154-512: WDAF may refer to: WDAF-TV , a television station (channel 4) licensed to Kansas City, Missouri, United States WDAF-FM , a radio station (106.5 FM) licensed to Liberty, Missouri, United States KCKC , a radio station (102.1 FM) licensed to Kansas City, Missouri, United States, used WDAF-FM callsign from 1961 to 1974 KFNZ (AM) , a radio station (610 AM) licensed to Kansas City, Missouri, United States, used WDAF callsign from 1922 to 2003 KWOD ,
308-481: A blind trust and then sold directly to Fox's owned-and-operated station group, Fox Television Stations , in January 1995). On May 23, 1994, as part of an overall deal in which network parent News Corporation also purchased a 20% equity interest in the group, New World signed a long-term affiliation agreement with Fox to switch thirteen television stations – five that New World had already owned and eight that
462-627: A radio station or television station is officially licensed to serve by that country's broadcast regulator. In North American broadcast law, the concept of community of license dates to the early days of AM radio broadcasting. The requirement that a broadcasting station operate a main studio within a prescribed distance of the community which the station is licensed to serve appears in U.S. law as early as 1939. Various specific obligations have been applied to broadcasters by governments to fulfill public policy objectives of broadcast localism , both in radio and later also in television, based on
616-594: A "W" to stations located east of the river. The anomaly in the case of the WDAF television and radio stations is due to the fact that Kansas City was originally located east of the original "K"/"W" border distinction defined by the FCC at the time that the WDAF call letters were assigned to both stations.) The station commenced test broadcasts on September 11, 1949, with a three-day event held at Kansas City, Missouri's Municipal Auditorium on West 13th and Central Streets, which
770-427: A CW affiliate) from 1998 to 1999; and finally – along with its successor blocks FoxBox and 4Kids TV – on KMCI (channel 38) from 1999 to 2008. Fox ended its network-supplied children's programming on December 28, 2008, replacing it thereafter with the paid programming block Weekend Marketplace , which is not carried by any Kansas City area station. On September 13, 2014, WDAF began carrying Xploration Station ,
924-524: A September 2003 format change that also saw the former's country music format move from the AM station, which adopted a sports talk format). (Channel 4 is among a handful of U.S. broadcast stations that is an exception to an FCC rule that assigns call signs prefixed with a "K" to television and radio stations with cities of license located west of the Mississippi River and call signs prefixed with
1078-558: A TV Station , a special 30-minute documentary inaugurating channel 4's launch, which featured speeches from Roberts and Fitzer as well as topical features on the station's development and a film outlining programs that would air on WDAF. It was the second television station to sign on in Missouri (after KSDK in St. Louis , which debuted in February 1947 as KSD-TV) and the first to sign on in
1232-503: A catch—at least there's supposed to be. The Commission is required by Section 307(b) of the Communications Act "to provide a fair, efficient, and equitable distribution of radio service" to "the several States and communities." The FCC cannot simply permit radio stations to relocate from rural areas to well-served urban markets without violating that mandate. That's when the game gets interesting. Under our FM allotment rules,
1386-769: A compromise location to serve both Knoxville and the Tri-Cities of Tennessee and Virginia on VHF channel 2. It met the minimum distance requirements to two other channel 2 stations in the region, WKRN in Nashville and WSB-TV in Atlanta . This became less important after full-power UHF satellite WKOP-TV signed on in Knoxville, and irrelevant once the 2003-09 DTV transition and 2016-21 repack moved WETP's main signal to physical channel UHF 24. Nonetheless, broadcasters and regulatory authorities are more likely to retain
1540-528: A condition of keeping the CBS affiliation on channel 5; KMBC-TV was automatically eliminated as an option for NBC as it was in the middle of a long-term affiliation agreement between ABC and that station's owner, Hearst Broadcasting . This left existing Fox station KSHB-TV (channel 41) as the only viable option with which NBC could reach an affiliation agreement; the station's owner, Scripps-Howard Broadcasting , would strike an agreement with NBC to affiliate KSHB with
1694-431: A consent decree in 1957 that required it to stop combining advertising and subscription rates for the newspaper and sell off its broadcasting interests. On May 18, 1958, the WDAF stations were sold to National-Missouri Broadcasters, the broadcasting division of National Theaters. On July 13, 1960, National-Missouri Broadcasters merged with Buffalo, New York –based Transcontinent Broadcasting. Under Transcontinent ownership,
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#17327873044121848-763: A de facto preference by regulators to encourage the assignment of broadcast licenses to smaller cities which otherwise would have no local voice, instead of allowing all broadcast activity to be concentrated in large metropolitan areas already served by many existing broadcasters. When dealing with multiple competing US radio station applications, current FM allotment priorities are: (1) first full-time aural service; (2) second full-time aural service; (3) first local aural transmission service; and (4) Other public interest matters. Similar criteria were extended to competing applicants for non-commercial stations by US legislation passed in 2000. Any policy favoring applicants for communities not already served by an existing station has had
2002-854: A deal with Gatling, and retained ownership of the four stations after the FCC raised the national ownership cap that restricted broadcast groups from owning television stations which reached a combined total of U.S. households from 35% to 39% following an order by the U.S. Court of Appeals issued to justify the limit. On December 22, 2007, Fox sold WDAF-TV and seven other owned-and-operated stations – WJW, WBRC, WGHP, KTVI in St. Louis, WITI in Milwaukee , KDVR in Denver and KSTU in Salt Lake City – to Local TV (a broadcast holding company operated by private equity firm Oak Hill Capital Partners that
2156-524: A full-service station maintain local presence in its community of license has been used by proponents of localism and community broadcasting as a means to oppose the construction and use of local stations as mere rebroadcasters or satellite-fed translators of distant stations. Without specific requirements for service to the local community of license, stations could be constructed in large number by out-of-region broadcasters who feed transmitters via satellite and offer no local content. There also has been
2310-695: A handful of television stations in the Central and Mountain time zones – to expand its 10 p.m. newscast to a full hour, a format more common in that timeslot with prime time newscasts aired on Fox stations and non-major-network outlets in the Eastern and Pacific Time Zones . The station's signal is multiplexed : WDAF-TV's digital signal was upgraded to full-power high definition on September 23, 2005, increasing its HD signal strength from 1.2 kW to 1,000 kW. The station shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 4, on June 12, 2009, at 9:01 a.m.,
2464-400: A huge mainstream audience in the larger metropolitan area. To avoid co-channel interference , a minimum distance is maintained between stations operating on the same frequency in different markets. On VHF , full-power stations are typically 175 miles or more apart before the same channel is used again. An otherwise-desirable channel may therefore be unavailable to a community unless either it
2618-557: A live-action educational program block distributed by Steve Rotfeld Productions that is syndicated primarily to Fox stations, on Saturday mornings through an agreement involving Tribune's Fox-affiliated stations. WDAF-TV began serving as the unofficial "home" television station of the Kansas City Chiefs in 1965 , when NBC obtained the television rights to the American Football League (AFL), which
2772-433: A market. Additional stations would be possible by transmitting the extra signals from a station technically in an adjacent market. In some cases, stations were constructed or acquired with the express purpose of driving a regional or province-wide chain of full-power repeaters. Which of these "satellite stations" would be designated as the main signal could be an arbitrary choice, as the programming carried on all stations in
