KONG (TV)

KONG (channel 16) is an independent television station licensed to Everett, Washington, United States, serving the Seattle area. It is owned by Tegna Inc. alongside NBC affiliate KING-TV (channel 5). Both stations share studios at the Home Plate Center in the SoDo district of Seattle, while KONG's transmitter is located in the city's Queen Anne neighborhood.

KONG
ATSC 3.0 station
KONG logo
CityEverett, Washington
Channels
BrandingKONG
Programming
Affiliations
Ownership
Owner
KING-TV
History
First air date
July 8, 1997 (1997-07-08)
Former channel number(s)
  • Analog:
  • 16 (UHF, 1997–2009)
Call sign meaning
Counterpart of KING-TV, as in King Kong
Technical information[1]
Licensing authority
FCC
Facility ID35396
ERP715 kW
HAAT232 m (761 ft)
Transmitter coordinates47°37′54″N 122°21′3″W
Links
Public license information
Websitewww.king5.com

History

The KONG-TV call sign was first granted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on April 6, 1984.[2] When it was applied for, it immediately drew a legal complaint from King Broadcasting, then-owner of KING-TV,[3] against Carl Washington's KONG TV, Inc., the first broadcaster to apply for a license for Everett's channel 16.[4] The station had planned to go on the air on June 1 of that year, with studios in Everett and an advertising sales office in Seattle, but kept getting bogged down by years of legal challenges from residents on Cougar Mountain who objected to the electromagnetic radiation from an additional broadcaster.[5] After the legal challenges to the transmitter, KONG lay dormant until broadcasters came up with innovative ways to program additional stations in their area.

KONG-TV signed on the air on July 8, 1997. It was locally owned, but managed by KING-TV (which had just been acquired by Belo) through a local marketing agreement. The KONG call letters were retained as a tongue-in-cheek reference to King Kong, which made both stations easily marketable together. Belo bought channel 16 outright in 2000, when the FCC began to permit television station duopolies. On June 13, 2013, the Gannett Company announced that it would acquire Belo.[6] The sale was completed on December 23.[7]

On June 29, 2015, the Gannett Company split in two, with one side specializing in print media and the other side specializing in broadcast and digital media. KING and KONG were retained by the latter company, named Tegna.[8]

Programming

Initially, the station ran a general entertainment format with classic sitcoms, westerns, old movies, cartoons, and a 10 p.m. newscast. Along with the newscast and KING's Evening Magazine, the station now airs KING-TV's syndicated shows during prime time or other time slots, giving viewers a second chance to watch the shows that day. It also carries a few syndicated programs that KING-TV does not air such as Inside Edition, Extra, and Access Hollywood. KONG also broadcasts certain NBC network programs in lieu of KING, including a repeat of Meet the Press in its traditional mid-morning time slot, as KING is one of the few West Coast NBC affiliates to carry it live from Washington, D.C. at 6:00 a.m. Pacific Time, instead of tape-delaying it to 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time as is custom.

Because of its relationship with KING, KONG can air NBC programming that may get displaced by other programming such as local events or extended breaking news coverage. An example of this is when in 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009, KONG aired NBC's coverage of the Stanley Cup Finals for games that occurred on the East Coast, with KING airing local programming and news in its place and ceding that more viewers usually watched CBC's NHL coverage on the network's Vancouver owned-and-operated station CBUT. Occasionally, KONG can air live breaking news events—whether from NBC News or KING—when KING-TV airs local programming and NBC's Olympic coverage and when situation warrants; although KING-TV and KONG simulcast NBC's breaking news coverage during morning news programs as well as in the middle of regular programming, especially whenever there is breaking news of a national or global matter. For the 2008 and 2012 NFL preseasons, Seattle Seahawks preseason football games that were not televised nationally aired on KONG as NBC held the rights to the Summer Olympic Games. KONG also aired Seattle Sounders FC games, and airs the weekly magazine program Sounders FC Weekly on Sunday nights during the Major League Soccer season.

