KLML (channel 20) is a television station in Grand Junction, Colorado, United States, serving Colorado's Western Slope region as an affiliate of Court TV. The station is owned by Fresno, California–based Ventura Broadcasting. KLML's transmitter is located at the Mesa Point Electronics Site on the Grand Mesa (southeast of I-70).
History
KLML signed on the air on October 22, 1979, as KJCT, the first television station in Western Colorado since KREX-TV in 1954. It was owned by the Pikes Peak Broadcasting Company as a semi-satellite of fellow ABC affiliate KRDO-TV in Colorado Springs. Before channel 8's sign-on, all three major networks had been shoehorned onto KREX-TV. However, cable viewers could watch the full ABC schedule via Denver's KBTV (channel 9, now KUSA).
The station had full production facilities in Grand Junction; however, much of the programming was fed via hundreds of miles of microwave links from KRDO. In the late 1990s, KJCT chief engineer Roger Hightower modernized KJCT into one of the first true digital facilities in Colorado, and severed the electronic umbilical cord with KRDO.