# 17 Equity stations go dark on June 12, including all Fox affiliates



## FTA Michael (Jul 21, 2002)

Multichannel News reports that 35 full-power stations will go dark on June 12, when all such stations are supposed to go digital. Of those, 17 are owned by Equity Media, although at least some of them have already been sold to new owners. (MN says 18 but lists 17, someone probably overlooked KARZ's change of ownership.) Once the change of ownership paperwork goes through the FCC, the new owners will probably relaunch their stations, although probably not via satellite.

The FCC had a news conference to announce this list. "I am concerned whenever any broadcast station goes dark or shuts down its operation in terms of localism and diversity and competition, said FCC acting chairman Michael Copps. "In the face of a disappearance of another newsoom, that is a net loss for the American people."

The FCC also said it would try to move some of these to subchannels of nearby digital stations.

Equity stations going dark include:
KBTZ, KLMN, KMMF, WMQF: Fox
KCBU, KEGS, KQUP, KWWF: AMG
KKYK, WNGS: this
KPBI, KWBM: MyNet
KUOK, WNYI: Univision
KUTF: TeleFutura
KTUW, WBIF: ??

Also of note: KARZ, now owned by Nexstar, is also on the list.

Full story: http://www.multichannel.com/article..._June_12.php?nid=2226&source=link&rid=5207347

PDF station list: http://www.broadcastingcable.com/file/3310-SilentStations.pdf


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## Jon Ellis (Dec 28, 2003)

I don't think the satellite feeds will actually go away on June 12, since they could still be used to feed cable systems and the subchannels the FCC talked about. When the FCC talks about "going dark" they are only talking about the broadcast signal. Who knows, Equity could just choose to shut down operations completely, but they don't have to.

KTUW Scottsbluff has actually been silent since April 2008, according to a January filing with the FCC, because of loss of their transmitter site. They had been included in the ID for KQDK-LP/KQCK-DT.

It's ironic that some of the commissioners expressed concerns about the loss of localism or a newsroom, since none of the Equity stations has any local programming (most don't even run local commercials), let alone news.

They also incorrectly list many of the stations as being RTN affiliates.

Our government at work.


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## FTA Michael (Jul 21, 2002)

Jon Ellis said:


> They also incorrectly list many of the stations as being RTN affiliates.
> 
> Our government at work.


To be fair, the FCC was probably working from the stations' paperwork, and those channels were probably still RTN at the time they filed their "going dark" paperwork.

And ditto on the Equity "localism" irony. 

Will the channels stay on FTA satellite? That's the big question. Considering that the primary reason they were there was that Equity was sending programming from Arkansas TO the local stations, that reason is gone when new owners take over or the local transmitter stops sending. I'd love to see as many stations stay up as long as possible, but I can't say that I'm optimistic about seeing football games on G18 this fall.


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## Raymie (Mar 31, 2007)

KXVA, WLNY, WMTJ, and KCWK were pulled from the silent list.

KXVA already had a working digital from February, WLNY was one of the first to flash-cut to digital, WMTJ fixed their issue, and KCWK was already dead from Pappas's chapter 11.


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