KONG, virtual channel

Virtual channel

In telecommunications, a logical channel number , also known as virtual channel, is a channel designation which differs from that of the actual radio channel on which the signal travels....

 16, is a television station

Television station

A television station is a business, organisation or other such as an amateur television operator that transmits content over terrestrial television. A television transmission can be by analog television signals or, more recently, by digital television. Broadcast television systems standards are...

 based in Seattle, Washington

Seattle, Washington

Seattle is the county seat of King County, Washington. With 608,660 residents as of the 2010 Census, Seattle is the largest city in the Northwestern United States. The Seattle metropolitan area of about 3.4 million inhabitants is the 15th largest metropolitan area in the country...

. Owned by the Belo Corporation, KONG's city of license

City of license

A city of license or community of license, in American and Canadian broadcasting, is the community that a radio station or television station is officially licensed to serve by that country's broadcast regulator....

 is Everett, Washington

Everett, Washington

Everett is the county seat of and the largest city in Snohomish County, Washington, United States. Named for Everett Colby, son of founder Charles L. Colby, it lies north of Seattle. The city had a total population of 103,019 at the 2010 census, making it the 6th largest in the state and...

. It is a sister station

Sister station

In broadcasting, sister stations or sister channels are radio and/or television stations operated by the same ownership....

 to KING-TV

KING-TV

KING-TV, virtual channel 5, is a television station in Seattle, Washington, affiliated with the NBC network. Owned by Belo Corporation, it broadcasts on UHF digital channel 48. Its offices and broadcasting center are located just east of Seattle Center...

, and is run out of KING's studios just east of Seattle Center

Seattle Center

Seattle Center is a park and arts and entertainment center in Seattle, Washington. The campus is the site used in 1962 by the Century 21 Exposition. It is located just north of Belltown in the Lower Queen Anne neighborhood.-Attractions:...

.

KONG broadcasts its digital signal on UHF channel 31, transmitted with 1MW of power from Seattle's Queen Anne Hill, and can be received over much of the Puget Sound

Puget Sound

Puget Sound is a sound in the U.S. state of Washington. It is a complex estuarine system of interconnected marine waterways and basins, with one major and one minor connection to the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the Pacific Ocean — Admiralty Inlet being the major connection and...

 area. Western Washington cable TV systems usually carry KONG on cable channel 6, next to its sister station KING-TV

KING-TV

KING-TV, virtual channel 5, is a television station in Seattle, Washington, affiliated with the NBC network. Owned by Belo Corporation, it broadcasts on UHF digital channel 48. Its offices and broadcasting center are located just east of Seattle Center...

 channel 5. Local-area cable companies, Comcast

Comcast

Comcast Corporation is the largest cable operator, home Internet service provider, and fourth largest home telephone service provider in the United States, providing cable television, broadband Internet, and telephone service to both residential and commercial customers in 39 states and the...

 and Wave Broadband

Wave Broadband

Wave Broadband is a leading provider of cable TV, broadband internet, and telephone services on the West Coast, serving customers in communities in Western Washington State, Oregon, Sacramento, and the San Francisco Bay Area....

 also carry the high-definition

High-definition television

High-definition television is video that has resolution substantially higher than that of traditional television systems . HDTV has one or two million pixels per frame, roughly five times that of SD...

 simulcast

Simulcast

Simulcast, shorthand for "simultaneous broadcast", refers to programs or events broadcast across more than one medium, or more than one service on the same medium, at the same time. For example, Absolute Radio is simulcast on both AM and on satellite radio, and the BBC's Prom concerts are often...

 on channel 106.

The call letters were retained as a tongue-in-cheek

Tongue-in-cheek

Tongue-in-cheek is a phrase used as a figure of speech to imply that a statement or other production is humorously intended and it should not be taken at face value. The facial expression typically indicates that one is joking or making a mental effort. In the past, it may also have indicated...

 reference to King Kong

King Kong

King Kong is a fictional character, a giant movie monster resembling a gorilla, that has appeared in several movies since 1933. These include the groundbreaking 1933 movie, the film remakes of 1976 and 2005, as well as various sequels of the first two films...

