Becoming an ABC affiliate
On September 1, 2003, the NBC affiliation in Casper moved from KTWO to KCWY (channel 13).[16] Equity had known at the time it acquired the station that the NBC affiliation would expire; in preparation for the move, on June 27, 2003, KTWO-TV announced that it had agreed to affiliate with ABC, and that the new affiliation would not take effect until the expiration of ABC's contract with KFNB on June 5, 2004.[16] In the interim, KTWO operated as an independent station, but carried programming from Pax TV (now Ion Television), including Candid Camera and Miracle Pets; before the affiliation change, Pax programming had been seen on KCWY.[16] Cheyenne satellite station KKTU was able to immediately switch from NBC to ABC,[16] and began branding itself as "ABC 8", after its position on the Cheyenne cable system. After reaching an agreement with KTWO, KFNB agreed to end its ABC affiliation early; on March 8, 2004, KTWO officially became an ABC affiliate, KFNB obtained the Fox affiliation from K26ES (now MyNetworkTV affiliate KWYF-LD channel 29) and K26ES became an affiliate of UPN and Pax.[17]
Coinciding with the affiliation switch, on March 1, 2004, K-TWO TV of Wyoming, controlled by Cheryl Kaupp, began operating KTWO-TV under a local marketing agreement, and that October filed to purchase the station outright from Equity Broadcasting for $1.7 million.[18] Kaupp was the daughter of Marvin Gussman, whose Wyomedia Corporation owned KFNB;[19] Wyomedia's general manager, Mark Nalbone, served as a consultant to KTWO and owned a thirty-percent interest in Mark III Media, which was in the process of acquiring KGWC-TV,[20] though in December 2005 he told Television Business Report that he did not speak for KTWO in retransmission consent negotiations.[19] In April 2004, Nalbone announced that KTWO would vacate its longtime studios on East Second Street in Casper;[20] its present location shares operations with KFNB, KWYF, and KGWC on Skyview Drive. K-TWO TV of Wyoming assigned its right to acquire KTWO-TV to Silverton Broadcasting, headed by Barry Silverton, in May 2005;[21]
Equity Broadcasting retained ownership of channel 33 in Cheyenne, which had changed its call sign to KDEV in 2005, and allowed KTWO to continue to operate it; KTWO later moved its ABC programming in Cheyenne to a low-powered repeater, KKTU-LP (channel 40), after KDEV dropped ABC in favor of programming from RTN. On June 24, 2008, KKTU-LP changed its call letters to KDEV-LP, after KDEV changed its call sign to KQCK. In September 2010, KDEV dropped all ABC programming; in 2011, KTWO-TV signed on a new low-powered satellite in Cheyenne, K16JM (channel 16), which changed its call sign to KKTQ-LD on June 5, 2013.[23] KKTQ is simulcast on KLWY's second digital subchannel, and airs its own station identifications and commercials.
In July 2005, KTWO was added to the Dish Network line up of channels for customers in the Casper/Riverton designated market area. On January 1, 2012, KTWO, KFNB, and KGWC were dropped from Dish Network after failing to come to an agreement on a new contract. The signals were restored by Dish Network on May 1, 2012.
2018–present
Silverton Broadcasting agreed to sell KTWO-TV to Legacy Broadcasting on February 8, 2018. The deal would have created a duopoly with KFNB, which Legacy would have concurrently acquired from Wyomedia Corporation; in its filing with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Legacy stated that the duopoly was permissible because KFNB was the fifth-ranked station in the Casper–Riverton market.[24] The sale was canceled in October 2018.[25]
On October 8, 2019, Silverton Broadcasting announced that it would sell KTWO-TV and KKTQ-LD to Vision Wyoming, a subsidiary of Vision Alaska (run by Stephen Brissette); the sale was concurrent with Big Horn Television's purchase of KGWC-TV and Coastal Television Broadcasting Company's purchase of KFNB and KLWY.[26] Coastal Television (run by Bill Fielder) and Vision Alaska already jointly operated stations in Alaska.[27] The sale was completed on June 1, 2020.[28]
