KBJR-TV
KBJR-TV in Superior, Wisconsin, and KRII in Chisholm, Minnesota, are television stations serving as the NBC and CBS affiliates for northeast Minnesota, northwest Wisconsin, and the Duluth, Minnesota, area. Owned by Gray Media, they share common ownership with CW+ affiliate KDLH. The stations share studios on South Lake Avenue in Canal Park, downtown Duluth; KBJR-TV's transmitter is located west of downtown in Hilltop Park.
KRII, formerly branded as Range 11, operates as a semi-satellite and has a news bureau and advertising sales office on East Howard Street in Hibbing. KRII serves the northern portion of the market, including the Iron Range area, Grand Rapids and International Falls. This station simulcasts KBJR except during commercials and station identifications. KRII's transmitter is located in Linden Grove Township; master control and most internal operations are based at KBJR's facilities in Duluth. It also acts as a full-power translator station of all of the various channels and subchannels of KBJR.
KBJR operates the area's CBS affiliate on a second digital subchannel, known on-air as CBS 3 in reference to the Twin Ports' longtime CBS affiliate, KDLH, and because it is carried on Charter Spectrum cable channel 3. KDLH was formerly operated by KBJR under a shared services agreement, wound down following the purchase of KBJR and KDLH by Quincy and SagamoreHill Broadcasting respectively. KBJR also operates a MyNetworkTV-affiliated third subchannel, branded as My 9 which airs programming from Gray's North Star Sports and Entertainment Network outside of the MyNetworkTV lineup.
History
The station began on March 1, 1954, as WDSM-TV, and was affiliated with CBS. It was owned by Ridder Newspapers, owner of the Duluth Herald, along with WDSM radio. WDSM was the first VHF television station in Duluth, signing on days before KDAL-TV. In October 1955, the station switched affiliations with KDAL and became an NBC affiliate. It began local color broadcasts in November 1965. It also aired some ABC programs, sharing them with KDAL, until WDIO-TV signed-on in 1966.Ridder merged with Knight Newspapers in 1974 to form Knight Ridder. However, the merged company was not allowed to keep the WDSM stations. It was grandfathered under Federal Communications Commission rules forbidding common ownership of newspapers and broadcasting outlets. The FCC considered the Knight-Ridder merger to be an ownership change, and as a result, the WDSM stations lost their grandfathered protection. The television station was spun off to RJR Communications, a locally based group, in the fall of that year. On November 13, the call letters were changed to the current KBJR-TV. Channel 6 is one of the few stations in the country whose call sign begins with "K" despite being licensed to a city east of the Mississippi River. However, its studios have long been located in Duluth.
Granite Broadcasting acquired KBJR at the end of October 1988, making it one of the company's earliest acquisitions. On December 14, 1997, KBJR's studios were destroyed in a fire late that evening. It left the air temporarily but managed to get back on-the-air the next morning cobbling together a makeshift workspace at its transmitter building after plastering a technical difficulties slide. Two days later, the news operation moved in with PBS member station WDSE and sales and business operations moved to open office space at the U.S. Bank building in Downtown Duluth while master control remained at the transmitter. In April 1999, a spring ice storm swept through Duluth. The heavy accumulation of ice severely damaged KBJR's transmitting tower and, as the melting ice started falling off the tower, large ice chunks broke through the roof of the transmitter building flooding it with water and damaging much of the equipment inside. Master control operations were moved again using a temporary transmitter on WDIO's tower while KBJR's own tower and transmitter were replaced. In June 1999, it relocated to its current location in Canal Park.
In March 2005, the Malara Broadcast Group purchased KDLH from New Vision Television and outsourced most of that station's functions to KBJR. Under this agreement, KDLH laid off most of its staff, and KBJR began to handle nearly all of channel 3's operations. Filings with the FCC showed Malara could operate KDLH with as few as two people on the payroll.
On January 24, 2006, The WB and UPN announced that they would cease broadcasting and merge. The new combined network would be called The CW. The letters would represent the first initial of its corporate parents, CBS and the Warner Bros. unit of Time Warner. On February 22, News Corporation announced that it would start up another new broadcast television network called MyNetworkTV. This new network, which would be sister to Fox, would be operated by Fox Television Stations and its syndication division Twentieth Television. MyNetworkTV was created to give UPN and WB stations, not mentioned as becoming CW affiliates, another option besides becoming independent. It was also created to compete with that network. KDLH operated the area's cable-only WB affiliate, "KWBD", which was part of The WB 100+. Area access to UPN was offered in two ways. KBJR operated an affiliate known on-air as "Northland's UPN" and later "UPN 9" on its second digital subchannel. This was also available over-the-air in Ashland, Wisconsin on WAST-LP, which was a low-power analog semi-satellite of the digital subchannel. WAST was owned by a separate entity from KBJR.
