KTWO-TV

ABC affiliate in Casper, Wyoming

KTWO TV (channel 2) is a television station in Casper, Wyoming, United States, affiliated with ABC. It is owned by Vision Alaska LLC, which maintains a shared services agreement (SSA) with Coastal Television Broadcasting Company LLC, owner of Fox affiliate KFNB (channel 20), for the provision of certain services. Coastal also operates CBS affiliate KGWC TV (channel 14) under a separate SSA with owner Big Horn Television LLC. The stations share studios on Skyview Drive in Casper, while KTWO TV's transmitter is located atop Casper Mountain. KTWO TV is also available on a network of UHF and VHF translators across the state. It is also available on the second digital subchannel of KGWC and its satellites and translators; as well as the second digital subchannels of KFNB satellites KFNE and KFNR (but not KFNB itself). Under previous owner Equity Broadcasting, it had also been available on a free to air satellite uplink (as with all of Equity's stations, hubbed out of Little Rock, Arkansas, and sent to the transmitter via FTA satellite) until Equity went bankrupt and the satellite was sold. KKTQ LD (channel 16) in Cheyenne operates as a semi satellite of KTWO TV.

KTWO TV signed on the air on March 1, 1957; it was owned by Harriscope Inc., and was a primary NBC affiliate with a secondary ABC affiliation. A secondary CBS affiliation was added in 1959, after the shutdown of previous CBS affiliate KSPR TV (channel 6); KTWO's owners also purchased KSPR radio (then at 1470 AM; now at 1030 AM), a longtime CBS Radio affiliate, and changed its call sign to KTWO to match its new television sister. In March 1978, after 21 years as a primary NBC affiliate, ABC announced that KTWO TV would become a primary affiliate effective September 5; this was around the same time that ABC became the nation's highest rated network. The station lost CBS to KCWY TV (channel 14, now KGWC TV) when it signed on in 1980. In 1984, another new station, KXWY TV (channel 20), began carrying NBC programming not cleared by KTWO. In early 1986, KTWO agreed to once again become a primary NBC affiliate effective September 1; the ABC affiliation went to KXWY (now KFNB). Later that year, Harriscope sold KTWO TV, along with KULR TV in Billings, Montana, to Dix Communications for $12.2 million. On August 28, 1987, Dix signed on KKTU (channel 33) as a satellite of KTWO TV. In 1994, Dix sold KTWO TV and KKTU, along with KAAL TV in Austin, Minnesota, to Eastern Broadcasting for $13 million. For a time starting in 1995, KTWO and KKTU had a secondary affiliation with The WB. Eastern sold its stations — KTWO TV and KKTU, KAAL TV, and KODE TV in Joplin, Missouri — to Grapevine Communications for $40 million in 1997; Grapevine merged with GOCOM Communications to form GOCOM Holdings in 1999. Equity Broadcasting bought KTWO TV and KKTU for $3.5 million in 2001.

On September 1, 2003, NBC moved its affiliation from KTWO to KCWY (channel 13). Equity had known at the time it acquired the station that the NBC affiliation would expire; in preparation for the move, on June 27, 2003, KTWO TV announced that it had agreed to affiliate with ABC, and that the new affiliation would not take effect until the expiration of ABC's contract with KFNB on June 5, 2004. Coinciding with the affiliation switch, on March 1, 2004, K TWO TV of Wyoming, controlled by Cheryl Kaupp, began operating KTWO TV under a local marketing agreement, and that October filed to purchase the station outright from Equity Broadcasting for $1.7 million. Kaupp was the daughter of Marvin Gussman, whose Wyomedia Corporation owned KFNB; Wyomedia's general manager, Mark Nalbone, served as a consultant to KTWO and owned a thirty percent interest in Mark III Media, which was in the process of acquiring KGWC TV, though in December 2005 he told Television Business Report that he did not speak for KTWO in retransmission consent negotiations. Silverton completed the purchase on May 31, 2006. Equity Broadcasting retained ownership of channel 33 in Cheyenne, which had changed its call sign to KDEV in 2005, and allowed KTWO to continue to operate it; KTWO later moved its ABC programming in Cheyenne to a low powered repeater, KKTU LP (channel 40), after KDEV dropped ABC in favor of programming from RTN. On June 24, 2008, KKTU LP changed its call letters to KDEV LP, after KDEV changed its call sign to KQCK. In September 2010, KDEV dropped all ABC programming; in 2011, KTWO TV signed on a new low powered satellite in Cheyenne, K16JM (channel 16), which changed its call sign to KKTQ LD on June 5, 2013. KKTQ is simulcast on KLWY's second digital subchannel, and airs its own station identifications and commercials. In July 2005, KTWO was added to the Dish Network line up of channels for customers in the Casper/Riverton designated market area. On January 1, 2012, KTWO, KFNB, and KGWC were dropped from Dish Network after failing to come to an agreement on a new contract. The signals were restored by Dish Network on May 1, 2012.

Silverton Broadcasting agreed to sell KTWO TV to Legacy Broadcasting on February 8, 2018. The deal would have created a duopoly with KFNB, which Legacy would have concurrently acquired from Wyomedia Corporation; in its filing with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Legacy stated that the duopoly was permissible because KFNB was the fifth ranked station in the Casper–Riverton market. The sale was canceled in October 2018. On October 8, 2019, Silverton Broadcasting announced that it would sell KTWO TV and KKTQ LD to Vision Wyoming, a subsidiary of Vision Alaska (run by Stephen Brissette); the sale was concurrent with Big Horn Television's purchase of KGWC TV and Coastal Television Broadcasting Company's purchase of KFNB and KLWY. Coastal Television (run by Bill Fielder) and Vision Alaska already jointly operated stations in Alaska. Shortly afterwards, the news department was significantly downsized, and weekend newscasts were replaced by programming from Michigan based NewsNet. On July 3, KTWO radio reported that KTWO TV's morning newscast, Good Morning Wyoming, would be replaced by a new morning show on July 6, and that the station's other newscasts would incorporate NewsNet content, with local reports primarily seen at the start of newscasts. Coastal Television's Alaska stations had moved to a NewsNet based model the preceding April; in a June 28 interview with KTWO radio, Fielder said that the shift to NewsNet had been accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic. Coastal later blamed the cutbacks on difficulties in achieving the economies of scale needed to maintain a full newsroom in rural areas, and in July 2021 cited this as the reason it was merging with Waypoint Media, another small rural broadcaster.

City of license Callsign Channel ERP HAAT Facility ID Transmitter coordinates Owner Big Piney, etc. 7 0.012 kW 69482 Upper Green TV System Cody 30 1.2 kW 51607 Vision Alaska Freedom Etna 30 0.072 kW 38919 Lower Star Valley TV Association Lander 22 0.94 kW 18289 Vision Alaska Pinedale, etc. 16 0.262 kW 63587 Sublette CountyShoshoni 36 0.3 kW 56603 Central Wyoming College 35 0.88 kW 18290 Vision Alaska