KFXL-TV - History

History

KFXL signed on June 26, 2006 as KOWH (referring to its owner), an affiliate of The WB Television Network. Previously, The WB was seen either via another Pappas-operated station, KXVO in Omaha, or a cable-only WB 100+ station, KWBL; KOWH took KWBL's place on cable systems in central Nebraska, including Charter Communications in Hastings, Grand Island, and Kearney. As with KWBL, KOWH's programming utilized the WB 100+ schedule, with no live programming.

Five months before KOWH's sign-on, The WB and UPN announced that they would close and form The CW Television Network. Pappas had obtained the affiliation for KOWH by the time it signed on, and to reflect this affiliation, the station changed its callsign to KCWL-TV on August 2, 2006. Similarly to its WB affiliation, KCWL operated as a member of The CW Plus.

On September 1, 2006, KCWL was added to the primary cable system in Lincoln, Time Warner Cable, on channel 18 in their low basic cable tier.

Because it was granted an original construction permit after the FCC finalized the DTV allotment plan on April 21, 1997, the station did not receive a companion channel for a digital television station. It was thus required to flash-cut to a digital signal when analog broadcasting formally ended on June 12, 2009. Instead, on June 9, 2009, three days before the end of the digital TV conversion period for full-service stations, KCWL-TV turned off its analog signal; on June 12, it turned on its digital signal.

However, on June 3, 2009, Pappas Telecasting announced that KCWL would cease to be a CW affiliate upon the shutdown of the analog transmitter, leaving the Lincoln-Kearney-Hastings market without an over-the-air CW station. Instead, when the station returned to the air on June 12, it did so as Fox affiliate KFXL-TV, airing the same programming as KTVG-TV and KSNB-TV. Lincoln had been served by two analog translators of KTVG as well as Omaha Fox affiliate KPTM, which previously included Lincoln in its station ID. Steve Harry, general manager of KCWL, stated that the move was made to increase viewership of his station due to most viewers in Lincoln choosing KXVO, which Time Warner had continued to carry, over KCWL for CW programming. Harry stated that as a Fox affiliate, KFXL would be in a better position to increase viewership in Lincoln due to the stronger signal, boosting its status as the city's default Fox station rather than KPTM.

For approximately two months, KFXL operated as a full-power repeater of KTVG under the moniker Fox 4 and 17; later in summer 2009, the network was rebranded as KFXL, Fox Nebraska, with KTVG and KSNB rebranded as satellites of KFXL.

The time brokerage agreement between Pappas Telecasting and Colins Broadcasting Corporation (the licensee of KSNB) expired without renewal on November 30, 2009. As a result, KSNB was removed from Fox Nebraska and shut down on December 1, 2009.

As of April 2010, KTVG-TV was no longer listed on KFXL ID screens. It was stated on a message board that parent station KHGI-TV announced during a newscast that KTVG-TV shut down on April 5, 2010; this was confirmed by a comment in the station's July DTV education quarterly activity report filed with the FCC.

Until KTVG shut down in April 2010, that station fed programming to KFXL and the network's low-power analog repeaters even though KFXL was billed as the main station. The digital subchannels of the NTV stations carrying KFXL received a direct feed from the studios in Axtell, as did KTVG.