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KXTV
Sacramento, California
Branding	News10
Slogan	Committed to News and Connected to Our Community
Channels	Digital: 10 (VHF)
Subchannels	(see article)
Affiliations	ABC
Owner	Gannett Company (KXTV, Inc.)
First air date	March 20, 1955
Call letters’ meaning	X = Roman numeral 10 (for channel number) TV
Former callsigns	KBET-TV (1955-1959)
Former channel number(s)	Analog: 10 (VHF, 1955-2009) Digital: 61 (UHF)
Former affiliations	CBS (1955-1995)
Transmitter Power	34.5 kW
Height	611.9 m
Facility ID	25048
Transmitter Coordinates	38°14′24″N 121°30′3″W / 38.24°N 121.50083°W / 38.24; -121.50083
Website	www.news10.net

KXTV, channel 10, is an ABC affiliate in Sacramento, California. It is owned and operated by the Gannett Company. Its transmitter tower (shared with KOVR) is located in Walnut Grove, California, and studios are located on Broadway, just south of Business Loop 80 at the south edge of downtown Sacramento. Its broadcasting tower is among the tallest man-made structures in the world.^[1]

History

The station went on the air on March 19, 1955 as KBET, owned by locally-based Sacramento Telecasters. Four years later, the call letters became KXTV (the "X" being the Roman numeral for the VHF channel it broadcasts on, channel 10) when Corinthian Broadcasting bought the station. Corinthian became part of Dun & Bradstreet in 1971. The A.H. Belo Corporation bought all of Dun & Bradstreet's television stations (except for two in Indiana, which went to LIN Broadcasting) in February 1984.

From its founding until 1995, KXTV was an affiliate of CBS. As a CBS affiliate, the station preempted some lower-rated daytime (the 9-10am block in the 1980s and early 90's) and late night (from the late 1980s until the arrival of The Late Show with David Letterman in 1993) programs. KXTV also preempted Sunday morning cartoons that CBS offered from the 60's until the early 80's. In 1991, KXTV dropped Price Is Right, due to the abundance of syndicated programming commitments. After several months of complaints, KXTV reinstated "Price Is Right, but to make room for syndicated programming it was committed to carry, dropped Guiding Light due to low ratings in the early 1990s. While most CBS stations would air The Young and The Restless from 11 a.m.-NOON, KXTV moved it to the 3 p.m. timeslot in 1994 where the soap did well.

Then, on March 6, 1995, in an unprecedented move in local television, KXTV swapped affiliations with KOVR, switching networks from CBS to ABC. As an ABC affiliate, the station preempted the half-hour soap airing in the 12:30 timeslot (Loving/The City/Port Charles), at some point running it on overnights; but when the network axed the programming block outright in the early 2000s; KXTV has aired the entire schedule of ABC programming since then. For the first 6 months as an ABC affiliate, KXTV preempted an hour of ABC Saturday morning cartoons, but since the Fall of 1995 has run the entire Saturday morning block. On another note, KXTV aired All My Children at 3 p.m. in the early years as an ABC affiliate (probably because they previously aired a soap from CBS in that timeslot and to maintain a similar type of show in that slot), before finally following the niche of airing it at Noon alongside majority of the ABC stations—only after the midday newscast moved an hour earlier from Noon to 11 a.m..

An advertisement for Lex Boyd the morning anchor in 1957

Four years later, in 1999, Belo traded KXTV to Gannett for that company's KVUE in Austin, Texas. (This actually marked a re-entry into the Sacramento television market for Gannett, which briefly owned KOVR during the late 1950s.) That same year, KXTV began digital broadcasts on a new and separate HDTV channel called 10.1. Then, in 2001, to reflect the station's commitment to its news coverage, KXTV decided to become better known as "News10". In 2006 News 10 started broadcasting a 24 hour weather channel on its second HDTV channel called 10.2.

