KSNT - History

History

It debuted on December 28, 1967 as KTSB, originally owned by Ralph C. Wilson Jr., founding owner of the Buffalo Bills NFL football team. It was Topeka's second commercial television station and the first full-powered UHF station in Kansas. The station has been an NBC affiliate from the first day. Unlike most then two-station markets, KTSB did not take a formal secondary affiliation with ABC but did clear a few shows from that network. It had little need to air many ABC shows because KMBC-TV in Kansas City and KQTV in St. Joseph both decently cover Topeka. In any case, KTKA got the ABC affiliation when it began operations in 1983.

In 1982, George Hatch (owner of the Kansas State Network based at KARD-TV in Wichita--now KSNW) bought the station. Later that year, this station was renamed KSNT as part of an effort to help viewers think of the KSN stations as part of one large network. During the next few years, the station referred to itself as KSN but only did limited simulcasting with KSNW and the other three KSN stations in Western Kansas, but still provides stories from the northeast area to KSNW and the other KSN stations and KSNW providing central and western Kansas news stories to KSNT today, in addition to University of Kansas Jayhawks basketball games and NBC programming. While in its role as airing partial simulcasts of KSNW programming, it used the Hello News music package until 1986.

George Lilly (SJL Communications) purchased the station from Hatch in 1990 along with KSNW and eventually dismantled part of the microwave system that linked the two stations in a cost cutting effort. In 1995, Lee Enterprises picked up the KSN group including KSNT. In 2000, Emmis Communications acquired the KSN stations but eventually sold it back to Montecito Broadcasting Group (formerly SJL Communications) for $259 million.

It was announced in April 2006 that KSNT-DT2 would be Northeast Kansas' home of the The CW beginning on September 18. On July 24, 2007, Montecito announced the sale of all of its stations (KSNT, KSNW and its satellites, plus KHON-TV in Honolulu and its satellites, and KOIN in Portland) to New Vision Television. The sale closed on November 1 of that year. In July 2008, New Vision purchased low-powered Fox affiliate KTMJ, and in November, replaced The CW programming on KSNT-DT2 with a digital broadcast of that channel since it did not air one of its own due to being a Class A station. KTMJ moved from its original studios on Southwest Southgate Drive in Topeka to KSNT's facilities.

On February 4, 2011, Free State Communications announced that would sell KTKA-TV to PBC Broadcasting, which also owns stations in Youngstown, OH and Savannah, GA. Both operations are part of shared service and local marketing agreements with stations owned by KSNT's owner New Vision Television in their respective markets, suggesting that KTKA would be structured under the same sort of arrangement with KSNT. Despite objections to the sale by the American Cable Association that the sale could give the virtual triopoly too much leverage in retransmission consent negotiations, leaving the possibility of the blackout of three of Topeka's network affiliates should retrans negotiations with area pay television providers break down in the future, the FCC approved the sale of KTKA to PBC Broadcasting for $1.5 million on July 21, 2011.

On May 7, 2012, LIN TV Corporation announced that it will acquire the New Vision Television station group, including KSNT and KTMJ-CD, for $330.4 million and the assumption of $12 million in debt. The agreement includes operational control of KTKA-TV through the existing shared services agreement with KTKA's owner PBC Broadcasting.On October 2, the FCC approved the proposed sale to LIN TV. The transition is expected to close by within the 4th quarter of 2012. The deal would mark a re-entry into Kansas for LIN, who briefly owned the licenses of Wichita ABC affiliate KAKE and its satellites in 2000, but never held operational control of the stations.