2926-483: A move out-of-state. A new network or station group will often enter a market after all of the most valuable available frequencies (such as the analogue VHF TV assignments in major cities) are already taken. This often results in building a network by constructing outlying stations, UHF stations, underpowered stations or some mix of all three. That can leave transmitters licensed to some very strange or tiny places. This happened to some degree with networks which signed on in
3080-468: A program focusing primarily on national and international news headlines that was modeled similarly to the national news programs of ABC , CBS and NBC (as with the national newscasts that Your World Tonight competed directly against, the program maintained a single-anchor format, with Phil Witt – who joined WDAF in August 1979 as a weekend evening anchor/reporter, before being promoted to main co-anchor of
3234-543: A prospective broadcaster, could locate transmitters midway between Pittston, Pennsylvania (the city of license), and a larger audience in Wilkes-Barre . A related problem was that of 'move-in'. Outlying communities would find their small-town local stations sold to outsiders, who would then attempt to change the community of license to a suburb of the nearest major city, move transmitter locations or remove existing local content from broadcasts in an attempt to move into
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#17327873044123388-607: A radio station (1660 AM) licensed to Kansas City, Kansas, United States, briefly used WDAF callsign in 2007 [REDACTED] Topics referred to by the same term This disambiguation page lists articles about radio and/or television stations with the same/similar call signs or branding. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=WDAF&oldid=1241716676 " Category : Broadcast call sign disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description
3542-563: A recording of Gordon MacRae 's rendition of " The Lord's Prayer ". The station would lose affiliations with three of the networks from which it cherry-picked programs in the late summer of 1953, when WDAF gained its first commercial television competitors in the Kansas City market. Programming from CBS and DuMont moved to WHB-TV and KMBC-TV (channel 9; KMBC became the sole occupant of that channel in June 1954), which shared affiliations with
3696-421: A second licence (and taking all the obligations which go with it) for each subchannel, returning just the spectrum (and keeping the licence) can be used as a means to recycle licences from abandoned, defunct outlying stations for use elsewhere in the network. Occasionally, a station owner would reach a legal limit on concentration of media ownership , already having the maximum number of commonly owned stations in
3850-420: A separate agreement with Communications Corporation of America as an ABC affiliate in August 1994 ) – to New York City -based African American business executive Luther Gatling. The deal was reportedly would have been an effort to free ownership cap space (the four stations covered 2.7% of 40.74% of U.S. television households that Fox had access to one of its owned-and-operated stations) to allow Fox to get under
4004-435: A short resurgence in news viewership amid viewer confusion caused by the switch, overtaking it for first place among the market's local television newscasts; this situation would further intensify the ratings rivalry between the two stations. Since the late 1990s, WDAF-TV's newscasts have rotated between first and second place with either KMBC or KCTV depending on the time slot, with the station's strongest ratings being logged in
4158-565: A short time while resolving a license conflict and ownership transaction in 1989, the current day KCAL-TV in Los Angeles was licensed to the little-known southeast suburb of Norwalk, California , with the station's identifications at the time only vocally mentioning the temporary city of license in a rushed form, with Norwalk barely receiving any visual mention on the station; at no time were any station assets actually based in Norwalk, nor
4312-513: A sibling, with Nexstar's current duopoly in that market of WOI-DT and KCWI being sold to Tegna Inc. WDAF-TV currently carries the majority of the Fox network schedule; however, it delays the network's Saturday late night block (consisting of reruns of Fox prime time reality series) by a half-hour in order to air its 10 p.m. newscast. Channel 4 has only aired Fox's prime time , late night, news and sports programming since it joined
4466-481: A sister station to WDAF rival KMBC-TV, and KNSD in San Diego , both of which New World later sold to NBC outright, remained with the network) – the other New World stations that joined Fox were previously affiliated with either CBS or ABC. As with most of the other New World-owned stations affected by the affiliation agreement with Fox, WDAF-TV retained its existing branding – in its instance, Newschannel 4 , which
4620-429: A strong signal over nearly all of its "principal community" (5 mV/m or stronger at night for AM stations, 70 dbuV for FM, 35 dbu for DTV channels 2–6, 43 dbu for channels 7-13 and 48 dbu for channels 14+), even if it primarily serves another city. For example, American television station WTTV primarily serves Indianapolis ; however, the transmitter is located farther south than the other stations in that city because it
4774-474: A television station that would transmit on VHF channel 4. The FCC granted the license for the proposed television station to the Star Co. on the same day; the company subsequently requested to use WDAF-TV (standing for "Why Dial Any Further?") as its call letters, applying the base call sign originally assigned to its radio station on 610 AM (now KFNZ ; on radio, the WDAF calls now reside on 106.5 FM through
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4928-494: A very scarce commodity in many markets as AM stations moved to the FM dial, relegating AM largely to talk radio . As cities expanded, former small-town FM stations found themselves not only in what were now becoming rapidly expanding suburbs but also on what was becoming some of the most valuable spectrum in broadcast radio. The once-tiny FM stations would often then be sold, increased (where possible) to much-higher power and used to serve
5082-539: Is "sharing" space on WGBX , a full-power non-commercial station in the heart of the Boston market. The same transmitter can, by using two different licences in a "channel sharing" arrangement, have two different communities of licence - which may allow more flexibility for its location. It is also possible to mix commercial and non-commercial licences. In Canada, where CRTC regulations prevent carrying any additional, unique programming on digital subchannels without obtaining
5236-633: Is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages WDAF-TV WDAF-TV (channel 4) is a television station in Kansas City, Missouri , United States, affiliated with the Fox network. The station is owned by Nexstar Media Group , and maintains studios and transmitter facilities on Summit Street in the Signal Hill section of Kansas City, Missouri. WDAF-TV also serves as an alternate Fox affiliate for
5390-553: Is licensed to Bloomington , 50 miles south of Indianapolis (it maintains a satellite station, WTTK, licensed to Kokomo, Indiana , but in the digital age, WTTK is for all intents and purposes the station's main signal, transmitting from the traditional Indianapolis transmitter site). In some cases, such as Jeannette, Pennsylvania -licensed WPKD-TV 19, the FCC has waived this requirement; the station claimed that retaining an existing transmitter site 25.6 miles southeast of its new community of license of Jeannette would be in compliance with
5544-524: Is located in the home market of the Cleveland Browns – differs from the situations in other former New World markets, mainly where it bought or already owned stations that were previously affiliated with CBS, in which the affected stations continued their relationships with a local NFL franchise after they switched to Fox (albeit with brief interruptions in these arrangements in cities such as Milwaukee, Atlanta and Dallas, where Fox's assumption of
5698-416: Is no longer a requirement to carry programs relevant to the particular community, or even necessarily to operate or transmit from that community. Accordingly, stations licensed to smaller communities in major metropolitan markets often target programming toward the entire market rather than the official home community, and often move their studio facilities to the larger urban centre as well. For instance,
