KQHT-TV

KQHT-TV is the ABC-affiliated television station for for the Tri-States area of Western Illinois, Northeastern Missouri, and extreme Southeastern Iowa. Licensed to Keokuk, it broadcasts a high definition digital signal on VHF channel 14 (or virtual channel 14.1 via PSIP) from a transmitter a third way between Keokuk and Fort Madison. Owned by Meredith Corporation, KQHT-TV has sales and administrative offices in midtown Keokuk.

Overview
KQHT-TV primarily serves much of the Quincy/Hannibal/Keokuk market while providing a Grade B covertge to the Kirksville/Ottumwa market, which is primarily covered by fellow ABC affiliate, KTVO Channel 3. In the Tri-States, the station's official coverage area consists of several counties of Southeastern Iowa and much of Northeastern Missouri, covered by Quincy, IL/Hannibal, MO/Keokuk, IA. Additional viewership comes from surrounding counties in Kansas City, St. Louis, Des Moines, Dubuque/Cedar Rapids, Moline/Rock Island/Davenport/Bettendorf, Columbia/Jefferson City, Peoria, Champaign/Urbana/Springfield/Decatur and as far as Omaha, Lafayette and even as farther away as Terre Haute, making it not only the most powerful station in the Midwest, but also as their slogan says, "One of America's Leading ABC Stations". This station earns the most Emmys recieved in the Tri-States in the 90's and was honored as the best newscast by United Press International and the Associated Press.

As WJJY-TV
West-central Illinois had limited choices for television in the 1960s. Most of the western portion of the region was in the Quincy market, while most of the eastern portion was part of the Springfield/Decatur trading area of the Champaign/Urbana/Springfield market. A significant part of the Quincy market lay in the states of Missouri and Iowa. For much of the region, television was limited to WGEM-TV and KHQA-TV in Quincy, or grade B signals from the St. Louis VHF stations. A few homes in the area (mostly in the eastern part of the region) could watch UHF stations from Springfield, and with luck could pick up signals from Peoria. Keith Moyer, an out-of-town promoter who also started WTIM radio in Taylorville, believed that Quincy was big enough to support a third station. With the help of several Jacksonville-area investors, he formed Look Television Corporation and applied for the channel 14 license. Jacksonville was chosen because it was the nearest city to Quincy with an available commercial license, even though it was located on the Springfield/Decatur side of the Champaign/Urbana/Springfield market. On August 18, 1969, WJJY-TV started broadcasting as an ABC affiliate.

WJJY had a lot going for it on paper. It signed-on using every watt of its legally permitted 4.5 million watts of effective radiated power — at the time, the most powerful UHF station in the world. It operated from a 1,610-foot tower near Bluffs, Illinois, one of the three tallest structures in North America at the time. It was topped with an experimental RCA "Vee-Zee" antenna, one of only three ever constructed. Since the station aired on the lowest portion of the UHF dial, the antenna weighed 26 tons--one of the heaviest ever put into service. On its first day on the air, reception reports came in from as far south as Cape Girardeau, Missouri and as far north as Minneapolis.

Look Television persuaded ABC to give the station the exclusive affiliation for the Quincy market. Before then, the ABC affiliation for the Quincy market was split between NBC affiliate WGEM-TV and CBS affiliate KHQA (licensed to Hannibal, Missouri, but with studios in Quincy). The transmitter's location and power gave the station primary coverage of Springfield as well even though there was already an ABC affiliate in the area, WAND in Decatur. The station usually identified as "Jacksonville/Springfield/Quincy" on-air, even though Quincy was its primary market. WJJY agreed to air the entire ABC schedule in pattern with no pre-emptions (except for breaking local news). The microwave relay system was built to be redundant in order to ensure that the ABC feed would always be available.

The station was on the air from 9 a.m. to midnight every day. Programming consisted of movies, travelogues and St. Louis Cardinals baseball in addition to ABC. It also aired newscasts at 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. Starting in 1970, it aired some PBS programming as well as educational programs from the Illinois Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction via microwave relay from WILL-TV in Champaign-Urbana during off-ABC hours. The area had been one of the few areas in the country without access to public television.

