KHSD-TV

Overview

KHSD-TV is a television station licensed to Lead, South Dakota, in the United States, broadcasting on virtual channel 11 as the ABC affiliate for the northern Black Hills. It operates as a full-power satellite of KOTA-TV, channel 3 in Rapid City, and is owned by Gray Media alongside KOTA-TV, low-power Fox affiliate KEVN-LD and MeTV affiliate KHME. KHSD-TV serves the Black Hills proper from a transmitter on Terry Peak near Spearfish, and its signal can also be received over the air in Rapid City, giving the KOTA operation a second, high-elevation path into its home market.

The station's modern history requires careful explanation, because the KHSD-TV name has belonged to two different Lead licences. From 1966 to 2016, KHSD-TV was the call sign of the station that is now KQME, the MeTV satellite on channel 5. In the Rapid City realignment of February 2016, Gray Television moved the KHSD call sign, its virtual channel 11 position and its ABC role across to the licence that had previously been KIVV-TV, KEVN's satellite in Lead. Today's KHSD-TV therefore carries forward the ABC satellite identity created in 1966, while its underlying licence traces to KIVV-TV, which signed on in 1976. Both halves of that inheritance — the older KHSD name and the KIVV licence — are part of this station's story.

Role as KOTA-TV's Lead satellite

KHSD-TV exists to extend KOTA-TV's ABC service across the Black Hills. Rapid City's stations face a market defined by distance and terrain, and Lead, set high in the northern hills near Deadwood and Spearfish, has hosted satellite transmitters since 1960. KHSD-TV rebroadcasts KOTA-TV's programming, including its KOTA Territory newscasts, ABC network programmes and syndicated shows, while identifying as a separate station. Together with KSGW-TV in Sheridan, Wyoming, it is one of KOTA-TV's two full-power satellites, and the three stations present a single service branded for the whole territory that KOTA describes as KOTA Territory, covering western South Dakota and parts of eastern Wyoming and eastern Montana.

For viewers, channel 11 is the ABC position in Lead and the northern hills. The station's Terry Peak site, shared in function if not in licence with the neighbouring KQME transmitter, gives it coverage that a Rapid City-only signal cannot reliably match in the higher communities of the Black Hills.

Lead's earlier channel 5: KDSJ-TV

The licence now used by KHSD-TV was first used by KIVV-TV, but television in Lead began earlier still. In January 1960, KRSD-TV in Rapid City started a satellite station on channel 5 in Lead, KDSJ-TV, owned by the Heart of the Black Hills Stations along with KRSD radio and KDSJ radio in nearby Deadwood. KDSJ-TV relayed KRSD's NBC-led schedule to the northern hills. The Daniels family's stations, however, became notorious for technical deficiencies. Federal Communications Commission inspectors found numerous violations in 1966 and 1967, more than 2,000 viewers appealed to NBC and the FCC for help in 1967, and an FCC inspector judged the signals unfit for broadcast in 1969.

In 1971 the FCC voted to deny the licences' renewal outright, finding that the stations had been out of compliance with technical standards since at least 1961 and that their signals had deteriorated to unacceptability by at least 1965. It was the first time the commission had shut down a television station for technical reasons. The owners fought the decision and were allowed to continue under special temporary authority while a new licensee was sought, but Heart of the Black Hills finally closed KRSD-TV and KDSJ-TV for good on February 29, 1976. Lead was left temporarily without its own satellite signal — a gap the KIVV licence was created to fill.

Creation of KIVV-TV in 1976

Construction permits for a new channel 7 in Rapid City and a new channel 5 in Lead were granted in April 1975 to Dakota Broadcasting Company, a group of Rapid City businessmen. In November 1975 the two stations were assigned the call signs KEVN-TV and KIVV-TV. After the old KRSD and KDSJ closed at the end of February 1976, the new stations came on the air on July 11, 1976, after a hiatus of about four months. KEVN and its Lead satellite KIVV began as full-time ABC affiliates, taking all ABC programming in the market, while the original KOTA-TV switched to a primary NBC affiliation with secondary CBS programmes.

KIVV-TV thus began life as the ABC satellite for the northern Black Hills on analogue channel 5 — the same channel position its predecessor KDSJ-TV had occupied, though under a new licence and ownership. That channel 5 transmission path is still the physical foundation of today's KHSD-TV, which transmits digitally on VHF channel 5 while displaying virtual channel 11.

ABC, NBC and Fox years as KIVV

As KEVN's satellite, KIVV followed its parent through a series of network changes. On June 24, 1984, KEVN took the NBC affiliation and KOTA-TV took over ABC, so KIVV became an NBC satellite. In 1985 Dakota Broadcasting sold KEVN, KIVV and Sioux Falls station KDLT to Heritage Communications for nearly $20 million. In 1987, after Tele-Communications Inc. bought a majority interest in Heritage Communications, the television and radio stations were spun off to Heritage's management under the Heritage Media banner.