, which made both stations easily marketable together.

History

The KONG call sign was first granted on April 6, 1984. When it was applied for, it immediately drew a legal complaint from King Broadcasting against Carl Washington's KONG TV, Inc., the first broadcaster to apply for a license for Everett's channel 16. They had planned to go on the air June 1st of that year, with studios in Everett and a sales office in Seattle, but kept getting bogged down by years of legal challenges from residents on Cougar Mountain

Cougar Mountain

Cougar Mountain Regional Wildland Park is a regional park in King County, Washington, near the towns of Bellevue and Issaquah. The park was established in June 1983 to protect the central core of Cougar Mountain...

 who objected to the Electromagnetic radiation from an additional broadcaster. After the legal challenges to the transmitter, KONG lay dormant until broadcasters came up with innovative ways to program additional stations in their area.



KONG signed on the air July 8, 1997. It was locally owned, but managed by KING-TV (which Belo had just acquired) through a local marketing agreement

Local marketing agreement

In U.S. and Canadian broadcasting, a local marketing agreement is an agreement in which one company agrees to operate a radio or television station owned by another licensee...

. Belo bought Channel 16 outright in 2000, when the Federal Communications Commission

Federal Communications Commission

The Federal Communications Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, created, Congressional statute , and with the majority of its commissioners appointed by the current President. The FCC works towards six goals in the areas of broadband, competition, the spectrum, the...

 began to permit duopolies

Duopoly (broadcasting)

In United States broadcast television and radio, duopoly is a term used to describe a single company which owns two or more stations in the same city or community....

.

Digital television

KING-TV and KONG TV ceased analog broadcasting, effective June 12, 2009, and became digital-only.

In 2009, KONG became one of the first four TV stations in the country to air mobile DTV signals. The OMVC chose KONG and KOMO

KOMO-TV

KOMO-TV, virtual channel 4, is a television station in Seattle, Washington. It is an affiliate of ABC and broadcasts on digital channel 38. KOMO-TV is the flagship station of Fisher Communications, and its studios and offices are co-located with sister radio stations KOMO , KVI , and KPLZ-FM ...

 in Seattle and WPXA and WATL in Atlanta as the stations to beta test the ATSC-M/H

ATSC-M/H

ATSC-M/H is a standard in the USA for mobile digital TV, that allows TV broadcasts to be received by mobile devices.....

 standard, which has since been officially adopted for free-to-air

Free-to-air

Free-to-air describes television and radio services broadcast in clear form, allowing any person with the appropriate receiving equipment to receive the signal and view or listen to the content without requiring a subscription or one-off fee...

 broadcast TV

Digital terrestrial television

Digital terrestrial television is the technological evolution of broadcast television and advance from analog television, which broadcasts land-based signals...

 with clear reception on mobile devices, overcoming many of the defects of the original ATSC

ATSC

ATSC standards are a set of standards developed by the Advanced Television Systems Committee for digital television transmission over terrestrial, cable, and satellite networks....

 standard.

Programming

KONG is independent of any network affiliation. Initially, the station ran a general entertainment format with classic sitcoms, westerns, old movies, cartoons, and a 10 p.m. newscast. Along with the newscast, the station now airs KING-TV's syndicated shows (such as Oprah

The Oprah Winfrey Show

The Oprah Winfrey Show is an American syndicated talk show hosted and produced by its namesake Oprah Winfrey. It ran nationally for 25 seasons beginning in 1986, before concluding in 2011. It is the highest-rated talk show in American television history....

) during primetime or other time slots, giving viewers a second chance to watch the shows that day. It also carries a few syndicated

Television syndication

In broadcasting, syndication is the sale of the right to broadcast radio shows and television shows by multiple radio stations and television stations, without going through a broadcast network, though the process of syndication may conjure up structures like those of a network itself, by its very...

 shows not aired on KING-TV, like Extra, Access Hollywood

Access Hollywood

Access Hollywood is a weekday television entertainment news program covering events and celebrities in the entertainment industry. It was created by former Entertainment Tonight executive producer Jim Van Messel, and is currently directed by Robert Silverstein. In previous years, Doug Dougherty and...