5852-479: Is no requirement that these local studio actually be in active use to originate any specific local programming. In many cases, the use of centralcasting and broadcast automation has greatly weakened the role and importance of manual control by staff at the nominal local station studio facilities. Exceptions to these rules have been made by regulators, primarily on a case-by-case basis, to deal with "satellite stations": transmitters which are licensed to comply with
6006-405: Is operated at greatly reduced-height and power, forced onto a strongly directional antenna pattern to protect the distant co-channel station or relocated to some other, more distant location in the region to maintain proper spacing. The choice of another community as home for a station can be one possible means to avoid short-spacing, effectively shifting the entire station's coverage area to maintain
6160-413: Is the requirement for stations to identify themselves, by call sign and community, at sign-on, sign-off, and at the top of every hour of operation. Other current requirements include providing a local telephone number in the community's calling area (or else a toll-free number). The former requirement to (in most cases) maintain an official main studio within 25 miles of the community's geographic center
6314-481: Is true for WJSU, which served East Alabama with local news until the station was merged into a triplex to form ABC 33/40 which focuses its coverage on the central part of the state. A 1988 precedent case (Faye and Richard Tuck, 3 FCC Rcd 5374, 1988) created the "Tuck Analysis" as a standard which attempts to address the Suburban Community Problem on a case-by-case basis by examining: Despite
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6468-534: The Cape Girardeau duopoly of Fox affiliate KBSI and MyNetworkTV affiliate WDKA , and ABC affiliate KDNL-TV in St. Louis (which was involved in an ownership conflict with WDAF's sister duopoly of KTVI and CW affiliate KPLR-TV , which Sinclair attempted to sell to the Meredith Corporation before rescinding that deal due to KPLR and Meredith-owned CBS affiliate KMOV both falling among
6622-516: The DuMont Television Network . Under Star ownership, the station largely utilized WDAF radio employees to staff the television station; among the notable staffers employed with both stations in its early years included Randall Jessee (who served as WDAF-TV's first news anchor), Shelby Storck (who was the station's first weathercaster), and future Hollywood character actor Owen Bush (who served as an on-staff announcer during
6776-527: The Fox River southwest of Green Bay, Wisconsin , stations in the Green Bay–Appleton area identify as "Green Bay/ Fox Cities " (e.g. " WBAY-TV , Green Bay/Fox Cities"); Green Bay-licensed stations thus still carry an official identification, while providing the ability for stations licensed to other places in the region to officially prefix their name before the mention of "Green Bay/Fox Cities". There
6930-672: The KCIT calls now reside on a Fox-affiliated television station in Amarillo, Texas ). As with most of its sister stations under its former New World ownership (with the subverted exception of St. Louis sister station KTVI), WDAF-TV has always declined carriage of Fox's children's programming; it opted not to run the Fox Kids weekday and Saturday blocks when it affiliated with the network, airing children's programs acquired via syndication on Saturday mornings instead (the preemptions of Fox Kids by
7084-488: The St. Joseph market (which borders the Kansas City market to the north), as the station's transmitter produces a city-grade signal that reaches St. Joseph proper and rural areas in the market's central and southern counties. WDAF previously served as the default NBC station for St. Joseph until it disaffiliated from the network in September 1994 (presently, NBC programming in St. Joseph is provided by KNPG-LD ), and as
7238-511: The Star on the grounds that it engaged in monopolistic practices in its sale of advertising for the newspaper and its television and radio stations. The case was taken to court in 1955, two years after the close of the Truman administration , a federal grand jury found the Star guilty at the end of the one-month restraint-of-trade trial. After attempts to appeal the ruling failed, the Star signed
7392-518: The U.S. Department of Justice initiated an antitrust investigation against the Star over its ownership of WDAF radio and WDAF-TV; the investigation was reportedly opened at the behest of President Truman, who had been engaged in a long-standing feud with the newspaper over its opposition to the Kansas City native's presidency and his policy proposals. The investigation culminated in the Justice Department filing indictment charges against
7546-595: The strike -shortened 1994 season , the station also carried certain regular season and postseason games featuring the Royals that NBC televised nationally (it also aired any nationally televised games of the city's first MLB team, the Kansas City A's from 1955 to 1967). Since Fox obtained the partial (now exclusive) over-the-air network television rights to the league in 1996 , WDAF has carried certain Royals games that have been regionally televised (and, since 2013 , select national telecasts scheduled during prime time) by
7700-479: The "community" functionally no longer exists in order to be released from its local obligations. Often, the city of license does not correspond to the location of the station itself, of the primary audience or of the communities identified in the station's branding and advertising. Some of the more common reasons for a community of license to be listed as a point far from the actual audience include: A broadcaster may wish to serve two different communities, both in
7854-706: The 1960s, such as National Educational Television in the US or the CTV Television Network in Canada. Later entrants fared worse. In the U.S., PAX Network (now Ion Television ) was prone to this, building a network largely from outlying owned-and-operated UHF stations. In Canada, third networks such as Global were often a motley collection of outlying stations in their early years. CKGN-TV , Ontario's original "Global Television Network" repeater chain, signed on in 1974 in an already densely-packed stretch of
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#17327873044128008-429: The 35% national market reach allowed by any station group and clear enough room to acquire standalone UPN affiliates in four markets that Fox was in the process of acquiring from Chris-Craft Television . Although representatives at WDAF and WHBQ confirmed the sale, News Corporation stated on July 3 that it had only received an offer from Gatling and had not entered into formal sale negotiations. Fox ultimately never reached
8162-660: The 7 to 9 a.m. block of WDAF-TV's weekday morning newscast and its nightly 9 p.m. newscast (ironically, the over-the-air signals of WDAF-TV and several other Kansas City area stations adequately cover most of the nearby Topeka market due to the close proximity of the two markets, Topeka being located 55 miles (89 km) due west of Kansas City). The simulcasts were dropped in November 2008, when KTMJ's earlier purchase by New Vision Television led to their replacement by locally based newscasts produced by its NBC-affiliated sister station KSNT. On October 12, 2010, WDAF-TV became
8316-455: The Canadian radio station CFNY-FM is officially licensed to Brampton, Ontario , although its studio and transmitter facilities are located in downtown Toronto . This may, at times, lead to confusion — while media directories normally list broadcast stations by their legal community of license, audiences often disregard (or may even be entirely unaware of) the distinction. For instance, for
8470-566: The Chiefs' preseason broadcaster since 2002 , four years after CBS took over the AFC television rights when that station became the team's primary local broadcaster and carrier of analysis and magazine programs produced by the team's production unit. WDAF-TV also carried the Chiefs' victories in Super Bowls LIV (the team's first championship in 50 years ) and LVII . WDAF-TV also served as
8624-545: The Commission will give a preference to any applicant that proposes to serve a community with no current licensees—i.e., not that the community doesn't receive radio service (it could receive service from dozens of stations) but that no station lists that particular community as its "community of license." That's where a good atlas comes in handy. The next step is to scour the maps to find a community near an urban area that doesn't yet have any stations licensed to it. You win
8778-436: The FCC's "top-four" ratings threshold for duopolies and the U.S. Department of Justice's Antitrust Division wanting to seek further review of the transaction). Less than one month after the FCC voted to have the deal reviewed by an administrative law judge amid "serious concerns" about Sinclair's forthrightness in its applications to sell certain conflict properties, on August 9, 2018, Tribune announced it would terminate
