KIVI-TV

KIVI-TV (channel 6) is a television station licensed to Nampa, Idaho, United States, serving the Boise area as an affiliate of ABC. Owned by the E. W. Scripps Company, the station maintains studios on East Chisholm Drive in Nampa (along I-84/US 30/SH-55), while its transmitter is located at the Bogus Basin ski area summit in unincorporated Boise County.

KIVI-TV operates KSAW-LD in Twin Falls, a semi-satellite of KIVI for the Magic Valley. It airs KIVI's ABC programs and some of its newscasts, alongside local commercials, separate evening newscasts produced from Nampa covering the Twin Falls area, and separate syndicated programming. KSAW-LD also maintains a small advertising sales office in the Blue Lakes Office Park on Falls Avenue in Twin Falls.

History

Prior use of channel 6

What is now KIVI-TV is actually the third attempt to launch a television station on channel 6 in Nampa, but the first to be successful.

News operation

The station currently ranks at a distant second place to KTVB (and sometimes third behind KBOI) in Nielsen ratings for all newscast periods.[28] Until July 2010, KIVI aired an hour-long broadcast weeknights at 6 along with KBOI. The 6:30 portion was eventually dropped as a result of low viewership in the comparative time slot.[29] Following Journal's acquisition of KNIN, KIVI began producing a weeknight prime time newscast on that station. Known as Today's 6 News on K9, the show was seen for thirty minutes and competed with a nightly half-hour newscast on then RTV affiliate KYUU-LP (which was produced by KBOI).

In January 2011, KIVI upgraded its local newscasts to 16:9 enhanced definition widescreen with the KNIN show being included in the change. Although not true high definition level, broadcasts match the aspect ratio of HD television screens. Corresponding with KNIN's affiliation switch to Fox in September 2011, its prime time show became known as Fox 9 News at 9 and initially featured separate news anchors but shared other personnel with KIVI.

The prime time show was also expanded to an hour on weeknights and added a weekend edition. Around the same time, the station's logo coloring was changed from gold, maroon and silver to red, white and blue; this was to allow the station to utilize the same standardized Renderon graphics package used by Journal's Milwaukee flagship WTMJ-TV and other company-owned stations.

Although most semi-satellites of another station provide some coverage of their home territory (in this case, the state of Idaho), until 2020, KSAW did not produce any local inserts for the Magic Valley during KIVI's newscasts since there were no news-related personnel locally based out of their Twin Falls offices. On April 13, 2020, following the hiring of three Twin Falls-based reporters, KSAW launched separate evening newscasts, which are produced and anchored out of KIVI; morning and weekend newscasts continue to be simulcast on both stations. Concurrently, KIVI and KSAW rebranded from 6 On Your Side to Idaho News 6.[30]

In 2023, after cutting ties with KIVI-TV, KNIN-TV dropped the newscasts from channel 6 and began broadcasting newscasts produced by KBOI-TV.

callsign	KIVI-TV
city	Nampa, Idaho
branding	Idaho News 6 The Spot Idaho (6.2)
digital	24 (UHF)
virtual	6
translators	see
affiliations	6.1: ABC for others, see
airdate	February 1, 1974
location	Nampa–Boise, Idaho
country	United States
callsign meaning	Idaho and VI for the Roman numeral 6
former callsigns	KITC (February–April 1974) KIVI (April 1974–2009)
former channel numbers	Analog: 6 (VHF, 1974–2009)
owner	E. W. Scripps Company
licensee	Scripps Broadcasting Holdings LLC
sister stations	KSAW-LD
erp	736 kW
haat	858.1 m
facility id	59255
coordinates	43.75578°N, -116.09917°W
licensing authority	FCC
website	https://www.kivitv.com/

History

Prior use of channel 6

Early years

Becoming a duopoly and sale to Scripps

News operation

Technical information

Subchannels

Analog-to-digital conversion

Translators

External links

References