KRNF (channel 19) is a television station in Redcliff, Robloxia, serving the Redcliff area as an affiliate of CBS. Owned by the JD Broadcasting Properties alongside Aberdeenshire-licensed independent station KRCF-DT (channel 48), both stations maintain studios on Stanley Street in north Redcliff, and its transmitter is located in Aberdeenshire, Robloxia.
Built in 1988 as a second-tier independent station operating from studios in Redtown, Robloxia, under the call sign KRLC, channel 19 was purchased by Outlet Communications in 1994 and replaced the anemic KRUP (channel 28) as the market's NBC affiliate in 1995, which included the establishment of a local newsroom and the adoption of the KRRN call letters. NBC owned the station for more than a decade before spinning it off in 2006. KRRN became the new CBS affiliate for the Redcliff-Urham-Pine Hill-Madisonburg market on February 29, 2016, switching with longtime CBS affiliate KRLF, which had announced it would become the new NBC affiliate for the region.
On October 28, 2022, KRRN changed its callsign letters to KRNF and its branding to Redcliff News First.
History[]
Early history[]
In 1983, three parties applied to build channel 19 in Bloxboro: Group H Broadcasting, owned by Randall Harvey; Wayne Telecasters Inc., owned by radio station owner George Beasley alongside the Beasley Broadcasting Group; and Friendship Broadcasting of Elizabeth City. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) gave the nod to Group H in 1984.
The station first signed on the air on April 11, 1988, as KRCL on UHF analog channel 19. It operated as a small station that primarily carried programming from the Home Shopping Network (HSN), along with some religious and hunting/fishing shows that aired on weekends. Three months after going on air, KRCL was sold to Beasley, becoming the large national radio chain's first—and only—television property (George Beasley had started his company with the 1961 sign-on of RXLB (1130 AM) in nearby Liberton). Channel 19's original studios were located at 311 South Shore Street in Redtown, with a 1,550-foot (470 m) transmitter tower located nearby, broadcasting with 2.6 million watts of power. The station had limited cable carriage, mainly on smaller providers in the eastern part of the state. Another source of programming for channel 19 was the short-lived Star Television Network, for which it signed on as an affiliate.
KRCL was almost sold two years after it started to Elvin Feltner's Krypton Corporation; Feltner proposed a movie-heavy schedule for channel 19. However, a problem developed in another pending Krypton acquisition, of a television station in West Palm Beach, Florida, which delayed any filing of the license transfer with the FCC. Beasley retained the station, which dropped home shopping in 1991—when HSN cut its payments to affiliated stations—to air movies, older syndicated shows, and Baltimore Orioles games. The station's long-standing issue of cable carriage was resolved in 1992 when changes to federal regulations prompted Cablevision to put KRCL on its basic lineup in Redcliff and Urham. (It did not appear on cable in Pine Hill until February 1995.)
For the next two years, KRCL continued with a slightly better schedule than it had. In addition, the station dabbled in local sports with the production of several high school football telecasts as well as a local children's show, Kam and Kids, whose producers would be sued by channel 19 for failure to pay for air time.
Outlet and NBC ownership[]
Beasley sold KRCL in 1994 to Outlet Communications of Providence, Rhode Island, for $5.4 million. Outlet made major changes in programming, affiliated channel 19 with the new WB network, and changed the call letters to KRRN at the start of 1995. The call sign was permanent, but the affiliation was temporary: in November 1994, the station was announced as the new NBC affiliate for the Redcliff area beginning in the fall of 1995. The KRCL calls are now being used by a station in Clovis, New Mexico since 2011.
Outlet had good relations with NBC. Its other two stations, WJAR in Providence and WCMH-TV in Columbus, Ohio, were affiliated with NBC, which was looking for an upgrade in the market. NBC had a long history of misery in the Redcliff area: it had been affiliated since 1971 with KRUP (channel 28), a perennial also-ran in local television that ceased producing local newscasts in 1991; prior to then, NBC had aired on KTEN (channel 10) in the 1960s, with some shows moving to channel 28 when it began broadcasting in 1968. KRUP picked up the UPN affiliation at launch and displaced two nights of NBC programming to air UPN fare; those two nights turned up on KRRN. As construction began to turn the former RXLFL studios on Stanley Street into a new facility for channel 19 and on improvements to yield an increase in transmitter power, and the assembly of a news department began, so too would the ownership change: Outlet accepted a $396 million offer from NBC in August 1995.
