| ATSC 3.0 station | |
|---|---|
 | |
| |
| City | Burlington, Iowa |
| Channels | |
| Branding | Quad Cities CW |
| Programming | |
| Affiliations |
|
| Ownership | |
| Owner |
|
| KLJB, WHBF-TV | |
| History | |
First air date | January 5, 1988 (37 years ago) (1988-01-05) |
Former call signs |
|
Former channel number(s) |
|
| |
Call sign meaning | Grant (previous owner) CW |
| Technical information[1] | |
Licensing authority | FCC |
| Facility ID | 7841 |
| ERP | 1,000kW |
| HAAT | 316.4 m (1,038 ft) |
| Transmitter coordinates | 41°19′39″N90°22′46″W / 41.32750°N 90.37944°W /41.32750; -90.37944 |
| Links | |
Public license information | |
| Website | www |
KGCW (channel 26) is atelevision station licensed toBurlington, Iowa, United States, serving as theCW network outlet for theQuad Cities area. It isowned and operated by network majority ownerNexstar Media Group alongside regionalCBS affiliateWHBF-TV (channel 4). Nexstar also provides certain services toFox affiliateKLJB (channel 18) under ashared services agreement (SSA) withMission Broadcasting. The three stations share studios in the Telco Building on 18th Street in downtownRock Island, Illinois; KGCW's transmitter is located nearOrion, Illinois.
Channel 26 began broadcasting as KJMH, a local station for Burlington, in January 1988 and became a Fox affiliate that July. It was owned by local businessman Steve Hoth, who named it for his wife, JoEllen M. Hoth. In May 1994, the station lost access to Fox programming after the network moved to strip KJMH of its affiliation. It then went off the air that November.
Grant Communications acquired the station and returned it to the air on March 1, 1996, rebroadcasting KLJB-TV in Davenport. In January 2001, channel 26 was split from channel 18 to become the affiliate ofThe WB in the Quad Cities, where it was seen on cable and a subchannel of KLJB, and its transmitter was relocated from Burlington to a site that offered increased coverage of the Quad Cities. The station became affiliated with The CW in 2006 when The WB andUPN merged. Nexstar acquired the Grant stations in 2014, coinciding with the separate purchase of WHBF-TV.
Burlington Broadcast Company, which was owned by local businessman Steve Hoth, obtained a construction permit for a new television station in Burlington in 1984. The station went unbuilt for three years. An intended November 1987 launch was scrapped because of equipment problems.[2] KJMH—named for JoEllen M. Hoth, Steve's wife[3]—began broadcasting on January 5, 1988.[4][5] The station, airing a mix ofindependent station programming and (for a time) a local newscast,[3] represented a $1 million investment.[6] It broadcast with an effective radiated power of 200,000 watts from a transmitting facility at Roosevelt Avenue and Winegard Drive in Burlington,[7] sufficient only to reach the Burlington area:Mount Pleasant sat on the edge of the contour, and cities such asKeokuk andMuscatine were outside of its signal range.[4]
Even though KJMH affiliated withFox on July 31, 1988,[8] financial precarity was a major issue in the station's early history. Amid reports that the station's payroll checks were bouncing, the general manager resigned in 1991.[9][7] Two years later, in November 1993, Fox moved to strip KJMH of its affiliation. Hoth hired a Chicago law firm to fight the disaffiliation in court but was unsuccessful, and KJMH ceased airing Fox programming in May 1994.[7] The station then aired programming from home shopping serviceValueVision andChannel America, which had historically catered to low-power stations.[10]
In November 1994, Hoth announced the sale of 80 percent of the station to Kelley Broadcasting for $405,000; Kelley, a consortium of investors based in Texas, planned to affiliate KJMH with the forthcomingUPN network. Additionally, it was announced that the station would leave the air for four to six weeks for equipment installation and refurbishing.[11] Channel 26 did not return after the four-week period of silence, and financial questions continued to swirl. In February 1995, the law firm that had been hired to fight KJMH's disaffiliation sued for nonpayment.[7] Hoth would later file bankruptcy for Burlington Broadcasting and a related company in October 1996; the then-former licensee of the station owed more than $444,000 against $38,000 in assets.[12]
The Kelley sale was never filed with the FCC; instead, in March 1995,Grant Broadcasting filed to purchase KJMH from Hoth for $400,000.[13] The station was restored to service on March 1, 1996, as a full-time rebroadcaster of Grant-ownedKLJB-TV, the Fox affiliate inDavenport.[14]