In 2017, after KIRO-TV discontinued its 31-year-old tradition of full-day coverage of the H1 Unlimited Seafair Cup, full-day coverage of the races moved to KONG the next year in association with SWX Right Now.[9]

Newscasts
Further information: KING-TV § News operation

KING-TV produces 26 hours of news programming (with five hours each weekday and 30 minutes each on Saturdays and Sundays) for KONG. KONG broadcasts a 10 p.m. newscast which competes with an in-house hour-long newscast on Fox owned-and-operated station KCPQ; the program airs for one hour on Monday through Friday evenings and a half-hour on weekend evenings. KONG also broadcasts a two-hour extension of KING's weekday morning newscast starting at 7 a.m., which also competes with KCPQ's morning newscast. KONG also broadcasts an hour-delayed rebroadcast of KING's noon newscast at 1 p.m. weekdays. It's the only newscast shown on KONG that comes from the main sister channel, KING. On September 9, 2013, KONG added a weeknight 9 p.m. newscast from KING, becoming the second newscast to air at that timeslot in the Seattle market (after KCPQ added a weeknight 9 p.m. newscast in 2011 on KZJO while keeping the 10 p.m. newscast on KCPQ), resulting in Seattle's first two-hour continuous prime time news block.

Technical information

Subchannels

The station's ATSC 1.0 channels are carried on the multiplexed digital signals of other Seattle television stations:

Subchannels provided by KONG (ATSC 1.0)[10][11][12]
Channel Res. Aspect Short name Programming ATSC 1.0 host
16.1 720p16:9KONG-HDMain KONG-TV programmingKING-TV
16.2 480iQVCQVCKZJO
16.3 TheGRIOTheGrioKCPQ

Analog-to-digital conversion

KONG shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 16, on June 12, 2009, as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television.[13][14] The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 31, using PSIP to display KONG's virtual channel as 16 on digital television receivers.

In 2009, KONG became one of the first four television stations in the country to begin broadcasting mobile DTV signals. The OMVC chose KONG and KOMO-TV in Seattle and WPXA-TV and WATL in Atlanta as the stations to beta test the ATSC-M/H standard, which has since been officially adopted for free-to-air broadcast television with clear reception on mobile devices, overcoming many of the defects of the original ATSC standard.

ATSC 3.0
Subchannels of KONG (ATSC 3.0)[15]
Channel Res. Aspect Short name Programming
5.1 1080p16:9KING-TVNBC (KING-TV)
13.1 720pKCPQFox (KCPQ)
16.1 1080pKONGIndependent (KONG)
22.1 720pKZJOMyNetworkTV (KZJO)

See also

References
  1. "Facility Technical Data for KONG". Licensing and Management System. Federal Communications Commission.
  2. "Call Sign History, KONG" Federal Communications Commission
  3. "Distinguishing KING from KONG" Seattle Times, March 9, 1984.
  4. "Residents Protest Another TV Transmitter" Seattle Times, June 27, 1984.
  5. "Judge Upholds Decision to Build TV Tower" Seattle Times, July 16, 1986
  6. Ortutay, Barbara; Fowler, Bree (June 13, 2013). "Gannett to buy TV station owner Belo for $1.5B". The Seattle Times. Associated Press. Retrieved June 13, 2013.
  7. Gannett Completes Its Acquisition of Belo, TVNewsCheck, Retrieved December 23, 2013
  8. "Separation of Gannett into two public companies completed | TEGNA". Tegna. Retrieved June 29, 2015.
  9. Joyce, Nathan (July 12, 2018). "Seafair hydroplane races return to familiar schedule and to TV". The Seattle Times. Retrieved August 10, 2018.
  10. RabbitEars TV Query for KING
  11. RabbitEars TV Query for KZJO
  12. RabbitEars TV Query for KCPQ
  13. Congress postpones DTV transition, Seattle may not Archived February 6, 2009, at the Wayback Machine, KING/AP, February 5, 2009
  14. List of Digital Full-Power Stations Archived August 29, 2013, at the Wayback Machine
  15. "RabbitEars TV Query for KOZL". www.rabbitears.info.
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