KARD

KARD

West Monroe/Monroe, Louisiana-El Dorado, Arkansas United States
Branding	Fox 14
Slogan	The Right News at the Right Time
Channels	Digital: 36 (UHF) Virtual: 14 (PSIP)
Subchannels	14.1 Fox 14.2 Bounce TV 14.3 Grit
Affiliations	Fox (secondary from 1987–1994)
Owner	Nexstar Broadcasting Group (Nextstar Broadcasting, Inc.)
First air date	October 6, 1974 (1974-10-06)
Call letters' meaning	unknown, but pronounced "card"; could be a reference to the Arkansas Delta region which it serves
Sister station(s)	KTVE
Former callsigns	KUZN (1967–1968), KYAY (1970–1971), KLAA (1974–1982)
Former channel number(s)	Analog: 14 (UHF, 1974–2009)
Former affiliations	Primary: Independent (1967–1968, 1970–1971) NBC (1974–1981) ABC (1981–1994) Secondary: CBS (as KYAY, 1970–1971) ABC (as KYAY, 1970–1971) PTEN (1994–1997)
Transmitter power	1000 kW
Height	520.8 m
Facility ID	3658
Transmitter coordinates	32°5′42″N 92°10′34″W / 32.09500°N 92.17611°W / 32.09500; -92.17611
Licensing authority	FCC
Public license information:	Profile CDBS
Website	www.myarklamiss.com

KARD, channel 14, is the Fox affiliate for the El Dorado, Arkansas/Monroe, Louisiana market area licensed to West Monroe, Louisiana. It is owned by the Nexstar Broadcasting Group, which acquired the station in 2003 as part of its purchase of Quorum Broadcasting. KARD operates NBC affiliate KTVE through a LMA with KTVE owners Mission Broadcasting and the two stations share studios located on Pavilion Road in West Monroe, Louisiana, with KARD's transmitter located in Columbia, Louisiana.

History

KARD's logo 2013-October 2014

The station that became KARD first signed on on August 19, 1967 as KUZN-TV on channel 39 and was owned by Howard E. Griffiths was a television counterpart of KUZN radio.^[1] The station aired a local newscast, the BBC series Panorama, and old Western movies.^[2] The station ceased operations on January 12, 1968 but was sold to Northeast Louisiana Broadcasting Corporation.

It resumed operations on August 31, 1970 as KYAY-TV.^[3][4] During this incarnation, KYAY, again, aired news and off-network Westerns and movies, as well as ABC and CBS programming not carried on KNOE and KTVE, such as That Girl, Mod Squad, Hawaii Five-0, The Courtship of Eddie's Father, The Lawrence Welk Show, Engelbert Humperdinck, and The Merv Griffin Show.^[5] KYAY proved to be no more successful than KUZN had been, and it also went dark, on August 16, 1971.

In 1974, the station returned with a new callsign, KLAA, a reallocation to channel 14, and an NBC affiliation. Since 1972, when KTVE changed affiliation to ABC, it and KNOE-TV carried selected NBC programs during the hours when their primary networks (CBS in KNOE's case) were not broadcasting (with some exceptions), but never the full NBC lineup. KLAA debuted on October 6, 1974, giving southern Arkansas and northeastern Louisiana full service from all "Big Three" networks for the first time ever.^[6] Today, channel 39 is occupied by KMCT-TV, a religious station, and that station now occupies KUZN/KYAY/KLAA/KARD's former studios.

On December 6, 1981, KLAA became an ABC affiliate, while KTVE retook the NBC affiliation that it held in the 1950s and 1960s.^[7] In December 1982, the station changed its calls to KARD, with the station manager citing the call sign change a reflection on the station's progress at the time.^[8] In 1984, KARD's era of local ownership came to end when it was purchased by Woods Communications, owned by Charles Woods of Alabama. It began airing Fox programming late at night in 1987 and in the same year was the first station in the Monroe area (and one of the first in Louisiana) to broadcast in stereo. In addition to KARD's secondary Fox affiliation, starting in 1991, Foxnet was available for cable subscribers in Monroe. In 1994, it dropped ABC to take Fox full-time, due to Fox picking up NFL football that season, and it was the first station in the nation to switch from a Big Three network to Fox during the U.S. television network affiliate switches of 1994, doing so April 17 that year.^[9] This left the Monroe market without an ABC affiliate until December 1998, when KAQY signed on. Between then, ABC programming was available on local cable systems via Alexandria's KLAX-TV and Shreveport's KTBS-TV. In 1993, Woods sold the station to Banam Broadcasting, a subsidiary of BankAmerica. Banam sold KARD along with three of its stations (WTVW in Evansville, Indiana, KDEB in Springfield, Missouri, and KLBK-TV in Lubbock, Texas) to Petracom Broadcasting in 1995. In 1998, Petracom sold KARD to Quorum Broadcasting, which was absorbed by Nexstar in 2003.

In 2002, Piedmont Television, then-owner of KTVE, took over KARD's operations under a local marketing agreement. However, the two stations' operations were consolidated in KARD's former studio in West Monroe. In addition to a common sales and promotions staff, the KTVE news department produces KARD's newscast. Piedmont's control of the duopoly officially came to an end on January 16, 2008 when KTVE was sold to Mission Broadcasting. This resulted in Nexstar, already the owner of KARD, taking over control of KTVE under a local sales agreement (LSA). The station no longer has a separate website. Its old address, kard.com, redirects to www.myarklamiss.com, a site powered by both KARD and its sister station KTVE.

Digital television

Digital channels

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:

KARD is simulcast on KTVE's digital subchannel 10.2 in standard definition.

In March 2009, KARD and KTVE informed the Federal Communications Commission that they needed to end analog operations sooner than June 12, 2009 (the earliest they could do so is April 16). KARD stated that a transmitter tube failed, bringing power down to 50%; KTVE claimed that its power was at 40%. Used parts were deemed unreliable, and staffers had travel 50 miles to the transmitter from the studio, two to three visits per week were required to monitor the analog facilities, according to Nexstar.^[11] The FCC denied the request based on the fact that they are the last two analog channels in the market.^[12]

Analog-to-digital conversion

KARD shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 14, on April 16, 2009. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 36.^[13] Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 14.

Programming

In addition to Fox programming, KARD-TV airs syndicated programs such as The People's Court, Judge Mathis, Family Feud, Steve Harvey (TV series), and Friends. KARD airs two hours of weekday newscasts--a morning newscast at 7 AM and two half-hour weeknight newscasts at 5:30 PM and 9 PM.

References

External links

• Official website
• FCC coverage map
• Query the FCC's TV station database for KARD
• BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on KARD-TV