KXVO

KXVO

Omaha, Nebraska United States
Branding	CW 15
Slogan	Omaha's CW
Channels	Digital: 38 (UHF) Virtual: 15 (PSIP)
Affiliations	.1: The CW .2: This TV .3: Grit
Owner	Mitts Telecasting Company (Mitts Telecasting Company, LLC)
Operator	Sinclair Broadcast Group
First air date	June 10, 1995 (1995-06-10)
Call letters' meaning	XV = Roman numeral 15 Omaha
Sister station(s)	KPTM
Former channel number(s)	Analog: 15 (UHF, 1995–2009)
Former affiliations	The WB (1995–2006)
Transmitter power	490 kW
Height	475 m
Facility ID	23277
Transmitter coordinates	41°4′16″N 96°13′31″W / 41.07111°N 96.22528°W / 41.07111; -96.22528Coordinates: 41°4′16″N 96°13′31″W / 41.07111°N 96.22528°W / 41.07111; -96.22528
Licensing authority	FCC
Public license information:	Profile CDBS
Website	cw15kxvo.com

KXVO, virtual channel 15 (UHF digital channel 38), is a CW-affiliated television station located in Omaha, Nebraska, United States. The station is owned by Mitts Telecasting Company; Sinclair Broadcast Group, which owns Fox affiliate KPTM (channel 42), operates KXVO under a local marketing agreement. The two stations share studios on Farnam Street in Omaha, KXVO's transmitter is located in Gretna, Nebraska.

History

KXVO signed on the air on June 10, 1995 as an affiliate of The WB, which debuted nationally almost five months earlier on January 11 of that year; the station was originally owned by Cocola Broadcasting, but was operated by Pappas Telecasting under a local marketing agreement. Prior to KXVO's debut, WB programming was only available on area cable and satellite providers through Chicago-based national superstation WGN. Cocola would later sell the station to Mitts Telecasting Company in 2000, which retained the LMA with Pappas.

On January 24, 2006, CBS Corporation and Time Warner announced that The WB and UPN would cease broadcasting that September and merge their programming to form a new "fifth" network called The CW. The letters represent the first initials of its corporate parents, CBS (the parent company of UPN) and the Warner Bros. Entertainment unit of Time Warner.^[1][2] In April 2006, KXVO announced an affiliation agreement with The CW, which began airing on the station when the network launched on September 18 of that year.

On January 16, 2009, it was announced that several Pappas stations, including sister station KPTM, would be sold to New World TV Group, after the sale received United States bankruptcy court approval.^[3] The LMA between KXVO and KPTM continued after the deal was finalized.

After KFXL-TV in Lincoln switched from The CW to Fox in 2009, KXVO became that market's default CW affiliate on DirecTV. Since its inception, KXVO has also been carried on cable in the eastern portion of the Lincoln-Hastings-Kearney market; cable providers in the western portion of the market carry the national CW Plus feed. The station is also carried as the default CW affiliate for DirecTV subscribers in the St. Joseph market; this continues even though News-Press & Gazette Company (owner of the St. Joseph News-Press) launched low-power Fox affiliate KNPN-LD on June 2, 2012^[4][5] that also carries CW programming on the LD2 subchannel of its sister signal KNPG-LD (formerly KBJO-LD, effectively an assumption of the Suddenlink Communications-run CW Plus cable channel "WBJO", after News-Press & Gazette acquired the channel and a local cable news channel from Suddenlink prior to KNPN's sign-on). Dish Network does not carry a local CW signal in the Lincoln-Hastings-Kearney and St. Joseph markets.

Titan TV Broadcast Group announced the sale of most of its stations, including KPTM and the LMA with KXVO (which will remain under Mitts Telecasting ownership after the sale), to the Sinclair Broadcast Group on June 3, 2013.^[6] Sinclair announced the closing of the sale on October 3.^[7]

Programming

Programming on KXVO includes the full CW schedule along with such Syndicated programming as Jerry Springer, Maury, Bill Cunningham, Family Feud and Celebrity Name Game as well as off-network reruns of King of Queens, Hot in Cleveland and The Middle.

Newscasts

For a station whose original identity and tagline was "All Entertainment, All the Time", news programming did not seem like a natural fit on KXVO. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, KXVO aired 60-second "news updates" during the 6 PM hour that promoted stories from that night's newscast on sister station KPTM. In 2001, KXVO station management made plans to produce a 5:30 PM newscast, utilizing on-air talent and production from KPTM. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and the resulting economic downturn, those plans were put on hold and eventually abandoned. In the days following the September 11 attacks, though, KXVO aired continuous news coverage from CNN Headline News.

In December 2005, the station debuted a half-hour 10 p.m. newscast called The KXVO 15 10 O'Clock News, which was produced by KPTM; that April, former MTV VJ and reality show host Brian McFayden was hired to anchor the program, only to leave the show for Current TV a few months later. In late August 2006, comedian and Second City Training Center alumnus Matt Geiler was tapped to anchor The KXVO 15 10 O'Clock News, which by that time would become a hybrid of news content (provided by the KPTM staff) and sketch/improv comedy. One prime example of this era occurred on the Halloween 2006 edition, when Geiler, for a pre-taped end-of-show segment, donned a black unitard and foam jack-o-lantern and danced in front of a green screen image of a cemetery. Though The KXVO 15 10 O'Clock News was cancelled in April 2007 (due to minuscule ratings),^[8] the "Pumpkin Dance" has had a lasting life as a seasonal viral video and meme thanks to its uploading to YouTube by a KXVO producer after its original airing and the video's subsequent discovery later in the decade by BuzzFeed, Huffington Post, and other websites.^[9]

Digital television

Digital channels

The station's digital channel is multiplexed:

Analog-to-digital conversion

KXVO shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 15, on June 12, 2009, as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television.^[11] The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 38, using PSIP to display KXVO's virtual channel as 15 on digital television receivers.

In October 2008, KAZO-LP dropped TuVision and returned to Azteca América programming that was simulcast on KXVO 15.2 in Omaha and KMEG 14.2 in Sioux City, Iowa. Around this time, analog transmissions on KAZO-LP temporarily ceased, though the analog channel 57 signal was again seen on the air in October 2009. KAZO-LP shut down permanently later in fall 2009 and was no longer listed on KXVO-DT2 station IDs. By spring 2010, KMEG-DT2 had been spun off from KXVO-DT2 to have its own local feed in the Sioux City area. KXVO-DT2 is carried on DirecTV's local station package in the Omaha area as KAZO 57. Dish Network and Cox Communications do not carry the station (KXVO-DT2 is the only digital subchannel in the Omaha area not carried on Cox), though Cox does provide the national Azteca América feed on digital cable channel 407. Cox had previously carried KAZO-LP on analog channel 68, but dropped it in 2007 when the station became a TuVision affiliate, and did not restore the local signal when it switched back to Azteca América in 2008. Until the addition of Estrella TV on KPTM-DT3 in June 2010, Azteca América was the only Spanish-language network available over-the-air in Omaha. Sometime in late 2013 or early 2014, Azteca was dropped in favor of ThisTV; KPTM already carries that on a subchannel, and the feed is only different because KPTM also airs MyNetworkTV on that channel.

References

External links

• Official website
• Query the FCC's TV station database for KXVO
• BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on KXVO-TV