KPBI (TV)
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| KPBI | |
|---|---|
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| Fayetteville, Arkansas | |
| City of license | Eureka Springs, Arkansas |
| Channels | Analog: 34 (UHF) |
| Translators | KPBI-CA 46 Fort Smith |
| Affiliations | MyNetworkTV |
| Owner | Equity Media Holdings Corporation (TV 34, Inc.) |
| First air date | June 2000 |
| Call letters’ meaning | Pharis Broadcasting Inc. (calls came from KPBI-CA, which Pharis owned while it was on KFDF-CA's license |
| Former callsigns | KWBS-TV (2000-2004) KWFT (2004-2006) KBBL-TV (2006) |
| Former affiliations | Pax TV (2000-2003) Lick TV (2003-2004) The WB (2004-2006) |
| Transmitter Power | 1200 kW |
| Height | 224.4 m |
| Facility ID | 81593 |
| Transmitter Coordinates | |
For the former KWFT-TV in Texas, see KAUZ-TV. "KBBL-TV" redirects here, for the fictional KBBL-TV of "The Simpsons", see Media in The Simpsons.
KPBI is a television station in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, serving the Fayetteville market on channel 34 as an affiliate of MyNetworkTV. While the station's city of license is located in the Springfield, Missouri market, ACNielsen considers this station to be part of the Fayetteville-Fort Smith market. The station is currently owned by Equity Broadcasting, and also serves Fort Smith, Arkansas via low-powered repeater station KPBI-CA (channel 46).
[edit] History
KPBI-LP (channel 46) was the flagship station for a network of low-power television stations owned and operated by Bill and Karen Pharis. This station served the Fort Smith area, and it's transmitter was located at Mt. Vista in Van Buren, Arkansas. It was followed by channel 15, which served Springdale, Arkansas and it's surrounding areas. KPBI eventually added several other low-power translators that extended the coverage area to Mt. Magazine in the east, Poteau Mountain to the west and south (located in Poteau, Oklahoma) and Rogers, Arkansas to the north. This gave an equal coverage area to that of the other local high-power stations. KPBI was originally an independent station, but it became affiliated with the Fox Network shortly after said network was formed. These actions all took place in the early to middle 90's.
KPBI carried Fox programming at night, and various syndicated offerings during the daytime hours. It also made an inroad in coverage of college sporting events that were not being otherwise made available to the public (i.e. Westark Lions basketball and baseball, Lady Razorbacks basketball, etc.)
KPBI was the operating station for the "Foxstar" satellite truck.
KPBI was known locally as a more "unstructured" station in on-air operations. This was demonstrated by various events such as off-the-path programming, strange video effects (i.e. the "dropping of sheep", which was a Video Toaster effect that would make sheep fall down into the video signal) and the substantial use of all employees as either on-air talent or as voices for commercials and tags. Also of interest is that KPBI used such devices as the Video Toaster and cable spot insertion equipment as primary switchers, commercial production gear and the like, which was a real world proof that a working television station could be operated without high-dollar equipment.
KPBI was joined in 1995 by a sister network, with the flagship station being KFDF-LP (channel 32). This secondary network was affiliated with UPN from the start, and was composed of channel 32 covering Fort Smith and surrounding areas and channel 36, which covered Springdale and it's associated area.
KPBI and KFDF operated from the same location in the Ward-Garrison Building, located at the corner of 6th and Garrison Avenue in Fort Smith, Arkansas. This was also the location for the AM radio stations of KFDF (Van Buren, AR) and KPBI (Greenwood, AR). These two AM stations were originally programmed to carry Southern Gospel (featuring the on-air talent of Jason Collier, Nancy Rowland a.k.a Tonia Trelaine and Mike Vaughn) and local programming, but around 1994 they were changed to carry Sports Talk Radio (satellite feed) and local programming (i.e. "The Huddle", which featured Marty Houston and John Wilhelm). The AM stations were transistioned to fully automated by the Chief Engineer for the TV and AM stations, Stuart Rowland, using a Packard Bell PC, a tone detector and a joystick.
One area that brought notice to KPBI was the area of locally produced computer animations for commercials and promotional spots. This area was pioneered in the local market by Earl Green. His productions won awards both locally and nationally.
KPBI led the area in the technical field of digital spot insertion. KPBI was the first station in the DMA to use computer spot playback in the form of the "Virtual Recorder" from ASC Audio Video. Many of the features currently used in the Virtual Recorder (now sold and supported by Leitch) were originated and/or tested by KPBI.
KPBI and KFDF ended operations as standard television stations when they were sold to Equity Broadcasting, at which time they became automated satellite-fed stations.
Channel 34 began operations in 2000 as KWBS, which stood for WB Springfield; however, Equity decided to make another new station, KWBM (channel 31) the WB affiliate for Springfield, forcing KWBS to sign on as a Pax (now Ion) affiliate. KWBS dropped the Pax affiliation in 2003 in favor of the Equity-owned Lick TV network, but one year later the station dropped the network and finally affiliated with The WB as its Fayetteville-Fort Smith affiliate; this was accompanied by a call change to KWFT. (Lick TV was a short-lived network broadcasting wrestling events (lacked WWE wrestling) but has since ceased operations.)
After it was announced in January 2006 that The WB and UPN would close down to form The CW that September, KWFT changed its calls to KBBL-TV on July 6, 2006, but its old Fort Smith repeater retained the KWFT-LP call sign, which it still uses to this day; it is unknown if that repeater is still operating. The KBBL-TV call letters were almost certainly not inspired by the KBBL-TV of The Simpsons, even though both stations are located in a DMA with the same name as the Simpsons' fictional hometown. Equity likes to use former radio call letters from its hometown of Little Rock, Arkansas as TV call letters, and KBBL was once used by a Little Rock radio station.
Around the same time as the call change, KBBL-TV was announced as joining the Equity-owned Retro Television Network after The WB ceased operations, but as a result of KPBI-CA (channel 46) losing its FOX affiliation to KFTA-TV (channel 24) and joining MyNetworkTV, channel 34 changed its call letters to KPBI on September 22, 2006 and began to carry KPBI-CA's programming schedule (KFDF-CA, the station that was originally scheduled to join MNTV, ended up becoming the RTN affiliate).
[edit] Digital television
Because it was granted an original construction permit after the FCC finalized the DTV allotment plan on April 21, 1997 [1], the station did not receive a companion channel for a digital television station. Instead, on or before February 17, 2009, which is the end of the digital TV conversion period for full-service stations, KPBI will be required to turn off its analog signal and turn on its digital signal (called a "flash-cut").
[edit] External links
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