KMPH-TV

For theunitofspeedknown as KMPH, seeKilometres per hour.

KMPH-TV

Visalia–Fresno, California United States
City	Visalia, California
Channels	Digital:28 (UHF) Virtual:26
Branding	Fox 26
Programming
Affiliations	26.1:Fox for others, see§ KMPH-TV subchannels
Ownership
Owner	Sinclair Broadcast Group (KMPH Licensee,LLC)
Sister stations	KFRE-TV
History
First air date	October 11, 1971(1971-10-11)
Former call signs	KMPH (1971–2006)
Former channel number(s)	Analog:26 (UHF, 1971–2009)
Former affiliations	Independent(1971–1988) The WB(secondary, 1997–2001)
Call signmeaning	Mike, Pete, and Harry Pappas(station founders)
Technical information
Licensing authority	FCC
Facility ID	51488
ERP	245kW
HAAT	792 m (2,598 ft)
Transmitter coordinates	36°40′2″N118°52′45″W
Translator(s)	KMPH-CD17.1 (19 UHF)Merced–Mariposa KFRE-DT26.4 (36.5 UHF)Sanger
Links
Public license information	Public file LMS
Website	kmph.com

KMPH-TV(channel 26) is atelevision stationlicensed toVisalia, California,United States, serving theFresnoarea as an affiliate of theFoxnetwork. It is owned bySinclair Broadcast GroupalongsideSanger-licensedCWaffiliateKFRE-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 toMercedandMariposa,with transmitter on Mount Bullion. Unlike its parent station, the translator does not broadcast inhigh definition.

History

Early years

The station first signed on the air on October 11, 1971; originally operating as anindependent station(though it ranABC,NBC,andCBSshows that the local affiliates passed on at times as well), it was the first television station founded by the Pappas brothers, Mike, Pete and Harry, through their company, Pappas Television. The brothers already owned radio stationsKGEN(1370 AM) andKBOS(94.9 FM) inTulare,KMPH's original city of license. The station's original studios were located on Mooney Boulevard in Visalia.The funding for KMPH came from general manager Harry Pappas' plan of having hundreds of investors each investing a small amount of money that was needed to construct the station, rather than having one investor providing all the capital; as a result, the Pappas brothers had a combined ownership stake of only 30.5%, with the other 69.5% controlled by other investors.

KMPH carriedOperation Prime Timeprogramming at least in 1978.That year, Harry Pappas formed a new company,Pappas Telecasting,to buy full control of the station for $3.1 million.In 1979, KMPH changed its city of license from Tulare to Visalia.That same year, the station began producing tape delay broadcasts ofFresno State Bulldogs football.After 1984'sNCAA v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahomadecision 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.

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.

Since 1988

Pappas signed an affiliation deal with Fox for KMPH to become an affiliate of the network in 1988;the agreement also covered sister stationsWHNSinGreenville, South Carolina,andKPTMinOmaha, Nebraska.At the time, Fresno and Omaha were the only two top-100 markets without a Fox affiliate.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 CWandMyNetworkTVin 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.

Ownership change

On May 10, 2008, thirteen Pappas stations, including KMPH, filed forChapter 11 bankruptcyprotection. As a result of the bankruptcy, Pappas Telecasting Companies was given until February 15, 2009, to sell these stations to other owners.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 courtapproval.On April 2, 2009, Pappaslaid off22 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 Groupon June 3, 2013.The FCC approved the sale on September 19,and the sale was officially finalized on October 3, 2013.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 Communicationsearlier in 2013.

Programming

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 atape delayon Sunday mornings (this resulted in KFRE carrying children's blocks from two major networks, as it already carried The WB'sKids' WBblock). 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 Kidsprogramming 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.

News operation

KMPH-TV presently broadcasts34+1⁄2hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with6+1⁄2hours 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 weeklynewsmagazineshow,The Sunday Edition,which occupied the 10 p.m. timeslot on Sunday nights; it was canceled a year later.The 10 O'Clock Newswent 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 springof 2007,Great Daywas 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 itsENGvehicles, 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.

KMPH produced newscasts forKPTMinOmaha, Nebraska,from early 2010s to 2023, interspersing live reporters from the Omaha market with studio anchors in Fresno.

In July 2014,Politifactreported that KMPH, in a news story, claimed that the implementation of thePatient Protection and Affordable Care Acthad 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 Foundationin 2012, and not from after the implementation of the Affordable Care Act.

Notable current on-air staff

• Kopi Sotiropulos– anchor

Notable former on-air staff

• Vic "The Brick" Jacobs– sportscaster (now atKLACradio inLos Angeles)
• Lloyd Lindsay Young– weathercaster (later atWWOR-TVinSecaucus, New Jersey)

Technical information

KMPH-TV subchannels

The station's signal ismultiplexed:

Subchannels of KMPH-TV

Channel	Res.	Aspect	Short name	Programming
26.1	720p	16:9	KMPH-TV	Main KMPH-TV programming /Fox
26.2	480i		Dabl	Dabl
26.3			Comet	Comet
26.5			Nest	The Nest

KMPH-CD subchannel

Subchannel of KMPH-CD

Channel	Video	Aspect	Short name	Programming
17.1	480i	4:3	KMPH-CD	Main KMPH-CD programming / Fox

In October 2009, KMPH began carryingThis TVondigital subchannel26.2. On October 31, 2015,Cometbegan airing on 26.3.

On October 1, 2019, KMPH-DT2 became an affiliate ofDabl,replacing This TV.

Analog-to-digital conversion

KMPH-TV shut down its analog signal, overUHFchannel 26, on June 12, 2009, the official date on which full-power television in the United Statestransitioned from analog to digital broadcastsunder federal mandate. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 28,usingvirtual channel26.

Out of market coverage

KMPH-TV's focus is on the San Joaquin Valley and Central California. The station's signal is receivable as far way as theBakersfieldarea; however, local Fox affiliate andsister stationKBFX-CD(itself once a KMPH repeater) is the only Fox station carried bycableproviders 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 Countyfor those who live just north ofKing City.KMPH-TV has been received over the air sometimes in easternKern County(Ridgecrest) andSan Luis Obispo.

External links

• Official website