KAMC

KAMC
Lubbock, Texas
United States
Branding KAMC ABC (general)
KAMC News (newscasts)
Slogan Local. Live. Late Breaking.
Channels Digital: 27 (UHF)
Virtual: 28 (PSIP)
Subchannels 28.1 ABC
Affiliations ABC (1969–present)
Owner Mission Broadcasting
(Mission Broadcasting, Inc.)
Operator Nexstar Broadcasting Group
First air date November 11, 1968 (1968-11-11)
Call letters' meaning station calls are pronounced Kay-Mack (KA-MC)
Sister station(s) KLBK-TV
Former callsigns KSEL-TV (1968–1975)
KMCC (1975–1979)
Former channel number(s) Analog:
28 (UHF, 1968–2009)
Former affiliations independent (1968–1969)
Transmitter power 1000 kW
Height 219.4 m
Facility ID 40820
Transmitter coordinates 33°31′33.8″N 101°52′8.6″W / 33.526056°N 101.869056°W / 33.526056; -101.869056Coordinates: 33°31′33.8″N 101°52′8.6″W / 33.526056°N 101.869056°W / 33.526056; -101.869056
Licensing authority FCC
Public license information: Profile
CDBS
Website www.everythinglubbock.com

KAMC is the ABC network affiliated television station serving the Lubbock, Texas metropolitan area. Its studios and transmitter are located on South University Avenue (Loop 289) in Lubbock, both of which are shared with KLBK. Syndicated programs on this station includes: Entertainment Tonight, Dr. Phil, Live! with Kelly and Michael, Rachael Ray, and The Meredith Vieira Show.

KAMC is licensed to broadcast digitally on UHF channel 27.

KAMC was acquired by Mission Broadcasting in late 2003 as part of Nexstar's acquisition of Quorum Broadcasting; most Mission stations have local marketing agreements with Nexstar stations in the same market; in this case, it is KLBK in Lubbock.

History

KAMC first began broadcasting in the fall of 1968 as KSEL-TV. Originally an independent station, KSEL soon began broadcasting some ABC programming which was previously split between CBS affiliate KLBK and NBC affiliate KCBD. After a few months of sharing secondary affiliations with the local CBS and NBC affiliates, KSEL became the primary and exclusive ABC affiliate for the Lubbock market in the fall of 1969. A few years later (1975 after sale of sister stations KSEL (AM) (now KJTV (AM) and KSEL-FM (now KLBB-FM) channel 28 changed its call letters to KMCC, then later (1979) to the current KAMC. From 1979 to 1986, KAMC applied the former KMCC call sign to a satellite station on Channel 12 in Clovis, New Mexico that is currently operating as KVIH-TV, now a satellite of Amarillo, Texas ABC affiliate KVII-TV. KMCC is now the callsign for the unrelated NTSC channel 34 and ATSC channel 32 in Laughlin, Nevada.

KSEL-TV entered as a competitor to established KLBK (as noted above, a full-time CBS and part-time ABC affiliate) and NBC affiliate KCBD, and recent sign-on (and, with regards to signal, weaker) channel 34, KKBC-TV (later KMXN-TV). KKBC operated from 1967 to 1973. A new channel 34, KJAA, signed on in 1981; it is now Fox affiliate KJTV-TV.

KSEL drew resources from sister stations KSEL-AM (now KJTV), 950 AM, and KSEL-FM (now KLBB-FM), 93.7 FM. The stations had unified sales staffs (spots were sold on both radio and TV by one sales force, which often voiced spots or appeared in commercials or as on camera talent, i.e., Bill Maddox was sales manager and late news anchor). All stations were owned by R.B. Mac McAlister, his son Bill, and the department heads at the stations (A.C. Ace Wimberly, Bill Maddox, Lew Dee, Bill Baker, etc.).

KSEL filled air time with many movies, each accompanied by an on camera host. The Late Lew Dee (1935-2011), also known as Lewis T. D'Elia, hosted a movie show, in addition to co-hosting This, That and the Other on radio and KSEL-TV. The news department gathered and delivered news for all three stations.

The old KAMC studios, which later housed the transmitter. Since the analog to digital TV conversion this site has not been used by KAMC.

The radio stations were sold to other interests in 1974-75, and moved out of the shared building at 1201 84th Street in south Lubbock (in picture), though the FM transmitter remained at this site until sold to the Ramar interests (and moved to new KJTV-TV tower in 2009). KSEL-TV changed its call sign to KMCC and invested in better equipment (RCA TCR-100 video cartridge player) and programming, including M*A*S*H reruns. Between growth of ABC's ratings in the late 1970s, an improving news operation, and the syndicated product, the station became a real player in the early 1980s.

A satellite station was added in 1979. KFDW-TV, channel 12 in Clovis, New Mexico, had been a satellite station of KFDA-TV in Amarillo for many years, under the same ownership (once the Bass Brothers) from 1966 to 1976 and under Mel Wheeler from 1976 to 1979. The McAlisters changed KFDW's call sign to KAMC, which triggered a complaint from NBC affiliate KAMR-TV, which was carried on cable systems in Clovis. The call signs were exchanged: the repeater in Clovis took the KMCC calls, while channel 28 in Lubbock became KAMC. The station is now KVIH-TV, a satellite station of KVII-TV; it was sold in 1986 as part of KAMC's financial restructuring (as former news anchor Jeff Klotzman, now at KJTV-TV,later wrote). [1]

Bill McAlister, who served as Lubbock's mayor in the early 1980s, died in 1983. Eight years later, in an effort to make the station more profitable, McAlister's son Greg took over the station before selling it in 1999. Klotzman, who spent much of the late 1970s and almost all of the 1980s as an anchor/reporter, wrote in 2000 that KAMC's position as a distant #3 (behind KCBD and KLBK) and "low prices for cotton and other agricultural commodities, which were Lubbock's economic base" as some of the primary factors hurting the station's financial situation. [2]

Former KAMC meteorologist, Matt Laubhan shocked his girlfriend of two and a half years, KAMC morning anchor Emily Leonard, in an on-air proposition to wed, clips of which first surfaced on various websites in early October, 2008.

Digital television

Digital channels

Channel Video Aspect PSIP Short Name Programming[3]
28.1 1080i 16:9 KAMC-DT Main KAMC programming / ABC

Analog-to-digital conversion

KAMC shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 28, 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). The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 27.[4] Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 28.

News operation

KAMC's news coverage centers around the city of Lubbock and across the South Plains region of West Texas. Newscasts air weekday mornings from 5:00 - 7:00 a.m., 11:00 a.m. and weeknights at 5:00, 6:00 and 10:00 p.m. Saturday night newscasts air at 6:00 and 10:00 p.m. Only one newscast airs on Sunday nights at 10:00 p.m. In July, 2013 the station became the fourth news operation in Lubbock to begin broadcasting all newscasts in high definition. On that day the station debuted its newly constructed sets, updated branding and image and a new state of the art weather graphics system from WSI. In April 2014 the station debuted a new half-hour midday newscast that airs weekday mornings at 11:00 a.m.

References

  1. ↑ Jeffery A. Klotzman, "The History of McAlister Television Enterprises of Lubbock, Texas," M.A. thesis, Texas Tech University, August 2000, p. 77, https://repositories.tdl.org/ttu-ir/bitstream/handle/2346/9709/31295016546797.pdf?sequence=1.
  2. ↑ Klotzman, pp. 83, 97-9, 5-6.
  3. ↑ RabbitEars TV Query for KAMC
  4. ↑ "DTV Tentative Channel Designations for the First and the Second Rounds" (PDF). Retrieved 2012-03-24.

External links

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