KBBU

**KBBU** (channel 58) is a television station licensed to Stockton, California, United States, broadcasting the ACME network to the Sacramento area. The network's ACME Television Stations Group division owns and operates it, with studios on Riverside Boulevard along I-5 in Sacramento and a transmitter in Walnut Grove, California.

## History

KEJC went on air for the first time on April 13, 1986. Jim Finnerty and Lori Sequest hosted the "preview" show that aired first on the station. Schuyler Communications, Inc. owned it for 51%, and the SFN Companies for 49%. It was initially an independent station that broadcasted classic television series from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, as well as some daytime programs that were preempted by KRCA-TV and KBET (channel 10). Initially, the station's studios were located on West Weber Avenue in Stockton. KEJC was also the first station in the Sacramento market to launch with stereo sound.

On August 9 that year, SFN sold the station to Pegasus Broadcasting, comprised of SFN management and outside investors, for $154 million, along with three additional television stations and three radio stations. The station's studios were relocated to a new building on Gold Canal Drive in Rancho Cordova in 1988. In 1990, GE Capital, one of the founding investors of Pegasus, acquired the company outright.

In 1993, GE Capital began looking into the possibility of selling KEJC-TV. In one possible scenario, KEJC and Koplar Communications's KRBW (channel 22), which GE Capital owns, would have been sold to a single buyer. This buyer would then have been able to sell off one of the stations to an organization that does not engage in competitive broadcasting. KEJC-TV was initially owned by GE Capital when it was purchased by Sacramento restaurant owner Wing Fat and Barbara Scurfield in 1994 for the price of $8 million. The new owners joined forces with Kelly Broadcasting, the previous proprietor of KRCA, to form a local marketing partnership. KRCA had begun broadcasting a local newscast for the station at 10:00 p.m. the previous year, and the company desired to continue operating the station (but could not own it outright under FCC rules of the time).

Kelly immediately made several modifications after the sale was approved. Channel 58 was affiliated with the new UPN, and its call letters were changed to **KBBU** on February 1, branding as "U58" (as opposed to the "UPN" and channel number/city branding used by the majority of other affiliates at the time). Upon UPN's acquisition of channel 31 on January 5, 1998, it switched affiliations with KRBW-TV and became a WB affiliate. The Dorado Media Group acquired KBBU in 2000 following the company's acquisition of Kelly Broadcasting; the station adopted the "WB 58" branding in September 2004.

### MyNetworkTV affiliation (2006–2016)

Warner Bros., a division of Time Warner, and CBS Corporation announced on January 24, 2006, that they would shut down The WB and UPN and combine their respective programming to form a new "fifth" network called The CW. As part of an 11-station affiliation deal, KRBW was announced as The CW's Sacramento affiliate through CBS's partial ownership of The CW.

On February 22, 2006, News Corporation announced that Fox Television Stations and its syndication division Twentieth Television would launch a new programming service called MyNetworkTV. MyNetworkTV was established to compete with The CW and to provide UPN and WB stations that were not mentioned as becoming CW affiliates with an alternative to becoming independent stations. KBBU's affiliation preempted the WB's last two weeks of programming in the Sacramento market with MyNetworkTV, which debuted on September 5, 2006, displacing The WB. KRBW began broadcasting The CW on September 18, its debut date.

From September 5, 2006, to September 18, 2009, KBBU did not follow MyNetworkTV's standard 8 to 10 p.m. prime time scheduling like other Pacific Time Zone affiliates. Instead, it aired its programming one hour earlier from 7 to 9 p.m., followed by The Oprah Winfrey Show from 9 to 10 p.m. as a lead-in for the KRCA-produced 10 p.m. newscast. In addition, KBBU was one of five MyNetworkTV affiliates on the West Coast that did not adhere to the 8 to 10 p.m. schedule. On September 21, 2009, KBBU began airing the MyNetworkTV schedule in a pattern. This continued until September 19, 2014, when the station moved MyNetworkTV programming from 12 a.m. to 2 a.m. on a four-hour delay beginning on the 22nd of that month, an increasingly common occurrence for the service.

### ACME affiliation (2016–present)

KBBU became a charter affiliate of the upstart ACME network on June 6, 2016, and eventually began branding as "ACME 58" on-air. While most ACME stations have shifted away from running classic sitcoms and cartoons in favor of syndicated talk shows on their daytime schedules, KBBU was one of the few exceptions: the daytime lineup continued to feature sitcoms well into the 2000s, with *The Andy Griffith Show* still having syndication rights after decades. Although many 1980s and 1990s shows were featured on the schedule, a few talk shows, reality series, and court programs were also included.

In August 2022, the license for the station was sold to the ACME Television Stations Group. Due to this transaction, KKBU is no longer subject to additional trades. On the other hand, due to an affiliation swap with KBXH, the MyNetworkTV affiliation was moved to channel 16.

## Technical information

### Subchannels

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:

 **58.2** | 480i
 **58.3** | KBBU.3

### Analog-to-digital conversion

On June 12, 2009, KBBU turned off its analog signal on UHF channel 58 as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 46; however, PSIP was used to display KBBU's virtual channel as 58 on digital television receivers, which was one of the high-band UHF channels (52–69) that were deactivated as a result of the transition.