KBSI

Template:Short description Template:Use mdy dates {{#invoke:other uses|otheruses}} Template:Infobox television station

KBSI (channel 23) is a television station licensed to Cape Girardeau, Missouri, United States, serving as the Fox affiliate for Southeastern Missouri, the Purchase area of Western Kentucky, Southern Illinois, and Northwest Tennessee. It is owned by the Community News Media subsidiary of Standard Media alongside Paducah, Kentucky–licensed MyNetworkTV affiliate WDKA (channel 49). The two stations share studios on Enterprise Street in Cape Girardeau; KBSI's transmitter is located in unincorporated Cape Girardeau County north of the city.

History

The station signed on the air on September 10, 1983, as an independent station and aired an analog signal on UHF channel 23.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The station was originally owned by Cape Girardeau Family Television, Ltd., in turn 51 percent owned by Media Central of Chattanooga, Tennessee. It was not the first independent to operate in the market—two stations broadcast in southern Illinois, and a prior attempt had been made at an independent in Paducah<ref name=TowersOverKY>Template:Cite book</ref>—but it was the first to cover all of it, which was the reason Media Central had been attracted to the area.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Media Central filed for bankruptcy in 1987 to fend off a hostile takeover attempt.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> That same year, despite having passed on the opportunity a year prior,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> KBSI joined Fox on September 7, in part because of the Media Central bankruptcy.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="Sout870816">Template:Cite news</ref> Media Central continued to own the station until a bankruptcy judge approved its acquisition by Engles Communications, owned by David Engles, a former Warner Bros. and NBC radio executive.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Under Engles, KBSI picked up the first season of NYPD Blue when ABC affiliate WSIL-TV refused to air the show.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Engles then sold the station to Max Television (later Max Media Properties) in 1995.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In 1998, Sinclair Broadcast Group acquired most of the Max Media Properties stations, including KBSI; it owned KBSI and later WDKA in Paducah until both were sold to Community News Media for $28 million in a transaction that closed in 2021.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Newscasts

From 2006 to September 30, 2010, NBC affiliate WPSD-TV (owned by the Paxton Media Group) produced a nightly prime time newscast for KBSI through a news share agreement.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> When the WPSD newscast started, KBSI competed with another nightly half-hour newscast at 9 p.m. on the area's low-powered CW affiliates WQTV-LP/WQWQ-LP. That newscast, produced by CBS affiliate KFVS-TV, focused on news from southeastern Missouri and was eventually canceled on July 29, 2007.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

On October 1, 2010, KBSI entered into a new agreement with KFVS to produce the newscast, which expanded to an hour in length. This agreement ended in March 2022 with KFVS moving the newscast to KFVS-DT2. On March 28, 2022, KBSI debuted its own newscast, produced out of Lincoln, Nebraska, at sister station KLKN. The news and weather anchors are based in Lincoln while the reporters work out of the KBSI studios in Cape Girardeau.

Technical information

Subchannels

The station's signal is multiplexed:

citation

CitationClass=web }}</ref>	Channel	Res.	Aspect	Short name	Programming
23.1	720p	16:9	KBSI-DT	Fox
23.2	480i		WDKA-DT	MyNetworkTV in SD (WDKA)
23.3	480i		COMET	Comet
23.4			DEFY	Ion Plus
23.5			BOUNCE	Bounce TV
23.6			SC NEWS	[Blank]

Analog-to-digital conversion

KBSI shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 23, on February 17, 2009, the original target date on which full-power television stations in the United States were to transition from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate (which was later pushed back to June 12, 2009). The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 22,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> using virtual channel 23.

External links

• KBSI "Fox 23"
• WDKA
• KFVS-TV