KCEN-TV - History

History

KCEN-TV signed on the air for the first time on November 1, 1953, originally owned by Frank W. Mayborn, publisher of the Temple Daily Telegram and owner of KTEM radio (1400 AM). Early on, Mayborn realized that Temple-Killeen and Waco were going to be consolidated into a single television market (although the radio stations in the respective areas are considered to be within separate markets). To signify his goal to serve all of Central Texas, Mayborn decided to call his new station KCEN-TV (the calls standing for "CENtral Texas"), rather than using the callsign KTEM-TV (for its city of license, TEMple), after his radio station property.

It was the first television station to serve the Waco-Temple-Killeen market, and the second television station in Central Texas, signing on one year after Austin's KTBC. KCEN signed on with one of the tallest transmitter towers in the southwestern United States, operating at a height of 830 feet (250 m). The station originally carried programming from all four major networks at the time, but was a primary NBC affiliate. It lost the CBS affiliation to KWTX-TV when its signed on the air on April 3, 1955. The DuMont Television Network ceased operations later that year, leaving KCEN with a primary NBC affiliation and a secondary affiliation with ABC.

In 1981, KCEN's transmitter facilities were moved to a new 1,924-foot (586 m) tower, expanding its coverage area to almost 29,000 square miles (75,000 km2) – one of the largest television station broadcast radiuses in the nation. The station now provides at least secondary over-the-air coverage from the southern fringes of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex to the northern fringes of the Austin market.

The station switched its primary affiliation to ABC in March 1984, while continuing to carry some NBC programs during off-hours. When KXXV signed on the air on March 22, 1985, that station took over the NBC affiliation. However, six months later in September, NBC programming returned to KCEN as an exclusive affiliation as KXXV picked up the ABC affiliation. KCEN was the first television station in Central Texas to provide closed captions in its programming in 1989.

KCEN, the Temple Daily Telegram and the Killeen Daily Herald remained under the Mayborn family's ownership after Frank Mayborn's death in 1987. KCEN had operated a low-powered translator in the Brazos Valley on UHF channel 62 for many years. On January 20, 2003, this translator was upgraded to a Class A repeater, KMAY-LP on UHF channel 23, that station switched to digital on June 12, 2009. In January 2009, the Mayborn family entered into an agreement to sell both KCEN and KMAY-LP to Dallas-based London Broadcasting Company, with a purchase price of $26 million.

On July 3, 2011, London Broadcasting announced that KAGS would be converted to a semi-satellite of KCEN for the Bryan-College Station market under the new callsign to KAGS-LD, with local news programming and commercial advertisements from KCEN replaced with its own newscasts and commercials targeted to the Brazos Valley area; the conversion of KAGS from a full satellite to a semi-satellite occurred in October of that year. On September 26, 2011, Azteca América programming on digital subchannel 6.3 was replaced with programming from classic television network Me-TV.