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Branding KGET-TV 17 (general)
17 News (newscasts)
Bakersfield's CW (on DT2)
Telemundo 17.3 (on DT3) Slogan In the Spirit of the Golden Empire Channels Digital: 25 (UHF)
Virtual: 17 (PSIP) Subchannels 17.1 NBC
17.2 CW+
17.3 Telemundo
17.4 Laff Owner Nexstar Media Group
(Nexstar Broadcasting, Inc.) First air date November 8, 1959; 57 years ago (1959-11-08) | ||
KGET-TV, virtual channel 17 (UHF digital channel 25), is a NBC-affiliated television station located in Bakersfield, California, United States. Owned by Nexstar Media Group, the station is operated as part of a duopoly with low-power Telemundo affiliate KKEY-LP (channel 13). KGET maintains studios located on L Street in downtown Bakersfield, while it maintains transmitter facilities located west of Breckenridge Mountain.
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History
Founded by businessman Ed Urner, channel 17 first broadcast on November 8, 1959 as KLYD, an ABC affiliate. The station originally operated from studios located on Eye Street in Bakersfield. It was co-owned with KLYD-AM 1350 (now KLHC), and is one of very few TV stations to be started by a daytime-only radio station. The call letters changed to KJTV in 1969. In October of that year, Urner sold the station to Atlantic States Industries. In 1974, KJTV swapped affiliations with KBAK-TV, becoming a CBS affiliate.
George N. Gillett Jr.'s Gillett Broadcasting bought the station from ASI Communications in 1978. The station's call letters changed again to KPWR-TV on September 27, 1978, when it increased its power to 5,000,000 watts. The Ackerley Group purchased the station in 1983. On February 1, 1984, the station changed its calls to the present day "KGET-TV", coinciding with an affiliation swap with KERO-TV to become Bakersfield's NBC affiliate a month later, an affiliation which continues to the present day. It is one of a handful of stations in the United States to have held a primary affiliation with all three of the "Big Three" television networks. It was sold to Clear Channel Communications in 2001.
KGET stands for "Kern Golden Empire Television," a moniker coined by the station's longtime vice president and general manager, Ray Watson, who was elected to the Kern County Board of Supervisors in 2002. The current KGET Manager is Derek Jeffery.
On April 20, 2007, Clear Channel entered into an agreement to sell its entire television stations group to Newport Television, a broadcasting holding company controlled by Providence Equity Partners. However, Providence Equity Partners owns a 19 percent share of the Spanish-language media company Univision, the owner of MyNetworkTV affiliate KUVI-TV. In addition, with only five full-power stations, Bakersfield does not have enough to legally support a co-owned duopoly operation. As a result, the Federal Communications Commission granted conditional approval of the sale, provided that Providence Equity Partners divest either KGET or its stake in Univision as soon as the deal was finalized. That happened on March 14, 2008.
In May 2008, Newport Television agreed to sell KGET and five other stations to High Plains Broadcasting, Inc. due to the aforementioned ownership conflict. The sale closed on September 15, 2008; Newport continued to operate KGET under a shared services agreement. Newport agreed to sell KGET and sister Telemundo affiliate KKEY-LP, as well as KGPE in Fresno, California, to Nexstar Broadcasting Group on November 5, 2012. The FCC approved the sale on January 23, 2013; and the sale was completed on February 19.
Digital channels
The station's digital signal is multiplexed:
Analog-to-digital conversion
KGET-TV discontinued regular programming on its analog signal, over UHF channel 17, on June 12, 2009, the official date in which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 25. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 17.