However, WJJY struggled almost from the start. For one thing, most of its viewers in the Quincy market, a previously all-VHF area, had probably not bought new sets since the Federal Communications Commission required television sets to include UHF tuning capability in 1964. In addition, most Quincy-area viewers could watch ABC on two longer-established VHF stations: KTVI in St. Louis (now a Fox affiliate) and KTVO in Kirksville, Missouri (which became a primary ABC affiliate in 1968). KTVI's grade B signal covers much of the Missouri and Illinois portions of the market, while KTVO's grade B signal covers nearly all of the market. As a result, the station made almost no headway against WGEM and KHQA. It was nonexistent in Springfield as well, gaining no ground against established stations WAND, WICS and WCIA. Look Television had expected WJJY to be profitable almost immediately — an unrealistic goal for any station, especially one serving such a small market.

The next year and a half witnessed a litany of bounced paychecks and unpaid bills. The biggest problems, ironically, came from what was potentially WJJY's most important asset: the transmitter, which was a voracious power hog. Look Television was badly undercapitalized, and its owners did not anticipate the high electrical costs from running such a powerful transmitter. The Western Illinois Power Cooperative shut off power to the transmitter on several occasions due to nonpayment. While WIPCO always restored the power, it was not because of a payment arrangement. Rather, it was because the utility would have thus been responsible for a 1,600-foot unlighted airplane hazard.

By early 1971, ABC was giving serious thought to yanking its affiliation from WJJY. The network's Quincy ratings were lower than they were when it aired part-time on KHQA and WGEM. Many of the station's engineering staff had left the station in 1970 after going unpaid. Finally that spring, Look Television was placed into receivership, and WJJY signed off for the last time September 15, 1971 with almost no fanfare.

Look Television eventually agreed in principle to sell the tower to Convocom, a consortium of west-central Illinois educational institutions. Convocom planned to used the tower for WJPT, a PBS member station serving Springfield and Quincy. However, on March 26, 1978--while financing was still being put together--a severe ice storm coated the tower with thick sheets of ice. With the shifting weight of the antenna, the tower collapsed. It had been designed with the specifications of a lighter antenna, and was thus not properly engineered to sustain so much weight. The same ice storm brought down WAND's tower, which was designed similarly to WJJY's tower.

As KQHT-TV
In the spring of 1979, the Federal Communications Commission in Washington, DC decided to bring back the channel 14 license to the market. This time, by moving its city of license from Jacksonville further west to Keokuk, Iowa, making it the last commercial VHF channel allocation available in the Tri-State Area and its construction permit was heavily contested among several local broadcast interests. Atlanta, Georgia-based Cox Media Group, MCA/Universal and Sacramento, California-based Kelly Broadcasting emerged as the leading suitors for the license and were locked in a battle for the frequency over several years of comparative hearings at the FCC. Following an initial decision in 1955 and a reaffirmation in 1957, the ultimate victorious party was Kelly Broadcasting, owners of KCRA-TV (Channel 3, NBC) in Sacramento and KCPQ-TV (Channel 13, Fox) in Tacoma/Seattle, Washington and Channel 14, along with its affiliation with ABC, returned to the airwaves as KQHT, commonly known as "Q14", distinguishing it from its sister station in western Washington.

In 1988, Des Moines, Iowa-based Meredith Corporation and Dallas, Texas-based A.H. Belo Corporation (which was later renamed Belo Corporation in 2002) acquired a share of 25% each in cooperation for a joint venture with Kelly Broadcasting, forming Local Media Partners LLC, which owned the station until Belo's merger with Gannett in late 2013.

Local Media Partners LLC, acquired the rest of KQHT's share in August 1998, as part of Kelly Broadcasting's exit from the television business, making it a 50/50 joint venture between Belo and Meredith. Belo later sold its remaining share to Meredith on December 9, 2013 upon its merger with Gannett two weeks later in order to satisfy FCC regulations.

On September 8, 2015, Media General, owner of NBC affiliate KWQC (channel 6) in Davenport, IA and CBS affiliate KIMT (channel 3) in Mason City, IA, announced that it would acquire Meredith by June 2016.