KTKA-TV (channel 49) is a television station in Topeka, Kansas, United States, affiliated with ABC and The CW Plus. It is owned by Vaughan Media, LLC, which maintains joint sales and shared services agreements (JSA/SSA) with Nexstar Media Group, owner of NBC affiliate KSNT (channel 27) and low-power, Class A Fox affiliate KTMJ-CD (channel 43), for the provision of certain services. The stations share studios on Northwest 25th Street (US 24), near the unincorporated community of Kiro (with a Topeka mailing address), while KTKA-TV's transmitter is located along Southwest West Union Road west of Topeka.
History
Early history
The station first signed on the air on June 20, 1983, as KLDH (for original owner Larry D. Hudson), becoming the third commercial television station in the Topeka market. Channel 49 has been an ABC affiliate since its sign-on; prior to its debut, ABC programming had been relegated in the market to off-hours clearances on CBS affiliate WIBW-TV (channel 13) and NBC affiliate KTSB (channel 27, now KSNT); WIBW had been a secondary ABC affiliate since it signed on in November 1953, with ABC network programs that the station was unable to clear airing on KTSB beginning with its sign-on in December 1967.
The inception of channel 49 made Topeka one of the last television markets in the United States to have full-time affiliations from all three networks. Most of the area, however, could receive the entire ABC schedule from KMBC-TV in Kansas City or KQTV in St. Joseph. Both KMBC-TV and KQTV decently covered Topeka over the air, and KMBC-TV continued to be available on cable in Topeka for decades until Cox Communications removed the station from its lineup on March 6, 2013, due to frequent programming blackouts from enforcement of syndication exclusivity and network non-duplication rules. Channel 49 originally operated from studio facilities located in downtown Topeka at 101 SE Monroe.
However, KLDH was plagued by technical problems during its first two years on-air, including a transmitter fire that knocked it off the air for a few weeks, as well as a total collapse of its transmitter tower due to heavy ice build-up shortly thereafter. To relay its signal to the entire market, KLDH operated translator station K58CX in Lawrence; this repeater ceased operations in 1999. In May 1986, the station was purchased out of bankruptcy by Northeast Kansas Broadcast Services (owned by Berl Brechner), who changed the call letters to the current KTKA-TV on December 7, 1987. That year, the station also signed on a second translator, K39BR in Junction City; that repeater operated until 2009.
In 1998, KTKA relocated its operations to new studio facilities located on 21st Street and Chelsea Drive in the southwestern side of the city; the following year, the station began sharing the facility with radio station KTPK (106.9 FM), which Brechner purchased through his Kansas Capital Broadcasting subsidiary in 1997.
On August 29, 2005, Northeast Kansas Broadcast Services, which had previously sold KTPK to JMJ Broadcasting Co. for $5.7 million earlier that year, sold KTKA-TV to Lawrence-based Free State Communications—an indirect subsidiary of the World Company, publisher of the Lawrence Journal-World and then-owner of Lawrence cable television provider Sunflower Broadband—for $6.2 million. Among those who considered buying KTKA included Bill Kurtis (who began his career in television journalism as a reporter for competitor WIBW-TV in the 1960s), who at the time of Northeast Kansas Broadcast Services' sale of the station, was considering purchasing a broadcast television outlet in Topeka; Kurtis, upon further consideration, decided against purchasing channel 49. On July 26, 2008, Free State Communications announced that it was putting KTKA up for sale; the company reversed course in October of that year, pulling KTKA from the sale block, unable to find any buyers.