8932-494: The Fox-New World deal – due to KMBC's existing agreement with the network). New World finalized its purchase of WDAF-TV and KSAZ on September 9, 1994; WDAF-TV switched to Fox three days later on September 12, ending its affiliation with NBC after 45 years. The final NBC program to air on channel 4 was an NBC Sunday Night Movie premiere of Other People's Money on September 11, 1994, at 8 p.m. Central Time. WDAF-TV
9086-517: The Kansas City market. WDAF-TV has maintained studio facilities based at 31st and Summit streets in Kansas City, Missouri's Signal Hill neighborhood since its sign-on; the station originally maintained transmitter facilities on a 724-foot (221 m) broadcast tower located atop the building. (Since the transmitter facility was relocated to a tower across the street from the Summit Street studios, on Belleview Avenue near West 30th Street, in 1969,
9240-553: The Love Fund for Children, a charity founded through a $ 1,200 endowment from several WDAF-TV employees. In September 1984, the station debuted a 20-minute local sports news program within the Sunday edition of its 10 p.m. newscast, The Kansas City Sports Machine , which borrowed its title from the syndicated The George Michael Sports Machine , which aired on WDAF from 1982 until it concluded its syndication run in September 2007;
9394-668: The NFC rights predated some of the stations' affiliation switches by several months). As a Fox station, since the network obtained partial broadcast rights to the NFL in 1994, Chiefs game telecasts on WDAF during the regular season have been limited to regionally televised interconference games against opponents in the National Football Conference (NFC), primarily those held at Arrowhead Stadium , and since 2014 , cross-flexed games originally scheduled to air on CBS in which
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#17327873044129548-581: The New World stations led the network to change its carriage policies to allow Fox stations uninterested in carrying the block the right of first refusal to transfer the local rights to another station, restructuring Fox Kids as a network-syndicated program package; by 2001, affiliates were no longer required to run the Fox Kids lineup even if Fox had not secured a substitute carrier). Fox Kids aired locally on KSMO-TV from 1994 to 1998; KCWE (channel 29, now
9702-679: The Saturday edition moving one hour earlier on April 23, 2016). After WDAF became a Fox affiliate on September 12, 1994, the station underwent a major shift in its programming philosophy that more heavily emphasized its local news programming. It retained a news schedule similar to the one it had as an NBC affiliate, but increased its news output from about 25 hours to nearly 45 hours per week by expanding existing newscasts and adding ones in new time periods (with its weekday news schedule expanding from 3 + 1 ⁄ 2 hours to seven hours per day). In its early years with Fox, local news programming on
9856-684: The Sinclair deal, intending to seek other M&A opportunities. Tribune also filed a breach of contract lawsuit in the Delaware Chancery Court , alleging that Sinclair engaged in protracted negotiations with the FCC and the DOJ over regulatory issues, refused to sell stations in markets where it already had properties, and proposed divestitures to parties with ties to Sinclair executive chair David D. Smith that were rejected or highly subject to rejection to maintain control over stations it
10010-519: The WDAF version lasted until 1999, when it evolved into a conventional sports segment within the Sunday 10 p.m. newscast. When WDAF-TV adopted the Newschannel 4 brand in April 1992, the station also implemented the "24-Hour News Source" concept (which was enforced in the promotional slogan used by the station until 1999, "Kansas City's 24-Hour Newschannel"). Its iteration of the concept involved both
10164-434: The addition marked the first time WDAF had aired a local newscast at that hour since its days as a hybrid NBC/ABC/CBS/DuMont affiliate, when the station aired its late-evening newscast at 9:30 from its sign-on in September 1949 until the program moved to 10 p.m. after the station became a full-time NBC affiliate in September 1953. On January 15, 1996, WDAF-TV reformatted its 5:30 p.m. newscast as Your World Tonight ,
10318-414: The addition of an hour-long block at 9 a.m. on March 24, 2011, and a half-hour early extension at 4:30 a.m. on October 3 of that year. Since Fox does not provide network programming during that hour, Channel 4 also added an hour-long prime time newscast at 9 p.m. – originally titled Newschannel 4 Primetime until January 1997 and then Fox 4 News: Primetime at 9 until September 1999, when it
10472-543: The agreement was signed, the affiliation contracts of WDAF-TV and CBS affiliate WJW-TV in Cleveland were up for renewal as they were set to expire on or shortly after September 1, 1994. The timing of New World's purchase of channel 4 and the signing of its affiliation deal with Fox automatically gave NBC only a five-month span until the conclusion of its contract with the station to find another outlet to replace WDAF-TV as its Kansas City affiliate (by comparison, depending on
10626-669: The assets of Tribune Media for $ 6.4 billion in cash and debt. The deal—which made Nexstar the largest television station operator by total number of stations upon the sale's closure on September 19, 2019—would put WDAF-TV under common ownership with Nexstar's existing virtual clusters in the adjacent markets of Topeka (among NBC affiliate KSNT , Fox affiliate KTMJ-CD and ABC-affiliated SSA partner KTKA-TV ) and Joplin (between NBC affiliate KSNF and ABC-affiliated SSA partner KODE-TV ). Channel 4 would also retain WHO-DT in Des Moines as
10780-404: The associated launch of Fox News Channel that August, it also added content sourced from Fox's in-house affiliate video service Fox News Edge. The Your World Tonight concept was not successful, and the 5:30 p.m. broadcast was retooled as a traditional local newscast, formatted as an extension of its lead-in 5 broadcast, on January 6, 1997. Not long after WDAF-TV switched to Fox, KMBC made
10934-411: The baseball or college football seasons, if Fox is only scheduled to air a daytime game telecast). The station operates a Hummer , branded as "Storm Fox", which the station primarily uses as a storm chasing vehicle to cover severe weather events affecting its viewing area. Local news has always maintained an important presence at WDAF-TV throughout its history, an ideology fitting of a station that
11088-406: The beaten-path Windsor-Quebec corridor in which few desirable channels were available. Cities such as Windsor , London , Toronto , Peterborough , Kingston and Cornwall are notable by their absence from the network's original roster. The five transmitters on-air in 1984 (after a decade of operation as a struggling "third network") were: The majority of these transmitters were not licensed to
11242-426: The best intentions of regulators, the system remains prone to manipulation. This has almost become a parlor game. The goal of the game—whether you're applying for a new station or a station currently licensed to a rural area—is to move as close to a big market as possible. The closer you get to a big market, the more potential listeners you can reach and hence the more advertising dollars you can attract. But there's
11396-400: The commission's minimum distance separation requirements (avoiding interference to co-channel WOIO 19 Shaker Heights ). Another extreme example of a station's transmitter located far from the city of license is the FM station KPNT , formerly licensed to Ste. Genevieve, Missouri , and transmitting from Hillsboro , but serving the St. Louis and Metro East market to the north. In 2015,
11550-465: The company was in the process of acquiring through separate deals with Great American and Argyle Television Holdings (which New World purchased one week later in a purchase option-structured deal for $ 717 million), including WDAF – to the network. The stations involved in the agreement – all of which were affiliated with one of the three major broadcast networks (CBS, ABC and NBC) – would become Fox affiliates once individual affiliation contracts with each of
11704-615: The completion of its restructuring) agreed to sell WDAF-TV and three other television stations – CBS affiliate KSAZ-TV in Phoenix , and ABC affiliates WBRC in Birmingham and WGHP in High Point, North Carolina – to New World Communications – for $ 350 million in cash and $ 10 million in share warrants ; Great American Communications, meanwhile, retained ownership of WDAF radio and sister station KYYS (the former WDAF-FM) until