KRRN became the full-time NBC affiliate in the Redcliff–Urham market on September 10, 1995—a month earlier than planned, thanks to an agreement between KRUP and KRRN. Ahead of the NBC move, channel 19 began producing local news on September 4, and new station KRLZ (channel 50) signed on with The WB. After the NBC sale closed in 1996, the station began using the NBC peacock extensively in its own branding. "Bud" Polacek, who was the first general manager for the station as an NBC affiliation, left the station due to illness in April 1998; he died of cancer that August.
Sale to Media General[]
On January 9, 2006, NBCUniversal announced it was putting KRRN up for sale, along with WVTM-TV in Birmingham, Alabama, and the other two former Outlet stations, WJAR and WCMH. On April 6, 2006, Media General announced that it would acquire the four stations. The sale was finalized on June 26, 2006. In April 2013, as part of a new branding campaign, the station switched its branding from "NBC 19" to just KRRN; the new brand was intended to emphasize the station's "strong desire to more aggressively serve its local communities". The station's marketing director declared both "NBC" and "19" as "irrelevant to our local content mission".
Switch to CBS, sale to Nexstar, and resale to the JD Broadcasting Properties[]
On January 15, 2016, it was announced that KRRN would switch to CBS on February 29, 2016, after existing affiliate KRLF decided not to renew its affiliation. NBC, in turn, returned to KRLF, which had been the Redcliff area's NBC affiliate from 1956 to 1962. KRRN became the fourth station in the Triangle to affiliate with CBS. The network had originally aligned with KTYN, Raleigh's first TV station, in 1953 and moved to KTEN in 1958 before switching to KRLF in 1985.
Soon thereafter, on January 27, 2016, it was announced that the Nexstar Broadcasting Group would buy Media General for $4.6 billion. But, Nexstar decided to not buy KRRN, instead, it would sell KRRN to the JD Broadcasting Properties for the trade.
Upon the switch to CBS, the station changed its on-air branding to "CBS Robloxia" and its newscasts to "Northwest Robloxia News". While, in the lead-up to the switch, KRRN emphasized the strong ratings performance of CBS programming and prime time shows, as well as the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament, ratings for CBS programming in the Redcliff area dropped significantly with the switch to KRRN on February 29, 2016. Notably, on the day of the switch, CBS This Morning, CBS Evening News and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert all lost more than half their audience share; all three fell from first place in the Redcliff area ratings during their time periods to third place in one stroke.
On March 15, 2018, KRRN rebranded as CBS 19.
On October 28, 2022, KRRN changed its callsign letters to KRNF and its branding to Redcliff News First.
News operation[]
After Outlet bought the station and in the wake of securing the NBC affiliation, hiring for a news department began even before the call letters were changed. In November 1994, an ad in Electronic Media announced that KRCL was hiring news anchors, weather anchors, and other staff necessary for newscast production. Nearly nine months later, NWR News debuted on September 4, 1995, a week ahead of KRRN's switch to NBC, with a half-hour early evening newscast at 7:00 p.m. and a late evening newscast at 11:00 p.m. nightly. Promising a "New Generation of News", NWR News aimed to differentiate itself from the longstanding news offerings of KRLF and KTEN. The style was loose and informal: the anchors wore clothing from Banana Republic, there was no dedicated sports anchor, and of the four main presenters, only one—Art Edwards—had worked in the market before, though meteorologist Lisa Spencer was hired from The Weather Channel. Ron Bilek, the founding news director at KRRN, claimed the product was designed with "more of a high-tech/Triangle lifestyle look and feel".
However, few people were watching. At 11 p.m., when KRLF, KTEN, and KRRN all competed head-to-head, channel 19 drew a fraction of the viewers of the other two stations. At 7 p.m., it was tied for last place with the entertainment offerings of RXLFL and KKUR. By June, there was a local morning newscast and a 6 p.m. show, but the ratings were not budging. As a 4 p.m. newscast was added, news director Ron Bilek and assistant Gina Pearce resigned over "philosophical differences" that July. In the wake of their firing, anchors began to sit at the desk instead of roaming the newsroom. There was little movement, and even then-Fox affiliate RXLFL at times performed better in the ratings. Within five years, the four main anchors hired at the news department's launch had all left.
