History
Channel 34 began operations on June 19, 2000, as KWBS-TV, which stood for "WB Springfield"; however, original station owner Equity Broadcasting decided to make another new station, Harrison-based KWBM (channel 31), as the WB affiliate for Springfield, and KWBS instead became affiliated with Pax (now Ion Television). KWBS dropped the Pax affiliation in 2003 in favor of the Equity-owned Lick TV, which was a short-lived network that broadcast professional wrestling events. One year later, the station dropped that network and was finally affiliated with The WB as its Northwest Arkansas affiliate. This was accompanied by a call-letter change to KWFT.
After it was announced in January 2006 that The WB and UPN would close down to form The CW in September, KWFT changed its call letters to KBBL-TV on July 6, 2006. However, its Fort Smith repeater retained the KWFT-LP call sign, which to this day it still uses. The KBBL-TV call letters were almost certainly not inspired by the KBBL-TV of The Simpsons, even though both stations are located in a designated market area (DMA) with the same name as the Simpsons' fictional hometown. Equity likes to use former radio call letters from its hometown of Little Rock, Arkansas, as TV call letters, and the KBBL call sign was once used by a Little Rock radio station.
Around the same time as the call letters were changed, KBBL-TV was announced as joining the Retro Television Network (then owned by Equity) after The WB ceased operations, but as a result of KPBI-CA (channel 46) losing its Fox affiliation to then-NBC affiliate KFTA-TV (channel 24) and joining MyNetworkTV, channel 34 changed its call letters to KPBI on September 22, 2006, and began to carry KPBI-CA's programming schedule (KFDF-CA, the station that was originally scheduled to join MNTV, ended up becoming the RTV affiliate).
After failing to find a buyer at a bankruptcy auction,[1] KPBI was sold to Pinnacle Media in August 2009 (after having initially been included in Silver Point Finance's acquisition on June 2 of several Equity stations[2]) with Pinnacle assuming control under a local marketing agreement with soon-to-be-former owner Equity on August 5 of that same year.[3] Pinnacle Media officially took ownership on November 3, 2009, and was restructured into Riverside Media in August 2010 with a change in the minority (40%) ownership in the company.
It was announced on August 12, 2009, that KPBI would join RTV,[4] which had been dropped by KFDF in January after the network severed its ties with Equity.[5] In 2010, KFSM-TV launched a second digital subchannel affiliated with MyNetworkTV. As of October 30, 2011, KPBI has dropped RTV in favor of MeTV programming.
Purchase by Local TV and then by Tribune
On September 1, 2011, Local TV, owner of CBS affiliate KFSM, filed papers with the Federal Communications Commission to purchase KPBI for $784,000 through a "failing station" waiver. This was necessary because the Fort Smith–Fayetteville DMA has only seven "unique" full-power television stations (though the ABC affiliate KHOG-TV is a satellite of Fort Smith–based parent KHBS, the FCC considers the parent and its satellite together as one unit). That small number of unique full-power stations is normally not enough to legally allow a duopoly.[6] The sale to Local TV was completed on January 5, 2012; on that day, the station's callsign was changed to KXNW.[7]
Immediately upon consummation, all remaining MeTV and RTV programming was dropped in favor of a simulcast of KFSM digital subchannel 5.2, which carries MyNetworkTV programming (also on KFSM-DT2) during prime time hours on weeknights; syndicated programming during the daytime hours and at select time periods on weekend mornings and afternoons; and as a part-time affiliate of Antenna TV on weekdays from 1 to 7 a.m., Saturdays from 1 to 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., and Sundays from 6 a.m. to 8 and 9 a.m. to 10, and midnight to 6 a.m. In addition, KXNW's digital subchannel 34.2 dropped Univision and began simulcasting KFSM's CBS-affiliated main channel 5.1. On October 23, 2016, KXNW added a simulcast of KFSM-DT3 on 34.2, resulting in the KFSM-DT1 simulcast moving to a new 34.3 subchannel.
