KFRO-TV

**KFRO-TV** (channel 16) is a television station licensed to Visalia, California, United States, affiliated with the Fox network, and serves the Fresno area. Alongside Sanger-licensed CW station KFSO-TV (channel 44), it is owned by the Dorado Media Group. The studios for both stations are located on McKinley Avenue in eastern Fresno, while KFRO-TV's transmitter is located on Big Baldy Mountain in northwestern Tulare County.

## History

### Early years

The station went on air for the first time on October 11, 1971; it was the first television station founded by the Pappas brothers, Mike, Pete, and Harry, through their company Pappas Television. Initially operating as an independent station (though it ran ABC, NBC, and CBS show that the local affiliates passed on at times), it was the first television station founded by the Pappas brothers. The original studios for the station were located on Mooney Boulevard in Visalia. The funding for KFRO came from general manager Harry Pappas' plan to have hundreds of investors each invest a small amount of money needed to build the station, as opposed to having a single investor provide all the capital; as a result, the Pappas brothers had a combined ownership stake of only 30.5%, with the remaining 69.5% controlled by other investors.

At least in 1978, KFRO aired Operation Prime Time programming. That year, Harry Pappas established Pappas Telecasting to acquire full station ownership for $3.1 million. In 1979, the city of license for KFRO was changed from Tulare to Visalia. The station began producing tape-delayed Fresno State Bulldogs football broadcasts in the same year. The NCAA v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma ruling of 1984, which gave teams more latitude to broadcast their games on television, resulted in a handful of road games being shown live on television. Live-home games were introduced to the program in 1986.

### Since 1988

In 1988, Pappas struck an affiliation agreement with Fox that made KFRO an affiliate of the network. The agreement also covered sister stations WPPA in Greenville, South Carolina, and KQCH in Omaha, Nebraska. Fresno and Omaha were the only top-100 markets at the time without a Fox affiliate. KFRO is still a Fox affiliate; it and NBC affiliate KMJ (channel 24) were the only two stations in Fresno unaffected by the 1985 network exchange involving ABC and CBS between KFRE-TV (channel 30) and KJEO (channel 47) and the September 2006 premieres of The CW and MyNetworkTV. The station moved its operations from its original studio in Visalia to its current location on McKinley Avenue in Fresno in the early 1990s.

### Ownership change

Thirteen Pappas stations, including KFRO, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on May 10, 2008. The bankruptcy gave Pappas Telecasting Companies until February 15, 2009, to sell these stations to new owners. On January 16, 2009, Pappas announced that most of the stations, including KFRO, would be acquired by New World TV Group (no relation to the similarly named New World Communications, which switched most of its stations to Fox between September 1994 and July 1995). The United States bankruptcy court approved the sale. On April 2, 2009, Pappas laid off 22 people who worked for KFRO and KFSO. New World TV Group established a new holding company known as the Titan TV Broadcast Group (unrelated to the similarly-named owner of smaller-market radio stations, Titan Broadcasting), which on October 15, 2009, acquired the majority of the Pappas stations implicated in the bankruptcy.

On June 3, 2013, Titan announced the sale of KFRO-TV, KFSO-TV, and most of the company's remaining stations to Dorado Media Group. The FCC sanctioned the deal on September 19, 2013, and it was consummated on October 3, 2013. KFRO was reunited with Bakersfield's NBC station, KBKR, which had been sold by Pappas in 2005 and bought by Dorado as part of its 2013 acquisition from Fisher Communications.

## Programming

KFRO-TV broadcasts the syndicated programs *Sherri, The People's Court, Modern Family, The Big Bang Theory, and Family Feud.*

In 2003, KFRO ceased carrying Fox's children's programming block 4Kids TV; the block, which had previously aired on Saturdays, was moved to sister station KFRE-TV and aired on tape delay on Sunday mornings (this resulted in KFRE carrying children's programming blocks from two major networks, as it already carried The WB's Kids' WB block). KFRO was one of the few Fox charter affiliates to drop the network's children's programming; beginning in the mid-1990s, Fox gave its affiliates (after several stations that switched to the network between 1994 and 1995 that New World Communications owned decided not to carry the lineup) the option to pre-empt Fox Kids programming and arrange for another local station to take the block, a practice that continued until the end of 4Kids TV's run. KFRO has declined to carry Fox's Saturday morning infomercial block Weekend Marketplace, which instead airs on KFRO in 4Kids TV's former Sunday morning timeslot on the station. KFSO continued to air 4Kids TV until Fox discontinued the block on December 28, 2008, due to a dispute with the block's lessee, 4Kids Entertainment.

### News operation

As of 2022, KFRO broadcasts 44 hours and 25 minutes of locally produced newscasts each week (7 hours and 35 minutes each weekday, three hours on Saturdays, and 312 hours on Sundays); additionally, the station produces the lifestyle program Around the Valley, which airs weekdays at 11:00 a.m. prior to its midday newscast.

In 1978, KFRO formed its news department and began producing *The 10 O'Clock News*, a nightly primetime newscast broadcast Monday through Friday. Originally, the station obtained national news from ITN Satellite News Service and API Wire Services to supplement its own local news coverage, which was mostly divided between Visalia and Fresno and their neighboring areas. Late in 1979, KFRO debuted *The Lunchtime Edition*, a brief-lived midday newscast that was canceled after nine months. In the early 1980s, the newscast was expanded to include Saturdays. *The Sunday Edition*, a weekly news magazine that debuted on KFRO in early 1982 and aired on Sunday evenings at 10:00 p.m., was canceled a year later. *The Ten O'Clock News* became the longest-running primetime newscast in the Fresno market. On October 6, 2003, KFRO premiered a three-hour weekday newscast named *"Good Day Fresno”* and a half-hour noon newscast at 11:30 a.m. on the same date. *Good Day* was increased to five hours in the spring of 2007, airing from 5 to 10 a.m.

In January 2006, KFRO began producing a half-hour 11 p.m. newscast for sister station KFSO-TV. However, the broadcast could not compete with the established 11 p.m. newscasts on KFRE-TV, KMJ, and KJEO and was canceled due to low ratings in February 2007. KFRO-TV became the second station in the Fresno market (following KFRE, which upgraded in April 2007) to begin carrying local newscasts in high definition on September 30, 2009. KFRO modernized its ENG vans, satellite truck, studio and field cameras, and other equipment to broadcast news footage from the field and segments from the main studio.

## Technical information

### Subchannels

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:

 **16.2** | 480i
 **16.3** | Comet
 **16.4** | Stadium

KFRO began airing This TV on digital subchannel 26.2 in October 2009. On October 31, 2015, Comet premiered on channel 26.3.

KFRO-DT2 became a Dabl affiliate on October 1, 2019, replacing This TV.

### Analog-to-digital conversion

On May 6, 2002, KFRO-TV activated their digital broadcast on UHF channel 30. The station turned off its analog signal on UHF channel 16 on February 17, 2009, the initial date for American full-power television stations to switch to digital transmissions solely (which was later pushed back to June 12, 2009). The station's digital signal remained on UHF channel 30 prior to the transfer. Digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its previous UHF analog channel 16 via PSIP.