KMPH-TV - History

History

KMPH began broadcasting on October 11, 1971 as an independent station, the first television station founded by the Pappas brothers, Mike, Pete, and Harry. The funding for KMPH came from General Manager Harry Pappas' plan of having hundreds of investors each investing a small amount of money 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. Throughout the early- to mid-1980s, KMPH was one of the top independent stations in the country. The TV station can be received 100 miles/150 km from Visalia before its move to an office in Fresno in the early 1990s.

Pappas signed an affiliation deal with Fox for KMPH and one of its two other UHF start-ups, KPTM in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1986. (The other Pappas-owned station, WHNS in Greenville, South Carolina, took the Fox affiliation from WAXA two years later.). KMPH and KSEE are the two stations in Fresno to keep the same network affiliation unaffected by the network swaps of ABC and CBS in 1985 and the network changes of The CW Television Network and My Network TV in 2006. The Fox affiliation remains on KMPH to this day.

On May 10, 2008, 13 of Pappas' stations, including KMPH, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. As a result of the bankruptcy, Pappas Telecasting had until February 15, 2009 to sell these stations. On January 16, 2009, it was announced that most of these stations, including KMPH, would be sold to New World TV Group, after the sale received United States bankruptcy court approval. On April 2, 2009, 22 station employees were laid off. Eventually, the New World TV Group formed a new holding company known as the Titan 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.