KSNB TV: История телеканала из Йорка, Небраска.

NBC affiliate in York, Nebraska

KSNB TV (channel 4) is a television station licensed to York, Nebraska, United States, serving southeastern and central Nebraska as an affiliate of NBC. It is owned by Gray Television alongside CBS affiliates KOLN/KGIN (channels 10 and 11) in Lincoln and Grand Island, and CW+ affiliate KCWH LD (channel 18) in Lincoln. KSNB TV's transmitter is located near Beaver Crossing, Nebraska. Its news operations are primarily based at a studio located north of Hastings on US 281, with a secondary news bureau and sales office on West State Street in Grand Island. Master control and some internal operations are based at KOLN's facilities on North 40th Street in Lincoln. The KSNB TV signal reaches Lincoln; in the Tri Cities area of the market, KSNB TV is broadcast as a subchannel of KGIN. Channel 4 in central Nebraska was originally allocated to Superior at the request of Bi States Company, owner of the Kearney based Nebraska Television Network (NTV) of ABC affiliates, and began operation as KHTL TV in October 1965 as a rebroadcaster for NTV. The call letters were changed to KSNB TV in 1974; in the late 1980s and early 1990s, translators were set up in Beatrice and Lincoln, though NTV never was added to cable systems in Lincoln, where KOLN and Omaha stations dominated viewing and Tri Cities stations like NTV were not seen. After NTV was sold to Pappas Telecasting in 1996, KSNB TV was switched from ABC to simulcasting Fox affiliate KTVG TV (channel 17) in Grand Island, with the two stations becoming known as "Fox 4 & 17". Because KSNB TV's signal overlapped with Omaha Fox affiliate KPTM, which Pappas also owned, the license was held by Colins Broadcasting Corporation, with Pappas providing programming. KSNB TV was added to Lincoln cable systems for the first time in 2003 because, unlike KPTM, it carried select UPN programs. In November 2009, after Pappas launched KFXL TV as the Fox affiliate in Lincoln, it terminated its agreement with Colins, and KSNB TV left the air. After only sporadically broadcasting, Gray Television acquired KSNB TV under a failing station waiver in 2013. Initially, KSNB TV broadcast the MyNetworkTV and local programming from "10/11 Central Nebraska", which had been the secondary subchannel of KOLN and KGIN. However, when Gray acquired Hoak Media in 2014 but could not acquire Hoak owned KHAS TV, the NBC affiliate in Hastings, KSNB TV assumed its NBC affiliation and news operation. KSNB TV also replaced Omaha NBC affiliate WOWT on Lincoln cable, whereas KHAS TV had never been broadcast there. In 2022, as part of the rebuild of KOLN's Beaver Crossing tower, KSNB TV changed its city of license from Superior to York and switched to broadcasting on the UHF band, improving coverage.

