KHGI-TV: Kearney's ABC Affiliate and the Flagship of NTV
KHGI-TV, channel 13, is the ABC-affiliated television station licensed to Kearney, Nebraska, and the flagship station of the Nebraska Television Network, known universally in the region as NTV. Owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, KHGI serves the Lincoln–Hastings–Kearney market's central and western portions, together with its satellite KWNB-TV, bringing ABC programming and local news to most of central and western Nebraska and the northern third of Kansas. Its studios and operations are in the Axtell–Kearney area, and its website is nebraska.tv.
KHGI is one of Nebraska's original television stations. It signed on at Christmas 1953 as KHOL-TV, built outward into a multi-station network that at its peak linked four transmitters across the state's midsection, and built the NTV brand that Nebraskans still use for the service more than seventy years later. Its call letters are a map of its market: KHGI stands for Kearney, Hastings and Grand Island, the Tri-Cities of central Nebraska.
Today KHGI operates as part of Sinclair's Nebraska group, alongside Fox affiliate KFXL-TV, its sister station in the market, with which it shares the NTV operation's Fox subchannel services. Its story — from a locally owned CBS pioneer, through network ownership and a bankruptcy auction, to Sinclair — tracks the consolidation of American local television in miniature.
Overview
KHGI broadcasts on virtual channel 13, the VHF position it has held since 1953. Its main subchannel carries ABC in high definition, and its second subchannel carries Fox programming for the market, part of the arrangement under which NTV and KFXL together provide the market's ABC and Fox services. Sister station KFXL-TV is listed alongside KHGI in Sinclair's Nebraska operations.
The station's coverage area is defined by its network. KHGI from Kearney and KWNB-TV from Hayes Center carry the NTV service across central and western Nebraska, a vast, sparsely populated territory of farms, ranchland and small cities for which the network has been the local television service since the 1950s.
History
KHGI began as KHOL-TV, signing on December 25, 1953. It was built by the Bi-States Company and began as a CBS affiliate, with secondary affiliations that included DuMont and, at various points in the 1950s, NBC and ABC programming, as was common for stations in markets too small to support a full set of network affiliates. Bi-States also expanded into radio, launching KHOL-FM in June 1959 and purchasing a Kearney AM station in 1961, though both radio properties were sold by the mid-1960s.
Expansion came quickly. KHOL added a satellite in Hayes Center, KHPL-TV on channel 6, extending the service into southwest Nebraska. On February 2, 1961, KHOL-TV and KHPL-TV dropped CBS to become full-time ABC affiliates, a few months before a Grand Island satellite of Lincoln's CBS station signed on and consolidated CBS service in the region. Two more satellites followed: KHQL-TV, channel 8, in Albion on December 3, 1964, and KHTL-TV, channel 4, in Superior on October 1, 1965. The four stations began branding together as the Nebraska Television Network — NTN for short at first, shortened to NTV in the early 1970s.
Local Programming in the Network Era
NTV in its locally owned years was more than a relay for network shows. Its best-remembered local production was The Bobby Mills Show, a Saturday evening music program in the late 1960s and early 1970s, built around the Bobby Mills Orchestra as a house band with guest artists, in a format similar to The Lawrence Welk Show. Bobby Mills' sons, Bobby Jr. and Ron, were featured extensively. Production was an overnight affair: taping was done once a month on a Friday night after KHOL's midnight sign-off, with an average of five shows taped in a session that typically ended at 4 a.m.
That kind of local production — music, news and community programming made in Kearney rather than imported — defined NTV's relationship with central Nebraska for decades, and helps explain why the NTV name, rather than any owner's, remains the brand viewers use today.
The NTV Enterprises Era
In 1974, NTV Enterprises acquired the NTV stations for $1.9 million. On June 3 of that year, the new owners changed the call letters of all the stations to reflect the areas they served: KHOL became KHGI-TV for Kearney, Hastings and Grand Island; KHPL became KWNB-TV, referring to its service to western Nebraska; KHQL became KCNA-TV; and KHTL became KSNB-TV. The KHGI calls have now been in use for half a century, the longest-lived identity in the station's history.
