KNXT


KNXT, virtual channel 49, is a religious independent television station serving Fresno, California, United States that is licensed to Visalia. The station is owned by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Fresno. KNXT's studios are located on North Fresno Street near the Hammond district just north of downtown Fresno, and its transmitter is located on Blue Ridge in rural northwestern Tulare County.

Overview

History

The station first signed on the air on November 2, 1986; prior to the station's sign-on, the KNXT call letters were previously used downstate on the CBS owned-and-operated station on VHF channel 2 in Los Angeles from 1951 to 1984, when it adopted its current KCBS-TV calls.

Programming

Programming seen on KNXT is mainly of a Roman Catholic religious orient, with some shows being sourced from the Eternal Word Television Network; however, KNXT is somewhat less conservative doctrinally. The station's programming consists of a mix of local daily and Sunday Mass, talk shows, music and variety programs, the Rosary, children's programs, and Catholic-targeted movies.
KNXT also carries a handful of Protestant produced programs that do not get into doctrinal issues, as well as some limited secular programming. The station's programming is simulcast on translator station KNXT-LP in Bakersfield. KNXT-LP was acquired by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Fresno from Cocola Broadcasting on November 2, 2007, to serve as a repeater of KNXT.
KNXT is the only full-power, 24-hour Catholic-owned broadcast station in the United States that is not a member station of PBS, although many other Roman Catholic dioceses around the nation provide such programming to cable or closed-circuit television systems in Tucson, Arizona, WETG in Erie, Pennsylvania, WBAY-TV in Green Bay, Wisconsin, WNDU-TV in South Bend, Indiana, WTXX in Hartford, Connecticut, and WIHS-TV.

Digital television

Digital channel

Analog-to-digital conversion

KNXT shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 49, on June 12, 2009, the official date in which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 50.

Spectrum auction repack

KNXT is one of nearly 1,000 television stations that were required to change their digital channel allocation in the upcoming spectrum auction repack in late 2017 or early 2018. The station reallocated its digital signal to UHF channel 22 in phase one of the repack.