History
KNHL was founded in 1956 as KHAS-TV by a group of local investors headed by Fred A. Seaton, publisher of the Hastings Tribune newspaper and Secretary of the Interior during the Eisenhower Administration.[1] It took its calls from KHAS radio, which Seaton had founded in 1940. In 1967, it was one of the first stations in the area to acquire color broadcasting equipment.
Seaton died in 1974. His family held on to channel 5 until 1997, when it was sold to Dick Shively and Ulysses Carlini Sr., owners of North Platte TV stations KNOP-TV and K11TW, operating the three stations under the name Greater Nebraska Television. In 2005, Greater Nebraska Television sold the stations to Hoak Media.[2]
The station's studio was located north of Hastings on US 281. The transmitter tower was located next to the studio. KHAS-TV was formerly rebroadcast on translator station K14IY in Holdrege; this translator went dark in 2009. KHAS-TV was later also carried on K02HJ in Ord and K35AL analog channel 35 in Lexington, Nebraska.[3] All three translators broadcast an analog signal. K35AL formerly carried programming from sister station KNOP-TV but Lexington is in the Lincoln–Hastings–Kearney market while North Platte is a separate market. Both local and national programming on KHAS was carried in high definition.
Starting around 2004, KHAS began branding itself as a full-market NBC station. Previously, Omaha's WOWT-TV had claimed the capital as part of its primary coverage area, inheriting that status when it regained the NBC affiliation from KMTV-TV in 1985. For the next two decades, KHAS-TV identified as "Hastings/Kearney/Grand Island/Lincoln" on-air and on its Website. While WOWT was still carried on Lincoln cable systems, KHAS-TV was picked up on the Lincoln DirecTV and Dish Network feeds as the local NBC station, boosting its potential audience to over 700,000 people across Nebraska and Kansas.
In June 2012, KHAS and other Hoak-owned stations were pulled from Dish Network after they failed to renew a carriage agreement. The refusal to renew reportedly surrounds Dish Network's "Hopper" digital video recorder and its controversial commercial-skipping feature AutoHopwhich has also led to complaints from the major U.S. television networks.[4][5]
Shutdown and sale
On November 20, 2013, Gray Television announced it would purchase Hoak Media in a $335 million deal.[6] As Gray already owned KOLN/KGIN, KHAS was to be sold to Excalibur Broadcasting and operated by Gray under a local marketing agreement.[7] However, in the wake of heightened FCC scrutiny of local marketing agreements, on June 11, 2014, KHAS-TV announced it would leave the air at midnight on June 13. Its NBC affiliation, along with its news department and syndicated programming, would be moved to KSNB-TV and the digital subcarriers of KOLN and KGIN.[8] KHAS would then be sold off to minority interests, which under this arrangement would allow the station to return to the air on the conditions that the new owner operate the station independently (under minority, female and/or non-profit ownership) and not make any partnerships or sharing arrangements with other broadcasters.[9] KSNB-TV still operates from KHAS-TV's former studio.
