nebraska to the north; Missouri to the east; Oklahoma to the south; and Colorado to th ...

. In June 2012, KHAS and other Hoak-owned stations were pulled from Dish Network after they failed to renew a carriage agreement. The refusal to renew reportedly surrounds Dish Network's "Hopper" digital video recorder and its controversial commercial-skipping feature ''AutoHop''which has also led to complaints from the major U.S. television networks.

Shutdown and sale

On November 20, 2013, Gray Television announced it would purchase Hoak Media in a $335 million deal. As Gray already owned

/KGIN, KHAS was to be sold to Excalibur Broadcasting and operated by Gray under a local marketing agreement. However, in the wake of heightened FCC scrutiny of local marketing agreements, on June 11, 2014, KHAS-TV announced it would leave the air at midnight on June 13 and NBC programming would be moved to KSNB-TV and the digital subcarrier of KOLN/KGIN. KHAS would then be sold off to minority interests, which under this arrangement would allow the station to return to the air on the conditions that the new owner operate the station independently (under minority, female and/or non-profit ownership) and not make any partnerships or sharing arrangements with other broadcasters. On August 27, 2014, Gray announced that it would sell KHAS-TV along with KAQY, KNDX, and KXND to Legacy Broadcasting, a new broadcasting company controlled by Sherry Nelson and daughter Sara Jane Ingram. On December 1, 2014, the call letters became KNHL. The sale was completed on December 15. Legacy returned KNHL to the air June 6, 2015 as an affiliate of the

SonLife Broadcasting Network Jimmy Lee Swaggart (; born March 15, 1935) is an American Pentecostal televangelist, gospel music recording artist, pianist, and Christian author. His television ministry, which began in 1971, and was originally known as the “Camp Meeting Ho ...

. On May 21, 2018, Gray agreed to acquire KNHL from Legacy Broadcasting for $475,000; in filing for FCC approval of the purchase in September 2018, Gray proposed to operate the station as a satellite of KSNB-TV. In connection with the sale, Gray began leasing KNHL's third digital subchannel on September 1, 2018 to simulcast

, Gray's Lincoln-based CW affiliate (through

); the affiliation formally launched on October 1. The sale of the station was approved on February 12, 2019. The sale was completed on March 1, reuniting KNHL with many of its former Hoak Media sisters. Upon completion of the sale, KNHL was converted into a satellite station of KSNB-DT1, KSNB-DT2, and KSNB-DT3 (on 5.2, 5.1, and 5.4, respectively) and KCWH-LD1 (on 5.3). Through the utilization of updated

multiplexer In electronics, a multiplexer (or mux; spelled sometimes as multiplexor), also known as a data selector, is a device that selects between several analog or digital input signals and forwards the selected input to a single output line. The sel ...

equipment, NBC and CW+ programming is being aired in high definition on 5.2 and 5.3, respectively (although in

720p 720p (1280×720 px; also called HD ready, standard HD or just HD) is a progressive HDTV signal format with 720 horizontal lines/1280 columns and an aspect ratio (AR) of 16:9, normally known as widescreen HDTV (1.78:1). All major HDTV broadcast ...

for both HD feeds; the KSNB-DT1 simulcast is downconverted from the native

1080i 1080i (also known as Full HD or BT.709) is a combination of frame resolution and scan type. 1080i is used in high-definition television (HDTV) and high-definition video. The number "1080" refers to the number of horizontal lines on the scre ...

resolution of the NBC network), with MyNetworkTV and MeTV programming on 5.1 and Ion Television programming on 5.4 airing in 16:9

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 ...

News operation

KHAS-TV produced 16 hours of local news per week, with 3 hours each weekday and 30 minutes on Saturday and Sunday. Newscasts aired weekday mornings at 6:00 and 11:30 a.m., weeknights at 5:00, 6:00 and 10:00 p.m. and a weekend newscast at 10:00 p.m. Upon the station going dark on June 13, 2014, the entire news operation moved to KSNB-TV.

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 ...

: In September 2005, KHAS-TV began operating

NBC Weather Plus NBC Weather Plus was an American weather-oriented digital broadcast and cable television network owned as a joint venture between NBC Universal and the local affiliates of the NBC television network. The service, which was broadcast in standard d ...

(known as "News 5 Weather Plus") on digital subchannel 5.2 and until 2008, it was the only Hoak Media-owned NBC affiliate to carry the network when it was dropped due to

NBCUniversal NBCUniversal Media, LLC is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate corporation owned by Comcast and headquartered at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, United States. NBCUniversal is primaril ...

's purchase of

The Weather Channel The Weather Channel (TWC) is an American pay television channel owned by Weather Group, LLC, a subsidiary of Allen Media Group. The channel's headquarters are in Atlanta, Georgia. Launched on May 2, 1982, the channel broadcasts weather foreca ...

. In September 2010, KHAS-TV digital subchannel 5.2 switched from a standard-definition simulcast to

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 ...

. It identified locally as "This Nebraska". On November 1, 2013, KHAS replaced This TV with Cozi TV.

Analog-to-digital conversion

KNHL (as KHAS-TV) shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 5, on December 1, 2008. The station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition UHF channel 21 to VHF channel 5. Due to Nebraska's cold winter weather, the station elected to make the transition early rather than on the national February 17, 2009 analog shutoff date. The digital signal on channel 5 is one of only 48 US full-power stations to broadcast digitally using a low-VHF/Band I channel.

References

External links

Nebraska Broadcasting Association profile of Fred A. Seaton
{{DEFAULTSORT:Knhl Television channels and stations established in 1956 1956 establishments in Nebraska NHL Ion Television affiliates The CW affiliates Gray Television