KGWC-TV
Overview
KGWC-TV is a television station in Casper, Wyoming, United States, broadcasting on channel 14 and affiliated with CBS. It is owned by Big Horn Television LLC and operated by Coastal Television Broadcasting Company LLC alongside Fox affiliate KFNB, channel 20, and ABC affiliate KTWO-TV, channel 2. The stations share studios on Skyview Drive in Casper, while KGWC-TV's transmitter is located atop Casper Mountain. KGWC-TV has been Casper's CBS station since it signed on in 1980, first under the call sign KCWY-TV, a name now used by a different Casper station on channel 13.
Channel 14's programming is rebroadcast by two full-power satellite stations in western Wyoming: KGWL-TV, channel 5, in Lander and KGWR-TV, channel 13, in Rock Springs, the latter counted as part of the Salt Lake City market. Together the three stations form the historic core of Casper-based commercial television for central and western Wyoming. KGWC-TV also carries KTWO-TV's ABC programming in standard definition on its second subchannel, a practical arrangement in a very small market where separate full schedules are difficult to sustain.
Origins and Launch in 1980
The station traces to the Chrysostom Corporation, a group of five local investors that included Casper's police chief, formed in 1977 to apply for a licence to build a station on channel 14 in Casper. The Federal Communications Commission approved the application on August 31, 1979, and KCWY-TV began broadcasting on August 12, 1980. It has been affiliated with CBS since its launch.
The debut was a landmark for Casper and for Wyoming. Channel 14 was the first new television station to go on the air in Casper since 1957, and its arrival marked the first time the city had two competing television stations since 1959, when KSPR-TV folded. It was also Wyoming's first UHF television station, an important distinction at a time when UHF reception still required viewers to use a separate tuning dial and often a different antenna from the VHF stations they already watched.
The Battle with KTWO-TV
The new station entered a tough, years-long contest with KTWO-TV, the established Casper station. Channel 14 was at a constant disadvantage against the longer-established rival. In its first ratings book, its Action News newscasts attracted about two percent of the audience, compared with KTWO's 59 percent. KTWO promoted the fact that it aired all 50 of the top 50 programmes in Casper. Those figures explain much of KGWC-TV's later history: the station had a major network, CBS, but building a local news audience and local advertising base against a dominant incumbent in a small market proved persistently difficult.
Chrysostom responded by expanding outward rather than relying on Casper alone. Building full-power satellites would let channel 14 sell and serve a wider Wyoming footprint, spreading costs across Lander and Rock Springs as well as Casper. That strategy, adopted within two years of sign-on, still defines the station's structure more than four decades later.
Building the Satellite System in 1982
Chrysostom 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 Wyoming. Channel 5 was found to be available at Lander, and both groups ultimately received channels: the college proceeded with its educational station, and Chrysostom put KOWY on the air in Lander in 1982, in September by the commonly cited account. At the same time, Chrysostom bought KTUX-TV, a station on channel 13 in Rock Springs that had signed on on October 21, 1977, but had gone silent, and renamed it KWWY-TV.
From 1982 onward, the Casper station was therefore the head of a three-station system: KCWY-TV in Casper, KOWY in Lander and KWWY-TV in Rock Springs. The satellites extended CBS programming and Casper-based news to west-central and southwestern Wyoming, areas far beyond reliable reception of the Casper Mountain signal. That system survived every subsequent owner, even as the call letters, news arrangements and corporate parents changed repeatedly.
Sale to Stauffer and the KGWC Call Letters
The Chrysostom Corporation sold KCWY-TV and its satellites to Stauffer Communications of Topeka, Kansas, in 1986 for 3.5 million dollars. At the same time Stauffer bought KYCU, the CBS affiliate in Cheyenne. On New Year's Day 1987 the stations adopted matching call letters: KGWC-TV in Casper, KGWL-TV in Lander and KGWR-TV in Rock Springs, matching the Cheyenne station, which became KGWN-TV. The shared letters represented what the group called the Great Western Network. RabbitEars' history glosses the Casper calls as Greater Wyoming Casper, after former sister station KGWN-TV. The KCWY call letters later returned to Casper on channel 13, which is why older references to KCWY-TV on channel 14 should not be confused with the present NBC station.
Under Stauffer, costs were cut in Casper to respond to a weak regional economy and to use synergies with Cheyenne. In early 1987 KGWC stopped producing its own local weathercasts and began taking legislative and state capitol reports from KGWN, and its news department was reduced from 11 reporters to eight. Deeper cuts followed the next year, and KGWC switched to producing local news and weather inserts into KGWN's Cheyenne newscasts. The switch had been intended for late 1987 but was delayed by problems relaying the KGWN signal to Casper.
The Benedek Revival and Its Collapse
In 1995 Stauffer sold its holdings to Morris Communications, which kept the newspapers and spun off the television stations to Benedek Broadcasting of Rockford, Illinois, for 60 million dollars as part of a wider station group deal. Benedek invested heavily in KGWC and relaunched a full schedule of newscasts. The station advertised its news product on billboards and in television commercials. In December 1996 it hired Rich Bircumshaw from KTWO radio as news director and KTWO-TV news director Vicki Daniels as assignment editor. It added weekend newscasts, doubled its staff, leased an electronics store building on CY Avenue as studios and installed about 500,000 dollars in new equipment.
