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| City | Temple, Texas |
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| Programming | |
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| Ownership | |
| Owner |
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| KAGS-LD | |
| History | |
First air date | November 1, 1953 (72 years ago) (1953-11-01) |
Former channel numbers |
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Call sign meaning | Central Texas |
| Technical information[2] | |
Licensing authority | FCC |
| Facility ID | 10245 |
| ERP | 25kW |
| HAAT | 527 m (1,729 ft) |
| Transmitter coordinates | 31°16′25″N97°13′15″W / 31.27361°N 97.22083°W /31.27361; -97.22083 |
| Links | |
Public license information | |
| Website | www |
KCEN-TV (channel 6) is atelevision station licensed toTemple, Texas, United States, servingCentral Texas as an affiliate ofNBC. Owned byTegna Inc., the station maintains studios on North 3rd Street in downtown Temple, with anews bureau and sales office inKilleen; its transmitter is located alongI-35 south ofEddy.
KAGS-LD (channel 23) inBryan operates as alow-powersemi-satellite of KCEN-TV, serving theBrazos Valley. As such, itsimulcasts all network andsyndicated programming as provided through KCEN-TV but airs separate local newscasts, commercial inserts andlegal identifications, and has its own website. KCEN-TV serves the western half of theWaco–Temple–Bryan market while KAGS-LD serves the eastern portion. The two stations are counted as a single unit forratings purposes. Although KAGS-LD maintains its own studios on South Texas Avenue in Bryan,master control and some internal operations are based at KCEN-TV's facilities.
The station signed on the air for the first time on November 1, 1953,[3] originally owned by Frank W. Mayborn, publisher of theTemple Daily Telegram and owner ofKTEM radio (1400 AM) in Temple. Early on, Mayborn realized that Temple–Killeen and Waco were going to be a single television market (although, then now, they are separate radio markets). To signify that his new station would serve all of Central Texas, Mayborn decided on the call letters KCEN-TV (for "Central Texas"), rather than KTEM-TV (for Temple), after his radio station property. He also built his studio and transmitter near Eddy, roughly halfway between Temple and Waco.
It was the first television station to serve the Waco–Temple–Killeen market, and the second television station in Central Texas, signing on one year afterAustin'sKTBC. KCEN signed on with one of the tallest transmitter towers in thesouthwestern United States, operating at a height of 830 feet (250 m). The station originally carried programming from all four major networks at the time but was a primary NBC affiliate. KCEN lost theCBS affiliation toKWTX-TV onJanuary 1, 1956. TheDuMont Television Network ceased operations later that year, leaving KCEN with a primary NBC affiliation and a secondary affiliation withABC.
For many decades since the Waco–Temple–Killeen market's introduction to cable in 1965, it was sandwiched with stations from other markets, withDallas–Fort Worth (channels4,5,8, and11) to the north, Houston (channels2,11, and13) to the southeast, and Austin (channels7,24, and42, later 36) to the south and southwest (as well as some cable providers in the southeast).[4]
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In 1981, KCEN activated a new 1,924-foot (586 m) tower just to the east of the original tower, expanding its coverage area to almost 29,000 square miles (75,000 km2)—one of the largest television station broadcast radiuses in the nation. The station now provides at least secondary over-the-air coverage to 33 counties–from the southern fringes of the Dallas–Fort Worth market to the northern fringes of the Austin market.[5]
The station switched its primary affiliation to ABC on June 25, 1984, while continuing to carry some NBC programs during off-hours.[6][7] WhenKXXV signed on the air on March 22, 1985, that station became the new primary NBC affiliate. However, over time, channel 6 became one of several ABC affiliates nationwide that were disappointed with the network's weak programming offerings, particularly on Thursday nights, which were bogging down KCEN's otherwise successful lineup.[citation needed] Meanwhile, nine months later on December 30, the NBC affiliation returned to KCEN, while KXXV picked up the ABC affiliation.[8][9] KCEN was the first television station in Central Texas to provideclosed captions in its programming in September 1989.
