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KFDM is a television station licensed to Beaumont, Texas and serving the Beaumont/Port Arthur market. The station operates on physical channel 25 or virtual channels 6.1 (which is affiliated with CBS) and 6.2 (The CW). The station is owned by the Sinclair Broadcast Group. It also serves the Lake Charles, Louisiana market as the market's default CBS station (especially since Lafayette's KLFY's coverage was severely crippled by the low power the FCC gave it on TV RF 10 with its digital signal; KLFY on analog 10 could easily cover Lake Charles). The station's studios are located at the Interstate 10/U.S. Highway 69 (Eastex Freeway) interchange in Beaumont, which is shared with KBTV-TV, and the transmitter location is in Vidor, Texas. ==History== KFDM-TV commenced broadcasting on April 24, 1955 and is the oldest on air TV station in the Beaumont/Port Arthur market (there was a short lived UHF TV 31 that preceded KFDM by a year or so but went dark (off the air) in less than a year of its sign on). The call sign was borrowed from its then sister radio station KFDM (AM 560), which was founded in 1924 by Magnolia Petroleum Company; the calls stood for "Kall For Dependable Magnolene," the brand name for Magnolia's motor oil line. (Coincidentally, the call letters could also be said to represent former owner FreeDoM Communications.) KFDM used the "-TV" suffix in its call sign to differentiate from KFDM radio until 1964 (when KFDM radio was sold and became KLVI) and again from 1980 until 2009. Original Chief Engineer Harold Bartlett (ham callsign W5KWA), oversaw all technical aspects of the station from its construction until his retirement in July, 1980. His assistant, Richard Kihn, took over immediately as "acting" Chief Engineer after Bartlett's retirement, and was appointed Chief Engineer on August 4, 1980. Kihn retired as of 10/26/2012 and was replaced by Jim Hobbs. However, Hobbs did not last long and returned to radio engineering in Nebraska. Don Dobbs, former Director of Engineering at KTVT and KXAS in Dallas, took over as Director of Engineering at KFDM to oversee a major rebuild of the studios. KFDM-TV would be sold by Beaumont Broadcasting to A.H. Belo Corporation in 1969.〔"$20 million in TV sales approved." ''Broadcasting'', May 12, 1969, pg. 48. ()〕 In 1983, Belo merged with Corinthian Broadcasting, owner of Houston's KHOU-TV, which caused concern with the Federal Communications Commission, which at the time did not normally allow common ownership of two stations with overlapping signals (as was the case with the Grade B signals of KFDM and KHOU). As a result, Belo would sell KFDM-TV to Freedom Communications in 1984. Freedom Communications announced on November 2, 2011 that it would bow out of television and sell its stations, including KFDM, to Sinclair Broadcast Group. The deal would make KFDM the fourth Sinclair-owned television property in the state of Texas and the first in Eastern Texas (Sinclair already owns the duopoly of KABB and KMYS in San Antonio and has completed its purchase of Austin's KEYE-TV on January 3, 2012). Sinclair began operating KFDM under a time brokerage agreement from December 1, 2011 until the group deal was consummated on April 2, 2012.〔("Rix Gary Named GM Of KFDM Beaumont," ) from TVNewsCheck, 12/12/2011〕 On August 22, 2012, Nexstar Broadcasting Group filed with the FCC to sell its Fox affiliate KBTV-TV to Deerfield Media (a company also involved in Sinclair's acquisition of stations from Newport Television〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.tvnewscheck.com/article/60876/newport-sells-22-stations-for-1-billion )〕); following the acquisition, KFDM took over operation of the station under a shared services agreement. The sale was completed on December 3.〔http://licensing.fcc.gov/cgi-bin/ws.exe/prod/cdbs/pubacc/prod/app_det.pl?Application_id=1531779〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「KFDM」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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