, America's Funniest Home Videos

America's Funniest Home Videos

America's Funniest Home Videos is an American reality television program on ABC in which viewers are able to send in humorous homemade videotapes. The most common videos usually feature slapstick physical comedy arising from incidents, accidents and mishaps...

and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire

Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (US game show)

Who Wants to Be a Millionaire is an American television quiz show which offers a maximum prize of $1,000,000 for correctly answering 14 consecutive multiple-choice questions of random difficulty. Until 2010, the format required contestants to correctly answer 15 consecutive questions of increasing...

.

KONG also broadcasts NBC

NBC

The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...

 network programs, including Meet the Press

Meet the Press

Meet the Press is a weekly American television news/interview program produced by NBC. It is the longest-running television series in American broadcasting history, despite bearing little resemblance to the original format of the program seen in its television debut on November 6, 1947. It has been...

and Early Today

Early Today

Early Today is an American morning news programme airing on the NBC television network. The program goes out live at 4:00am Eastern Time Zone for those few stations which start their local news at 4:30am, and is transmitted in a continuous half-hour tape delay loop until 10:00am ET, when Today...

. KING also produces extra newscasts for KONG including an extension of the KING5 Morning News and a 10pm newscast.

Because of its relationship with KING, KONG can air NBC programming that may get displaced by other programming such as local events, or by local interest. An example of this is when in 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009, KONG aired NBC's coverage of the Stanley Cup Finals

Stanley Cup Finals

The Stanley Cup Finals is the championship series to determine the winner of the Stanley Cup, emblematic of the professional club championship of ice hockey. Although the Cup itself has existed since 1893, an annual championship series between professional teams was not established until 1913...

 for games that occurred on the East Coast, with KING airing local programming and news in its place and ceding that more viewers usually watched CBC's NHL coverage

Hockey Night in Canada

Hockey Night in Canada is the branding used for CBC Sports' presentations of the National Hockey League...

 on CBUT

CBUT

CBUT-DT is the CBC's television station in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and the flagship CBC Television station for the Pacific Time Zone. The station transmits its main terrestrial signal from a tower atop Mount Seymour....

. For the 2008-2010 NFL preseasons, non-national telecasts of Seattle Seahawks

Seattle Seahawks

The Seattle Seahawks are a professional American football team based in Seattle, Washington. They are currently members of the Western Division of the National Football Conference in the National Football League . The team joined the NFL in 1976 as an expansion team...

 pre-season football games aired on KONG as NBC held the rights to the Summer Olympic Games

Summer Olympic Games

The Summer Olympic Games or the Games of the Olympiad are an international multi-sport event, occurring every four years, organized by the International Olympic Committee. Medals are awarded in each event, with gold medals for first place, silver for second and bronze for third, a tradition that...

.

Newscasts

KING 5 Morning News on KONG
(weekday mornings 7-9 a.m.)

• Anchors:
  • Joyce Taylor
  • Mark Wright
• Weather:
  • Rich Marriott
• Traffic:
  • Tracy Taylor

KING 5 News at Noon
(weekdays 1-2 p.m.; replay of KING's noon newscast)

• Anchors:
  • Greg Copeland
  • Mimi Jung
• Weather:
  • Rich Marriott

KING 5 News @ 10 on KONG (10 to 11 p.m.)

Weeknights

• Anchors:
  • Lori Matsukawa
  • Dennis Bounds
• Weather:
  • Jeff Renner
• Sports:
  • Paul Silvi

Weekends

• Anchor:
  • Allen Schauffler
• Weather:
  • Jim Guy
• Sports:
  • Andrea Nakano

Northwest Sports Tonight (Monday-Saturdays 11-11:35 p.m.; rebroadcast Northwest Cable News

Northwest Cable News

Northwest Cable News is a regional 24-hour cable news network based in Seattle, Washington, U.S. It is similar to New England Cable News, which operates out of Boston and covers the New England area....

 primetime program; first segment is occasionally live on KONG if a sporting event ends late)

• Host:
  • Paul Silvi

KONG features additional news personnel from KING-TV. See that article for a complete listing.

External links

• KONG 6/16