 | |
| City | Paducah, Kentucky |
|---|---|
| Channels | |
| Branding | My 49 WDKA |
| Programming | |
| Affiliations |
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| Ownership | |
| Owner |
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| KBSI | |
| History | |
| Founded | October 2, 1989 |
First air date | June 5, 1997 (27 years ago) (1997-06-05) |
Former channel number(s) |
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Call sign meaning | Paducah (soundalike "K" substituting for "C") |
| Technical information[2] | |
Licensing authority | FCC |
| Facility ID | 39561 |
| ERP | 1,000kW |
| HAAT | 327 m (1,073 ft) |
| Transmitter coordinates | 37°23′42″N88°56′23″W / 37.39500°N 88.93972°W /37.39500; -88.93972 |
| Translator(s) | KBSI-DT 23.2 (22.2 UHF) Cape Girardeau, MO |
| Links | |
Public license information | |
| Website | kbsi23 |
WDKA (channel 49) is atelevision station licensed toPaducah, Kentucky, United States, serving as theMyNetworkTV affiliate forWestern Kentucky'sPurchase region,Southern Illinois and SoutheasternMissouri, andNorthwest Tennessee. It is owned by the Community News Media subsidiary ofStandard Media alongsideCape Girardeau, Missouri–licensedFox affiliateKBSI (channel 23). Both stations share studios on Enterprise Street in Cape Girardeau, while WDKA's transmitter is located inVienna, Illinois.
In addition to its own digital signal, WDKA issimulcast instandard definition on KBSI's seconddigital subchannel (23.2) from a transmitter north of Cape Girardeau inunincorporatedCape Girardeau County.
WDKA began broadcasting on June 5, 1997. It was aUPN affiliate broadcasting ananalog signal on UHF channel 49.[3] In 2000, WDKA switched affiliations withlow-powered stationWQTV-LP (licensed toMurray, Kentucky) and repeater WQWQ-LP to become an affiliate ofThe WB. In September 2006, The WB and UPN merged to becomeThe CW, and WQTV-LP was announced to become The CW affiliate for Paducah in advance of the merger. As a result, WDKA became affiliated with MyNetworkTV when it launched on September 5.
On August 30, 2014, WDKA became a charter affiliate of Sinclair's ad-hoc syndicated television network, theAmerican Sports Network. ASN providedOhio Valley Conferencebasketball andConference USAfootball and basketball games to the station's viewers.[4][5] The ASN's programming content replacedSoutheastern Conference football and basketball broadcasts fromESPN Plus-orientedSEC TV, which was run from 2009 until 2014, which was discontinued because of the launch of the pay TV-exclusiveSEC Network.
On March 3, 2016, WDKA Acquisition Corporation (owned by Paul T. Lucci[6]) filed to sell WDKA to Sinclair's subsidiary WDKA Licensee, LLC.[7] Sinclair bought the station for $1.9 million.[8] The sale was completed on September 1, 2017.[9]
The station's signal ismultiplexed:
| Channel | Res. | Aspect | Short name | Programming |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 49.1 | 720p | 16:9 | MyTV | MyNetworkTV |
| 49.2 | 480i | Charge! | Charge! | |
| 49.3 | TBD | TBD | ||
| 49.4 | TheNest | The Nest | ||
| 49.5 | Dabl | Dabl | ||
| 49.6 | CourtTV | Court TV | ||
| 49.7 | CHSN | Chicago Sports Network |
WDKA shut down its analog signal, overUHF channel 49, 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 pushed back to June 12, 2009). The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 50,[11] usingvirtual channel 49.
In October 2019, WDKA reallocated its digital signal onto UHF channel 25 as a result of the station's participation in the FCC's spectrum incentive auction.