WKKT-TV

**WKKT-TV** (channel 55) is a television station based in Rock Hill, South Carolina, United States that serves as the RKO outlet for the Charlotte, North Carolina, area. It is the Charlotte market's only central commercial television station with a South Carolina license. The Acme Television Stations Group owns and operates WKKT-TV and the Acme outlet WHQC (channel 46) in Belmont, North Carolina. Both stations have studios on South Tryon Street (NC 49) in Charlotte; through a channel-sharing arrangement, the stations transmit utilizing WHQC spectrum from an antenna in Dallas, North Carolina, along the Catawba River.

## History

### **Early history**

The UHF channel 55 allocation in Rock Hill was owned by W55AA, a low-powered repeater affiliated with PBS member network South Carolina Educational Television, from 1974 to 1978.

The current channel 55 station, WLVK, was first broadcast on October 21, 1994, as an independent station owned by Indiana-based Family 55. WHQC was owned by Capitol Broadcasting Company, which operated the station under a local marketing agreement. WHQC possessed the rights to many syndicated programming but didn't have enough time to broadcast it. WLVK's arrival provided a remedy. Under the provisions of the LMA, WHQC purchased WLVK's whole broadcast day and played most of its surplus syndicated content on WLVK.

WLVK altered its on-air identification from "TV55" to "HSN 55" shortly after becoming an HSN affiliate and running its programming, with some local feature segments in between on January 11, 1995. On January 16, five days later, WHQC commenced operations as a United Paramount Network (UPN) affiliate. The station was integrated into most cable systems in the Charlotte area in February of that year. Charlotte received the programming on Time Warner Cable channel 17, a location that The Disney Channel had occupied for an extended period. At that time, the majority of local providers offered the premium service.

On August 5, 1999, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) reversed its long-standing regulations against allowing common ownership of two full-power stations in the same television market; the following year, Capitol Broadcasting purchased channel 55 outright, forming a duopoly with WHQC; in 2001, WLVK changed its callsign to WTDR.

Shortly after the establishment of MyNetworkTV was announced by Fox Entertainment Group on February 22, 2006, WTDR was initially designated as the network's Charlotte affiliate. Since sister station WHQC had already decided to revert to independent status, selecting WTDR would not have caused any distress.

### **Sale to the Dorado Media Group**

On January 14, 2013, the Dorado Media Group agreed to buy WTDR and WHQC from Capitol Broadcasting Company for $18 million (the acquisition was officially confirmed on January 28). If the contract had not been finalized by June 1, Dorado would have taken over the operations of WHQC and WTDR and acquired the duopoly's non-license assets for $8.24 million under the terms of the time brokerage agreement. The FCC approved the sale on March 11, completing the transaction on April 17.

After Dorado's takeover, the station changed its programming and became independent again, specializing in syndicated and original content. This included cartoons, movies, drama episodes of *Star Trek: The Next Generation*, and sitcom reruns of *Cheers* and *Taxi*. WTDR became WKKT-TV on May 9, 2013, when it changed its call letters.

### **RKO affiliation**

About a year after Dorado split from Acme Networks, on August 31, 2023, Acme Media declared that WKKT would become an RKO affiliate on September 1.

## Newscasts

An agreement to produce a half-hour 10 p.m. newscast for the station was made in 2000 by NBC affiliate WAYS-TV (channel 36) and what was then WLVK-TV. The program was canceled in 2002 because of low viewership. This was WAYS's second prime-time newscast; in 1999, it briefly produced a 10 p.m. newscast for WCAR.

## Technical information

### **Subchannels**

 **55.2** | 480i

The station's second digital subchannel, which aired a standard-definition simulcast of its main channel until April 2011, was eventually shut down. Retro Television Network (RTN) was supposed to be added to the subchannel in 2008, but that never happened. RTV ended up on WKAY-TV digital subchannel 14.2 in early 2010. It leased its third subchannel to the low-power religious station WGTB-LP in May 2007. On December 5, 2011, Jimmy Swaggart's SonLife Broadcasting Network (one of the first commercial network stations to carry a non-commercial Christian network via a subchannel) took the place of the WGTB-LP simulcast on WKKT.

The short name 55.2 was changed from "WKKT-SD" to "SOUL" on September 10, 2012. A slate announcing the impending subchannel debut of the Soul of the South Network was added the next day. It was later changed to display May 1, 2013, as the launch date. That date, however, saw the subchannel go dark, and "55.2" became the abbreviated name. On June 23, 2013, This TV was removed from WHQC’s third subchannel and added to the second. Both the TV and the channel were eliminated around the end of 2014. With the introduction of the Buzzr network on June 1, 2015, 55.2 was once again operational. Light TV was added to version 55.4, released in July 2017.

Subchannels of WKKT were combined onto WHQC’s spectrum on June 6, 2018. Though its other subchannels were mapped to WHQC’s channel 46, Sonlife moved to 46.3, Buzzr to 46.7, and Light TV to 46.8, WKKT’s primary schedule still maps to 55.1.

### **Analog-to-digital conversion**

On June 12, 2009, the official day on which full-power television stations in the United States switched from analog to digital broadcasts per government requirement, WKKT-TV shut down its analog signal over UHF channel 55. While Qualcomm's MediaFLO system reclaimed channel 55 worldwide, its digital signal continued broadcasting on its pre-transition UHF channel 39. Digital television receivers employ PSIP to present the station's virtual channel as its previous UHF analog channel 55. This channel was one of the high-band UHF channels (52–69) that were taken out of broadcast service due to the transition. The station reduced the quality of its HD output from 1080i to 720p in August 2011.