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| Branding | MeTV Utah |
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Call sign meaning | Cedar City St. George |
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Licensing authority | FCC |
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| Translator(s) | see§ Other translators |
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| Website | KCSG page on MeTV website |
KCSG (channel 8) is atelevision station licensed toCedar City, Utah, United States, airing programming from the classic television networkMeTV.Owned and operated by network parentWeigel Broadcasting, the station maintains studios on West 1600 South Street inSt. George, and its transmitter is located onCedar Mountain, southeast of Cedar City.
KCSG-LD (channel 8) inOgden operates as alow-powertranslator of KCSG, serving theSalt Lake City metropolitan area; this station's transmitter is located atopFarnsworth Peak in theOquirrh Mountains. In addition to KCSG-LD, KCSG has anetwork of 11 broadcast translators that extend its over-the-air coverage throughout the state. It is also available onDirecTV,Dish Network,Galaxy 19, andcable systems throughout the geographically large Salt Lake Citymedia market.[3]
KCSG began as KCCZ, with aconstruction permit issued on June 11, 1984, to Michael Glenn Golden. After several extensions and replacements of expired permits, and transfer of the permit to Liberty Broadcasting Company, the station first signed on the air on April 23, 1990, operating as anindependent station; it was licensed by theFederal Communications Commission on June 21, 1990. However, financial difficulties doomed KCCZ and it shut down in November 1992. Liberty Broadcasting filed forChapter 11 bankruptcy on December 17, 1992, but the filing had to be converted toChapter 7 bankruptcy on June 22, 1993. On October 20, Seagull Communications Company, whose principals owned KSGI radio (1450 AM, nowKSGO, and 99.9 FM, nowKONY) in St. George, filed an application to acquire the station out of bankruptcy and on November 12, changed its call letters to KSGI-TV to match the radio stations. The acquisition was approved by the FCC and consummated on February 1, 1994. Seagull Communications returned the station to air the same day, again as an independent station.[4]
Almost immediately, the new owners applied to the FCC to build booster stations serving St. George, Utah, andBeaver Dam, Arizona–Mesquite, Nevada, communities cut off from the signal due to the mountainous terrain of those areas. The FCC granted the construction permit for the St. George booster, KSGI1 (later KCSG1), on February 28, 1995, but did not grant a permit for the Beaver Dam booster, KSGI2 (later KCSG2), until January 1998. That station was never built, but the construction permit remained in the FCC database until 2009.
In 1997, Seagull Communications sold KSGI-TV toBonneville Holding Company, a broadcasting company wholly owned bythe Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The sale was approved by the FCC on December 10, 1997, and was consummated on April 27, 1998. On February 16, 1998, the station changed its call letters to KXIV, in anticipation of itsDTV channel assignment on UHF channel 14, but the FCC adopted the virtual channel standard, whereby digital stations would continue to identify by their analog channel assignment, and on May 15, 1998, the station again changed call letters, this time to KCSG. On August 31, 1998, the station became a charter affiliate of the family-oriented network Pax TV (nowIon Television). In August 2002, KCSG was sold to Broadcast West, a St. George-based partnership of Daniel Matheson and local auto dealer Stephen Wade. The new owners elected to continue the Pax affiliation and to maintain an association with Bonneville-ownedKSL-TV (channel 5).[3]
Broadcast West began to make changes to KCSG that would establish its identity as a Southern Utah station. In 2003, the company founded the region's first television news department for the station. Before, the only local news program available to residents of Cedar City and St. George came from Salt Lake City area stations. In June 2005, with Pax TV preparing to adopt a more general entertainment format, KCSG switched its affiliation toAmerica One, continuing to offer family-focused programming. The station made news in September 2005, when it began offering its news programs inSpanish, as well as in English, attempting to serve the region's growing Hispanic population.[5] The Broadcast West partnership was dissolved on October 18, 2005, and a new company, Southwest Media, owned by Stephen Wade, became the licensee.[6]
On August 18, 2008, KCSG replaced Salt Lake City'sKJZZ-TV (also on channel 14) as Utah'sMyNetworkTV affiliate.[7] The station added programming from theRetro Television Network, which was previously carried in the market by KUSG andKCBU, in 2009.[8] For a time, starting on September 20, 2010, KCSG was one of two MyNetworkTV affiliates serving the geographically large Utahmedia market, along with KUSG; the affiliation was subsequently ceded completely to the renamedKMYU (channel 12).
