KIFR (channel 49) is a religious television station in Visalia, California, United States, serving the Fresno area. The station is owned by Vita Broadcasting. KIFR's studios are located on North Fresno Street near San Joaquin Memorial High School and the Hammond district just north of downtown Fresno, and its transmitter is located on Blue Ridge in rural Tulare County.
Prior to its current ownership, channel 49 (as KNXT) was a Catholic television station for the Central Valley.
History
In 1985, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) granted an application by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Fresno—which learned of the channel a week before the deadline to file[2]—to build a new non-commercial educational television station on the channel 49 allocation in Visalia, beating out a bid from the Trinity Broadcasting Network and the Tulare County board of education. Construction of the transmitter on Blue Ridge proved to be a test of sensitivity; the tower required environmental approval because the site is a roosting area for the California condor, and the county approved the tower over protests by Native American groups, who argued that the ridge was sacred ground and had been used for centuries as a communication point for smoke signals between tribes on different sides of the Sierra. The station signed on November 2, 1986.[3]