KCIT

The station first signed on the air on October 24, 1982 as KJTV. Not counting satellite stations, it was the fourth commercial television station — after NBC affiliate KAMR-TV (channel 4), which signed on as KGNC-TV on March 18, 1953, CBS affiliate KFDA-TV (channel 10), which signed on April 4, 1953, and ABC affiliate KVII-TV (channel 7), which signed on the air on December 21, 1957 — and the first commercial UHF outlet to sign on in the Amarillo market. The station was founded and owned by Ray Moran, who, in March 1981, purchased the construction permit for the UHF channel 14 allocation that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) originally granted to Amarillo Family Television (owned by Gary L. Acker, who operated several Christian radio stations across Texas, Louisiana, Florida and Missouri through various subsidiaries) in a $624,000 swap for the license of Roswell, New Mexico radio station KRIZ (now KBCQ-FM).[3][4][5]

Operating as an independent station, channel 14 maintained a programming inventory typical of a non-network-affiliated outlet, consisting of first-run and off-network sitcoms and drama series, classic off-network westerns (with films from the genre airing on Friday nights under the sponsored Western Theater umbrella), feature films in prime time and on weekend afternoons (with those airing on Monday through Thursday evenings presented under the Star Movie umbrella) and cartoons. KJTV also carried business news programming from the Financial News Network each weekday afternoon until 1985.

Channel 14, however, housed older transmission equipment and was fairly prone to technical problems during its run as an independent. The station's transmitter failed on its first night of operation, and did not return to the air until the following morning. Its programming was fed to the Amarillo facility from an off-air receiver relayed by microwave link from sister station KJAA in Lubbock (now also a Fox affiliate, which assumed the KJTV call letters in 1986); this method of relaying the signal produced a blurred feed. Most of its transmission equipment, while new, was also of low quality. Commercials aired during program breaks were played on ³⁄₄-inch (1.9 cm) tape decks that suffered from repeated picture glitches at the beginning and end of each ad. The picture format was also substandard, with RF interference being prevalent over the audio feed as the equipment was housed in a room next to the station's transmission tower (located along US 87/287 at KVII's original transmitter facility), which housed an older model RCA transmitter dish that produced a low-power, 128-kW signal that barely covered the entire Amarillo metropolitan area.

In November 1984, Moran sold the station to Ralph C. Wilson Industries Inc. (owned by Detroit businessman and Buffalo Bills founder Ralph Wilson) for $1 million; the sale received FCC approval on December 11, 1984.[6] Wilson heavily invested in the station, constructing a state-of-the-art studio and office facility on South Fillmore Street in downtown Amarillo, and a 1,522-foot (464 m) transmitter tower north of Amarillo that produced a more powerful signal that reached much of the Texas Panhandle. Subsequently, on August 11, 1985, the station changed its call letters to KCIT, a phoneticism for "See It"). Around that time, the station changed its on-air branding to "TV-14 KCIT". During its later years as an independent station and its early years as a Fox affiliate, KJTV/KCIT heavily relied on sponsorships from Amarillo area businesses for its programming, including among others, local car dealerships Don Judd Dodge (now defunct) and John Chandler Ford (now Tri-State Ford), and furniture retailer Heath Furniture (which would later be purchased by Richmond, Virginia-based Heilig-Meyers in 1997).[7][8][9]

In the summer of 1986, News Corporation approached Wilson Industries about turning KCIT into a charter affiliate of the Fox Broadcasting Company. Channel 14 joined Fox when the network inaugurated programming on October 9, 1986. Though it was technically a network affiliate, KCIT continued to be programmed as a de facto independent station as Fox's initial programming lineup consisted solely of a late-night talk show, The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers. Even after its programming expanded with the launch of a three-hour Sunday night lineup in April 1987, Fox aired its prime time programming exclusively on weekends until September 1989, when it began a five-year expansion towards a nightly prime time schedule. Until Fox began airing prime time programs on all seven nights of the week in January 1993, KCIT continued to air a movie at 7:00 p.m. on nights when the network did not offer any programming.

On January 18, 1991, Wilson announced it would sell KCIT to the KCIT Acquisition Co. subsidiary of Wichita Falls-based Epic Broadcasting Corporation – owned by Peter D'Acosta, the Martha Steed Lyne Management Trust, Charles R. Hart and eventual Texas House Representative F. Lanham Lyne Jr. (the latter two of whom owned Wichita Falls Fox affiliate KJTL) – for $2.3 million in cash to be paid upon closing; the sale was approved by the FCC on March 11, 1991.[10][11][12][13] In the summer of 1991, the station retired the "TV-14" branding in favor of identifying exclusively as "Fox 14," a brand that KCIT had been using on an alternating basis since 1988; with the change, the station also implemented a logo similar to that used by KJTL — then Epic's flagship station — that remained in use until 1994.[14] In September 1993, KCIT began maintaining a secondary affiliation with the Prime Time Entertainment Network (PTEN), carrying first-run drama series from the programming service in late night until September 1995.[15]

