KWGN-TV (channel 2) is a television station in Denver, Colorado, United States, serving as the local outlet for The CW. It is owned by Nexstar Media Group alongside Fox affiliate KDVR (channel 31); Nexstar's Tegna subsidiary owns KUSA (channel 9), an NBC affiliate, and KTVD (channel 20), an independent station with MyNetworkTV. KWGN-TV and KDVR share studios on East Speer Boulevard in Denver's Speer neighborhood; KWGN-TV's transmitter is located atop Lookout Mountain, near Golden. KWGN is available to subscribers of satellite provider Dish Network throughout the United States as part of its superstations package (for grandfathered subscribers that purchased the a la carte tier before Dish halted sales of the package to new subscribers in September 2013), and is carried on cable television providers in parts of the western United States. The station is authorized for cable and satellite distribution as a U.S. superstation by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC); however, KWGN is not currently available on any pay television providers in that country.
History
Early years The station first signed on the air as KFEL-TV on July 18, 1952. It was owned by Colorado broadcasting pioneer Gene O'Fallon along with KFEL radio (AM 950, now KKSE), and was the first television station to sign on in the state of Colorado. It was also first station on the VHF band to sign on the air following the Federal Communications Commission's decision to lift its freeze on television station licenses that year. The station originally operated as a primary affiliate of the DuMont Television Network, sharing the affiliation with KBTV (channel 9, now NBC affiliate KUSA), but also cherry-picked programs from NBC, ABC and CBS. The station's original studio facilities were located in a remodeled brick warehouse at 550 Lincoln Street. Gotham Broadcasting, owned by J. Elroy McCaw (who also owned radio station WINS in New York City), purchased the station from O'Fallon in 1955. John M. Shaheen, the founder of aviation services company Tele-Trip Inc., which later became a subsidiary of Mutual of Omaha, subsequently acquired a 50% ownership interest in the station. Channel 2's call letters were changed that same year to KTVR; the station lost the DuMont affiliation when the network shut down on August 6, 1956, after which it became an independent station. During the late 1950s, the station was briefly affiliated with the NTA Film Network. In 1959, McCaw became the sole owner of channel 2, buying out Shaheen's share in the station. In 1963, McCaw changed the call letters to KCTO (for "Channel Two").
Under Tribune ownership In September 1965, the station was acquired by Tribune Broadcasting – then known as WGN Continental Broadcasting. After the sale was finalized in March 1966, the new owners changed the call letters to KWGN-TV after its new sister station and the company's flagship, WGN-TV in Chicago (the WGN calls refer to the longtime slogan of the company's former flagship newspaper, the Chicago Tribune, "World's Greatest Newspaper"; the newspaper division was split into a separate company in August 2014). At the time of its purchase, KWGN became Tribune's fourth television station property—after WGN-TV, WPIX in New York City, and KDAL-TV (now KDLH) in Duluth, Minnesota, the latter of which was owned by Tribune from 1960 to 1978. When WGN Continental Broadcasting bought channel 2, it gave the station a significant technical overhaul, allowing it to broadcast programming in color. KWGN promoted itself as Colorado's only all-color station, because all of its local programs were produced in the format. Denver's three major network affiliates—KOA-TV (channel 4, now KCNC-TV), KLZ-TV (channel 7, now KMGH-TV) and KBTV—were broadcasting national network programs in color, but had yet to equip their studios with color cameras for local programming production. As an independent station, KWGN aired a mix of off-network sitcoms and dramas, cartoons, movies, syndicated game shows, and locally produced programs such as Blinky's Fun Club, Denver Now, Afternoon at the Movies with Tom Shannon and public affairs program Your Right to Say It. It took six years for WGN Continental to make the station profitable. Beginning in the 1960s, the station started building a massive network of translators across the state. Around this time, KWGN became a regional superstation (long before that term was coined and popularized by Atlanta station WTBS). At its height, it was available on nearly every cable system in Colorado and Wyoming, as well as portions of Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, South Dakota, Utah and Washington. KWGN was attractive to cable systems because its programming had no duplication with programs seen on the local network affiliates within their given markets. Additionally, it was the only independent station that was available in much of the region until the 1980s. It remained the only independent station in Denver—and indeed, in all of Colorado—until eventual sister station KDVR (channel 31) signed on in August 1983. To this day, KWGN remains available on most cable systems in Colorado and Wyoming, as well as on several systems in western Nebraska and Kansas. The station moved its operations from the Lincoln Street facility to a new building in suburban Greenwood Village in 1983. As one of the strongest independent stations in the country, KWGN was approached by Fox to affiliate with the upstart network upon its October 1986 debut. However, channel 2 turned the offer down. Station and company officials were skeptical of Fox's business model, and were confident enough in KWGN's schedule that they felt they didn't need a network affiliation. However, most Fox affiliates were essentially programmed as independents until the network began airing a full week's worth of programming in 1993, so KWGN would not have had to give up many of its syndicated shows. Additionally, by this time, most of the smaller markets in its vast cable footprint had enough stations to provide Fox affiliates at the outset, making the prospect of KWGN as a multi-state Fox affiliate unattractive to Tribune. The affiliation instead went to KDVR.
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