Early years (1959–1968)
Channel 13, not 11, was originally assigned to Fargo. This changed in December 1953 after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) received a petition from a civic group in Bemidji, Minnesota, seeking the assignment of channel 13 there.[1][2] This prompted a consortium of two local radio stations, KFGO in Fargo and KVOX in Moorhead, Minnesota, to abandon their plans for the station.[3]
Interest was rekindled in January 1957 when the Fargo Telecasting Company, controlled by Marvin Kratter of New York, applied for channel 11.[4] That application was followed five months later by one from the North Dakota Broadcasting Company (NDBC), controlled by John Boler.[5] Among Boler's holdings was KXJB-TV (channel 4) in Valley City.[6] Kratter dropped out in January 1958. Turning down an intervention from Fargo TV station WDAY-TV (channel 6), which feared the loss of some network programs to the new station and believed that channels 4 and 11 would constitute a then-illegal duopoly,[7] an FCC hearing examiner approved the North Dakota Broadcasting Company application on May 27, 1958;[8] the commission approved the station in 1959. NDBC announced that, though the studios would be shared with KXJB-TV's Fargo site and the recently purchased KFGO (renamed KXGO), the new station would transmit from Sabin, Minnesota, and be named KXGO-TV.[9][10]
KXGO-TV began broadcasting on October 11, 1959.[11] Its arrival triggered a minor realignment of network programming in North Dakota as its first exclusive ABC affiliate. Previously, North Dakota's three NBC affiliates—WDAY-TV, KFYR-TV in Bismarck, and KNOX-TV in Grand Forks—had aired some ABC shows. With the advent of channel 11, ABC shows were now seen from the new KXGO-TV and Boler's Bismarck station, KBMB-TV. However, some viewers lost ABC programming because the NBC affiliates reached more viewers than the new channel 11.[12]
In 1962, Ferris Traylor of Evansville, Indiana, acquired KXGO-TV as well as KNOX-TV in Grand Forks and KCND-TV (channel 12) in Pembina. The new ownership announced major plans to shuffle the first two stations by relocating channel 11 to a new, tall tower near Hillsboro, North Dakota, and moving channel 10 completely from Grand Forks to Thief River Falls, Minnesota.[13] The station set up new local offices in the Manchester Building in Fargo[14] and began planning the construction of a new, 2000 ft television tower. At the time, the tallest tower—located in Cusseta, Georgia[15]—was 1749 ft high. On May 15, 1963, to dissociate itself from KXGO radio, the station changed its call sign to KEND-TV (for "Eastern North Dakota"); that month, the new tall tower received FCC approval.[16] This facility would make KNOX-TV redundant by including Grand Forks in the enlarged channel 11 service area.[17] Though delayed by the discovery that Bethlehem Steel
Traylor's broadcasting interests were undergoing ownership changes even as channel 11 was acquired, as Milwaukee-based Polaris Industries acquired half of Traylor-owned Producers, Inc. in 1962[25] and the remainder in 1963.[26] In 1966, Polaris merged with the Natco Corporation. It put KTHI-TV and KCND-TV on the market; despite an offer for the former by Don Burden of the Star Stations radio group,[27] channel 11 was never sold and remained in the Natco fold post-merger.[28][29] Natco's primary owner, J. B. Fuqua, renamed the firm Fuqua Industries in February 1967.[30] During this time, in 1967, KTHI-TV moved its Grand Forks studio to larger quarters on 9th Avenue North.[31]
Morgan Murphy ownership (1969–1995)
In 1969, Fuqua Industries sold KTHI-TV for $1.491 million to Spokane Television, a subsidiary of the Morgan Murphy Stations group.[33] The FCC waived a rule requiring new owners to hold stations at least three years except in cases of financial difficulty, noting that Pembina had not been able to find a buyer in 1966 even though the sale of KTHI-TV was provided for in the merger agreement.[34] After the sale, the station remained unprofitable for at least its first four years.[35] Into the late 1970s, most of the station's local morning programming continued to originate from Grand Forks.[36]
On August 22, 1983, KTHI became an NBC affiliate, swapping affiliations with WDAY-TV and its satellite for the Devils Lake and Grand Forks area, WDAZ-TV (channel 8). The switch was initiated by ABC, which at the time was number-one in the ratings seeking affiliation upgrades nationally and had courted WDAY for several years. KTHI management found out in a curt, 90-second phone call from ABC; most station employees learned their station was losing its network by way of an announcement on WDAY-TV's newscast.
Meyer and Sunrise ownership
Meyer Broadcasting of Bismarck, North Dakota, owner of KFYR-TV in Bismarck and its network of satellites in western North Dakota, bought the station in a deal announced in November 1994 and completed in March 1995.[40][41] On June 5, the station changed its call sign to KVLY-TV, reflecting the Red River Valley region; recently relaxed FCC rules allowed an FM station in Texas to share the call sign.[42] In 1998, Meyer opted to exit the television business. It sold all its TV stations—KVLY-TV and KFYR-TV and satellites—to Sunrise Television, a division of the private equity firm Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst, for $63.75 million.[43][44]
Consolidation with KXJB
In 2002, North Dakota Television LLC—a consortium of private equity firms The Wicks Group of Companies, JP Morgan Partners, and Halyard Capital—acquired KVLY-TV and KFYR-TV.[45] The next year, the station acquired the non-license assets of KXJB from Catamount Broadcasting. Under a local marketing agreement (LMA), KVLY began to provide most operating functions beyond programming for KXJB. The KVLY studios on 21st Avenue South were expanded to house an additional studio for KXJB. Hoak Media of Dallas acquired KVLY-TV and KFYR-TV, as well as KSFY-TV in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and its satellites in 2006.[46]
On November 20, 2013, Hoak announced the sale of most of its stations, including KVLY-TV, to Gray Television. Simultaneously, KXJB-TV was to be sold by Parker Broadcasting to Excalibur Broadcasting and would have continued to be operated by KVLY under an LMA.[47] The sale was completed on June 13, but upon the closing of the sale, and in the wake of the new FCC rules restricting LMAs, Excalibur abandoned its plans to acquire the station.