11858-472: The consolidation of its half-hour weeknight 5 and 6 p.m. newscasts into a single 90-minute block – although the early-evening block was structured as three separate half-hour broadcasts – filled timeslots vacated by the departures of Today and NBC Nightly News from its schedule as Fox, unlike NBC, does not have daily national news programs. The weekday morning newscast would gradually expand over time, eventually attaining its current 5½-hour format with
12012-564: The country music programs Country Hayride and The Stan Hitchcock Show during its second season). Although NBC had long been less tolerant of affiliates preempting its programming than the other broadcast networks were, it usually did not raise objections to those made by WDAF-TV. The issue was rectified between 1969 and 1971, as most of the NBC shows that the station chose to preempt would air instead on independent station KCIT-TV (channel 50, now Ion Television owned-and-operated station KPXE-TV ;
12166-402: The early 1950s). Among the local programs that WDAF aired during its early years included the half-hour daytime talk program The Bette Hayes Show , the 90-minute-long daily children's program Dr. Inventor , and a weekly television program on religion hosted by Arthur Otto Ackenbom that ran from 1955 to 1956. For several years, WDAF-TV's daily sign-on and sign-off sequence was accompanied by
12320-430: The entire land area of the community, whereas non-commercial educational FM stations need only provide a field strength of 1 mV/m over 50% of the community's population. This electric field contour is called the "principal community contour". The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) makes other requirements on stations relative to their communities of license; these requirements have varied over time. One example
12474-452: The entire metropolitan area rather than with the particular needs of their specified communities," according to an FCC policy statement of the era. In order "to discourage applicants for smaller communities who would be merely substandard stations for neighboring, larger communities," the FCC established the so-called "Suburban Community presumption" which required applicants for AM stations in such markets to demonstrate that they had ascertained
12628-412: The equivalent of at least one other full-time staff member, as well as the maintenance of a public inspection file) are still applied, removal of the requirement that stations originate local content greatly weakens the significance of maintaining a local main studio. A facility capable of originating programming and feeding it to a transmitter must still exist, but under normal conditions there most often
12782-676: The exception of Dallas – Fort Worth and Phoenix – some higher-rated independents it approached rejected offers to join CBS due to its faltering ratings and the older-skewing programming slate it had at the time. To prevent such a situation from happening in Kansas City, CBS decided to approach the Meredith Corporation on a proposal to switch two of KCTV's sister stations – NBC affiliate WNEM-TV in Bay City, Michigan , and independent station KPHO-TV in Phoenix – to that network as
12936-489: The family which owned the company; its new owners restructured the group into the Great American Television and Radio Company (also known as Great American Communications). By that year, WDAF-TV had overtaken KMBC as the dominant station in Kansas City, as was the trend during this period at many NBC-affiliated stations, buoyed by the stronger programming slate that helped the network retake first place in
13090-405: The first 20 NBC stations to begin receiving the network's programs via satellite transmission. In 1986, it also became the first television station in Kansas City to broadcast in stereo , initially broadcasting NBC network programs and certain syndicated shows that were transmitted in the audio format. On October 12, 1987, company investors completed a hostile takeover of Taft Broadcasting from
13244-736: The first owned-and-operated station of a major network in the Kansas City market since DuMont briefly operated KCTY (channel 25) from December 1953 until it shut down that station in February 1954. On January 26, coinciding with Fox's telecast of Super Bowl XXXI , WDAF-TV subsequently changed its branding from Newschannel 4 to Fox 4 under the network's branding conventions (with its newscasts concurrently rebranding as Fox 4 News ). On June 29, 2001, reports surfaced that Fox Television Stations had reached an agreement to sell WDAF and three of its other owned-and-operated stations – WGHP, WBRC and WHBQ-TV in Memphis, Tennessee (which Fox purchased through
13398-434: The fourth (and last) television station in the Kansas City market to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition . On April 11, 2011, the station extended its existing pre-Fox-era late newscast, with the debut of a separate 10:30 p.m. news program on Sunday through Friday nights (Fox late night programming airs on Saturdays during that half-hour); as a result, it became the first Fox station – and one of only
13552-511: The game if you get the FCC to grant you a preference for providing "first service" to a close-in suburban community while being able to cover the larger market. While becoming less meaningful over the decades, stations are still required to post a public file somewhere within 25 miles of the city, and to cover the entire city with a local radio signal . In the United States, a station's transmitter must be located so that it can provide
13706-412: The growing portability of broadcast-quality production equipment due to transistorization , and the elimination of requirements (in 1987 for most classes of US broadcast stations) that broadcasters originate any minimum amount of local content. While the main studio concept nominally remains in US broadcast regulations, and certain administrative requirements (such as the local employment of a manager and
13860-437: The helicopter was grounded by station management on August 31, 2009, citing budget issues with the leasing of the helicopter. Also in 1982, WDAF launched a feature titled "Thursday’s Child", a segment that aired weekly during its 10 p.m. newscast, which highlighted Kansas City area children in the foster care system who were seeking adoptive families; the segment was produced by the WDAF news department, in conjunction with
14014-505: The larger city. The small town of Anniston, Alabama , due to its location 90 miles west of Atlanta and 65 miles east of Birmingham , has lost local content from both TV and FM stations which were re-targeted at one of the two larger urban centers or moved outright. ( WHMA-FM Anniston is now licensed as WNNX College Park, Georgia —an Atlanta suburb—after a failed attempt to relicense it to Sandy Springs, Georgia —another Atlanta suburb . Transmitters are now in downtown Atlanta.) The same
14168-407: The largest audiences and much of the FM spectrum lay vacant. In the era of vacuum tubes , the five-tube AM radio with no FM tuning capability and limited audio quality was common; later advances in receiver design were to make good-quality FM commonplace (even though most AM/FM stereo receivers still have severely limited AM frequency response and no AM stereo decoders). Eventually FM spectrum became
14322-496: The latter company's ten Fox affiliates being folded into the former's Fox Television Stations subsidiary, making them all owned-and-operated stations of the network (the New World Communications name continued as a licensing purpose corporation for WDAF-TV and its sister stations until 2007 under Fox, and from 2009 to 2011 under Local TV ownership); the purchase was finalized on January 22, 1997, making WDAF-TV
14476-484: The latter decade in first place, overtaking KCTV for the top spot. In 1982, WDAF-TV became the first television station in Kansas City to use a helicopter for newsgathering; the helicopter (originally known as "Chopper 4" until 1992, then as "NewsChopper 4" from 1992 to 1999, and later "Sky Fox" thereafter) was used to provide aerial coverage of breaking news and severe weather events, and periodically for traffic reports during its weekday morning and 5 p.m. newscasts;
14630-782: The latter group) acquired the Local TV stations for $ 2.75 billion; the sale was completed on December 27. On May 8, 2017, Hunt Valley, Maryland -based Sinclair Broadcast Group announced that it would acquire Tribune Media for $ 3.9 billion, plus the assumption of $ 2.7 billion in debt held by Tribune. If the deal received regulatory approval, WDAF-TV would have been placed under common ownership with Sinclair's existing Missouri-based stations: CBS affiliates KRCG in Jefferson City , KHQA-TV in Hannibal and KTVO in Kirksville ,
