KGWC-TV

The Chrysostom Corporation, a group of five investors that included the Casper police chief,[2] was formed in 1977 to apply for a license to build a TV station in Casper. The Federal Communications Commission approved the application on August 31, 1979, and KCWY-TV began broadcasting on August 12, 1980.[3] Channel 14, which has been affiliated with CBS since its launch, was the first new television station to go on the air in Casper since 1957 and marked the first time the city had two competing stations since 1959, when KSPR-TV folded. It also was Wyoming's first UHF television station.[4]

The new channel entered into a tough battle with KTWO-TV, with which it was at a constant disadvantage. In its first ratings book, its Action News newscasts attracted two percent of the audience, compared to 59 percent at KTWO.[5] KTWO trumpeted that it aired all 50 of the top 50 programs in Casper.[6] With the Casper station on air, Chrysostom then began a push to build full-power satellite stations. It filed for the open channel 4 at Lander, which put it in competition with Central Wyoming College's application to build the first educational television station in the state.[7] Channel 5 was found to be available, and both groups received channels. Chrysostom put KOWY on the air in Lander in 1982.[8] At the same time, it bought KTUX-TV, a channel 13 station in Rock Springs that had signed on October 21, 1977 but was silent, and renamed it KWWY-TV.[8] With all three in operation, the group briefly branded as the "Wyoming Action Network".[9]

The Chrysostom Corporation sold KCWY-TV and its satellites to Stauffer Communications of Topeka, Kansas, in 1986 for $3.5 million.[10] At the same time, Stauffer bought KYCU, the CBS affiliate in Cheyenne.[11] On New Year's Day 1987, the stations adopted new call letters of KGWC-TV, KGWL-TV (Lander), and KGWR-TV (Rock Springs), matching the Cheyenne station, which became KGWN-TV, representing the "Great Western Network".[12] (The KCWY call letters later returned to Casper on channel 13.)

Under Stauffer, cuts were made to the operation in Casper to reduce costs, respond to the weak regional economy, and take advantage of synergies with the Cheyenne station. In early 1987, the station ceased producing its own local weathercasts and began taking legislative and state capitol reports from KGWN; it cut its news department from 11 staff down to 8.[12] Even deeper cuts followed the next year, with six of the remaining eight news positions in Casper eliminated.[13] Viewers in Casper now mostly saw KGWN's news.[14]

In 1995, Stauffer sold its holdings to Morris Communications. Morris kept the newspapers and spun off the television stations to Benedek Broadcasting of Rockford, Illinois, for $60 million.[15]

Under Benedek's ownership, KGWC received significant investment and increased the visibility of its product, running billboards and TV advertisements for its newscasts. In December 1996, it poached Rich Bircumshaw from KTWO radio to serve as the news director[16] and KTWO-TV news director Vicki Daniels as assignment editor.[17] It added weekend newscasts and doubled its staff.[16] Benedek leased an electronics store building on CY Avenue to serve as the station's studios and outfitted it with $500,000 in new equipment, improving the technical quality of its broadcasts.[17]

However, the product failed to work for Benedek. The news department's size slowly shrank, and the station had three general managers in less than two years. On June 4, 2000, the entire Casper operation, except for an engineer, was shuttered and the station turned into a satellite of KGWN.[18] The vice president of KGWN-TV noted that, despite good ratings, poor personnel and "management problems" made a closure necessary; Benedek vowed to restore news but did not give a timetable.[19]

After the closure of the KGWC-TV operation, financial problems developed at Benedek. The early 2000s recession dented ad sales and caused the company to be unable to pay interest on a set of bonds issued in 1996, prompting a filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.[20] While many Benedek stations were sold to Gray Television, some—including KGWC-TV and KGWN-TV—went to Chelsey Broadcasting, an affiliate of the Chelsey Capital hedge fund.[21]

In 2003, Chelsey Broadcasting sold the KGWN stations in two separate sales. KGWN and Scottsbluff, Nebraska, satellite KSTF were sold to SagamoreHill Broadcasting, while KGWC, KGWL, and KGWR were sold separately to Mark III Media. Mark Nalbone, who was the general manager of KFNB owner Wyomedia and a consultant to KTWO-TV, was the president of Mark III. The sale languished during a lengthy approval process at the FCC due to several objections, primarily concerning whether the sale would effectively put the stations under common ownership with KFNB and KTWO-TV.[22] However, Mark III programmed KGWC separately from KGWN under a time brokerage agreement.[23]

Mark III resurrected a local newscast in 2004, which shared reporting resources with KTWO-TV. KTWO sponsored an "Anchorman for a Day" contest, which was won by Marvin Nolte, a retired man from Bar Nunn with no previous broadcasting experience; he wound up getting a permanent position after one of KGWC-TV's anchors moved to Cheyenne.[23] However, the program failed to make headway in the ratings against KTWO and KCWY, which had begun a local newscast in 2003, and was canceled on January 3, 2006.[24]

Mark III Media announced the sale of KGWC-TV to Gray Television, owner of KCWY-DT and KGWN, on February 12, 2018.[25] Under the terms of the deal, the KGWC license was to be donated to a non-profit organization and would receive a new call sign and virtual channel number;[26] on March 6, 2018, Gray agreed to donate the license and transmitter to Central Wyoming College, operator of the Wyoming PBS network. Central Wyoming College planned to convert channel 14 into a non-commercial license, with the station being used to broadcast their PBS Kids subchannel full-time in high definition (which is currently unavailable in the area via Wyoming PBS station KPTW).[27][28] CWC reserved the call sign KEWY for the station.[29] Gray would have retained the KGWC call letters and CBS programming, moving them to its low power KCBZ-LD, formerly KSBF-LD (channel 36); per the donation agreement, KCBZ-LD was to have taken the virtual channel 14 PSIP to maintain CBS programming on channel 14.[30] Gray would have acquired and retained KGWR-TV and KGWL-TV.[26] The sale of KGWC-TV and its satellites was canceled in October 2018;[31][32] on January 24, 2019, Gray disclosed that its acquisition of the CBS affiliation had been blocked by the Department of Justice (DOJ).[33] This came primarily because the DOJ regarded KGWL as a Casper station.[34] The FCC took the line that the Gray deal would have had the effect of creating a duopoly between KCWY and KGWL. Casper has only four full-power stations, not enough to legally permit a duopoly.

On October 8, 2019, Mark III Media announced that it would sell KGWC-TV and its satellites to Big Horn Television (run by Michael Hogan); the sale was concurrent with Vision Alaska's purchase of KTWO-TV and Coastal Television Broadcasting Company's purchase of KFNB.[35] The sale was completed on June 1, 2020.[36]