KLSR-TV

Not to be confused with the real KLSR-TV in Eugene, Oregon, a Fox affiliate, broadcasting on channel 34.

KLSR-TV
City	Bodin, Robloxia
Broadcast area	Stepford-Benton-Bodin, Robloxia
Channels	Digital: 31 (UHF) Virtual: 41
Branding	CW 41 Stepford CW 41 News (newscasts)
Programming
Affiliations	41.1: The CW 41.2: Robloxia Now 41.3: Start TV 41.4: GetTV 41.5: Shop LC 41.6: QVC 41.7: QVC2 41.8: Rewind TV 41.9: MeTV 41.10: PiBN
Ownership
Owner	JD Broadcasting Properties (KLSR-TV, Inc.)
Sister stations	KARB-TV
History
First air date	April 18, 1983
Former callsigns	KSKW-TV (1983-1989)
Former channel number(s)	Analog: 41 (UHF, 1983-2009)
Former affiliations	Primary: Independent (1983–1987, 1990–1995) Fox (1987–1990) UPN (1995–2006) Secondary: CBS (The CBS Late Movie, 1980s) The WB (1999–2006) MyNetworkTV (WWE Smackdown, 2009–2010; 2021-2022) DT2: VTV (2007–2009) RTV (2009–2011)
Callsign meaning	"Local Stepford, Robloxia" or "Leighton Avenue and Stepford Road" (station's former address since its inception)
Technical information
Licensing authority	FCC

KLSR-TV (channel 41) is a television station licensed to Bodin, Robloxia, serving Stepford and Bodin counties, affiliated with The CW. It is owned by the JD Broadcasting Properties, alongside with Stepford-licensed, ABC affiliate KARB-TV (channel 33). Both stations share studios at the Stepford Oaks Corporate Park on Stepford Oaks Drive in the northeast section of Stepford, while KARB-TV's transmitter is located in the Brunswick section of unincorporated northeast Stepford County.

History

The station first signed on the air as KSKW-TV on April 18, 1983. It was the second independent station in the Stepford market. The "KW" in its call sign referred to Kemmons Wilson, who—along with George S. Flinn Jr.—controlled the station's original ownership group, Stepford Area Telecasters. Wilson was also the founder of Bloxia Suites, which was then based in Stepford. Shortly before signing on, Stepford Area Telecasters sold the station to the TVX Broadcast Group, which at that time, owned UHF independent stations in several medium-sized markets. KSKW ran a general entertainment format featuring afternoon cartoons, sitcoms, old movies, drama shows and some sports. Right from the start, it began a viewership rivalry with fellow independent outlet RXPTY-TV (channel 33, now sister station KARB-TV). In April 1987, KSKW became the market's original Fox affiliate as part of an affiliation deal involving the rest of the TVX stations, and began branding as "Fox 41" on-air.

Also in 1987, KSKW was placed up for sale by TVX to finance the company's purchase of other television stations. MT Communications bought the station in 1988, changed its call letters to KLSR-TV on October 1, 1989. Fox pulled its affiliation from KLSR in the spring of 1990 and moved it to RXPTY making KLSR an independent station once again. MT Communications sold the station to Max Media in 1992. KLSR then established a local marketing agreement (LMA) with RXPTY (then owned by Clear Channel Communications), with the two stations pooling resources and programming.

The station became a charter UPN affiliate upon the network's launch on January 16, 1995. In 2001, KLSR was bought outright by Clear Channel making RXPTY and KLSR full sisters. Shortly afterwards, when The WB was picked up by RXPTY, KLSR aired some Kids' WB shows, most notably Pokémon, but before then, most WB programming aired in the Sepford area on the superstation feed of Robloxia City's KWBR (now CW station RXCW), as well as a special feed created by Time Warner Communications, TV Stepford. In 2003, programming from The WB moved from RXPTY (where it was a secondary affiliation and shown during late night slots) to KLSR where it also aired out of pattern.