On April 11, 2008, a blizzard swept through the area. Winds over, and heavy, wet snow caused power outages in Duluth which caused KBJR, KDLH, and WDIO to lose their signals at times. Weekday morning anchor Dan Hanger was on the air live from 5 to 9 a.m. At times, he and meteorologist Shannon Murphy were in the dark but were able to broadcast audio. By late morning when KBJR returned to the air, Barbara Reyelts and George Kessler anchored nonstop using a newsroom setup with one microphone and one camera. By noon, KDLH anchor Pat Kelly was reporting from outside the studios. Also, any phone interviews were done through a cell phone by holding a microphone up to the speaker of the cell phone.
At some point in time, it was announced that KDLH would carry The CW on a new second digital subchannel as part of The CW Plus which would be simulcasted on "KWBD". That service would be a similar operation to The WB 100+. It was later announced that "UPN 9" would become an independent station known as "Northland's 9" complete with new logo and graphics. In March 2006, it was made public that KBJR-DT2 would become an affiliate of MyNetworkTV. In July ahead of the launch of the network, "Northland 9" became known as "My 9" while WAST was shut down in August. MyNetworkTV began broadcasting on September 5 while "KWBD" began broadcasting The CW on September 18. On that date, that station officially started using the KDLH-DT2 call sign. On April 5, 2010, KBJR and KRII introduced a new logo with a joint branding of "KBJR 6 & Range 11".
KRII history
KRII signed-on for the first time on November 27, 2002 as a semi-satellite of KBJR. It was originally licensed to International Falls but was changed to Chisholm, which is closer to Duluth, before signing on. It was granted an original construction permit after the FCC finalized the DTV allotment plan on April 21, 1997. As a result, it did not receive a companion channel for a digital television station. Instead on January 6, 2009, over a month before the end of the digital television conversion period for full-service stations, KRII turned off its analog signal and turned on its digital signal. After shutting off analog broadcasts, KRII began multi-casting programming on digital subchannels. Its news bureau is home to a reporter who contributes Iron Range coverage to the KBJR and KDLH newscasts.Sale to Quincy, then Gray
On February 11, 2014, Quincy Media announced that it would purchase KBJR-TV and its satellite KRII, along with WEEK-TV in Peoria, Illinois, and WBNG-TV in Binghamton, New York, from Granite. The license for Malara-owned KDLH was originally planned to be sold to SagamoreHill Broadcasting, with KBJR continuing to operate KDLH through a shared services agreement; that November, SagamoreHill was dropped from the deal, and KDLH would remain with Malara, though Quincy and KBJR would continue to provide services.In July 2015, the deal was reworked yet again; it returned to its previous structure, with SagamoreHill acquiring KDLH, but with the SSA wound down within nine months of the deal's closure—after which CBS programming would be moved to a subchannel of KBJR, and KDLH would operate independently of KBJR and solely carry CW programming. In this form, the deal was completed on November 2, 2015.
These changes took effect on-air on August 1, 2016, with the launch of KBJR's new "CBS 3" subchannel and re-launched news programming.
Quincy acquired KDLH in 2018, asserting that the station was 5th in the market in November 2017 sweeps numbers.
On February 1, 2021, Gray Television announced its intent to purchase Quincy Media for $925 million. The acquisition was completed on August 2, making KBJR and KDLH sisters to Gray stations in nearby markets, including CBS/Fox affiliates KEYC-TV in Mankato and WSAW-TV/WZAW-LD in Wausau, and NBC affiliates WLUC-TV in Marquette and WEAU in Eau Claire, while separating from their former Wisconsin sister stations which were divested in order to complete the purchase.
Christmas City of the North Parade
Each November on the Friday before Thanksgiving, KBJR puts on a parade in downtown Duluth called the Christmas City of the North Parade. It is broadcast live on KBJR and streamed live on its website. In recent years, the parade also has been replayed numerous times in the weeks and days before Christmas. According to this station, the parade dates back to 1958 when KBJR started the event as a way to kick off the holiday shopping season in the area.It has been held every year since except in 1963 when the event was canceled following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy; the 2020 edition was held as a no-spectator event due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In the early 1960s, the station commissioned Merv Griffin to produce a song especially for the parade. The "Christmas City Song" has been used for the parade every year and also has been the closing music for all KBJR newscasts from Thanksgiving until Christmas.