KCEN, theTemple Daily Telegram and theKilleen Daily Herald remained under the Mayborn family's ownership after Frank's death in 1987, with his third wife, Sue, taking over running the station. In January 2009,Frank Mayborn Enterprises, Inc. entered into an agreement to sell KCEN toDallas-based London Broadcasting Company, with a purchase price of $26 million[10]—a handsome return on Frank Mayborn's original investment in KTEM radio in 1936.
KCEN had operated alow-power translator in theBrazos Valley on UHF channel 62 for many years. On January 20, 2003, this translator was upgraded toClass A status on UHF channel 23 under new calls, KMAY-LP. Like its low-power predecessor, it was a straight simulcast of KCEN, only mentioned in legal IDs. KMAY switched to digital on June 12, 2009. On July 3, 2011, London Broadcasting announced that KMAY would be converted to a semi-satellite of KCEN for the Bryan–College Station submarket under the new callsignKAGS-LD, with local news programming and commercial advertisements from KCEN replaced with newscasts and commercials targeted to the Brazos Valley area. KAGS was relaunched as a locally focused station in October of that year.[11] On September 26, 2011,Azteca América programming ondigital subchannel 6.3 was replaced with programming from classic television networkMeTV.
On May 14, 2014, theGannett Company announced that it would acquire KCEN-TV and five other LBC stations for $215 million. Gannett's CEOGracia Martore touted that the acquisition would give the company a presence in several fast-growing markets, and opportunities for local advertisers to leverage its digital marketing platform.[12] The sale was completed on July 8, 2014.[13] 13 months later, on June 29, 2015, the Gannett Company split in two, with one side specializing in print media and the other side specializing in broadcast and digital media. KCEN was retained by the latter company, namedTegna. However, KCEN retained its London Broadcasting-era website until September 2016.
In January 2016, KCEN announced it would vacate its longtime studios in Eddy and move to the former complex of First Baptist Church in downtown Temple. Station management explained that the fast-growth ofBell County contributed to their decision; general manager Gayle Kiger said that it was important for "the fastest-growing and largest county" in the channel 6 coverage area to have a station based there. She also said that KCEN would have likely had to move anyway, as there was not enough room to expand its Eddy facility.[14] The move was completed in early 2017.[citation needed]
KCEN-TV presently broadcasts a total of21+1⁄2 hours of local newscasts each week (with3+1⁄2 hours each weekday and one hour each on Saturdays and Sundays). On February 1, 2010, KCEN became the first television station in the Waco–Temple–Killeen market to begin broadcasting its local newscasts inhigh definition.
On March 23, 2015, KCEN-TV debuted the Gannett group's graphical theme.[15]
The station's signal ismultiplexed:
| Channel | Res. | Aspect | Short name | Programming |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6.1 | 720p | 16:9 | KCEN-HD | NBC |
| 6.2 | MYTX | Quest /Dallas Mavericks games | ||
| 6.3 | 480i | 4:3 | H & I | True Crime Network |
| 6.5 | ION | Get | ||
| 6.7 | 16:9 | Nosey (soon) | ||
| 6.8 | Comet | |||
| 6.9 | Shop LC |
KCEN-TV shut down its analog signal, overVHF channel 6, on February 17, 2009, the original target date on which full-power television stations in the United States were totransition from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate (which was later pushed back to June 12, 2009). The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition VHF channel 9.[17]
Though most television stations typically map theirvirtual channels to that station's analog channel allocation pre-transition, digital television receivers displayed KCEN-TV's virtual channel following the transition as 9, instead of 6 with the station's on-air branding changing to "KCEN 9" in accordance.[18] The station's virtual channel changed to its former VHF analog channel 6 (its on-air branding was changed to simply "KCEN-HD" as well) on February 1, 2010.
Includes English-language stations in out-of-state TV markets, but reaching a portion of Texas | ||
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| The CW | ||
| Ion Television | ||
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| ATSC 3.0 | ||
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