KSNW - History

History

KSNW signed on the air on September 1, 1955 as KARD-TV, the third television station in Wichita. This made Wichita one of the smallest cities in the country with three network-affiliated stations.

In 1962, after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ruled that central and western Kansas was part of the Wichita market, KARD merged with KCKT-TV, channel 2 in Great Bend and its satellites KGLD-TV in Garden City and KOMC-TV, channel 8 in Oberlin. The three stations, known as the "Tri-Circle Network," brought NBC programming to central and western Kansas. The Tri-Circle Network then changed its name to the Kansas State Network, with KARD as the flagship station of the new four station group. The stations eventually expanded their signals to reach 75% of Kansas plus portions of Nebraska, and now claim to reach half of Kansas' television households.

The stations changed their calls on August 16, 1982 to help viewers think of the four stations as parts of one large network. KARD became KSNW, KCKT became KSNC, KGLD became KSNG and KOMC became KSNK, with the KARD call letters ending up with KARD-TV in Monroe, Louisiana. In 1988, SJL Broadcast Management acquired the KSN stations. They were then sold to Lee Enterprises in 1995. Emmis Communications bought most of Lee Enterprises' stations in 2000. Montecito Broadcast Group, a newly formed partnership between SJL and the Blackstone Group, acquired the KSN stations from Emmis on January 27, 2006. In January 2006, the station hired former general manager Al Buch as the station's new GM, under the then-pending ownership of Montecito Broadcast Group. The CEO/founder of Montecito is George Lilly.

On July 24, 2007, Montecito announced the sale of all of its stations (KSNW and its satellites, plus KHON-TV in Honolulu and its satellites, KOIN in Portland and KSNT in Topeka) to New Vision Television. The sale was finalized on November 1, 2007.

In 2008, KSNW established a low-powered repeater for Salina, K06LZ, which is the same programming as KSNW, but with local ads and programming. K06LZ will soon be replaced with a new digital channel, KSNL-LD. During the 1960s and 1970s, KCKT-TV sent programming to Salina via K18AA, a repeater that aired on channel 18, which in recent years became a Fox affiliate.

On May 7, 2012, LIN TV Corporation announced that it will acquire the New Vision Television station group, including KSNW and its four satellite stations, for $330.4 million and the assumption of $12 million in debt. On October 2, the FCC approved the proposed sale to LIN TV. The completion of the deal on October 12, 2012 marked a re-entry to Kansas for LIN, who briefly owned the licenses of rival KAKE and its satellites in 2000 but never held operational control of the stations.