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WKPT-TV, channel 19, is an ABC-affiliated television station licensed to Kingsport, Tennessee, USA and serving the Tri-Cities area of northeastern Tennessee and southwestern Virginia. WKPT-TV is owned by owned by the Glenwood Communications Corporation, and is a sister station to Class A stations WAPK-CD and WOPI-CD; and several radio stations, including WKPT (1400 AM). All properties share studios on Commerce Street in downtown Kingsport, and WKPT-TV's transmitter is based on Holston Mountain in the Cherokee National Forest. Although the station is licensed to and based in Kingsport, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) requires it to include Johnson City and Bristol, Tennessee/Virginia in its legal on-air identifications.〔Television Factbook #49, 1980 Edition, page 788-B, WKPT-TV〕 ==History== WKPT-TV began broadcasting on August 20, 1969, as the Tri-Cities' exclusive ABC affiliate. Previously, the network had been shared between NBC affiliate WCYB-TV (channel 5) and CBS affiliate WJHL-TV (channel 11), each of which picked its own ABC programs to air. However, many viewers in the area could view the entire ABC schedule on nearby WLOS-TV in Asheville, North Carolina. Before WKPT signed on, WLOS included the Tri-Cities as part of its primary coverage area as it was widely available over the air (from a transmitter on Mount Pisgah that provided city-grade picture quality) and on cable. WKPT has three historical distinctions. First, it is the oldest UHF television station in Tennessee to have maintained continuous operation on the UHF band to the present. Second, it is the second oldest station in Tennessee to have had the same licensee from its inaugural date to the present. WBBJ-TV in Jackson, Tennessee is the oldest but only after it was sold to Bahakel Communications. Third, for years it was the only locally owned-and-operated full-power station in the Tri-Cities. However, that was merely by default. Because the antenna heights of its two VHF rivals, WJHL and WCYB, are above the above average terrain full power ceiling height mandated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), those two could not operate at their full power capacities. WCYB radiated 65,000 watts ERP analog visual while WJHL radiated 245,000 watts ERP analog visual. WKPT was also one of the first stations in the country to utilize a newly adopted (at the time) FCC rule called must-carry that required local cable companies to black out stations in nearby cities affiliated with the same network that were carried on local cable systems and cover the channel with the local network affiliate. As a result, the easily receivable off-air network signal from WLOS, away, was always blacked out on cable systems in the Tri-Cities while being covered by the WKPT signal any time both stations were broadcasting ABC programming. Local WLOS programming was not blacked out. After deregulation of the cable industry, stations from adjacent markets were taken off most local cable systems altogether in favor of satellite stations like TBS, WGN America, CNN, and others. WCYB and WJHL received ABC via traditional ground microwave relay stations provided by AT&T back in the 1950s and 1960s. However, when WKPT started in 1969, its owners could not afford to spend a half-million dollars per year for a network feed. As a result, the station developed its own low-cost way of bringing ABC to upper East Tennessee and Southwestern Virginia. Before the advent of satellite technology, WKPT utilized a series of private microwave relay stations between Kingsport and Knoxville. As the ABC signal was being transmitted via traditional microwave from AT&T into the studios of then-ABC affiliate WTVK-TV on Sharp's Ridge in Knoxville (now CBS affiliate WVLT-TV), WKPT would literally "grab" the telco signal just as it was going into the WTVK studios. It then sent the signal via private microwave to a relay station line-of-sight miles east to Camp Creek Bald on the Tennessee/North Carolina border in Southern Greene County, Tennessee. The ABC signal was then re-transmitted via another WKPT microwave line-of-sight miles further east to the WKPT transmitter site on Holston Mountain. From the relay point there, it was transmitted by a third WKPT microwave line-of-sight miles down to the studios in Downtown Kingsport through the station's master control board and then back to Holston Mountain via the station's regular studio-transmitter link and then broadcast on Channel 19. Private microwave relays of network programming were prevalent before the advent of AT&T commercial microwave. WVVA-TV in Bluefield, West Virginia operated its own private microwave relay that brought NBC to Bluefield from WSLS-TV in Roanoke. In its early days, WSMV-TV, Nashville received its NBC feed from WAVE-TV Louisville, and WSAZ-TV Huntington operated a private microwave to deliver NBC first from WLWT in Cincinnati, then from WLWC-TV (now WCMH-TV) in Columbus. Whenever any part of WKPT-TV's private microwave relay system malfunctioned, as it did periodically because of heavy snowfall or downed trees, station engineers were forced to broadcast the signal of either WTVK or WLOS whenever network programming was airing. Occasionally, WKPT accidentally aired the local commercials and the station identifications of either WTVK or WLOS being unable to cover them up quickly. When WTVK swapped affiliations with WATE-TV, WKPT merely moved its Knoxville microwave relay west to WATE's transmitter site, also on Sharp's Ridge, and continued to receive ABC via its privately owned microwave relay system. Ironically, the AT&T network signals for WJHL and WCYB were both delivered from Greenville, South Carolina to the phone company microwave that is also atop Camp Creek Bald that fed the Knoxville television stations. WKPT's first branding in the 1970s was "WKPT, Tri-Cities' ABC" which featured the first musical station IDs in the area. That concept was later used by WATE when that station became an ABC affiliate in 1979. In 1998, the station re-branded as "ABC 19 WKPT" which marked the first time the station's channel number was actually mentioned on-air since the 1980s. Under federal must-carry rules, broadcasters can either allow cable systems in their market to carry their signals for free or charge a fee under retransmission consent provisions. On December 3, 2008, it was announced that Inter Mountain Cable (IMC), a cable provider serving parts of Eastern Kentucky, announced that it would drop WKPT from their lineup unless an agreement was reached over retransmission consent.〔 〕 According to ''The Mountain Eagle'', this dispute has caused concern among officials in the city of Fleming-Neon, where IMC holds the cable television franchise there. The city council in Fleming-Neon have stated that the removal of WKPT would violate IMC's franchise agreement.〔 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「WKPT-TV」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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