KQDS-TV — Fox 21, the Fox Affiliate for Duluth, Superior and the Northland
KQDS-TV (channel 21), branded Fox 21, is the Fox affiliate for Duluth, Minnesota, and Superior, Wisconsin — the Twin Ports market that broadcasters call the Northland. Owned by Coastal Television Broadcasting Company, the station has studios on London Road in Duluth, along Interstate 35, and its transmitter in Hilltop Park west of downtown. Its website is fox21online.com. The call letters stand for Quality Duluth–Superior, inherited from a former sister radio station, KQDS-FM.
KQDS is a young station by American standards, and its history divides cleanly in two. It signed on in the mid-1990s as KNLD, an independent station under different ownership, and it became a real force in the market only in 1999, when Red River Broadcasting bought it, raised its power, built a new tower and made it the Northland's first primary Fox affiliate. A generation later it has its own award-winning newsroom, the market's entrenched 9 p.m. newscast, and since 2024 a new owner in Coastal Television.
Overview
Fox 21 serves one of the geographically largest television markets in the eastern United States: northeastern Minnesota, northwestern Wisconsin and the western end of Michigan's Upper Peninsula — an area the station itself compares in size to the state of West Virginia. Master control and some internal operations have been based at the Fargo, North Dakota studios of its longtime sister station, fellow Fox affiliate KVRR, a hub arrangement it shared under Red River ownership.
The station broadcasts Fox in high definition on 21.1, with Antenna TV's classic programming on 21.2. Its signal, at a full million watts, and a network of translators reach a dispersed audience of port cities, Iron Range towns, lake communities and forest counties across three states.
History: From KNLD to Fox 21
The station was founded on December 9, 1991, holding the call letters KRBR until 1994, when it became KNLD. It signed on in 1994 as an independent station, without a network affiliation, in a market already served by established NBC, CBS and ABC outlets. As an independent, KNLD was a minor presence; Fox programming reached the Northland only by cable, through the Foxnet service or distant affiliates — the Twin Cities' KMSP-TV and later WFTC, Fargo's KVRR, Green Bay's WLUK, Cadillac's WGKI, or Detroit's WKBD before that station left the network in 1994.
Everything changed at the end of the decade. Red River Broadcasting, the Fargo-based owner of KVRR, purchased the station, increased its power and relaunched it as KQDS-TV. On September 1, 1999, KQDS became the Duluth–Superior market's first primary Fox affiliate. The same day, the station activated a new transmitter tower — a project on which it had agreed with city officials to build further from a parking lot than originally planned — along with eight translator stations to spread the Fox signal across the Northland.
Ownership: Red River, the Forum Attempt and Coastal Television
Red River Broadcasting owned KQDS from the late 1990s until 2024, operating it alongside KVRR and its satellites in North Dakota and, until 2019, NBC affiliate KDLT in Sioux Falls. The Duluth station's identity — call letters, Fox affiliation, news operation — was built entirely under Red River, whose leadership publicly described the stations' community work as the legacy it wanted a buyer to carry on.
That buyer nearly was Forum Communications, owner of WDAY in Fargo and the Duluth News Tribune. On November 30, 2021, Forum announced its intent to buy KVRR, its satellites and KQDS for $24 million, seeking an FCC waiver to hold a second top-four station in the Fargo market while promising not to consolidate newsrooms. The FCC never acted, and the deal was terminated in June 2023. On December 1, 2023, Red River instead announced a sale of its stations to the Coastal Television Broadcasting Group — a transaction valued at $18.1 million — and the sale was completed on April 5, 2024. KQDS-TV is now owned by Coastal Television Broadcasting Company LLC, through CTMN License LLC.
Affiliation and Programming
Fox prime time, Fox sports — including NFL football and major events — and the network's Sunday animation block anchor channel 21.1, surrounded by syndicated programming chosen for the Northland audience. Channel 21.2 carries Antenna TV, which joined the Red River stations' subchannels on January 1, 2016, and has remained with the station through the change of ownership.
The station's local programming commitment centers on news rather than entertainment production, a deliberate philosophy the station has articulated for years: because national news is available everywhere, Fox 21 fills its newscasts with local coverage, aiming for a large-market look with a hometown feel.
News Operation
KQDS's first attempt at news was outsourced. In its early Fox years it entered a news-share agreement with NBC affiliate KBJR, which produced a 9 p.m. newscast from its South Lake Avenue studios, anchored by Mark Mallory with meteorologist Paul Heggen on weather and Tom Hansen on sports. Ratings were low, the program was cancelled after about nine months, and the slot was filled for a time by a simulcast of CNN Headline News.
The station's own newsroom launched Fox 21 News at 9 on March 12, 2007, and the results were immediate: in its first ratings period in May 2007 the newscast placed third among all evening newscasts in the Duluth market, ahead of KBJR's competing 9 p.m. offering on its subchannel and KDLH's 10 p.m. news. Within six months the operation was nominated for three Upper Midwest Emmy Awards, including Best Newscast. A Sunday newscast followed in August 2007 and a Saturday edition in November 2008; fox21online.com launched in March 2009. In July 2009 the station recorded its best ratings period to date, with about 8,650 viewers for its flagship newscast, and that fall it won two regional Emmy Awards, for Best Newscast and Overall Station Excellence. On June 28, 2010, it added a half-hour weeknight newscast at 6 p.m.
Among the station's notable former staff, Tracee Carrasco worked as a weekend anchor and reporter at Fox 21 before going on to a national television career.
Market and Audience
The Duluth–Superior market covers Carlton, Cook, Koochiching, Itasca, Lake and St. Louis counties in Minnesota; Ashland, Bayfield, Douglas, Iron and Sawyer counties in Wisconsin; and Gogebic County in Michigan. Its communities include Duluth, Superior, Cloquet, Hibbing, Virginia, Grand Rapids, International Falls and Grand Marais in Minnesota; Ashland and Hayward in Wisconsin; and Ironwood, Michigan. It is a market of port industry, mining, timber, tourism and lake weather, spread across distances that make translators and a million-watt signal necessities rather than luxuries.
Within that market, Fox 21 competes at 9 p.m. — an hour when its rivals are still in prime time — which is the strategic advantage that allowed a 2007 startup newsroom to take third place among evening newscasts within months of launching.
Technical Details
KQDS-TV broadcasts digitally on UHF channel 18, displayed as virtual channel 21, from its transmitter west of downtown Duluth in Hilltop Park. The station's digital service signed on in 2003 and was upgraded to 1,000,000 watts in 2006. The analog channel 21 signal left the air on February 1, 2009, ahead of the national transition, and the digital signal continued first on pre-transition channel 17 before moving to channel 18 in the repack era. FCC records list facility ID 35525, an effective radiated power of 1,000 kilowatts and a height above average terrain of 297 meters. Studios are at 2001 London Road in Duluth.
Recent Developments
The completed sale to Coastal Television on April 5, 2024, is the station's defining recent event: the end of the Red River era that created Fox 21, and the start of ownership by a group whose stations stretch from Alaska and Wyoming to Indiana, New York and the South. KQDS continues to operate from London Road as the Northland's Fox affiliate, with Fox 21 News carrying forward the local-first philosophy established in 2007. From an unaffiliated startup in 1994 to the market's first Fox station, an Emmy-winning newsroom and a million-watt signal, KQDS-TV's first three decades trace the modern history of television in the Twin Ports — a station that had to invent its place in the market, and did.