The revival did not last. The news department gradually shrank and the station had three general managers in less than two years. On June 4, 2000, KGWC became a satellite of KGWN with no local newscasts or advertising. All but two staff members were laid off; only an engineer and one other employee, the minimum needed to run the station, were retained. KGWN's general manager said that despite good ratings, personnel and management problems required rebuilding from scratch, and Benedek promised to restore local news without giving a timetable. The three Casper-system stations were then grouped as semi-satellites of the Cheyenne station.
Bankruptcy, Chelsey and Mark III Media
Benedek's finances deteriorated in the early 2000s recession, and the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2002. While most Benedek stations went to Gray Television, KGWC-TV and KGWN-TV went to Chelsey Broadcasting, an affiliate of the Chelsey Capital hedge fund. In 2003 Chelsey separated the Wyoming stations in two sales: KGWN and its Scottsbluff, Nebraska, satellite KSTF went to SagamoreHill Broadcasting, while KGWC, KGWL and KGWR were sold to Mark III Media, headed by Mark Nalbone, the general manager of Casper Fox affiliate KFNB who also served as a consultant to KTWO-TV.
That sale faced a lengthy FCC approval process because of objections, principally about whether it would effectively place the stations under common ownership with KFNB and KTWO-TV. Mark III ultimately consummated the purchase on May 31, 2006, and programmed KGWC separately from KGWN. Mark III restored a local newscast in 2004 using reporting resources shared with KTWO-TV. One memorable detail was an Anchorman for a Day contest sponsored by KTWO, won by Marvin Nolte, a retired man from Bar Nunn with no broadcasting experience, who gained a permanent position after an anchor left for Cheyenne. The newscast nevertheless failed to gain ground against KTWO and KCWY, which had started local news in 2003, and KGWC cancelled it on January 3, 2006.
The Blocked Gray Transaction
Mark III announced on February 12, 2018, that it would sell KGWC-TV to Gray Television, owner of KCWY-DT and KGWN. Under that plan the channel 14 licence was to be donated to a nonprofit; on March 6 Gray agreed to donate the licence and transmitter to Central Wyoming College, which planned to convert channel 14 to a noncommercial licence as KEWY broadcasting PBS Kids full-time. Gray would have retained the KGWC call letters and CBS programming, moving them to low-power KCBZ-LD, which was to take virtual channel 14, and Gray would also have acquired and retained KGWL-TV and KGWR-TV.
The sale was cancelled in October 2018. On January 24, 2019, Gray disclosed that acquisition of the CBS affiliation had been blocked by the United States Department of Justice. The department regarded KGWL in Lander as a Casper station, and Casper had too few stations to permit an outright television duopoly legally. The episode is central to KGWC-TV's modern identity: the station came close to losing its licence to educational use and its CBS identity to a low-power channel, yet remained a full-power CBS affiliate because regulators treated its small Lander satellite as part of the Casper competitive picture.
Sale to Big Horn Television
On October 8, 2019, Mark III Media announced 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. It was completed on June 1, 2020. That transaction explains the present operating structure: Big Horn owns KGWC-TV, while Coastal operates it and owns KFNB, and KTWO-TV is commonly operated within the same Casper group from the Skyview Drive studios. Current newscasts use the shared Your Wyoming Link identity associated with the Casper stations.
Big Horn ownership preserved the three-station CBS system intact. KGWL-TV and KGWR-TV continue as satellites rather than being separated or surrendered, and KGWC-TV continues to originate the service they carry. For viewers, the practical result is continuity: CBS on 14.1 in Casper, 5.1 in Lander and 13.1 in Rock Springs, with ABC from KTWO on the second subchannel of each station.
Technical Information and Subchannels
KGWC-TV's FCC facility ID is 63177. Its digital signal is on UHF channel 14, its virtual channel is also 14, its effective radiated power is listed at 53.3 kW and its height above average terrain is 562 metres, or 1,844 feet, from Casper Mountain. It had operated a digital signal on channel 15 for some time before the transition and moved digital operations to channel 14 after shutting down its analogue transmitter in 2009. Its satellites began digital service by February 2009: KGWL moved to RF channel 7 while keeping virtual channel 5, and KGWR flash-cut on channel 13.
The multiplex is shared in structure across the system. On KGWC-TV, 14.1 carries CBS in 1080i high definition, 14.2 carries ABC from KTWO-TV in standard definition, 14.3 carries Court TV and 14.4 carries Ion Mystery. KGWL-TV carries the CBS and ABC services without the Court TV and Ion Mystery subchannels, while KGWR-TV carries all four. Translators rebroadcasting KGWC or its satellites serve communities including Big Piney, Bondurant, Clareton, Douglas, Gillette, Pinedale, Sheridan, Shoshoni and Wyodak.
Significance
KGWC-TV's history is a compact history of small-market American television economics. It began as a locally owned challenger that could win only a tiny share against a dominant incumbent, expanded through satellites to make its footprint viable, was folded into a Cheyenne-centred group, was revived with a full newsroom, was reduced to two employees, passed through a hedge fund after bankruptcy, was run alongside its Fox and ABC competitors, and was nearly transferred to a college before antitrust concerns stopped the deal. Through all of that, three facts endured: CBS stayed on channel 14 in Casper, the Lander and Rock Springs satellites stayed attached, and Casper Mountain stayed the transmission point. Those continuities, rather than any single owner, are what make KGWC-TV a durable Wyoming institution.
