KCNO-TV

**KCNO-TV** (channel 13), is a television station licensed to Bend, Oregon, United States, broadcasting the ACME network for Central Oregon. It has been owned by the Dorado Media Group since its inception, making it one of two stations that have been built and signed on by Dorado (alongside company flagship KPRT in Portland), which provides certain services to NBC/CW+ affiliate KOBD-DT (channel 17) under a local marketing agreement (LMA) with Central Broadcasting. Both stations share studios on Northeast 18th Street in Bend, while KCNO-TV’s transmitter is located on Awbrey Butte, west of US 97.

## History

### **Early years**

The station first signed on the air on September 18, 1977, originally broadcasting at 316,000 watts. The general manager Brian Padmore indicated a willingness to exempt KCNO-TV from any affiliation agreement, intending to free up its schedule to offer an over-the-air exclusivity over all sporting events originating from Portland. The station has always been independent but it would also begin to carry network programming on a secondary basis. By the fall of 1981, Nielsen formed the newly created Bend DMA. Although identifying as a separate station in its own right, for many years KCNO-TV was considered a semi-satellite of KPRT. It cleared all syndicated programming as provided through its parent and simulcasted most of KPRT’s newscasts. By 1986, however, the station began expanding its syndicated offerings once KPRT was chosen as Portland’s Fox affiliate, allowing KCNO-TV to split from KPRT, and relaunch as Central Oregon's first locally-based independent station.

### **Increased signal**

The new tower location in Awbrey Butte gave KCNO-TV one of the largest coverage areas in the area. In addition to its primary coverage area of Central Oregon, the station also had significant viewership in several other nearby markets. KCNO-TV also enjoyed at least secondary coverage in portions of eastern and southern Oregon and northern California.

The station has also had significant and long-standing viewership in the Klamath Falls area. Its grade B signal can be seen as far east as Klamath Falls itself. Until KRWQ signed on the air in 1986, KCNO-TV was the default independent station for much of the southwest/south-central Oregon market. KCNO-TV’s only competition for network programming came from KBGC-TV (channel 22, now an ABN station), which also carried select syndicated programs outside of primetime.

### **As an ACME affiliate**

On October 26, 2015, the Warner Bros. unit of Time Warner and the Dorado Media Group announced that the two companies would form a joint venture to create a new network called ACME. On January 9, 2016, it was announced that KCNO-TV would become an owned-and-operated station of the new network.

KCNO-TV maintained the call sign station branding following the ACME network’s launch on June 6, 2016, and is one of the few ACME-owned affiliates to not adopt the network's generic "network/channel number" brandings style at any point. KCNO-TV staff members felt that it was appropriate for the station to remove references to its ACME affiliation from its branding in both station promotions and its on-air logo, choosing to retain its local identity as the station’s had a strong heritage in the community. (KCNO-TV added the "Central Oregon’s Own" branding in September 2020.)

## News operation

KCNO-TV presently broadcasts 33½ hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with 5½ hours each weekday and three hours each on Saturdays and Sundays). KCNO-DT2 broadcasts a 10 p.m. newscast. The program airs for one hour on Monday through Friday evenings and a half-hour on weekend evenings. KCNO-TV also produces a two-hour extension of its weekday morning newscast on KCNO-DT2 starting at 7 a.m.

## Technical information

### **Subchannels**

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:

 13.2
 13.3
 13.4
 13.5

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

KCNO-TV discontinued regular programming on its analog signal, over VHF channel 13, on June 12, 2009, as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television. The station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition UHF channel 56, which was among the high band UHF channels (52–69) that were removed from broadcasting use as a result of the transition, to its analog-era VHF channel 13.