In October 1994, channel 14 gained a sister station when Epic Broadcasting signed on low-power independent station K65GD (channel 65, now a MyNetworkTV affiliate KCPN-LP on UHF channel 33). In May 1995, Epic Broadcasting sold KCIT, K65GD, KJTL and its Wichita Falls sister station K35BO (now MyNetworkTV affiliate KJBO-LP) to New York City-based Wicks Broadcast Group – then a primarily radio-based broadcasting division of private equity firm The Wicks Group, which intended the purchases to be a stepping stone to build a group of middle-market television stations complementary to its nine existing radio properties – for $14 million; the sale was finalized on August 31, 1995.[16][17][18]

On January 6, 1999, Wicks announced that it would sell KCIT and KCPN-LP to Bexley, Ohio-based Mission Broadcasting for $13 million, as part of a four-station transaction that also included KJTL and KJBO-LP. The acquisition of KJTL and KJBO was among the first station acquisitions for Mission (part of a four-station transaction that also involved the purchases of KCIT and KCPN-LP); developed as an arm of its creditor Bastet Broadcasting, the group had formed partnerships with the Nexstar Broadcasting Group and Quorum Broadcasting to operate many of Mission's stations in markets that did not have enough television stations to allow a legal duopoly between two commercial outlets. In the Amarillo market, Boston-based Quorum had announced its intent to acquire KAMR-TV from Wichita Falls-based Cannan Communications the day before the Mission purchase was announced (on January 5), in a $64-million, three-station deal. Quorum took over the operations of KCIT and KCPN on June 1, 1999, under joint sales and shared services agreements with Mission, under which KAMR would handle news production, engineering, security and certain other services as well as handling advertising sales for the two stations.[19][20][21][22][23]

Even though it was the senior partner in the outsourcing agreement, KAMR subsequently vacated its longtime studio facility on North Polk and Northeast 24th Streets, and relocated its operations seven miles (11 km) south to KCIT/KCPN's Fillmore Street facility.[24] On September 12, 2003, Irving, Texas-based Nexstar Broadcasting Group announced it would acquire the Quorum stations and all of its associated JSA/SSAs for $230 million; when the sale was finalized on December 31, 2003, Mission transferred the SSA involving KCIT and KCPN to Nexstar in conjunction with that group's acquisition of KAMR.[25][26][27]

On February 25, 2013, the over-the-air signals of KCIT, KAMR and KCPN were knocked off the air for more than 18 hours as a result of electricity fluctuations that shut off cooling pumps on the stations' transmitter tower off of US 287 during a major blizzard that crippled much of the Texas Panhandle. Snow drifts of up to four feet (1.2 m) prevented station employees from accessing the site until the morning of February 26, in order to restore power to the transmitters. All three stations remained available to Suddenlink systems in the area through a direct fiber feed.[28]

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:

KCIT launched a digital subchannel on virtual channel 14.2 in 2010, which originally served as an affiliate of This TV. On June 15, 2016, Nexstar Broadcasting Group announced that it had entered into an agreement with Katz Broadcasting to affiliate 81 stations owned and/or operated by the group—including KAMR-TV and KCIT—with one or more of Katz's four digital multicast networks, Escape, Laff, Grit and Bounce TV (the latter of which is owned by Bounce Media LLC, whose COO Jonathan Katz serves as president/CEO of Katz Broadcasting).[30]

As part of the agreement, on August 25 of that year, KCIT launched three digital subchannels to serve as affiliates of three of the Katz networks: the station began carrying Grit on virtual channel 14.2 (displacing This TV, which did not obtain a replacement affiliate in the market and is now only available in fringe areas of far eastern New Mexico via repeaters of Albuquerque NBC affiliate KOB), Escape on channel 14.3 and Bounce TV on channel 14.4 (which also temporarily remained available on the main channel of low-power station KAUO-LD [channel 15] until January 2017); the Laff affiliation rights for the Amarillo market instead went to KAMR, which launched a tertiary subchannel on the same date.

KCIT shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 14, on February 17, 2009, the original target date in 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).[31][32] The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 15. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 14.

Since September 1994, KCIT has served as the television partner of the Dallas Cowboys for the Amarillo market. Channel 14 currently holds the local rights to air preseason games and various team-related programs during the regular season from the team's syndication service (including the Cowboys Postgame Show, Special Edition with Jerry Jones and the head coach's weekly analysis program The Jason Garrett Show, along with specials such as the Making of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders Calendar and postseason team reviews). Most Cowboys telecasts carried on KCIT are those carried by Fox, which through the network's contract with the National Football League (NFL), holds primary broadcast rights to the National Football Conference (NFC). In addition to carrying Fox-televised games involving in-conference opponents, since 2014, Cowboys games carried on the station also include certain cross-flexed games against opponents in the American Football Conference (AFC) that were originally scheduled to air on CBS.