KWCH-DT — BrandWiki

KWCH-DT

callsign	KWCH-DT
city	Hutchinson, Kansas
branding	12 News
digital	19 (UHF)
virtual	12
network	Kansas Broadcasting System
affiliations	12.1: CBS for others, see
owner	Gray Media
licensee	Gray Television Licensee, LLC
location	Hutchinson–Wichita, Kansas
country	United States
airdate	July 1, 1953
callsign meaning	"Wichita"‡R1R‡
sister stations	KSCW-DT · KBSD-DT · KBSH-DT · KBSL-DT
former callsigns	KTVH (1952–1983) KWCH-TV (1983–2009)
former channel numbers	Analog: 12 (VHF, 1953–2009) Digital: 12 (VHF, February−September 2009)
former affiliations	All secondary: ABC (1953–1954) DuMont (1953–1955) NBC (1953–1956)
erp	1,000 kW
haat	421 m
facility id	66413
coordinates	38.06044°N, -97.76381°W
licensing authority	FCC
website	www.kwch.com

KWCH-DT (channel 12) is a television station licensed to Hutchinson, Kansas, United States, serving the Wichita area as an affiliate of CBS. It is owned by Gray Media alongside CW affiliate KSCW-DT (channel 33) and maintains studios on 37th Street North in northeast Wichita and a transmitter facility located east of Hutchinson in rural northeastern Reno County. KWCH-DT serves as the flagship of the Kansas Broadcasting System (KBS), a network of four full-power stations that relay CBS network and other programming provided by KWCH across central and western Kansas, as well as bordering counties in Colorado, Nebraska, and Oklahoma.

The station was established as KTVH in Hutchinson on July 1, 1953, and was the first television station built within the state. Though based in Hutchinson until 1978, when the main studio was officially moved to Wichita, it has had a presence in that city since 1954. The KBS network took its present form in the early 1960s. KTVH was the third-rated news outlet in the area until the owners of two of the other three KBS stations purchased it, changed the call letters to KWCH in 1983, and successfully led it to first place in the local ratings.

History

KTVH

News operation

Prior to 1983, KTVH was generally an also-ran in local news. Viewers found it stodgy and conservative, and KAKE and KSNW both regularly trounced channel 12 in the ratings; KAKE drew three to four times as many households in the Wichita metro, while KTVH drew barely half the news ratings of KSN in the full market. In 1978, when the station overhauled its news product, it also had the market's smallest newsgathering staff with nine reporter-photographers where KARD had 12 and KAKE had 22.[47][48] The KWCH overhaul orchestrated by Beach and Schmidt brought a series of changes, including the adoption of the Eyewitness News moniker; the station's first professionally built set; and a new female anchor, Susan Peters, to present the news alongside market veteran Roger Cornish.[49] Over the decade that followed, KWCH rose to the top of the local news ratings, first in the Wichita metro and then in the full market beginning in 1991.

The other KBS stations, which were not co-owned with KWCH until the 1980s, produced their own local news programs. In 1991, KBSH in Hays abandoned its longstanding separate evening news and switched to inserting a segment of local news into the KWCH broadcasts.[50] In January 2002, this was discontinued, and news stories from Hays were sent to Wichita for incorporation into KWCH's newscasts.[51] Similarly, the local news in Dodge City was trimmed back from a full program to inserts and then to reports in KWCH's own newscasts. In 2005, KWCH began producing an insert into its news for Cox Communications cable customers in Salina.[52]

On January 19, 2004, KWCH began producing a half-hour prime time newscast at 9 p.m. for Fox affiliate KSAS-TV through a news share agreement.[53] In September 2007, after its acquisition of KSCW, KWCH began producing a two-hour extension of its weekday morning newscast for KSCW; this later expanded on September 12, 2011, to include half-hour newscasts at 4 p.m. weekdays and nightly at 9 p.m. For the rest of 2011, KSAS and KSCW carried simultaneous and separate newscasts before KSNW assumed the KSAS news production contract at the start of 2012.[54][55] This resulted in a lawsuit where KSAS alleged a breach of contract because it was receiving a taped newscast instead of a live one; the suit was settled when KWCH agreed to air the Fox newscast live for the remainder of the contract.[56]

Beyond local news programs, KWCH operates the high school sports outlet Catch It Kansas, which includes a website and a weekly show aired on KSCW.

Notable former on-air staff

David Bloom – reporter (1988–1990)[57]
Cheryl Burton – anchor[58]
Shon Gables – anchor/reporter[59]
Andrea Joyce (Andi Joyce) – anchor[60]
Susan Peters – anchor (1983–1991)
Don Woods – weatherman (1953–1954)[61]

Technical information and subchannels

The primary KWCH-TV transmitter is east of Hutchinson in Reno County. The station's signal is multiplexed: {{legend|#DFEBF6|Broadcast on behalf of another station}}

Analog-to-digital conversion

KWCH shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 12, on February 17, 2009, the original target date on which full-power television stations in the United States were to transition from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate (which was later pushed back to June 12, 2009). The station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition UHF channel 19 to VHF channel 12.[65]

After the transition, KWCH became one of four television stations that operated their digital signals on the VHF band that were granted a power increase later that month due to reception issues that the stations experienced as a result of moving their digital channel allocations from UHF to VHF.[66] As reception problems continued even after the increase, the FCC granted KWCH-DT permission to swap transmitter facilities with sister station KSCW-DT; on September 29, 2009, KWCH-DT moved its digital signal back to UHF channel 19, with KSCW-DT moving its digital allocation to VHF channel 12.[67]

In 2012, Schurz built a digital replacement translator of KSCW-DT in Wichita, broadcast from the studios. The 12.1 and 12.2 subchannels are also carried; this aids reception of KSCW and KWCH in parts of Wichita that may not get as strong a signal from the Hutchinson transmitters.

Satellites

KWCH operates a network of three additional full-power satellite stations covering central and western Kansas, which together with KWCH are branded as the Kansas Broadcasting System (KBS). These stations—KBSD-DT in southwestern Kansas and KBSH-DT and KBSL-DT serving northwestern Kansas—are counted as one outlet for ratings and regulatory purposes. KBS was formed in 1962 and provided network programming and advertising sales functions to the then-separately owned stations; trade advertising boasted that advertisers had the ease of "One Order, One Invoice, One Check" working with KBS.[68]