On September 5, 2011, KCSG switched its primary affiliation to classic television networkMeTV.[9][10] On July 26, 2012, KCSG addedFamilyNet to Baja Broadband channel 87.[11] FamilyNet is limited to cable and satellite viewing because of programming restrictions placed on it by the network. Otherwise, FamilyNet would have been added to digital subchannel 14.4.
On September 29, 2014, KCSG switched its affiliation from MeTV toHeroes & Icons, a new network owned by MeTV's parent company (and KCSG's future owner),Weigel Broadcasting, as its first non-owned affiliate. The network mainly carries a format of crime shows and westerns targeted to men from the MeTV acquisition library. MeTV is still available throughout the state viaKTVX-DT2.
On July 19, 2017, Weigel (through TV-49, Inc., the licensee ofWMLW-TV inRacine, Wisconsin) agreed to acquire the station for $1.1 million.[12] The sale will convert KCSG in a H&I owned-and-operated station, though the possibility of Weigel's other networks being contained to it is also possible. It would also be Weigel's first purchase of any station outside of a state alongLake Michigan, as all of its properties are inIllinois,Wisconsin andIndiana. The sale closed on December 5,[13] with the St. George-related channel contracts voided the week before in order to make it a station only carrying H&I and Decades for the moment.
On July 16, 2020, it was announced that low-power stations KUTA-LD and KQTI-LD would be sold to Weigel Broadcasting for $375,000.[14] Weigel intends to use the stations as relays of KCSG for northern Utah and the Salt Lake City metropolitan area.[15] The sale was completed on September 17.[16]
KCSG was the first television station in southern Utah to produce local newscasts for the region. Until KCSG started its news department, St. George residents received local newscasts from stations in Salt Lake City; indeed, KCSG itself simulcast KSL-TV's morning newscast for a time under Bonneville ownership.[17] The station's news operation began in 2003 with a five-minute newscast; this subsequently expanded to half-hour newscasts at 5:30 and 9 p.m. KCSG discontinued its newscasts on February 19, 2010; the station still broadcasts news updates and still places news stories on its website.[18][19]
After a six-month hiatus, full-scale newscasts were reinstated on August 23, 2010, with the early evening newscast now airing at 6:30 p.m., in addition to the 9 p.m. newscast. KCSG previously announced a partnership withDixie State College of Utah.[20] In late August 2011, KCSG began rebroadcasting the first half-hour ofKSL-TV's 6 p.m. newscast at 7 p.m., and its 6:30 p.m. newscast re-airs at 9 p.m. Both newscasts are titledKSL Live 5 News on KCSG.
On August 4, 2011,Utah State University announced that it had partnered with KCSG to show selectfootball and men's and women'sbasketball games on the station.[21][22]
The St. George Marathon, the City of St. GeorgeFirst Night and theHuntsman World Senior Games are broadcast on KCSG.
The stations' signals aremultiplexed:
| Channel | Res. | Aspect | Short name | Programming |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8.1 | 720p | 16:9 | MeTV | MeTV |
| 8.2 | 480i | CATCHY | Catchy Comedy | |
| 8.3 | START | Start TV | ||
| 8.4 | HEROES | Heroes & Icons | ||
| 8.5 | MeTV+ | MeTV+ | ||
| 8.6 | STORY | Story Television | ||
| 8.7 | MOVIES | Movies! | ||
| 8.8 | TOONS | MeTV Toons | ||
| 8.12 | EMLW | OnTV4U (Infomercials) |
| Channel | Res. | Aspect | Short name | Programming |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8.1 | 720p | 16:9 | MeTV | MeTV (unmapped)[a] |
| 8.2 | 480i | Catchy Comedy | ||
| 8.3 | Start TV | |||
| 8.4 | Heroes & Icons | |||
| 8.5 | MeTV+ | |||
| 8.6 | Story Television | |||
| 8.7 | Movies! | |||
| 8.8 | MeTV Toons | |||
| 8.12 | OnTV4U (Infomercials) |
KCSG shut down its analog signal, overVHF channel 4, on June 12, 2009, as part of thefederally mandated transition from analog to digital television.[25] The station's digital signal broadcasts on its pre-transition UHF channel 14, usingvirtual channel 8.