In 1960, Bi States Company, owner of KHOL TV in Kearney and KHPL TV in Hayes Center, proposed the addition of channel 4 as an allotment of to Superior, to the southeast of Kearney. In November 1962, the FCC affirmed the assignment of channel 4, as well as channel 8 in Albion. Formal applications were then made for Superior and Albion in November 1963, with construction permits issued in February 1964 for both stations. Albion was built first, signing on as KHQL TV on December 3, 1964. KHTL TV in Superior followed on October 1, 1965. The four stations then began branding as the Nebraska Television Network. In 1974, Bi States sold the stations to NTV Enterprises for $1.9 million. On June 3, the new owners changed channel 4's call letters to KSNB TV, as its signal reached parts of Kansas in addition to Nebraska. Joseph Amaturo bought the NTV stations in 1979 in an $8.5 million deal funded by the sale of KQTV in St. Joseph, Missouri. KCNA, the former KHQL TV, was split off from NTV on November 1, 1983, to become an independent station under the call letters KBGT TV; Amaturo Group sold KSNB TV, KHGI TV, and KWNB TV to Gordon Broadcasting for $10 million in 1985; the sale separated the NTV stations from KBGT, which was separately sold a year later to Citadel Communications and became KCAN, a satellite of Sioux City, Iowa's KCAU TV. Citadel later moved KCAN to Lincoln as a stand alone station, KLKN. Gordon Broadcasting planned to sell the NTV stations to Sterling Communications for $11 million in 1989. However, the Sterling sale was unable to be completed, and in May, ownership reverted to Joseph Amaturo under a court appointed receivership. The next month, Chicago based Heller Financial sued Gordon Broadcasting; Gordon had borrowed $7 million from Heller to purchase the stations and still owed the entire principal and $1.6 million in interest on the loan. Joseph Girard was appointed successor receiver in 1991. During this time, NTV was put on the market; a bid by Pappas Telecasting in 1990 received court approval, but the company failed to obtain financing, while television meteorologist John Coleman later sought to purchase the stations. Under Girard, who operated NTV through Girard Communications, KHGI TV, KWNB TV, and KSNB TV were sold to Fant Broadcasting, owner of WNAL TV in Gadsden, Alabama, for $2 million in 1993. The Fant purchase took a year to come together because the receivership status required the company to buy NTV's assets on an individual basis. On April 1, 1994, Fant took over the operations of Hill Broadcasting Company's KTVG (channel 17), an upstart independent station in Grand Island in the process of joining Fox, under a local marketing agreement (LMA). KTVG then became a Fox affiliate; the NTV ABC stations took on a secondary Fox affiliation to carry the network's NFL coverage. In July 1995, Fant announced a deal to sell KHGI, KWNB, and KSNB to Blackstar, LLC, a minority controlled company in which nonvoting equity interests were held by Fox Television Stations and Silver King Communications, for $13 million. Blackstar was a vehicle for acquiring stations in medium to small markets and switching them from their existing networks to Fox, and the company stated its intent to switch the NTV stations to Fox if the deal was approved. When the Blackstar sale agreement was filed with the FCC, Citadel lodged a protest, feeling that Fant Broadcasting had attempted to block its Lincoln proposal by applying for Albion; company president Anthony Fant denied this, noting that his main goal for seeking the Albion channel was to restore the coverage lost a decade prior and "try to put that part of the NTV puzzle back together". Citadel's objection, as well as two federal government shutdowns, delayed FCC approval; Fant walked away from the deal in May 1996 because of continuing delays. KSNB TV gained two translators as part of NTV expansion plans first floated in the late 1980s, at Beatrice and Lincoln. Channel 22 in Lincoln, K22CX, began broadcasting in 1994. This service fulfilled a longstanding ambition of the network to expand to Lincoln and Lancaster County, which had nearly twice as many TV households as the Tri Cities area. However, the Lincoln translator attracted little interest locally, and NTV was not added on cable there.

In July 1996, Fant agreed to sell KSNB TV, KHGI TV, and KWNB TV to Pappas Telecasting for $12.75 million. Pappas immediately assumed control of the NTV stations through a local marketing agreement that began on July 1 and, that September, switched KSNB, as well as the Lincoln and Beatrice translators, to rebroadcasting KTVG and Fox; KHGI and KWNB remained with ABC. In 1997, Pappas sold its right to acquire KSNB to Colins Broadcasting Company for $10 (with Colins paying $333,333 to Fant), as channel 4's signal overlapped with Pappas's Omaha station, KPTM; Pappas also entered into an LMA with Colins to continue operating KSNB. The sales of KHGI and KWNB to Pappas and KSNB to Colins were approved by the FCC on February 17, 1999, and completed on May 24. KSNB TV and KTVG dropped a secondary affiliation with UPN in January 1998; however, the network's programming returned to the stations in 2000. This was noteworthy because Time Warner Cable, which ran the cable system in Lincoln, added KSNB to its lineup in early 2003 expressly because of its carriage of select UPN programs; previously, the KSNB translators were the only way of receiving the network in town. UPN programming was removed again in September 2005, when KOLN and KGIN launched a UPN affiliated subchannel.

