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| History | |
First air date | October 6, 1979 (46 years ago) (1979-10-06) |
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| Technical information[1] | |
Licensing authority | FCC |
| Facility ID | 59988 |
| ERP | 1,000kW |
| HAAT | 258 m (846 ft) |
| Transmitter coordinates | 32°16′38″N99°35′52″W / 32.27722°N 99.59778°W /32.27722; -99.59778 |
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KTAB-TV (channel 32) is atelevision station inAbilene, Texas, United States, affiliated withCBS andTelemundo. It is owned byNexstar Media Group, which provides certain services toNBC affiliateKRBC-TV (channel 9) underjoint sales andshared services agreements (JSA/SSA) withMission Broadcasting. The two stations share studios on South 14th Street in western Abilene; KTAB-TV's transmitter is located onTexas State Highway 36 in neighboringCallahan County.
KTAB-TV went on the air in October 1979 as the third major TV station for the Abilene area, bringing a full schedule of CBS programs to the Big Country area. It was built by a consortium headed by Bill Terry, who had been KRBC-TV's general manager, and several of that station's on-air personalities moved to the new channel 32. The news product was successful and supplanted KRBC as the dominant station for local news in town. The station was sold several times in the 1980s and 1990s, including an 11-year ownership tenure byShamrock Broadcasting, before being purchased by Nexstar in 1999. Nexstar acquired the assets of KRBC-TV in 2003 and merged the two operations together in that station's studios in 2004.
Big Country TV Inc., a group majority-owned and led byKRBC-TV general manager Bill Terry, filed with theFederal Communications Commission (FCC) in March 1978 for aconstruction permit to build a new TV station onultra high frequency (UHF) channel 32 in Abilene.[2] The group waited a year before receiving FCC approval in March 1979, announcing it would be aCBS affiliate. At the time,KTXS-TV inSweetwater was a dual affiliate of CBS andABC,[3] though it heavily favored ABC. As such, CBS affiliation was available.[4] Picking up CBS gave the new station, designated KTAB, an immediate audience draw: mostDallas Cowboys football games.[5]
In staffing KTAB, Terry poached a number of key employees from KRBC-TV, then the leading news station in Abilene. Larry Fitzgerald, a 25-year veteran of KRBC, left that station to become channel 32's first news director. Sportscaster Bob Bartlett joined KTAB as a news anchor;[6] he has remained with KTAB as of 2019[update].[7] Meanwhile, equipment arrived at the studios and the transmitter site, 15 miles (24 km) southeast of the city; at the latter, an oil rigtrailer andwinch were used to haul materials up the site.[4]
KTAB began broadcasting on October 6, 1979.[8] On Abilene'scable television system, it replacedDallas CBS affiliateKDFW-TV.[9] It benefited in its first year from the Cowboys and a strong performance by the CBS network.[10]
When KTAB signed on, KRBC had led the Abilene market's news ratings by a wide margin, obtaining as much as 80 percent of the audience, but by 1983, KTAB had edged ahead of KRBC in news viewership. After theMinneapolis-based International Broadcasting Corporation,[11] owned by stockholderThomas Scallen, acquired KTAB in 1984,[12][13] the station's news ratings continued to grow. By 1985, its 10 p.m. newscast was attracting a 52 percent share, among the highest in the nation,[14] and its noon and 6 p.m. newscasts led in their time slots.[15] Among allAreas of Dominant Influence ranked above 100 with three network affiliates, per aTelevision/Radio Age analysis ofArbitron data from November 1985, only six stations posted higher news ratings.[16]
Shamrock Broadcasting,Roy E. Disney's broadcasting company, bought the station in 1986.[17][18] Under Shamrock, KTAB continued to be the news leader in Abilene, though KTXS made inroads with younger viewers and won more regional awards.[19] In August 1995, channel 32 became a secondary affiliate ofUPN.[20]
Shamrock announced in 1990 that it intended to sell KTAB-TV,KXXV inWaco, and three radio stations,[21] though it took years for Shamrock to sell the Abilene station. By 1996, it was Shamrock's last broadcasting property; the company put KTAB-TV on the market again because Roy E. Disney was joining the board of ABC as part ofThe Walt Disney Company's acquisition of the network and KTAB would thus count against ABC's ownership cap.[22] The station was sold to ShootingStar Inc., a company controlled by Diane Sutter, who had headed the television stations division of Shamrock;[23]Alta Communications then acquired 81 percent of KTAB from ShootingStar.[24]
Nexstar Broadcasting Group purchased KTAB-TV from Alta Communications and ShootingStar in 1999.[25] The station continued to lead with its newscasts, but it faced a growing challenge from KTXS in the years after the purchase. KTAB's 6 and 10 p.m. newscasts still won their time slots, but KTXS experienced growth in mornings and among younger, more desirable demographics,[26] as well as in total-day ratings, where it managed to edge out KTAB for the first time in a non-Olympics rating period since at least 1994.[27]
In 2003, Nexstar acquired the assets of KRBC-TV, withMission Broadcasting assuming the license and outsourcing much of the station's operation to Nexstar under joint sales and shared services agreements for a monthly fee.[28] The stations—along withKACB, KRBC's semi-satellite inSan Angelo—came under one news director, though the stations continued to have separate anchors and reporters for their newscasts.[29] The next year, KTAB moved up 14th Street into the KRBC-TV studios; though KRBC had the older building, it also had unused space from when KRBC radio existed.[30] At the same time, Nexstar acquiredKLST in San Angelo and consolidated traffic—the scheduling and logging for commercials—for the San Angelo stations in Abilene.[31]
In 2014, KTAB addedTelemundo to its 32.2 digital subchannel, three years after low-power stationKTES-LP dropped the network in 2011 to joinThis TV.[32][33]
KTAB-TV is broadcast from a tower inCallahan County.[1] Its signal ismultiplexed:
| Channel | Res. | Aspect | Short name | Programming |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 32.1 | 1080i | 16:9 | KTAB-DT | CBS |
| 32.2 | KTABDT2 | Telemundo | ||
| 32.3 | 480i | KTABDT3 | Ion Mystery | |
| 32.4 | KTABDT4 | Ion |
Now we just recently this year put a Telemundo D2 on the air in Abilene, Texas where there was no other Telemundo affiliate over the air, and that makes perfect sense.
Includes English-language stations in out-of-state TV markets, but reaching a portion of Texas | ||
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Includes Spanish-language stations in out-of-state TV markets, but reaching a portion of Texas | ||
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| Estrella TV | ||
| UniMás | ||
| Univision | ||
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** Owned by third parties but operated by Nexstar through various agreements. | ||
