KAKE (TV)

History[edit]

The station first signed on the air on October 19, 1954, as KAKE-TV (the "-TV" suffix was dropped in 2010). The television station was started up by KAKE Broadcasting Company, owner of AM radio station KAKE (AM 1240, now KNSS at AM 1330). It has always been an ABC affiliate.


KAKE-TV and ABC programs were seen in the late 1950s and early 1960s on two additional stations in western Kansas: KTVC (channel 6) at Ensign,^[2] which signed on August 1, 1957, and KAYS-TV (channel 7) in Hays, which took to the air in 1958. The stations branded as the "Golden K Network".^[3] However, KAKE would lose both stations when they defected to CBS in 1961 and 1962. On October 28, 1964, KAKE signed on KUPK-TV (channel 13) in Garden City to serve as a satellite station for southwestern Kansas.


In 1978, KAKE received a letter from Dennis Rader, the "BTK" serial killer. He asked for the police to send him a hidden message. During an evening newscast, a subliminal message was broadcast on KAKE to convince Rader to turn himself in; the effort was unsuccessful.^[4][5][6] In 2004 and 2005, the BTK killer once again sent letters to KAKE – one included a word puzzle, while another expressed concern about the colds that anchors Susan Peters and Jeff Herndon had suffered at the time. Park City resident Dennis Rader was eventually arrested and convicted of the murders.


In 1979, the station was sold to the San Francisco-based Chronicle Publishing Company, run by the de Young family, who also owned KRON-TV in San Francisco and WOWT-TV in Omaha, Nebraska; KRON (as well as a translator of that station), WOWT and KAKE and its translators all have facility IDs in the same range (which were assigned by the Federal Communications Commission around 1980). In 1987, Chronicle purchased KLBY (channel 4) in Colby, an independent station that had ceased broadcasting in December 1985, and converted it into a satellite of KAKE. In 1988, KAKE moved all of its translators on UHF channels 70 to 83 (which were being phased out from broadcasting use) to other, lower channel positions; in addition, a few the affected translators were shut down outright.


On June 16, 1999, the deYoung family announced that it decided to liquidate Chronicle Publishing's assets. KAKE, its satellites, and WOWT were sold to LIN TV (KRON was later sold to Young Broadcasting, which became involved in a contract dispute with NBC, which had bid for the station, that led to KRON losing its NBC affiliation in January 2002). Almost as soon as the sale was finalized, LIN turned around and traded KAKE and WOWT to Benedek Broadcasting in a cash deal, in exchange for NBC affiliate WWLP in Springfield, Massachusetts. The acquisition of KAKE and WOWT could be seen as the ultimate undoing for the financially challenged Benedek, which in 2002 declared for Chapter 7 bankruptcy; the company then sold most of its stations, including KAKE and WOWT, to Atlanta-based Gray Television. Another translator shuffle occurred on August 15, 2003, as three of the station's low-power repeaters changed channel allocations: K20BU (channel 20) in Russell moved to channel 38 as K38GH, K22CP (channel 22, now KHDS-LD) in Salina moved to channel 51 as K51GC, and K69DQ (channel 69, now KGBD-LD) in Great Bend moved to channel 30 as K30GD.


On September 14, 2015, KAKE and its satellites were put up for sale, as Gray entered into a deal to acquire the broadcasting assets of Schurz Communications, including rival KWCH, a station that Gray intends to retain.^[7] On October 1, Gray announced that it would sell KAKE to Lockwood Broadcast Group, and in return receive WBXX-TV in Knoxville and $11.2 million.^[8] On January 1, 2016, Lockwood (through Knoxville TV LLC) took the operations of the stations via local marketing agreement.^[9] The sale was completed on February 1.^[10]