Overview
KXTV (channel 10) is a television station in Sacramento, California, United States, affiliated with ABC. Owned by Tegna Inc., the station maintains studios on Broadway, just south of US 50 at the south edge of downtown Sacramento, and its transmitter is located in Walnut Grove, California.
KXTV was the second station built in Sacramento proper, signing on in 1955; it served as Sacramento's CBS affiliate for four decades before changing to ABC in 1995. Its early history was dominated by a battle between local newspaper interests and a group of non-broadcasting business owners for the right to operate the channel, which was won by the latter. Owned in turn by Corinthian Broadcasting and Belo before being acquired by Tegna's forerunner Gannett in 1999, the station slowly rose to a second place in local news ratings before falling back to third in the late 2000s.
History
A long channel 10 battle
The first application for channel 10 in Sacramento was filed on May 7, 1948, by the McClatchy Broadcasting Company, owner of The Sacramento Bee newspaper and radio stations KFBK and KFBK-FM. The application was put on hold during the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)'s four-year freeze on television licenses; when the freeze ended, McClatchy refiled for channel 10. By October, the FCC had received eight applications for Sacramento's various TV channels, and joining McClatchy in seeking channel 10 was a consortium known as Sacramento Telecasters, Inc. Sacramento Telecasters consisted of mostly private business interests outside of broadcasting. One owner was Robert S. Breuner of the Breuners Home Furnishings chain; his store had sold televisions when San Francisco stations went on the air, only to have many of them returned because San Francisco stations were not sufficiently received in Sacramento. Also present in the consortium was John Schacht, general manager of radio station KMOD in Modesto, California.
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