About KNDO

KNDO

KNDO is the NBC-affiliated television station serving Yakima, Washington, broadcasting on virtual channel 23 from digital channel 16. It first signed on the air on 15 October 1959, and for more than six decades it has been one of the defining broadcast voices of the Yakima Valley and central Washington. Owned by the Spokane-based Cowles Company through KHQ, Incorporated, KNDO operates together with its semi-satellite KNDU in Richland, which serves the Tri-Cities of Richland, Pasco and Kennewick on virtual channel 25. Together the two stations cover the western and eastern halves of a single Yakima–Tri-Cities market, are counted as one unit for ratings purposes, and today brand their news operation as NonStop Local Yakima and NonStop Local Tri-Cities.

The station's longevity alone gives it a particular place in Washington broadcasting. When KNDO began, Yakima was a small market with only one other television station, and network programming that viewers in larger cities took for granted had to be shared, delayed or turned down. KNDO's arrival changed what local viewers could expect, and its subsequent history — an unusual first affiliation, a long road to becoming an exclusive NBC station, a succession of owners, and a modern rebrand under a regional news banner — tracks the wider evolution of American local television from the network era through consolidation to multi-platform local news.

Origins in Yakima and the Columbia Empire Years

KNDO was founded by Hugh Davis and his Columbia Empire Broadcasting Corporation, and it debuted on 15 October 1959. Before its launch, all three major networks had been carried in some form by the market's existing station, KIMA-TV on channel 29, the primary CBS affiliate. A second station was therefore not simply an addition to the dial; it was a reordering of how network television reached the Yakima Valley, giving viewers a dedicated home for programming that had previously been fitted around another network's schedule.

The call letters themselves carried a small piece of boosterism. KNDO was understood to sound like “can-do,” a fitting identity for a new station in an agricultural valley that prided itself on getting things built. Its studios would eventually be established on West Yakima Avenue in downtown Yakima, with its transmitter atop Ahtanum Ridge, a location that remains its technical home. The station holds FCC facility ID 12395, a reminder that behind the familiar channel 23 branding sits a licensed facility whose technical parameters — 150 kilowatts of effective radiated power and an antenna height of 266 metres above average terrain — define its reach across the valley.

An Unusual First Affiliation

The most distinctive chapter in KNDO's early history is its choice of network. Conventional expectations for a small two-station market would have pointed a new entrant toward NBC, but KNDO instead signed on as a primary ABC affiliate. That decision was widely noted as unusual, especially for a market of Yakima's size. At the same time, the station carried NBC programming on a secondary basis and also aired selected CBS programmes that KIMA-TV had turned down, including The Andy Griffith Show. In practice, early KNDO was a hybrid: anchored by ABC, but still responsible for bringing pieces of all three networks to local screens.

That hybrid arrangement reflected the realities of American television at the end of the 1950s. Network affiliation was valuable, but in smaller markets no single station could assume that one network alone would fill a schedule that satisfied viewers and advertisers. Secondary affiliations and cherry-picked programmes were a pragmatic answer. For Yakima viewers, the benefit was breadth. For the station, the cost was complexity, since its identity could not be reduced to a single network in the way that became normal later.

KNDU and the Building of a Two-Station Service

KNDO's service was extended eastward with the creation of KNDU. Columbia Empire filed on 16 August 1960 to build a new station on channel 25 in Richland, the Federal Communications Commission granted the permit on 24 May 1961, and KNDU began programming on 10 August 1961 as a satellite of KNDO. A major increase in power followed in 1966, strengthening its service to the Tri-Cities. KNDU's call sign was a disambiguation of KNDO, and its role was structurally similar: extend the parent station's network and syndicated programming into a distinct but neighbouring community.

Over time KNDU developed into a semi-satellite rather than a pure repeater. It maintains its own studios on West Kennewick Avenue in Kennewick, with its transmitter on Jump Off Joe Butte, airs separate commercial inserts and legal identifications, and produces local newscasts that are simulcast on both stations. The two stations share a website and are operated as a pair, with master control and some internal operations centralised at KHQ-TV in Spokane. On satellite carriage, the pairing is split in a way that reflects their separate communities: KNDO is carried on DirecTV, while KNDU is carried on Dish Network. A translator, K32IG-D in Ellensburg, further extends KNDO's signal.

The Move to NBC and Exclusive Affiliation

In 1965, KNDO and KNDU became primary NBC affiliates, a change that set the course for the rest of their history. The transition was not immediate or complete. The stations continued to share ABC programming with KIMA-TV for several more years, because the market still lacked a dedicated ABC outlet. Only in 1970, when KAPP in Yakima and KVEW in the Tri-Cities debuted to take the ABC affiliation, could KNDO and KNDU become exclusive NBC affiliates. They have remained with NBC ever since.

That five-year interval between becoming primary NBC stations and becoming exclusive NBC stations is important to understanding the market. Affiliation changes in small markets were rarely clean breaks; they were negotiated around the arrival of new stations and the capacity of existing ones. By 1970, however, the Yakima–Tri-Cities market had settled into a clearer structure, with each major network finding a distinct home, and KNDO's identity as the NBC station for Yakima was established in the form viewers still recognise today.

Ownership: From Davis to Cowles

Ownership of KNDO and KNDU passed through several hands after the Davis era. Davis sold the two stations to Farragut Communications in 1988, ending nearly three decades of founding ownership. Federal Enterprises acquired them in 1995, and Federal itself was bought by Raycom Media in 1997. In July 1999, the Cowles Company purchased the stations from Raycom, bringing them into the same Spokane-centred group as KHQ-TV. Cowles, through KHQ, Incorporated, remains the owner.

