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|---|---|
| City | Visalia, California |
| Channels | |
| Branding | Fox 26 |
| Programming | |
| Affiliations |
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| Ownership | |
| Owner |
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| KFRE-TV | |
| History | |
First air date | October 11, 1971 (54 years ago) (1971-10-11) |
Former call signs | KMPH (1971–2006) |
Former channel number |
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| |
Call sign meaning | Mike, Pete, and Harry Pappas (station founders) |
| Technical information[1] | |
Licensing authority | FCC |
| Facility ID | 51488 |
| ERP | 245kW |
| HAAT | 792 m (2,598 ft) |
| Transmitter coordinates | 36°40′2″N118°52′45″W / 36.66722°N 118.87917°W /36.66722; -118.87917 |
| Translator(s) | |
| Links | |
Public license information | |
| Website | kmph |
KMPH-TV (channel 26) is atelevision station licensed toVisalia, California, United States, serving theFresno area as an affiliate of theFox network. It is owned bySinclair Broadcast Group alongsideSanger-licensedCW affiliateKFRE-TV (channel 59). The two stations share studios on McKinley Avenue in eastern Fresno; KMPH-TV's transmitter is located on Big Baldy Mountain in northwesternTulare County.
The station's signal is relayed to the northern part of the market onlow-powerClass AtranslatorKMPH-CD (originally KMPH-LD from 2007 to 2011), channel 17, licensed toMerced andMariposa, with transmitter on Mount Bullion. Unlike its parent station, the translator does not broadcast inhigh definition.
When theFederal Communications Commission (FCC) first underwent a major overhaul of its Television Table of Assignments on June 4, 1965, it sought to "unsaturate" the table by removing all unusedUHF allocations from communities with a population below 25,000 unless there was an immediate need by an applicant for that assignment.[2]Tulare, California, with a population of 13,824 in the1960 United States census, lost its sole allocation, UHF channel 27, as a result of this plan; the channel had once been used byKVVG, aDuMont affiliate owned by Sheldon Anderson alongsideKCOK radio andKAFY-AM-TV inBakersfield, from 1953 to 1957.[3]
In 1967, Pappas Electronics, owner of radio stationsKGEN andKBOS in Tulare,[4] petitioned the FCC for the addition of channel 26 at that city; this was granted on July 26, 1967, on the condition that Pappas apply for the channel.[5] The Pappas brothers—Mike, Pete and Harry—received a construction permit for channel 26 on November 6, 1968;[4] KMPH signed on the air on October 11, 1971, as anindependent station, broadcasting from studios at Mooney Boulevard inVisalia.[6] While Mike and Pete Pappas originally controlled 45 percent each of the new venture, with Harry owning the other ten percent, other investors were brought on, and by 1973 their combined stake in KMPH was only 30.5 percent.[7]
KMPH carriedOperation Prime Time programming at least in 1978.[8] That year, Harry Pappas formed a new company,Pappas Telecasting, to buy full control of the station for $3.1 million.[9] In 1979, KMPH changed its city of license from Tulare to Visalia.[10] That same year, the station began producingtape-delayed broadcasts ofFresno State Bulldogs football. After 1984'sNCAA v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma decision brought more freedom for teams to have their games on TV, about a handful of road games began to be telecast live. In 1986, live home games were added to the schedule.[11]
Soon after signing on, KMPH had passedKAIL (then on channel 53, now on channel 7) as the leading independent in the Central Valley. KAIL went dark in 1973 but returned to the air in 1976 as a very low budget operation initially running mostly religion but would gradually build into a major player. Throughout the early to mid-1980s, KMPH was one of the top independent stations in the country. The station could be received up to 100 miles (160 km) from Visalia.
Pappas signed an affiliation deal with Fox for KMPH to become an affiliate of the network in 1988;[12] the agreement also covered sister stationsWHNS inGreenville, South Carolina, andKPTM inOmaha, Nebraska. At the time, Fresno and Omaha were the only two top-100 markets without a Fox affiliate.[13] KMPH remains a Fox affiliate to this day; both it and NBC affiliateKSEE (channel 24) were the only two stations in Fresno that were unaffected by the 1985 network swap involving ABC and CBS betweenKFSN-TV (channel 30) and KJEO (channel 47, nowKGPE) and the later launches ofThe CW andMyNetworkTV in September 2006. The station relocated its operations from its original studio in Visalia to its current facility on McKinley Avenue in Fresno in the early 1990s.
On May 10, 2008, thirteen Pappas stations, including KMPH, filed forChapter 11 bankruptcy protection. As a result of the bankruptcy, Pappas Telecasting Companies was given until February 15, 2009, to sell these stations to other owners.[14] On January 16, 2009, Pappas announced that most of the stations, including KMPH, would be purchased by New World TV Group (no relation to the similarly namedNew World Communications, which switched most of its stations to Fox between September 1994 and July 1995), after the sale receivedUnited States bankruptcy court approval.[15] On April 2, 2009, Pappaslaid off 22 employees involved with the KMPH/KFRE duopoly. New World TV Group formed a new holding company known as the Titan TV Broadcast Group (unrelated to the similarly named smaller-market radio station owner Titan Broadcasting), which completed its purchase of most of the Pappas stations involved in the bankruptcy on October 15, 2009.
Titan announced the sale of KMPH-TV, KFRE-TV and most of the company's other stations to theSinclair Broadcast Group on June 3, 2013.[16] The FCC approved the sale on September 19,[17] and the sale was officially finalized on October 3, 2013.[18] With the completion of the sale, KMPH was reunited with Bakersfield Fox affiliate, KBFX-CD, which formerly operated as a repeater of KMPH, but was sold by Pappas in 2005 and had been acquired by Sinclair as part of its merger withFisher Communications earlier in 2013.
