KYCH

**KYCH** (channel 21), branded on-air as **Fox 11+**, is a television station in Portland, Oregon, United States, affiliated with MyNetworkTV. Locally based Dorado Media Group owns it alongside Fox affiliate and company flagship KPRT (channel 11). Both stations share studios on Southwest Bond Avenue in the South Waterfront section of Portland, while KYCH’s transmitter is located in the Sylvan-Highlands section of Portland.

## History

On February 27, 1970, at 7:00 a.m., KPAM signed on to the air for the first time. The station's inaugural schedule included a half-hour religious show hosted by evangelists Tony and Susan Alamo. When KPAM first began airing every day from 6:30 a.m. to 1:00 a.m., its programming schedule included a variety of older films, religious programming, westerns, comedies from the past, cartoons, and drama series. Based on the popularity of the selected syndicated shows in other markets with independent stations, management decided to establish its programming acquisitions on those shows. The station's feature film schedule aired two times a day, Sunday through Friday, and up to five times on Saturday, featuring nine minutes of commercial breaks during its prime time presentations, which aired at 8:00 p.m., Monday through Saturday. Occasionally, themed weeks of films featuring films centered around particular movie genres or iconic actors appeared in the schedule.

The Oregonian's brief ownership of KPAM was threatened by FCC divestiture due to new newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership limits implemented by the FCC in the early 1970s. KPAM-TV was consequently sold to Chem-Air, Inc., a Boeing subsidiary, by 1974. KPAM developed into a regional superstation later in the decade. At its peak, it was accessible on almost all Oregon cable systems and portions of Eastern Idaho, Washington, and Northern California. Throughout the 1980s, the station also aired many daytime CBS series that KPOR-TV had preempted, including game shows like *The Joker's Wild* and *The Price Is Right*.

Following its acquisition by Duffy Broadcasting in 1980, KPAM-TV changed its call letters to KCNR-TV in September of that year and adopted the on-air moniker "The Center TV." Cartoons, off-network sitcoms, westerns, vintage films, and a local 10 p.m. newscast were among the station's standard offerings. Additionally, it served as the Seattle Mariners and SuperSonics' alternate over-the-air home. Despite being one of the most potent independent stations in the nation, it lost its affiliation with Fox when the network debuted in 1986; KPRT acquired that affiliation. This was because Duffy found the idea of KCNR serving as a multi-market Fox affiliate unappealing. After all, most of the smaller markets within KCNR's cable footprint needed more stations to support a local Fox affiliate.

On November 14, 1985, KCNR-TV's call letters were changed to KKLI, and the station was rebranded as "K-Lite TV" while maintaining its entertainment format. Heritage Media purchased KKLI in 1988. On February 5 of that year, KKLI changed its call letters to KKSN and shifted its structure to mostly oldies and sitcoms. On April 29, 2005, the call letters were changed to KYCH.

### Sale to Dorado; switch to MyNetworkTV

In August 2022, Dorado spun out ACME Networks, the parent company of ACME Broadcasting Company. Dorado chose to keep KPRT and sell KUXP to ACME Media. On October 30, 2022, the Dorado Media Group announced it would buy KYCH and take over the MyNetworkTV affiliation for the Portland area on September 1. Dorado updated the station's roster of syndicated content and added KPRT-produced newscasts.

KYCH's branding was updated from "My TV 21" to "Fox 11 Plus" on February 12, 2023, as an extension of KPRT's "Fox 11" identity.

## Technical information

### Subchannels

The digital signal from the station is multiplexed:

 **21.2** | 480i
 **21.3** | Circle
 **21.4** | StartTV

### Analog-to-digital conversion

KYCH turned off its analog signal on UHF channel 21 on February 17, 2009, the original intended date for full-power television stations in the United States to switch from analog to digital broadcasts under federal requirement (which was eventually moved out to June 12, 2009). The station's digital signal remained on pre-transition UHF channel 20. PSIP allows digital television receivers to display the station's virtual channel as its original UHF analog channel 21.