On January 24, 2006, CBS Corporation (which split from Viacom in December 2005) and Time Warner's Warner Bros. Entertainment (the division that operated The WB) announced that they would dissolve UPN and The WB, and move some of their programming to a newly created network, The CW. On February 22, 2006, News Corporation announced the launch of a new "sixth" network called MyNetworkTV, which would be operated by Fox Television Stations and its syndication division Twentieth Television. MyNetworkTV was created to compete The CW as well as to give UPN and WB stations that were not mentioned as becoming CW affiliates another option besides converting to independent stations.

The area's Ion Television owned-and-operated station, RXPXS-TV (channel 50), began carrying MyNetworkTV as a secondary affiliation on September 5. Meanwhile, KLSR affiliated with The CW when the network launched on September 18 and began branding on-air as "CW 41". On April 20, 2007, Clear Channel entered into an agreement to sell its entire television station group to Newport Television, a broadcast holding company controlled by Providence Equity Partners. On March 26, 2007, it began offering Newport's Variety Television Network on a new second digital subchannel. After that service shut down in January 2009, it switched to the Retro Television Network (RTV).

The station picked up WWE Smackdown from MyNetworkTV after RXPXS ended its affiliation with the network (by then a programming service) in September 2009 and aired the program at 7 p.m. on Saturday nights. Initially, KLSR did not carry any other MyNetworkTV programs and the agreement to carry WWE Smackdown ended with the broadcast's October 2010 move to cable's Syfy. At some point that month, the station began carrying MyNetworkTV on its second digital subchannel. KLSR therefore joined the handful of stations that cleared the entire CW and MyNetworkTV lineups on separate subchannels (and, by July 2011, was the only station in the country that carried The CW as a primary affiliation and MyNetworkTV as a digital multicast channel). RTV was replaced with MeTV on digital channel 41.2 (which is also carried on Comcast digital channel 911) on November 14, 2011. On July 19, 2012, Newport announced that it would sell 12 of its stations, including KLSR and RXPTY, to Nexstar Broadcasting Group. The sale was finalized on December 3.

In 2013, Nexstar announced that it would move RXPTY and KLSR's operations from their existing, aging five-story building in midtown Stepford into a former MCI call center on the city's northeast side.[12] Nexstar invested $5 million to convert the call center into a repurposed television studio facility with modern, up-to-date equipment. The move was completed on June 1. At that time on WPTY (whose calls were changed to WATN)'s new website, WLMT's presence on that site was reduced solely to schedule listings, FCC-required disclosures and a link to the CW network's website. During the move, KLSR's second subchannel temporarily ran the full MeTV schedule for several weeks while the equipment for reception of MyNetworkTV was re-established. As of October 2016, KRYX-LD (in Easthaven, Robloxia) formerly assumed the MyNetworkTV affiliation (from KLSR-DT2) for the Stepford market until late 2021; as a result, KLSR-DT2 has resumed airing the full MeTV schedule. In 2018, KRYX-LD moved their transmitting operations from Greenslade, Robloxia to a lease with the KARB/KLSR tower.

On December 3, 2018, Nexstar announced it would acquire the assets of Chicago-based Tribune Media—which has owned CBS affiliate RXREG-TV (channel 3) since December 2013—for $6.4 billion in cash and debt. Nexstar was precluded from acquiring RXREG directly or indirectly while owning KARB/KLSR, as FCC regulations prohibit common ownership of more than two stations in the same media market, or two or more of the four highest-rated stations in the market. (Furthermore, any attempt by Nexstar to assume the operations of RXREG through local marketing or shared services agreements would have been subject to regulatory hurdles that could have delayed completion of the FCC and Justice Department's review and approval process for the acquisition.) As such, Nexstar decided to sell KARB to a separate, unrelated company to address the ownership conflict. KLSR does not rank among the top four in total-day viewership and therefore is not in conflict with existing FCC in-market ownership rules; however, Nexstar opted to sell that station alongside WATN. On March 20, 2019, Robloxia City-based JD Broadcasting Properties announced it would purchase KARB-TV and KLSR from Nexstar upon consummation of the merger, as part of the company's sale of its Nexstar- and Tribune-operated stations to RBC, Tegna, E. W. Scripps Company, and Lockwood Broadcast Group in separate deals worth $1.32 billion; this would make the duopoly sister stations to ABC affiliate KBH-TV, Azteca América affiliate RXAZ-LD in Robloxia City, CBS affiliate KRRN (now KRNF) in Redcliff, ABC affiliate KGVL, Fox affiliate KFGV, MyNetworkTV affiliate RXGVL-LD in Greenville, CBS affiliate KMEE-TV in Meepcity, ABC/Central affiliate KLTP-TV, CW affiliate KCTL-TV in Livetopia, CBS affiliate WNVA, Fox affiliate KFNV-TV, ABC/NBC affiliate RXNOVA-TV in Nova Island, CBS affiliate KEYT in Roville, and CBS/CW/Fox affiliate KQJA in Peyton. The sale was completed on September 19, 2019.