Until recently, KXTV had first choice on all King World programs offered locally—King World has since become CBS Television Distribution and acquisition policies may have now changed. Nevertheless, KXTV holds the local syndication rights to Jeopardy!, Inside Edition, and Wheel of Fortune (all King World-turned-CBS properties). Until 2002, the station also held the local syndication rights to The Oprah Winfrey Show (now another CBS property seen locally on KCRA/KQCA). It is these shows that have made News10 one of the highest-rated local stations in daytime television. Since 2002-2003, KXTV has been the local television home of the Sacramento Kings, the city's National Basketball Association franchise, which coincides with their network's coverage of NBA games. The station picked up the rights to Kings telecasts in the middle of the 2002-03 season due to the contractual dispute between the team and its then-rights holder, ex-UPN station KMAX. As of 2009, The Sacramento Kings have moved their broadcasts exclusively to Comcast Sportsnet California.

In the late '00s, KXTV heavily promoted its weather coverage as part of its "Connected to Our Community" marketing campaign. Over-the-air promotions introduced weather presenters and touted weather coverage on the internet (news10.net), on its dedicated digital weather channel (channel 10.2, referred to as "ten-dot-two"), and "on the 10s" (at :10, :20, :30, etc.) on "News 10 Good Morning," its 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. newscast.

Also in the late '00s, KXTV intensively covered local high school football, especially during Friday news broadcasts. In 2007, for example, the segments were known as "Friday Night Football." The station's helicopter flew from one high school to another to capture aerial shots of the various games. KCRA had its own version called "High School Playbook."

On September 12, 2005, KXTV launched a morning program called Sacramento & Company (shows like this are on a number of Gannett stations) hosted by Kristen Simoes and Guy Farris. Sacramento & Co. is a local morning lifestyles and entertainment show that is sponsored by local companies. The show airs weekdays from 9-10 AM and is available online. [1]

KXTV became the market's only commercial station to remain on the VHF dial when the FCC completed the digital transition on June 12, 2009. [2]

News10 Weather Tower

News10 Weather Tower at day time

News10 Weather Tower at night time

The News 10 weather tower was debuted on August 24, 2001, the same day the California State Fair opened. It was completed on October 11, 2000, but News10 decided to debut it later because of the rolling blackouts at that time. It was built and designed by Nacht & Lewis Architects based in downtown Sacramento. The television station, an anchor facility and active proponent of improvements to the Broadway Street Corridor, elected not to construct a conventional broadcast tower, examples of which may be seen throughout Sacramento. The proposed design melds the rather demanding engineering requirements for communications towers with sensitivity to the suggestions of the surrounding residents while creating an icon and gateway for the Broadway Corridor. The top glows with a different color based on the weather conditions or the result of a Sacramento Kings or the Sacramento Monarchs win.

Information Center

The Information center located in the News10 newsroom debuted on February 5, 2007 where the News10 Now updates are conducted, online stories are written for the web site and where is Live_Online is produced. On June 12, 2008 News10 revealed a new website that lets viewers create a profile and become members of News10.net that allows them to post comments, pictures, write blogs and communicate to News10 people provided by SiteLife.

Newscasts

Prior to adopting the current News10 newscast branding in 1983; KXTV's newscasts had successively identified as Shell News, The Big News, Channel 10 News, Newservice 10 (in the 1970s), and Eyewitness News (early 80's [3]). For the past two decades (dating back to its time as a CBS affiliate), KXTV has been a distant runner-up to KCRA. In the past two years, KXTV's 11 p.m. newscast has frequently finished in last place in total households among all of the major stations' late-night newscasts (not counting the KCRA-produced 10 p.m. newscast on KQCA).

