KFJX
KFJX (channel 14), branded on air as Fox 14, is a television station licensed to Pittsburg, Kansas, in the United States, serving as the Fox affiliate for the Joplin, Missouri-Pittsburg, Kansas, television market. Its second subchannel carries The CW Plus under the brand The Four States' CW. The station is owned by SagamoreHill Broadcasting and operated by Morgan Murphy Media under joint sales and shared services agreements, alongside Pittsburg-licensed CBS affiliate KOAM-TV (channel 7). The two stations share studios and transmitter facilities on U.S. Highway 69 south of Pittsburg, with a secondary studio and news bureau on South Range Line Road in Joplin.
KFJX was created for a single purpose and has never deviated from it: it signed on October 18, 2003, to give the Joplin-Pittsburg market its own Fox affiliate, and it is the only commercial television station in the market that has never changed its network affiliation. Its call letters combine its elements: K for Kansas, F and X for Fox, and J for Joplin.
A market without Fox
Before 2003, the Joplin-Pittsburg market, serving the Four States corner where Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Arkansas meet, had no Fox affiliate of its own. The closest Fox stations were in Kansas City (WDAF-TV), Springfield (KDEB, now KOZL-TV) and Tulsa (KOKI-TV), and most cable providers in the Joplin area carried one of those distant stations or Foxnet, the network's cable-only national feed, which closed in 2006. For over-the-air viewers in southeastern Kansas and southwestern Missouri, Fox prime time and Fox's National Football League coverage simply were not available from a local signal.
KFJX was launched primarily to close that gap. Contemporary accounts also suggested the launch may have been a response to the consolidation then taking place among the market's existing stations, where Nexstar Broadcasting Group's operation of KODE-TV alongside KSNF, begun after Mission Broadcasting acquired KODE in 2002, had created a two-station combination among channel 14's future competitors.
Sign-on in 2003
KFJX signed on the air on October 18, 2003, on analog UHF channel 14, as a sister station to KOAM-TV, the market's CBS affiliate since 1982 and a station with roots in Pittsburg broadcasting back to 1953. The new station was built at KOAM's existing plant south of Pittsburg, sharing the studios, transmitter site and newsroom of its established sister from the start, an arrangement that has defined its operation ever since. Channel 14 took the Fox affiliation for the Four States and the brand Fox 14, which it retains.
Because the station was an outgrowth of the KOAM operation rather than an independent newcomer, it launched with the infrastructure of a full local station behind it: the same sales organisation, the same technical plant and, within months, newscasts produced by the KOAM newsroom.
Fox 14 News at Nine
KFJX's local news service began on April 5, 2004, when KOAM began producing a nightly 9 p.m. newscast for the station, the market's first prime-time local news, scheduled an hour ahead of the traditional 10 p.m. broadcasts of its competitors. A weekend edition followed in the fall of 2005. On June 1, 2010, the weekday edition of Fox 14 News at Nine expanded to a full hour. In the spring of 2012, KFJX also began airing a rebroadcast of the KOAM morning news at 7 a.m.; that rebroadcast has since been discontinued, leaving the 9 p.m. programme as the station's signature local production.
The newscast is a shared production in the full sense: it is reported, anchored and produced by the KOAM news team from the Pittsburg studios, and presented under Fox 14 branding. The model is common among sister-station pairs in small markets, where a second newsroom would be uneconomic but a second newscast, in an unoccupied time period, is a valuable service.
An unusual digital transition
KFJX's path to digital broadcasting was shaped by the timing of its birth. Because it received its original construction permit after the FCC had finalised the digital television allotment plan on April 21, 1997, the station was not assigned a companion digital channel of the kind older stations used to broadcast in both formats during the transition. It would originally have had to perform a flash cut, switching off its analog transmitter and switching on a digital one on the same assignment at the deadline.
Events took a different course. On February 17, 2009, the original digital transition date, KFJX began broadcasting a digital signal on VHF channel 13, the former digital assignment of KOAM, which had returned to channel 7, after receiving FCC permission to use it. It continued broadcasting its analog signal on channel 14 past that date, but not until the revised June 12, 2009, deadline: on May 8, 2009, a line of severe thunderstorms damaged the broadcast tower and forced the removal of the analog antenna, ending channel 14's analog service permanently about a month early. The station has broadcast digitally on channel 13, displayed as virtual channel 14, ever since.
Satellite carriage
KFJX's relationship with satellite television illustrates the retransmission disputes common to small-market stations of the period. When DirecTV added Joplin local stations to its line-up in June 2010, KFJX and KOAM were initially not carried, because the stations and DirecTV could not reach a carriage agreement. The impasse lasted well over a year; KOAM and KFJX began airing on DirecTV in February 2012, completing the station's availability across cable, satellite and over-the-air reception in the Four States.
Programming and subchannels
Channel 14.1 carries the Fox network schedule, including Fox prime time, Fox Sports and the network's NFL package, together with syndicated programming in non-network hours. Channel 14.2 carries The CW Plus, the network service designed for smaller markets, branded as The Four States' CW, which gives the Joplin-Pittsburg market a local broadcast home for The CW in the same way KFJX itself localised Fox two decades ago. Further subchannels have carried Start TV on 14.3 and Dabl on 14.4.
Because KFJX's own digital signal, at 45.1 kW, is weaker than KOAM's, its primary channel is also simulcast in high definition on KOAM-TV's second digital subchannel, channel 7.2, from the same transmitter site. Viewers in parts of the market who cannot reliably receive channel 14's signal can therefore watch Fox 14 through its sister station's stronger transmission, and the two stations function, in coverage terms, as a single combined plant.
Ownership and operation
KFJX is owned by SagamoreHill Broadcasting, through SagamoreHill of Missouri Licenses, LLC, and is operated by Morgan Murphy Media, the owner of KOAM-TV, under joint sales and shared services agreements. The pairing of a separately owned Fox licence with the market's CBS station is the structure under which channel 14 has operated in its recent history, and it preserves the operational unity with KOAM that the station was built with in 2003, while the two licences rest with different owners.
The station's contact and studio address is the shared KOAM facility at 2950 Northeast Highway 69 in Pittsburg, and its public identity, including its website and news branding, is presented jointly with KOAM as part of the stations' combined news operation for the Four States.
Technical information
KFJX broadcasts digitally on VHF channel 13, displayed as virtual channel 14, from the shared transmitter site south of Pittsburg on U.S. Highway 69. Its FCC facility ID is 83992. Its analog service operated on UHF channel 14 from 2003 until May 8, 2009, when storm damage ended it. The station's signal is simulcast on KOAM-TV's 7.2 subchannel, and on cable it is carried on channel 14 on most systems in the market, with some providers, including Suddenlink and Mediacom, historically placing it on other positions.
Place in the Four States market
In a market whose other commercial stations trace their lineages to the 1950s, KFJX is the modern addition, built in the digital era for the specific job of completing the market's set of network affiliations. It has done that job without interruption or reinvention since October 18, 2003: the only Joplin-Pittsburg commercial station never to have changed affiliation, still Fox 14, still produced from the KOAM plant south of Pittsburg, and now carrying The CW for the Four States on its second channel as well.
