KDLH - History

History

KDLH began broadcasting on March 14, 1954 with the call sign KDAL-TV and aired an analog signal on VHF channel 3. The station was affiliated with NBC and was owned by Dalton LeMasurier along with KDAL-AM 610. It switched affiliations with WDSM-TV (now KBJR) in 1955 and joined CBS. It also aired some ABC programs sharing them with WDSM until WDIO-TV signed-on in 1966. During the late-1950s, KDAL was also briefly affiliated with the NTA Film Network. KDAL began broadcasting in color in 1965. The LeMasurier family sold KDAL-AM-TV to what eventually became Tribune Broadcasting in 1960. Tribune sold KDAL-TV to Stauffer Communications in 1979 who changed the call letters to KDLH-TV. The station dropped the -TV suffix in 1991.

Stauffer merged with Morris Communications in 1995 but Morris was not allowed to keep the former Stauffer television stations. KDLH, along with most of its sisters, were sold to Benedek Broadcasting. That company merged with Gray Television in 2001 but KDLH was not included in the merger and was sold to Chelsey Broadcasting instead. New Vision Television bought the station in 2003.

In March 2005, the Malara Broadcast Group purchased channel 3 from New Vision and outsourced most of the station's functions to longtime rival KBJR who was owned by the Granite Broadcasting Corporation. Under this agreement, KDLH laid-off most of its staff and KBJR began to handle nearly all of KDLH's operations. Filings with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) showed Malara could operate KDLH with as few as two people on the payroll.

KDLH's digital transmitter had been operating at reduced power with a substitute side-mounted antenna after a May 18, 2008 fire that severely damaged its main digital antenna. It returned to full power on UHF channel 33 by June 2009. In February 2009, Malara Broadcasting announced that KDLH would not make the switch to all digital later in the month due to the fire. With that announcement, the station was the only one in the area still broadcasting in analog after February 19 as KBJR, WDSE, WDIO, and KQDS-TV all went digital-only on that date. On June 12 at around 7 p.m., KDLH ceased normal broadcasting operations on its analog signal. At that time, the analog station began a nightlight signal consisting of a ten minute digital television informational video on a constant loop.

On June 26 two weeks after regular broadcasts were stopped, the nightlight signal was terminated with the help of Bob Peterson (a former engineer at the station who helped launch KDLH in 1954) bringing an end to all full-power analog broadcasting in the area. In November 2009, the station re-branded from "CBS 3" to "KDLH 3". This brought a new logo to the station for the first time since it merged with KBJR.