Each transfer reflected a broader pattern in American broadcasting: locally founded stations passing first to regional operators and then to larger groups able to centralise technical and administrative functions. Under Cowles, that centralisation became explicit, with master control based in Spokane. At the same time, the stations retained local studios in Yakima and Kennewick and a local news presence, a balance between group efficiency and market presence that has characterised the Cowles era.

Programming and the Late-Night Story

For much of their history, KNDO and KNDU exercised considerable discretion over the NBC schedule, particularly after late night. The stations pre-empted much of the network lineup that followed Late Night, including Later and Friday Night Videos, as well as NBC's Nightside rolling news block, preferring syndicated programming and a nightly sign-off. That practice ended in 1996, shortly after Federal Enterprises took control, when the stations began carrying all three programmes. The detail may seem minor, but it illustrates how affiliate autonomy worked in practice: a local station could, for years, reshape the network's overnight hours to suit its own schedule and economics.

Beyond that history, the stations' programme offer has rested on the familiar pillars of an NBC affiliate: network prime time, national news and sports, syndicated programmes in daytime and early evening, and local newscasts as the main locally produced content. KNDU's locally produced newscasts, simulcast across both stations, are the operational centre of that local offer, supported by separate commercial and identification material for each community.

Digital Transition and Subchannels

KNDO and KNDU have been digital-only since 17 February 2009, among the stations that completed the transition ahead of the national deadline that year. KNDO now transmits on digital channel 16 while displaying as virtual channel 23, preserving the channel number viewers had known since the analogue era, when it broadcast on analogue channel 23 from 1959 to 2009. KNDU similarly transmits digitally while displaying as channel 25.

Their multiplexed signals carry NBC in high definition on the main subchannel — 23.1 in Yakima and 25.1 in the Tri-Cities — and SWX Right Now on 23.3 and 25.3. SWX is Cowles's regional sports and weather service, and its presence as a dedicated subchannel gives the stations a second, locally oriented service beyond the network feed. Earlier digital arrangements have come and gone: NBC Weather Plus was carried until the national network ceased operation on 1 December 2008, and Universal Sports was carried on the .2 subchannels until 1 September 2010, when it was discontinued and its bandwidth reallocated to improve the picture quality of SWX programming.

The NonStop Local Rebrand

In October 2022, Cowles unified its stations under the NonStop Local brand, and KNDO became NonStop Local Yakima, with KNDU as NonStop Local Tri-Cities. The rebrand, launched across Cowles stations in eastern Washington, the Idaho Panhandle and Montana on 24 October 2022, was presented as a move toward multi-platform local news: the same newsroom serving viewers on television, on computers and on phones, under a name that emphasised availability rather than a channel number or a legacy slogan.

For KNDO, the change replaced the earlier “Right Now” branding associated with the nbcrightnow.com identity — the web address given for the station in its batch listing and long used as its online home, alongside the newer nonstoplocal.com hub for Cowles content. The rebrand did not change the station's affiliation, ownership or market role, but it did reframe how that role is described: less as a single channel at a fixed hour, more as a continuous local service. Newscast presentation, graphics and music were updated across the group as part of the same rollout.

People and Presence in the Valley

A station of KNDO's age accumulates people as well as programmes. Its documented former on-air staff includes Jamie Kern, Whit Johnson, Anish Shroff and Jim Snyder, who worked at the station in the late 1980s — names that illustrate a familiar pattern in local broadcasting, where a mid-sized market station serves both as a community fixture and as an early or intermediate step in national careers. For viewers, however, the more important continuity has been institutional rather than individual: a Yakima newsroom, a Yakima studio address and a signal from Ahtanum Ridge, maintained through every ownership and branding change.

The station marked that continuity explicitly on 15 October 2009, when it celebrated 50 years of broadcasting to the Yakima Valley. In the run-up to the anniversary, KNDO aired stories about local businesses and organisations that had themselves been operating for 50 years or longer, placing its own history alongside the history of the community it served. It was a fitting form of celebration for a station whose value has always depended on being recognisably of its place, even as its network, owners and technology changed around it.

KNDO Today and Its Place in Central Washington Television

Today KNDO operates as part of a tightly integrated regional system: paired with KNDU, flagship-led by KHQ-TV in Spokane, branded as NonStop Local, and distributed over the air, by satellite, through a translator in Ellensburg and online. Its main channel remains NBC, its second service remains SWX Right Now, and its news remains simulcast across the Yakima and Tri-Cities halves of the market. That structure would have been unimaginable in 1959, when a single new UHF station with a borrowed mix of three networks signed on in Yakima, but it grew logically from the decisions taken in the station's first decade.

KNDO's significance is therefore twofold. Locally, it is the long-standing NBC home for Yakima and, with KNDU, for the Tri-Cities, with a history that reaches back to the moment the market first expanded beyond one station. More broadly, its record — the unusual ABC start, the gradual move to exclusive NBC affiliation in 1970, the passage from Hugh Davis through Farragut, Federal and Raycom to Cowles in 1999, the digital transition in 2009 and the NonStop Local rebrand in 2022 — is a compact history of how American local television itself changed, told through one station in the Yakima Valley that has, in the spirit of its call letters, simply kept going.