KTRE


KTRE, virtual and VHF digital channel 9, is a dual ABC/Telemundo-affiliated television station licensed to Lufkin, Texas, United States and also serving Nacogdoches. The station is owned by Gray Television. KTRE's studios and transmitter are located on TV Road in the unincorporated community of Pollok.
Although identifying as a separate station in its own right, KTRE is considered a semi-satellite of KLTV in Tyler. As such, it simulcasts all network and syndicated programming as provided through its parent station but airs separate commercial inserts, legal identifications, weeknight newscasts and Sunday morning religious programs, and has its own website. KTRE serves the southern half of the Tyler–Longview–Lufkin–Nacogdoches market while KLTV serves the northern portion. The two stations are counted as a single unit for ratings purposes. Although KTRE maintains its own facilities, master control and some internal operations are based at KLTV's studios on West Ferguson Street in downtown Tyler.
On cable, KTRE is available on Suddenlink, Consolidated Communications and on independent providers in the area. On satellite, the station is carried on Dish Network, but not on DirecTV, which instead carries KLTV in the area.

History

The station first signed on the air on August 31, 1955; it was founded by the owners of now-defunct radio station KTRE-AM, and originally operated as a satellite of Houston NBC affiliate KPRC-TV. However, it occasionally deviated from the KPRC schedule to air programming from ABC and CBS. In 1964, the Federal Communications Commission collapsed Lufkin and Nacogdoches into the Tyler–Longview market. Soon afterward, the Buford family, owners of KLTV, bought KTRE and converted it into a semi-satellite of that station.
Until 1984, the station had an unusual "joint primary" arrangement with all three networks, with a slight favor towards ABC programming. Both stations lost CBS programming when KLMG-TV signed on in September 1984, but retained a secondary affiliation with NBC until KETK-TV signed on in March 1987. KTRE and KLTV were sold to Civic Communications in 1989. Civic merged with Liberty Corporation in 2002, which in turn merged with Raycom Media in 2006.
For many years, the station operated at 26,000 watts from a tiny tower, which was short-spaced to prevent interference with CBS affiliate WAFB-TV in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and later PBS member station KETG-TV in Arkadelphia, Arkansas. In the early 1980s, KTRE installed a new antenna and transmitter, operating at an increased power of 131kW, but never reached full power because of the short-space interference it would cause to those other stations. Eventually, as noted in the Television Factbook, KTRE was allow to increase visual power to 158kW visual and 31.6kW aural power. On another front, the new transmitter antenna was directional to minimize overlap with KLTV to comply with FCC duopoly rules, which until 2000, prohibited one company from owning stations in adjacent markets that had significant signal overlap.
On June 25, 2018, Gray Television announced that it was merging with Raycom, under the Gray name. When it was approved by the FCC and the Justice Department, it made KLTV and KTRE sisters to adjacent market stations KXII in Sherman, KBTX in Bryan and KWTX in Waco in addition to the current Raycom sister stations, while separating it from KXXV. The sale was approved on December 20, and was completed on January 2, 2019.

Digital television

Digital channels

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:
ChannelVideoAspectPSIP Short NameProgramming
9.1720pKTREMain KTRE programming / ABC
9.2480iTelemundo

KTRE carries Telemundo on digital subchannel 9.2; the subchannel is not carried on Suddenlink Communications.

Analog-to-digital conversion

KTRE shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 9, 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 relocated from its pre-transition VHF channel 11 to channel 9 for post-transition operations.

Programming

programs broadcast by KTRE include Live with Kelly and Ryan, Jeopardy!, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Wheel of Fortune, and Texas Country Reporter.

News operation

KTRE presently broadcasts five hours of locally produced newscasts each week. In other common news timeslots where the station does not produce its own locally based newscasts, KTRE simulcasts the weekday morning, midday, 4:00 p.m., 5:00 p.m. and weekend morning and evening newscasts from KLTV. In addition to its main studios, the station operates a bureau on North Street in Nacogdoches. The first news anchor at channel 9 was Murphy Martin, who later became a local television anchor in Dallas and eventually served as an anchor for ABC News.