Grant Broadcasting intended to eventually air separate programming on the station from the start.[3] KLJB-TV had previously acquired the rights to programming fromThe WB in the Quad Cities market in September 1999 as a result ofSuperstation WGN ceasing carriage of WB programming nationally; selected WB shows aired in late night time slots on channel 18.[15] In January 2001, The WB programming moved from a secondary affiliation on KLJB–KJMH to channel 26 alone, which was added to Quad Cities cable systems and changed its call sign to KGWB-TV.[16] Initially, KGWB-TV broadcast its own programming for half of the broadcast day, continuing to air KLJB-TV's programming in other time slots.[3]
While branded as channel 26, the Burlington signal was so far from the Quad Cities that another station was allowed to operate on the channel: low-powerWBQD-LP debuted in 2002 as the Quad Cities area'sUPN affiliate.[17] KGWB-TV programming was made available over-the-air in the Quad Cities as early as 2003 as a subchannel on KLJB-TV's digital signal.[18] After splitting channel 26's programming, Grant invested in a relocation of the KGWB-TV transmitter facility from Burlington toSeaton, Illinois, midway between Burlington and the Quad Cities, to increase the station's availability in the more populous Quad Cities area.[3]
KGWB-TV became the local affiliate ofThe CW in 2006, upon the merger of The WB and UPN, under new KGCW-TV call letters.[19][20]
Grant Broadcasting announced the sale of its stations for $87.5 million toNexstar Broadcasting Group in November 2013. It was the second acquisition by Nexstar involving a Quad Cities-market television station in six weeks; in September, Nexstar had announced the acquisition ofWHBF-TV inRock Island, Illinois.[21] The Grant purchase closed in December 2014, along with the acquisition of KLJB byMarshall Broadcasting Group under a deal in which Nexstar continued to provide services via ashared services agreement; Nexstar could own WHBF-TV with KGCW outright but not with KLJB, which was one of the top four-rated stations in the market.[22][23] In May 2015, KGCW's Quad Cities simulcast—still needed to serve some viewers who could not receive a strong signal from Seaton—moved from a subchannel of KLJB to a subchannel of WHBF-TV as a consequence of the ownership change, a move that had been anticipated for months.[24][25] Another effect was that KLJB and KGCW could no longer share syndicated programming.[26]
In 2020, KGCW moved its transmitter to a new tower at Orion, from where other Quad Cities stations are broadcast.[27] This coincided with the repack from the2016 United States wireless spectrum auction, which moved the station to channel 21.[28] As a result, the WHBF-TV subchannel simulcast was discontinued.[29]
The station's signal ismultiplexed:
| Channel | Res. | Aspect | Short name | Programming | ATSC 1.0 host |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 26.1 | 720p | 16:9 | KGCW-DT | The CW | KLJB |
| 26.2 | 480i | Rewind | Rewind TV | WHBF-TV | |
| 26.3 | Laff | Laff | |||
| 26.4 | CBS-SD | CBS (WHBF-TV) inSD | KLJB |
| Channel | Short name | Programming |
|---|---|---|
| 4.1 | WHBF | CBS (WHBF-TV) |
| 6.1 | KWQC | NBC (KWQC-TV) |
| 18.1 | KLJB | Fox (KLJB) |
| 26.1 | KGCW | The CW |
The station began ATSC 3.0 broadcasting on December 19, 2024.
KGCW was the only Quad Cities-market station to cease analog broadcasts on February 17, 2009, the original date on which full-power television stations in the United States were totransition from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate.[33] The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 41, usingvirtual channel 26.[34]
You spoke and we listened! We are happy to announce that KGCW-TV, the Quad Cities CW, is now being broadcast on channel 4.2. You will remember that FCC Ownership Rules forced us to take The CW off of the channel 18 transport stream (18.2), leaving the station largely unavailable to many over-the-air viewers who were unable to access it on 26.1. So, after overcoming some technical and operational hurdles, as of Thursday afternoon, the Quad Cities CW is now available on channel 4.2. A channel re-scan on your digital tuner will likely be necessary.
Recently, some viewers have wondered why they can no longer watch KGCW, The Quad Cities' CW on channel 4.2. KGCW has always been available on channel 26.1, but the KGCW broadcast tower was in Seton, IL and many viewers had issues receiving a clear and consistent signal. In March, the KGCW began broadcasting from Orion, IL and the signal has been more reliable for Quad City viewers. So Monday, WHBF changed 4.2 programming to Court TV in an effort to provide a larger variety of free program choices to Quad City television viewers.
Broadcast television stations by affiliation in the state ofIowa | ||
|---|---|---|
| ABC | ||
| CBS | ||
| Fox | ||
| NBC | ||
| The CW | ||
| MyNetworkTV | ||
| Ion Television | ||
| Iowa PBS |
| |
| Other | ||
| Defunct |
| |
.svg){kind=logo}