Construction and early years
On August 21, 1952, the Southern Idaho Broadcasting and Television Company, owner of local radio station KLIX (1310 AM),[1] applied to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for permission to construct a new television station on channel 11 in Twin Falls, Idaho, with its transmitter on Flat Top Butte east of Jerome. The permit was granted by the commission on March 18, 1953,[2] but the question of whether Twin Falls and the Magic Valley were large enough to support a television station was in doubt.[3] More than two years passed before construction was completed and KLIX-TV broadcast its first test pattern on May 31, 1955.[4] In that time, the FCC had granted three extensions to Southern Idaho Broadcasting and Television.[5] The Carman–Wrathall group that had owned the KLIX stations, gave options to the Kearns-Tribune Corporation and the Standard-Examiner Publishing Corporation, publisher of the Ogden Standard-Examiner in Utah, to buy their properties in 1955.[6] A. L. Glasmann, publisher of the Standard-Examiner, and members of his family acquired the KLIX stations under these options in a deal announced in December 1955[7] and approved in March 1956.[8] Glasmann later recalled that the station's construction was "piecemeal", with only one camera available for broadcasts.[9]
KLIX-TV had an affiliation with CBS, having signed on to its Extended Market Plan for small-market stations in December 1954,[10] as well as NBC and ABC.[11] With no remote facilities, local programming had to come to the studio. In one case, a city council and zoning hearing was held in the studio for telecasting, and a horse show took place outside on the lawn.[12] In 1958, KLIX-TV, KID-TV in Idaho Falls and four stations in Montana joined to form the Skyline Network, which provided network programming by microwave transmission from the network affiliates in Salt Lake City.[13] In the early years, KLIX-TV also fought for protection from the duplication of programs it aired on the feeds of Salt Lake City TV stations provided via cable television, which weakened the value of local advertising on channel 11. In 1962, it won a ruling against Cable Vision Inc. that prevented it from duplicating KLIX-TV's programming on its feeds of Salt Lake City stations.
The Glasmann family sold off KLIX radio in 1963, resulting in a change of call sign for channel 11[15] to KMVT (Magic Valley Television) on June 5 or 14, 1963.[16] The two stations, although under separate management, remained in the same building on Eastland Drive.[17] During this period, the station underwent a series of technical improvements, starting with the construction of a second studio in 1960, including the construction of a taller tower in Jerome, and ending with a new transmitter that enabled KMVT to broadcast network programming in color.[18] Local color programming required new cameras and an upgraded lighting setup.
The Skyline Network folded in 1969, as a result of ownership changes at the participating stations,[19] and was replaced by the Television Network of Idaho, which offered national sales for KTVB in Boise, KIFI-TV in Idaho Falls, and KMVT.[20] The network built a microwave distribution system for the airing of news and other programs on a statewide basis.[21]
Western Broadcasting ownership
In 1970, Glasmann sold KMVT to the Western Broadcasting Company, owned by Dale Moore of Missoula, Montana. At the time, Western owned Twin Falls radio station KTFI, which the FCC required to be divested as part of the acquisition.[22][23]
The Glasmann era heralded two separate shifts of network affiliation for KMVT, which until this time had been a primary CBS affiliate. The station switched to primary ABC in 1973[24] and to primary NBC on May 1, 1977.[25] The move bucked a trend of ABC acquiring affiliations, including in large markets, as it rose to number-one in the national ratings.[26] The remaining ABC programs disappeared from channel 11's lineup in January 1979, when KID-TV—no longer a secondary ABC affiliate in its market—ceased transmitting them on the microwave link from Salt Lake City. As a result, KMVT lost ABC at a time when it was the number-one network.
Root Communications ownership
Dale Moore died in a 1981 plane crash in Idaho.[30] Two years later, Western Broadcasting agreed to sell KMVT to Root Communications of Daytona Beach, a firm expanding into radio in Florida at the same time it acquired KMVT. The grandfather of the company's owner, Chapman S. Root, had designed the Coca-Cola bottle.[31] The transaction received FCC approval in January 1984.[32]
Under Root, KMVT moved in January 1986 from its existing building on Eastland Drive and into a former life insurance office, twice the size, on Blue Lakes Boulevard North. The new equipment in the facility improved the quality of KMVT's on-air signal.[33][34] There was also one more affiliation switch for the station, which changed to a primary CBS affiliate on September 9, 1985, while retaining
Since 1998
Root considered selling KMVT in 1996 but instead ordered budget cutbacks.[44] The next year, the firm sold the station to Catamount Broadcast Group, a new company owned by former TV advertising sales representative Raymond Johns.[45] In 2004, Catamount sold KMVT to the Neuhoff family, which had experience owning radio and TV stations elsewhere in the United States.[46]
Neuhoff acquired two low-power TV stations in 2005: KTWT-LP (channel 43) and KTID-LP (channel 58),[47] which after 2006 aired programming from The CW and MyNetworkTV, respectively.[48] In 2012, KXTF (the former KKVI) dropped Fox in a dispute over retransmission consent fees,[49]