On June 12, 2009, Pappas converted KCWL TV, an affiliate of The CW it managed in Lincoln, to Fox Nebraska as KFXL TV. This fulfilled an ambition of Pappas that dated to the late 1990s. Additionally, Fox Nebraska was added to subchannels of the NTV stations at Kearney and Hayes Center. This came months after a web page briefly indicated that the Fox affiliation would move to subchannels of KOLN and KGIN, a page labeled by a station official as a "leftover piece of an experimental project". That same day, KSNB TV converted to exclusively digital broadcasting on the national transition date, returning from ultra high frequency (UHF) channel 34 to channel 4. With Fox network coverage shifted to KFXL and the NTV transmitters, the operating agreements Pappas held to run KSNB TV and KTVG TV ended. The time brokerage agreement between Pappas Telecasting and Colins Broadcasting Corporation expired on November 30, 2009; that station, along with the two translators in Lincoln owned by Colins, shut down on December 1. (KSNB TV's Beatrice translator, K17CI, had already left the air on June 12, 2009.) KTVG TV followed suit on April 5, 2010. To keep the license active, Colins was approved to broadcast a temporary, 225 watt signal at low power in 2010; in its filing seeking the facility, it noted that it had been in litigation with Pappas for years over the use of the KSNB TV transmitter site, which Pappas continued to own, and that it was affected by the bankruptcy of its principal owner. The station intermittently operated for some time, carrying 3ABN programming. On June 23, 2011, Colins Broadcasting filed an application with the FCC to increase the effective radiated power of the station to 23.5 kW and move the transmitter site to the existing tower of FM radio station KTMX, near York, roughly 50 mile (80 km) northeast of the original site and closer to Lincoln.

On November 21, 2012, Gray Television, the owner of KOLN/KGIN, announced it would acquire KSNB TV and its translators in Lincoln for $1.25 million. The Lincoln–Hastings–Kearney market has only five full power stations (KOLN/KGIN and KHGI/KWNB are both counted as single stations for ratings and regulatory purposes), not enough to legally permit a duopoly. Colins and Gray sought a failing station waiver to allow the acquisition to move forward. The station deal included Lincoln translators K18CD and KWAZ LP. After the FCC granted the assignment of the license to Gray, the sale was officially completed on February 25. On April 1, 2013, the station took the MyNetworkTV affiliation previously held by the second digital subchannels of both KOLN and KGIN under the moniker "10/11 Central Nebraska". 10/11 Central Nebraska also offered 5:30 and 9 p. m. newscasts from KOLN/KGIN and several local programs. On September 2, 2013, KSNB became an affiliate of MeTV.

On June 11, 2014, Hastings based KHAS TV (channel 5), the longtime NBC affiliate for the Tri Cities portion of the market, announced on its website and Facebook page that it would leave the air at midnight on June 13. KHAS's owner, Hoak Media, had recently merged with Gray, and original plans called for it to be sold to Excalibur Broadcasting to satisfy duopoly rules. Gray would have operated the station under an LMA. However, increased FCC scrutiny of LMAs prompted Gray to shut down KHAS. On the day KHAS TV shut down, its NBC affiliation, syndicated programming, and news department moved to KSNB TV and the second subchannels of KOLN and KGIN. KSNB's MyNetworkTV and MeTV programming moved to its second subchannel as well as a third digital channel on KOLN and KGIN, with all channels being broadcast in high definition. In August 2014, KSNB replaced Gray owned WOWT in Omaha, long the default NBC affiliate for Lincoln and the eastern portion of the market, on Time Warner Cable's channel 6 position; in 2016, the remaining standard definition channel slot for WOWT was removed. Lincoln area cable systems historically had never carried KHAS TV, instead opting to carry WOWT. After the NBC affiliation change, the station briefly continued to brand as channel 5, inherited from KHAS TV, until changing to "NBC Nebraska" in October.

In January 2020, the KOLN tower near Beaver Crossing collapsed in an ice storm. That August, Gray sought approval to make major upgrades to KSNB TV's transmitter. In filings with the FCC, Gray called the old channel 4 facility "grossly inadequate" and "unsuitable for digital broadcasting when it was installed"; Gray noted that Colins had limited resources and had used older equipment that failed to meet signal coverage expectations. It also proposed to change KSNB TV's city of license from Superior to York and switch the station from low VHF channel 4 to ultra high frequency (UHF) channel 24, with the new transmitter being co sited at the rebuilt Beaver Crossing site. The FCC approved the channel and city of license on August 23, 2021, and Beaver Crossing was reactivated in March 2022 with KSNB TV beginning broadcasting from the new permanent site.

KSNB TV formerly repeated its programming on one translator station, K18CD D, licensed to Lincoln. On October 20, 2017, the broadcast tower for the Lincoln translator collapsed, rendering the translator out of commission. It returned to the air September 26, 2018, as CW affiliate KCWH LD.