14784-552: The latter station as a WB affiliate on September 12, 2005) and a KMBC-produced newscast on that station's CW-affiliated sister KCWE (which began as a half-hour program on September 14, 2010 ). In February 2003, WDAF-TV launched an investigative reporting unit, the "Fox 4 Problem Solvers", which conduct investigative reports centering on businesses that have ripped off local consumers and uncovers various consumer scams. In April 2007, fellow Fox affiliate KTMJ-CA in Topeka began simulcasting
14938-486: The legislative presumption that a broadcaster fills a similar role to that held by community newspaper publishers. In the United States, the Communications Act of 1934 requires that "the Commission shall make such distribution of licenses, frequencies, hours of operation, and of ower among the several States and communities as to provide a fair, efficient, and equitable distribution of radio service to each of
15092-595: The market's default Fox affiliate from that point on until KNPN-LD (channel 26) signed on as an in-market affiliate on June 2, 2012. On January 30, 1948, The Kansas City Star Co. – the locally based parent company of the Kansas City Star , which operated as an employee-owned entity at the time – submitted an application to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for a construction permit to build and license to operate
15246-449: The morning and at 9 p.m., where WDAF regularly finishes at No. 1 (in time periods where that station does not have an absolute hold in that position, WDAF competes for second place with CBS affiliate KCTV). Channel 4 has maintained its status as the ratings leader in the 9 p.m. hour, even as it has faced added competition in recent years from a KCTV-produced newscast on MyNetworkTV-affiliated sister station KSMO-TV (which premiered on
15400-494: The mountain peaks. This occasionally left stations with a distant mountaintop (or its nearest small crossroads) as the historical city of license, even though the audience was elsewhere. Often, a license for a new station will not be available in a community, either because a regulatory agency was only willing to accept new applications within specified narrow timeframes or because there are no suitable vacant channels. A prospective broadcaster must therefore buy an existing station as
15554-435: The nearest large city. For example, CBS affiliate WOIO is licensed to Shaker Heights , a suburb of Cleveland , and thus identifies as "WOIO Shaker Heights-Cleveland." Similarly, northern New York 's WWNY-TV (also a CBS affiliate) identifies as "WWNY-TV 7 Carthage - Watertown " as a historical artifact; the original broadcasts originated from Champion Hill in 1954 so the license still reflects this tiny location. If
15708-648: The network during the league's regular season and postseason . Notable Royals telecasts that the station has aired during its tenures with NBC and Fox have included the team's World Series appearances in 1980 , 2014 and 2015 , the first having been aired by NBC and the two most recent appearances being carried by Fox, the latter of which saw the franchise win its first world championship title since 1985 . As of August 2022 , WDAF-TV presently broadcasts 67 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with 11 + 1 ⁄ 2 hours on weekdays, 4 + 1 ⁄ 2 hours on Saturdays and five hours on Sundays); in regards to
15862-410: The network in September 1994, with the only content it has aired involving Fox's children's programming having been of fall preview specials and network promotions for those blocks that aired within the network's prime time lineup for the final twelve years that Fox carried programming aimed at that demographic. The only notable program preemption outside of the network's children's blocks has been that of
16016-589: The network on August 1, 1994, agreeing to do so on the condition that it carry as much local news programming as WDAF had aired as an NBC affiliate (Scripps excluded KSHB from the affiliation deal it struck with ABC around the same time – which also renewed affiliation contracts with WEWS-TV in Cleveland and WXYZ-TV in Detroit , both of which were approached by CBS to replace newcomer Fox affiliates WJW and WJBK-TV , which had their CBS affiliations displaced through
16170-475: The network's contract with the AFC expired after the 1997 season (KSHB would resume airing certain regular season games involving the Chiefs in 2006 , when NBC obtained the rights to the Sunday Night Football package). The loss of primary broadcast rights to the Chiefs by WDAF – one of two Fox affiliates affected by the New World agreement that is located in an AFC market, alongside WJW, which
16324-434: The network's programming, usually consisting of some daytime shows and an occasional prime time program. Among the notable programs that were preempted by channel 4 included Days of Our Lives (which was preempted by the station from its November 1965 debut until 1971), the 1967 reboot of Dragnet (which was dropped by WDAF-TV after the police procedural 's first season, before the station decided to re-permit clearance of
16478-420: The news department's expansion, WDAF increased its news staff from 80 to 120 employees; it hired up to 40 additional employees (including additional reporters and behind-the-scenes staff members) to handle the expanded news coverage that the new news-intensive lineup would allow. The weekday morning newscast's expansion from one to three hours – with the addition of a two-hour extension from 7 to 9 a.m. – and
16632-409: The number of hours devoted to news programming, it is the highest local newscast output among the Kansas City market's commercial television stations. WDAF-TV's Sunday 5 p.m. newscast is subject to preemption due to network sports coverage, as is standard with Fox stations that carry early-evening newscasts on weekends (though the Saturday 5 p.m. newscast is usually delayed to 6 p.m. during
16786-610: The number of stations under common ownership. In the early days of television, the majority of stations could be found on the VHF band; in North America, this currently represents just twelve possible channels and in large markets any suitable allocations in this range were mostly full by the early 1950s. Occasionally, a prospective broadcaster could obtain one of these coveted positions by acquiring an existing station or permit in an adjacent community - although in some cases this meant
16940-406: The official date on which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. WDAF continued to transmit its digital signal on its pre-transition UHF channel 34, using virtual channel 4. Cities of license In U.S., Canadian, and Mexican broadcasting, a city of license or community of license is the community that
17094-466: The only way to readily enter the market, in some cases being left with a station in a suburban, outlying or adjacent-market area if that were the only facility available for sale. Occasionally, a community on an international border is served using a station licensed to another country . This may provide access to less restrictive broadcast regulation or represent a means to use local marketing agreements or adjacent-market licenses to circumvent limits on
17248-563: The original city of license, rather than bring unwanted scrutiny for taking away a small community's only station, which may be a mark of civic pride , only to move it to some larger center which already has multiple stations. In the United States , the Federal Communications Commission maintains a Table of Allotments, which assigns individual channel frequencies to individual cities or communities for both TV and FM radio . A corresponding Table of Allotments for digital television
17402-562: The original tower at the studio facility has remained in use for auxiliary transmissions). Channel 4 originally operated as a primary affiliate of NBC – an affiliation that was owed to WDAF radio's longtime relationship with the television network's direct predecessor, the NBC Red Network , which it had been affiliated with since 1925 (when the station transmitted on 680 AM) as the network's westernmost affiliate – although it also maintained secondary affiliations with CBS , ABC and
17556-590: The over-the-air flagship station of the Kansas City Royals from 1979 to 1992 ; this relationship continued long after many Big Three-affiliated stations discontinued regular coverage of local sporting events, including those involving Major League Baseball (MLB) franchises. In addition, from 1969 until the network lost the rights to the MLB Game of the Week in 1989 and sporadically during part of
17710-453: The primary community served. Many were underpowered, short-spaced or in undesirable locations - often just putting enough signal into key communities to obtain cable must-carry protection. As the only transmitters to be operating on then-valuable VHF channels at anything other than greatly-reduced power were licensed to Paris and Bancroft, both awkward outlying communities, the Paris transmitter
