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KMPH-TV, virtual channel 26 (UHF digital channel 28), is a Fox-affiliated television station serving Fresno, California, United States that is licensed to Visalia. The station is owned by the Sinclair Broadcast Group, as part of a duopoly with CW affiliate KFRE-TV (channel 59). The two stations share studio facilities located on McKinley Avenue in eastern Fresno (one mile southwest of Fresno Yosemite International Airport); KMPH maintains transmitter facilities located on Big Baldy Mountain in northwestern Tulare County. KMPH-TV's focus is on the San Joaquin Valley and Central California. KMPH-TV's signal is receivable as far way as the Bakersfield area; however, local Fox affiliate and sister station KBFX-CD (itself once a KMPH repeater) exclusively carried on cable providers in the Bakersfield market. KMPH's airwaves extend northward to Mariposa and Merced, and the southern Sierra Nevada, and sometimes can be received in Monterey County for those who live just north of King City. KMPH has been received over-air sometimes in eastern Kern County (Ridgecrest) and San Luis Obispo. ==History== The station first signed on the air on October 11, 1971; originally operating as an independent station, it was the first television station founded by the Pappas brothers, Mike, Pete and Harry, and served as the flagship station of their company Pappas Telecasting Companies. The station's original studios were located on Mooney Boulevard in Visalia. The funding for KMPH came from general manager Harry Pappas' plan of having hundreds of investors each investing a small amount of money that was needed to construct the station, rather than having one investor providing all the capital; as a result, the Pappas brothers had a combined ownership stake of only 30.5%, with the other 69.5% controlled by other investors. 〔((''1973 Broadcasting Yearbook: The Facilities of TV'') )〕 KMPH carried Operation Prime Time programming at least in 1978. Throughout the early to mid-1980s, KMPH was one of the top independent stations in the country. The station could be received up to from Visalia. KMPH formerly operated a translator in Merced, California on channel 17, KMPH-CA. Pappas signed an affiliation deal with Fox for KMPH to become a charter affiliate of the network in 1986 (the other Pappas-owned stations, WHNS in Greenville, South Carolina and KPTM in Omaha, Nebraska; joined Fox two years later). KMPH became a Fox affiliate when the network launched on October 5 of that year. KMPH remains a Fox affiliate to this day; both it and NBC affiliate KSEE (channel 24) were the only two stations in Fresno that were unaffected by the 1985 network swap involving ABC and CBS between KFSN-TV (channel 30) and KJEO (channel 47, now KGPE) and the later launches of The CW and MyNetworkTV in September 2006. The station relocated its operations from its original studio in Visalia to its current facility on McKinley Avenue in Fresno in the early 1990s. On May 10, 2008, thirteen Pappas stations, including KFRE, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. As a result of the bankruptcy, Pappas Telecasting Companies was given until February 15, 2009 to sell these stations to other owners.〔(Pappas Saga Turning Into Tragedy ), ''TVNewsCheck'', September 24, 2008.〕 On January 16, 2009, Pappas announced that most of the stations, including KFRE, would be purchased by New World TV Group (no relation to the similarly named New World Communications, which switched most of its stations to Fox between September 1994 and July 1995), after the sale received United States bankruptcy court approval. On April 2, 2009, Pappas laid off 22 employees involved with the KMPH/KFRE duopoly. New World TV Group formed a new holding company known as the Titan TV Broadcast Group (unrelated to the similarly named smaller-market radio station owner Titan Broadcasting), which completed its purchase of most of the Pappas stations involved in the bankruptcy on October 15, 2009. Titan announced the sale of KFRE-TV, KMPH-TV and most of the company's other stations to the Sinclair Broadcast Group on June 3, 2013. The FCC approved the sale on September 19,〔http://licensing.fcc.gov/prod/cdbs/pubacc/Auth_Files/1558204.pdf〕 and the sale was officially finalized on October 3, 2013.〔(SINCLAIR BROADCAST GROUP CLOSES ON ACQUISITION OF THE TITAN STATIONS )〕 With the completion of the sale, KMPH was reunited with Bakersfield Fox affiliate, KBFX-CD, which formerly operated as a repeater of KMPH, before it was sold to Fisher Communications in 2005. 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「KMPH-TV」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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