An advertisement for the Wilson-Gray Report in 1965

Current personalities/ joined date

Anchors

• Dan Elliott- News 10 Good Morning/ Midday anchor (1989)
• Dana Howard- Weekend anchor/ Reporter (1992)
• Kelly Jackson- News 10 Good Morning Anchor 5-7am (2007)
• Cristina Mendonsa- Anchor 5, 6, 11 p.m. (1995)
• Dale Schornack- Anchor 5, 6, 11 p.m. (1997)

Weather

• Darla Givens - Weekend Evenings, Weds and Fri at 11am on Midday, News10 Good Morning Free Fridays 5-7am (1999)
• Monica Woods- News10 Good Morning Weekdays 5-7am (2001)
• Harry Stockman, Former News10 Meteorologist, and Fill-in Weather anchor

Sports

• Bryan May - Anchor/Reporter Weekdays (1999)
• Ryan Yamamoto - Anchor/Reporter Weekends (2005)

Traffic Team

• Angel Cardenas- News10 Good Morning Traffic

Video Journalists

• Cornell Barnard- General Assignment Reporter/ Fill-in Anchor (1997)
• Tim Daly- San Joaquin Valley Chief reporter (1991)
• Will Frampton- Multi-media Journalist(2008)
• Sharon Ito- Weekday Online Chat room moderator 11 a.m. (1985 and again 1996)
• Dave Marquis- General Assignment Reporter(1993)
• Anne Makovec Morning/ Midday Reporter/ Fill-in anchor
• Alicia Malaby- General Assignment Reporter (1999)
• Karen Massie- General Assignment Reporter (1987)
• Jonathan Mumm- "Mumm @ the Movies" critic, Weekday Reporter, "California Postcard in HD" Segment (1983)
• George Warren- Multi-media Journalist (1981)
• Wendy Poon, Freelance Morning Reporter

Past news personalities

News/Station presentation

Newscast titles

• Shell News (1950s)
• KXTV News (1960s)
• The Wilson-Gray Report (1960s)
• Channel 10 News (1960s-1970s)
• Newservice 10 (1970s)
• Eyewitness News (1970s-1986)
• News10 (1986-present)

Station slogans

• The Spirit of California (1986-2005)
• Committed to News and Connected to Our Community (2005-present)

This film, television or video-related list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it with reliably sourced additions.

Digital television & high-definition

Digital television

Digital channels

High-definition

News10 produces Friday Night Football highlights and Johnathan Mumm's "California Postcard" segments in High-Definition.

KXTV's talk show, "Sacramento & Co." produced an all-HD produced TV special called "The Future Is HDTV on News10", profiling the FCC's imposed transition from an Analog television signal to a Digital television signal. The special also show-cased HD produced shows from ABC as well as some syndicated shows.

On December 16, 2009 at 11PM, KXTV began broadcasting its newscasts in high definition, becoming the 3rd Sacramento TV station (behind Hearst's KCRA/KQCA and CBS' KOVR/KMAX), and 9th Gannett-owned station to do so. ^[3]

On KXTV's digital subchannel 10.2, The AccuWeather Channel broadcasts live National weather, plus local KXTV weather. It is available online.

Other station notes

• As a CBS affiliate, KXTV's station ID would include an electronic alarm like version of the infamous CBS "ding".
• KXTV is the third station in Sacramento to affiliate with ABC. Low-performing ABC affiliate KCCC Channel 40 (now the home of KTXL) had it first before shutting down and the network moved to KOVR.
• Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune have aired on KXTV since the mid-80s (back when it was CBS). Until 2002, The Oprah Winfrey Show also aired on KXTV, but it has since moved to KCRA.
• KXTV can be seen on cable in eastern portions of the Bay Area and in all of Butte County as a competitor to KGO and KRCR, respectively.

References

1. ^ "Burj Dubai is now world’s tallest manmade structure". Thaindian News. April 7, 2008. http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/world-news/burj-dubai-is-now-worlds-tallest-manmade-structure_10035445.html. Retrieved 2009-02-13.  
2. ^ http://www.sacbee.com/static/weblogs/ticket/archives/2009/09/tv-meteorologis.html Patty Souza announces her resignation from KXTV published 01-10-2009 Sacramento Bee
3. ^ http://www.news10.net/life/entertainment/local-entertainment/story.aspx?storyid=70620&catid=103

External links

• Official News10 website
• News10 50th Anniversary
• Infamous Halloween scare on News10 Good morning
• Query the FCC's TV station database for KXTV
• BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on KXTV-TV