17864-411: The production of 30-second news updates that aired at or near the top of each hour during local commercial break inserts – even during prime time network and overnight programming – and five-second end-of-break weather updates (consisting of an image of the station's Doppler radar , then known as "Doppler 4 Radar", usually accompanied by a brief voiceover by one of the station's meteorologists illustrating
18018-473: The program at the start of its third season in September 1969, albeit airing on delay on Saturday afternoons; the station eventually began airing the show in pattern on Thursdays towards the end of its run), I Dream of Jeannie (which the station began preempting partway through its first season in 1966, before it resumed carrying the show in the fall of 1968), and The Name of the Game (which it replaced with
18172-476: The projected date of WDAF's switch to Fox was now fast approaching. NBC first entered into discussions with KCTV for a contract; this concerned CBS, as New World planned to switch several of the network's stronger-performing affiliates in other markets to Fox, which often forced CBS to affiliate with either a former Fox affiliate or a lower-profile independent station, as many of the Big Three stations and – with
18326-456: The ratings among the Big Three broadcast networks around that time. In December 1993, Great American Communications underwent another financial restructuring following the company's filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy . Great American then decided to put most of its television stations up for sale. On May 5, 1994, Great American Communications (which would later be renamed Citicasters following
18480-466: The renamed Citicasters merged with Jacor on February 13, 1996, in a $ 770 million deal (due to FCC rules at the time that restricted broadcasting companies from owning more than twelve television stations nationwide, WBRC – also due to the agency's prohibition of television station duopolies ; New World having purchased Birmingham's NBC affiliate, WVTM-TV , through the Argyle deal – and WGHP were placed in
18634-403: The required distances between transmitters. In hilly or mountainous regions, a city would often be built in a waterfront or lakeside location (such as Plattsburgh - Burlington , both on Lake Champlain ) - lower ground which in turn would be surrounded by tall mountain peaks. The only reliable means to get the VHF television or radio signals over the mountains was to build a station atop one of
18788-505: The same content. The 2016-2020 OTA TV repack opened additional possibilities for using an outlying community's licence as an over-the-air placeholder. Buy a station, return the licensed broadcast spectrum to the government, then claim to be "sharing" a channel with another broadcaster by using the orphan licence to place content on one of their digital subchannels . Suddenly, an outlying commercial low-power station in New Hampshire
18942-430: The same region but far enough from each other that a transmitter in one market would provide poor service to the other. While a transmitter in each community served would be preferable, occasionally a station licensed to a small town between the two larger centres will be used. In FM radio broadcasting, small local stations were sometimes built to serve suburban or outlying areas in an era where AM radio stations held
19096-445: The same." The Federal Communications Commission interprets this as requiring that every broadcast station "be licensed to the principal community or other political subdivision which it primarily serves." For each broadcast service, the FCC defines a standard for what it means to serve a community; for example, commercial FM radio stations are required to provide a field strength of at least 3.16 millivolts per meter (mV/m) over
19250-439: The secondary Sunday morning NFL pre-game show Fox NFL Kickoff , of which WDAF had declined carriage for the 2015 regular season (the program moved to Fox from Fox Sports 1 in September 2015), with the station's second digital subchannel airing it instead in its network-recommended time slot; WDAF began clearing Fox NFL Kickoff in September 2016. During its first four decades with NBC, WDAF-TV preempted moderate amounts of
19404-474: The short-term forecast or teasing the weather segment in an upcoming newscast), during time periods when the station was not airing its regularly scheduled, long-form newscasts. In September 1992, WDAF became the first television station in Kansas City to launch a weekend morning newscast, with the debut of two-hour-long Saturday and Sunday broadcasts that initially aired from 8 to 10 a.m. (both editions would later move to 7 to 9 a.m. in September 1997, with
19558-408: The state and its containing county of Fulton . The definition of a "community" also comes into play when a broadcaster wants to take a station away from a tiny hamlet like North Pole, New York , whose population is in decline. In general, regulators are loathe to allow a community's only license to be moved away - especially to a city which already has a station. A broadcaster may make the case that
19712-849: The station adopted as a universal brand in April 1992 as an NBC affiliate – upon the affiliation switch; branding references to Fox, both visually and verbally, were limited in most on-air imaging, with the exception of on-air IDs (which used the tagline "in Kansas City, Newschannel 4 is Fox") that aired until January 1997. In addition to expanding its local news programming, the station added additional syndicated talk shows as well as some reality series and off-network sitcoms to fill time periods that were occupied by NBC's daytime and late-night lineups beforehand, as well as syndicated film packages for broadcast in weekend afternoon timeslots on weeks when Fox did not provide sports programming. On July 17, 1996, News Corporation announced that it would acquire New World in an all-stock transaction worth $ 2.48 billion, with
19866-480: The station is licensed in the primary city served, on occasion the station will list a second city or region next to it. For example, the Tampa Bay region's Fox owned-and-operated station WTVT is licensed to Tampa, Florida , its primary city, but identifies on-air as "WTVT Tampa/ St. Petersburg ", as St. Petersburg is another major city in the market. To encompass Appleton and the smaller cities clustered around
20020-505: The station is unwatchable — but, even if the underlying over-the-air signal was not valuable, the corresponding cable television slots in the various communities it was almost serving were. Any full-service domestic signal above some arbitrary minimum had access to " must carry " protection, could request favourable placement on the dial and (in Canada) could engage in signal substitution to take ad revenue from other stations already carrying
20174-493: The station ran on weekdays from 6 to 9 a.m., noon to 1 p.m. and 5 to 6:30 p.m. and nightly from 9 to 10:30 p.m., as well as on weekend mornings and early evenings. The station retained the "24-Hour News Source" format after the affiliation switch, continuing to offer news updates on an hourly basis during commercial breaks until it discontinued the concept in May 1999. With New World Communications heavily investing in
20328-408: The station was allowed by the FCC to move their city of license to Collinsville, Illinois , and have a transmitter in St. Louis proper with a power decrease. FCC regulations also require stations at least once an hour to state the station's call letters, followed by the city of license. However, the FCC has no restrictions on additional names after the city of license, so many stations afterwards add
20482-402: The station, the existing affiliation contracts of most of the other New World stations that were slated to join Fox were not due to expire until as early as December 1994 to as late as September 1996, giving NBC, ABC and CBS more time to find a replacement affiliate). The network entered into negotiations with other area stations in the immediate weeks after the Fox-New World deal was announced, as
20636-564: The stations' existing network partners had expired. The deal was motivated by the National Football League (NFL)'s awarding of the rights to the National Football Conference (NFC) television package to Fox on December 18, 1993, in which the conference's broadcast television rights moved to the network effective with the 1994 NFL season , ending a 38-year relationship with CBS . At the time