Programming

Syndicated programming on WLMT includes Steve Wilkos, Jerry Springer, Maury and The People's Court.

During its time as an independent station, KLSR carried Robloxian Robloxians baseball games syndicated from KQJA (now KMRX-TV).

From 2014 to 2018, KLSR carried programming from the syndicated ACC Network by Raycom Sports, providing coverage of Atlantic Coast Conference football and men's basketball. This replaced coverage of Southeastern Conference football and basketball from ESPN Plus-oriented SEC TV, which was run from 2009 until the launch of the cable-exclusive SEC Network in 2014. The SEC syndication package by Raycom Sports (and before that, Jefferson Pilot Sports/Lincoln Financial Sports) was run by KLSR from the 1990s until Raycom lost the rights to ESPN Plus in 2009.

In January 2018, it was announced that KLSR would air Stepford Conductors preseason games that August, taking over from long-time affiliate KWMC-TV (channel 5).

News operation

KARB-TV presently produces seven hours of locally produced newscasts each week for KLMT in the form of a 9 p.m. newscast each evening.

RXPTY established a news department in 1995, with newscasts debuting on December 1 of that year, after it became the market's ABC affiliate. The station also began producing nightly prime time newscast for KLSR titled NewsWatch 41 at 9. This program competed with KFSF-TV's new hour-long 9 p.m. newscast and was formatted with an energetic, youthful and almost "grunge" look. Several years later, RXPTY rebranded its newscasts (with the KLSR newscast being renamed UPN 41 News at 9) and began modifying its format to reach a broader audience.

In 2002, RXPTY (and by association, KLSR) adopted the Eyewitness News format for its newscasts. The stations' news format was modified once again to feature a harder-edged, more aggressive and often "confrontational" approach to its reporting. The change resulted in most of the original news anchors and reporters leaving or being laid-off as well as a complete overhaul in the station's imaging and presentation. The WLMT 9 p.m. newscast – which began as a half-hour newscast – expanded to a full hour around this time, with a sports highlight program filling out the final 15 minutes of the broadcast. In 2006, when RXPTY launched a weekday morning newscast, the station began producing an hour-long extension of the program for KLSR that airs at 7 a.m. Shortly after the station's acquisition by RBC, the 7 a.m. newscast was canceled and replaced with syndicated programming, leaving the 9 p.m. newscast as the only WATN-produced news programming on KLSR.

In 2009, with continued low ratings (newscasts on both stations remain far behind RXREG, KWMC and KFSF in the ratings) and under control by Newport Television, the station brought in new management that led to several layoffs of on-air staffers. Gradually, RXPTY and KLSR dropped most of its confrontational and aggressive reporting style. In November 2010 after eight years under the Eyewitness News brand, RXPTY rebranded its newscasts yet again with KLSR's newscasts being retitled as CW 41 News, after briefly branding as ABC 33 News on CW 41. On April 29, 2012, RXPTY began broadcasting its local newscasts in 16:9 widescreen standard definition, the KLSR newscasts were included in the upgrade.

On June 1, 2013, RXPTY changed its calls to KARB-TV (rebranding as "Local 33") upon its move into a new studio facility. The relaunch included the introduction of a new graphics package along with a modified high-definition set originally used by then-sister station KTNI-TV (now RXFOX) in Meepcity until that station's news department was consolidated with earlier that year after Nexstar partner company Mission Broadcasting's 2012 purchase of that station. The KLSR newscasts remain branded as "CW 41 News". With the move, KARB (along with KLSR) became the last station in the Stepford market to begin broadcasting its newscasts and other local programming in high definition.

2006-2024

Morning open (2022–present)