Heritage Media announced in September 1995 that it would sell KEVN-TV and KIVV-TV to Blackstar, LLC, a minority-controlled company with non-voting equity interests held by Fox Television Stations and Silver King Communications, for $14 million. The deal was completed on February 7, 1996, and in July 1996 KEVN and KIVV became Fox affiliates. Before that change, Fox programming in the market had reached most viewers by cable from Denver's KDVR or the national Foxnet service, apart from KOTA-TV's secondary Fox affiliation for football. KIVV gave Fox a full-power over-the-air presence in the northern Black Hills for the next twenty years.

USA Networks, the former Silver King Communications, acquired Blackstar outright in 1998 and soon sold KEVN-TV and KIVV-TV to Mission TV, LLC, an independent private company. KEVN filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on November 20, 2003, to prevent its largest creditor, Finova Capital, from taking legal action to seize control; programming and operations were not affected, and the stations emerged from bankruptcy in July 2005. In January 2007 KEVN rebranded from KEVN Fox 7 to Black Hills Fox, a brand its Lead satellite shared.

Sale to Gray Television

On December 18, 2013, Mission TV announced the sale of KEVN-TV and KIVV-TV to Gray Television for $7.75 million. The sale was completed on May 1, 2014, making KEVN Gray's first stand-alone full-power Fox affiliate. Gray's position in Rapid City was transformed the following year, when on September 14, 2015, it announced the purchase of Schurz Communications' television and radio stations — including KOTA-TV and its satellites — for $442.5 million. Because Gray could not simply own both full-power station groups outright, a complex rearrangement of call signs, affiliations and licences followed, and the Lead satellites were at the centre of it.

The 2016 swap: KIVV becomes KHSD-TV

On February 1, 2016, Gray moved the KOTA-TV intellectual unit — its call letters, programming, ABC affiliation and staff — onto the former KEVN licence in Rapid City, while the Fox identity continued on low-power KEVN-LD. A similar realignment took place in Lead. Gray moved the KHSD intellectual unit from the 1966 KHSD licence to KEVN's satellite, KIVV. The former KIVV licence accordingly became the new KHSD-TV, inheriting virtual channel 11 and the ABC affiliation, while the former KHSD licence changed its calls to KQME and became a satellite of MeTV affiliate KHME.

One consequence was that Fox lost its full-power signal in the western part of the market. To compensate, KEVN's Fox programming was simulcast on the new KHSD-TV's second digital subchannel, keeping a Fox feed available from Terry Peak alongside ABC on the main channel. The station had, in effect, exchanged roles with its neighbour: the licence that had carried Fox since 1996 now carried ABC, and the licence that had carried ABC since 1966 now carried MeTV.

Programming, news and subchannels

KHSD-TV's main channel, 11.1, carries ABC, including KOTA-TV's locally produced KOTA Territory newscasts from Rapid City. Its additional subchannels follow the KOTA-TV multiplex, which includes the Outlaw western service, the True Crime Network and Grit. Since the start of July 2024, the separate Black Hills Fox branding for KEVN-LD and its simulcasts has been discontinued, and KOTA and KEVN have both been presented under the unified KOTA Territory branding, without vocal emphasis on their separate network affiliations. KHSD-TV participates in that unified presentation as KOTA's Black Hills satellite. Low-power translators in Deadwood, K29OF-D and K31QA-D, further rebroadcast the KHSD signal locally.

The station produces no separate newscasts of its own. Its local identity rests instead on its separate licence, its Lead city of license, its station identifications and commercials, and its transmitter's role in delivering the shared KOTA service to communities that a Rapid City signal alone would not reliably reach.

Technical information

The present KHSD-TV transmits on digital VHF channel 5 and displays virtual channel 11. Its FCC facility, inherited from KIVV-TV, is facility ID 34348. Earlier technical listings for the station recorded an effective radiated power of 9.2 kilowatts and a height above average terrain of 561 metres from the Terry Peak site near Spearfish, at approximately 44°19′35.1″ north latitude and 103°50′9″ west longitude. As KIVV-TV, the station ended its analogue channel 5 service during the 2009 digital transition, and its digital signal relocated from pre-transition UHF channel 29 to VHF channel 5 for post-transition operation.

KHSD-TV's biography is the most layered of any station in the Rapid City market: a 1966 name, a 1976 licence, a transmitter tradition reaching back to 1960, and network affiliations that have included ABC, NBC and Fox at different times. What has remained constant is the purpose of a full-power station at Lead — carrying Rapid City television into the northern Black Hills.