20790-578: The team plays against a fellow AFC team. However, Channel 4 held broadcast rights to preseason games involving the team from 1997 to 2001 through a partnership with the Chiefs Television Network; during this period, the on-air production presentation of the locally exclusive telecasts was upgraded to network quality standards by way of WDAF's then-ownership under Fox. Currently, most regular season and some preseason games shown over-the-air locally are televised by KCTV, which has served as
20944-443: The technical requirements of full service broadcast facilities and have their own independent call signs and communities of license but are used simply as full-power broadcast translators to rebroadcast another station. These are most often non-commercial educational stations or stations serving thinly populated areas which otherwise would be too small to support an independent local full-service broadcaster. The requirement that
21098-727: The two networks when both stations signed on under a timesharing arrangement between their respective licensees, the Cook Paint and Varnish Company and the Midland Broadcasting Company, on August 2 of that year. Channel 4 shared the ABC affiliation with WHB/KMBC until September 27, when KCMO-TV (channel 5, now KCTV ) signed on as the network's original full-time Kansas City affiliate (KMBC and KCMO would swap affiliations two years later in September 1955); this left channel 4 as an exclusive affiliate with NBC. Also in 1953,
21252-419: The two stations were joined by an additional sister radio station, WDAF-FM (102.1, now KCKC ). Transcontinent merged with Cincinnati -based Taft Broadcasting on February 19, 1964; the transaction was finalized on April 1, 1964. On July 13, 1984, as NBC began transitioning away from using microwave relays for distribution of its programs to the more economically efficient downlink method, WDAF-TV became one of
21406-472: The unincorporated areas around the city that share a mailing address. This sometimes leads to inconsistencies, such as the licensing of one metro Atlanta station to the unincorporated Cobb County community of Mableton , but the refusal to license another to Sandy Springs , which is one of the largest cities in the state, and was at the time an unincorporated part of Fulton County due to political complications involving its eventual incorporation from both
21560-417: The unintended effect of encouraging applicants to merely list a small suburb of a large city, claiming to be the "first station in the community" even though the larger city is well served by many existing stations. "The Suburban Community Problem" was recognized in FCC policy as early as 1965. "Stations in metropolitan areas often tend to seek out national and regional advertisers and to identify themselves with
21714-482: The unmet programming needs of the specific communities and were prepared to satisfy those needs. By 1969, the same issues had spread to FM licensing; instead of building transmitters in the community to nominally be served, applicants would often seek to locate the tower site at least halfway to the next major city. In one such precedent case (the Berwick Doctrine), the FCC required a hearing before Berwick,
21868-421: The view of broadcast regulators held that an expedient way to ensure that content broadcast reflected the needs of a local community was to allocate local broadcast stations and studios to each individual city. The nominal main studio requirement has become less relevant with the introduction of videotape recorders in 1956 (which allowed local content to be easily generated off-site and transported to stations),
22022-518: The weekday evening newscasts in 1981, a role in which he remained until Witt retired from broadcasting on June 20, 2017 – at the helm). Because Fox did not have a news division – and by association, an affiliate news service – at the time WDAF joined the network, the program – as was the case with WDAF's news department as a whole since the September 1994 switch to Fox – initially relied mainly on external video feeds from CNN Newsource for coverage of national and international news stories, although with
22176-583: Was annexed into the National Football League (NFL) – as the American Football Conference (AFC) – when the two professional football leagues merged in 1970 . The station carried most regional or national Chiefs game telecasts aired by NBC through the 1993 season ; the local rights to the Chiefs broadcasts transferred to KSHB after it assumed the NBC affiliation from WDAF in September 1994 and remained there until
22330-406: Was arbitrarily listed as the main station for the entire network. Sometimes, putting a usable over-the-air signal into the primary community served is anywhere from second-priority to not a priority at all. A station could be barely within the market's boundaries or be underpowered to the point of putting a "B" grade signal into the community at best. On anything less than a huge rooftop antenna,
22484-431: Was created in 1997. To operate a licensed station, a broadcaster must first obtain allocation of the desired frequencies in the FCC's Table of Allotments for the intended city of license. This process is subject to various political and bureaucratic restrictions, based on considerations including the number of existing stations in the area. The term "city" has in some cases been relaxed to mean "community", often including
22638-501: Was discontinued in December 2017 when the regulation was amended. The requirement that a station maintain a main studio within a station's primary coverage area or within a maximum distance of the community of license originated in an era in which stations were legally required to generate local content and the majority of a station's local, non-network programming was expected to originate in one central studio location. In this context,
22792-516: Was formed on May 7 of that year to assume ownership of the broadcasting division of The New York Times Company ) for $ 1.1 billion; the sale was finalized on July 14, 2008. On July 1, 2013, the Tribune Company (which in 2008, had formed a joint management agreement involving its Tribune Broadcasting subsidiary and Local TV to operate stations owned by both companies and provide web hosting, technical and engineering services to those run by
22946-428: Was founded by a newspaper. Dating back to its NBC affiliation, channel 4 has long battled KMBC-TV (and at times, KCTV as well) for the most-watched local television newscast in the Kansas City market for the better part of four decades. During the late 1970s and 1980s, WDAF-TV's newscasts sat in second place in the ratings, behind KMBC; however, coinciding with the rise of NBC's ratings fortunes during that period, it ended
23100-487: Was presented by Kansas City Star Co. president Roy A. Roberts and WDAF-TV-AM general manager H. Dean Fitzer. Channel 4 informally signed on the air on September 29, when it broadcast coverage of President Harry S. Truman 's speech at the Municipal Auditorium. WDAF-TV officially commenced regular programming two weeks later at 6 p.m. on October 16, 1949; the station's first broadcast was The Birth of
23254-503: Was public affairs or news programming adjusted to become Norwalk-centric over that of Los Angeles and Southern California . The station returned to its Los Angeles city of license after the transaction was complete. Often, a station will keep a tiny outlying community in its licensing and on-air identity long after the original rationale for choosing that location is no longer truly applicable. Sneedville, Tennessee , as city of license for PBS member station WETP-TV originally made sense as
23408-426: Was renamed as simply Fox 4 News at 9 – to lead into its existing 10 p.m. newscast (WDAF is one of several Fox stations that offer newscasts in both the final hour of prime time and the traditional late news time slot – as well as one of the few affiliated with the network that runs a nightly newscast in the latter slot – and one of ten that continued its Big Three-era late-evening newscast after switching to Fox);
23562-428: Was required to sell. Had the deal been approved, it would have marked a re-entry into Kansas City for Sinclair, which previously owned KSMO-TV from 1994 to 2005, when it sold that station to Meredith to form a duopoly with KCTV. On December 3, 2018, Irving, Texas -based Nexstar Media Group —which had previously owned ABC affiliate KQTV in St. Joseph from April 1997 until January 2017—announced it would acquire
23716-422: Was the second New World station to switch its network affiliation to Fox through the agreement between the two companies (the first to switch was WJW, which traded affiliations with Cleveland's original Fox affiliate, WOIO , nine days earlier on September 3), and was the only one involved in the deal that had been an NBC affiliate prior to switching networks (WVTM-TV, now owned by Hearst Television and ironically now
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