The network's composition changed over the following decades. The Albion station, KCNA, was spun off in 1983 and eventually became Lincoln's KLKN. The Superior station's path also diverged. NTV settled into its modern form centred on KHGI in Kearney and KWNB in the west, serving the Tri-Cities and the region beyond.
Ownership: Pappas and Sinclair
NTV later became part of Pappas Telecasting, one of the larger independent station groups of its era. When Pappas went through bankruptcy, KHGI's future was settled at auction: Sinclair Broadcast Group acquired the station in 2015. Sinclair, one of the largest and most diversified television broadcasting companies in the country, has owned and operated KHGI, through KHGI Licensee, LLC, since then, grouping it with its other Nebraska stations, including Fox affiliate KPTM in Omaha and sister station KFXL-TV in the Lincoln–Hastings–Kearney market.
The Sinclair era brought the station into national debates about local news. In 2018, Sinclair required anchors at its stations to read corporate promotional scripts warning about biased and false news. At KHGI, morning producer Justin Simmons resigned in protest in late March 2018, telling national media that the required promos were the final straw after a period of required segments that had made him uncomfortable. The episode made the Kearney station a named example in a nationwide controversy over the balance between corporate ownership and local newsroom independence.
News Operation
NTV News is the local news service produced from the station's Axtell–Kearney area operation, covering the Tri-Cities of Kearney, Hastings and Grand Island and the communities of central and western Nebraska. For viewers across a wide rural region, NTV's newscasts are the local television news of record, covering agriculture, weather — a critical service on the central Plains — local government, high school and college sports and community life.
The newsroom has also figured in the region's civic life in unexpected ways. On one occasion, KHGI's coverage of a Kansas murder trial led a Norton County judge to declare a mistrial, after the station aired footage that included people waiting to be chosen as jurors, contrary to Kansas rules on photographing jurors. The station said a court official had shown its reporter where it was acceptable to stand and that it would not have filmed or aired the video had it known prospective jurors were in the location — an episode that illustrates both the reach of NTV's news gathering into northern Kansas and the responsibilities that come with it.
Market and Audience
KHGI's market, Lincoln–Hastings–Kearney, is one of the most geographically stretched in the country, combining the state capital in the east with the Tri-Cities and the farming and ranching country to the west. Within that market, the ABC service is divided: KHGI and NTV serve the western portion, while Lincoln's KLKN serves the capital, making it one of the few American markets with two ABC affiliates. KHGI's own coverage reaches most of central and western Nebraska and the northern third of Kansas, areas where its signal and its satellites are often the primary source of network television.
Longevity is a large part of the station's audience relationship. NTV's call letters and brand have been present in central Nebraska homes since the Eisenhower era, and generations of viewers in Kearney, Hastings and Grand Island have grown up with channel 13 as their ABC station.
Technical Details
KHGI operates on virtual channel 13, with its digital signal on VHF channel 13 from the Kearney area. Its network is delivered with satellite KWNB-TV in western Nebraska, and its subchannels include Fox programming on its second channel, complementing sister station KFXL-TV. The station is licensed to Kearney, with operations centred in the Axtell–Kearney area, and identifies on air as NTV ABC. Station listings show it as a full-power digital station owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group in the Lincoln–Hastings–Kearney market.
Recent Developments
Leadership of Sinclair's Nebraska stations has been the station's most recent headline. Sinclair named Carol Kellum as vice president and general manager of its Nebraska operations, including KHGI and KFXL in the Lincoln–Hastings–Kearney market and KPTM in Omaha, succeeding John Hannon on his retirement at the end of August. Kellum, an experienced broadcast manager returning to Sinclair after running stations in Missouri and Illinois, was quoted by Sinclair's chief operating officer as bringing a strong understanding of local markets and station operations. For KHGI, now in its eighth decade, the change marks the latest chapter in a history that has run from Bi-States' Christmas Day sign-on in 1953 through NTV's network-building years to its place in one of America's largest station groups — with the NTV name, and channel 13, constant throughout.