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In 2003, KMPH stopped carrying Fox's children's program block4Kids TV; the block, which normally aired on Saturdays, was moved to sister station KFRE-TV and aired on that station on a tape delay on Sunday mornings (this resulted in KFRE carrying children's blocks from two major networks, as it already carried The WB'sKids' WB block). KMPH was one of the few Fox charter affiliates to have dropped the network's children's programming; beginning in the mid-1990s, Fox gave its affiliates (after several stations that switched to the network between 1994 and 1995 that were owned by New World Communications opted not to carry the lineup) the option to pre-emptFox Kids programming and arrange for another local station to carry the block, a practice continued until the end of the 4Kids TV's run. KFRE continued to carry 4Kids TV until the block was discontinued by Fox on December 28, 2008, due to a dispute with the block's lessee4Kids Entertainment; KMPH has also declined to carry Fox's Saturday morning infomercial blockWeekend Marketplace, which instead airs on KFRE in 4Kids TV's former Sunday morning timeslot on the station. KMPH began clearingXploration Station in the mid-2010s, marking the first time since 2003 that the station cleared the entire Fox network schedule.
KMPH-TV presently broadcasts34+1⁄2 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with6+1⁄2 hours each weekday and one hour each on Saturdays and Sundays); in addition, the station produces the lifestyle programAround the Valley, which airs weekdays at 11 a.m. prior to its midday newscast.
In 1978, KMPH launched its news department and began producing a nightly prime time newscast Monday through Friday;The 10 O'Clock News. Originally the station sourced its national news from the ITN Satellite News Service and API Wire Services to augment its own local news coverage, primarily split between the cities of Visalia and Fresno and the surrounding communities. In late 1979, KMPH launched a short-lived midday newscast,The Midday Edition, which was canceled after nine months. Later, in the early 1980s, the station's newscast was expanded to Saturdays. In early 1982, KMPH, launched a weeklynewsmagazine show,The Sunday Edition, which occupied the 10 p.m. timeslot on Sunday nights; it was canceled a year later.The 10 O'Clock News went on to become the longest-running prime time newscast in the Fresno market. On October 6, 2003, KMPH debuted a three-hour weekday morning newscast, titledGreat Day; that same date, the station also launched a half-hour midday newscast at 11:30 a.m. In the spring[when?] of 2007,Great Day was expanded to five hours, running from 5 to 10 a.m.
In January 2006, KMPH began to produce a half-hour 11 p.m. newscast for sister station KFRE-TV; the newscast was unable to compete against the established late evening newscasts on KFSN-TV, KSEE and KGPE and was canceled the following year in February 2007, due to low ratings. On September 30, 2009, KMPH-TV became the second television station in the Fresno market (after KFSN, which made the upgrade in April 2007) to begin broadcasting its local newscasts inhigh definition. It was the first television station in the market to provide news video from the field in true high definition, as KMPH upgraded itsENG vehicles, satellite truck, studio and field cameras and other equipment in order to broadcast news footage from the field in high definition, in addition to segments broadcast from the main studio.[19]
From 2013 to 2023, KMPH produced a newscast for sister stationKPTM inOmaha, Nebraska; the program was produced from Fresno with contributions from Omaha-based reporters.[20][21][22]
In July 2014,Politifact reported that KMPH, in a news story, claimed that the implementation of thePatient Protection and Affordable Care Act had increased the average emergency room wait time in California to five hours. Its reporting was deemed inaccurate, as it was based on statistics released by theCalifornia HealthCare Foundation in 2012, and not from after the implementation of the Affordable Care Act.[23]
The station's signal ismultiplexed:
| Channel | Res. | Aspect | Short name | Programming |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 26.1 | 720p | 16:9 | KMPH-TV | Fox |
| 26.2 | 480i | Dabl | Roar | |
| 26.3 | Comet | Comet | ||
| 26.5 | Nest | The Nest | ||
| 59.3 | 480i | 16:9 | ROAR | Roar (KFRE-TV) |
| Channel | Res. | Aspect | Short name | Programming |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 17.1 | 480i | 4:3 | KMPH-CD | Fox |
In October 2009, KMPH began carryingThis TV ondigital subchannel 26.2. On October 31, 2015,Comet began airing on 26.3.
On October 1, 2019, KMPH-DT2 became an affiliate ofDabl, replacing This TV.
KMPH-TV shut down its analog signal, overUHF channel 26, on June 12, 2009, the official date on which full-power television in the United Statestransitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 28, usingvirtual channel 26.[26]
KMPH-TV's focus is on the San Joaquin Valley and Central California. The station's signal is receivable as far way as theBakersfield area; however, local Fox affiliate andsister stationKBFX-CD (itself once a KMPH repeater) is the only Fox station carried bycable providers in the Bakersfieldmarket. Through its translator, KMPH-TV's signal extends northward to Merced, Mariposa and the southernSierra Nevada, and sometimes can be received inMonterey County for those who live just north ofKing City. KMPH-TV has been received over the air sometimes in easternKern County (Ridgecrest) andSan Luis Obispo.
Includes English-language stations in out-of-state TV markets, but reaching a portion of California | ||
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** Owned by third parties and operated by Sinclair through various operating agreements. *** Owned by Sinclair and operated byMarquee Broadcasting. JV Joint venture. | ||||||||||||||||||