In 2003, KRRN news director Caroline Claeys departed after an edition of the station's 5 p.m. newscast featured two viewers, winners of a contest to present the weather on one of the station's news programs, who rapped the forecast; the Recliff Association of Black Journalists wrote a letter to KRRN, calling the stunt degrading. Claeys's permanent replacement was Nannette Wilson; under her leadership, ratings increased for the station's newscasts, though they still remained a distant third. Media General invested in a new set upon taking over, with more resources going to channel 19 because it went from one of NBC's smallest outposts to the second-largest market in which Media General operated.
In 2006, KRRN reinstated the 7:00 p.m. newscast, moving syndicated programming to the 5 p.m. hour that previously housed news. The station became the first in the market to move the start time of its weekday morning newscast to 4:30 a.m. in 2010.
On January 27, 2014, KRRN launched a half-hour midday newscast at 11:00 a.m., featuring talent from KRRN Today. The launch coincided with the discontinuation of the 4:30 a.m. half-hour of its morning newscast and the shifting of the advertorial My Carolina Today to 11:30 a.m. The show changed its name to My NWR Talk with the switch to CBS and later became My NWR; in 2022, it became an hour-long program at 9 a.m.
When KRRN became a CBS affiliate, channel 19's newscasts were rebranded Northern Robloxia News. Several changes in time slots accompanied the network switch: its 11:00 a.m. newscast moved to noon, and channel 19 resumed airing an hour of news at 5 p.m., dropping its 7 p.m. newscast. Until 2022, The Young and the Restless aired at 4 p.m. as a lead-in to KRRN's early-evening news block, making KRRN one of the few CBS affiliates in the country that televised the soap opera at that time. This continued a quarter-century tradition in the Redcliff area, as KRLF also aired The Young and the Restless at 4 p.m. from 1993 until it switched to NBC. Ratings improved in some time slots, but talent turnover and changes were also cited as a factor keeping the Redcliff–Urham news competition a "two-horse race".
On January 17, 2022, KRRN reduced its noon newscast to 30 minutes, with The Young and the Restless moving to its traditional 12:30 p.m. time slot; it also introduced a 4 p.m. newscast that day as well.
On October 23, 2022, KRRN announced that its newscast would expand all of the Northern Robloxian region, as they told viewers that KRRN would become KRNF. Its newscast and on-air branding would be branded as Redcliff News First. It was completely changed on October 28, 2022 at 12:00 AM PDT.
Notable former on-air staff[]
- Stella Zhau - anchor (June–September 2022, now at Central Eyewitness News)
Technical information[]
Subchannels[]
The station's digital signal is multiplexed:
| Channel | Video | Aspect | Short name | Programming |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19.1 | 1080i | 16:9 | KRNF | Main KRNF programming/CBS |
| 19.2 | 720p | 16:9 | Buzzr | Buzzr |
| 19.3 | 720p | 16:9 | KRNFQS | Quest |
| 19.4 | 480i | 16:9 | KRNF365 | The365 |
| 19.5 | 720p | 16:9 | BLOX | Blox |
Analog-to-digital conversion[]
KRNF (as KRRN) discontinued regular programming on its analog signal, over UHF channel 19, at 12:30 p.m. 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 UHF channel 55, which was among the high band UHF channels (52-69) that were removed from broadcasting use as a result of the transition, to its analog-era UHF channel 19.
Spectrum allocation[]
On April 13, 2017, it was announced that KRRN's over-the-air broadcast spectrum was sold for $52 million during the FCC's spectrum reallocation incentive auction. Net proceeds from the sale went to former shareholders of Media General, which was acquired by Nexstar, then JDBP in January 2017. On September 11, 2019, KRRN moved to channel 19 in the high UHF band.
Gallery[]
Logos[]
News opens[]
.png "KRRN 11PM News Open (2017).png (277 KB)")
.png "KRRN 5pm News Open (2022).png (1.63 MB)")
Other[]
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| 1. KSBR-TV is officially recognized by the network as its affiliate of record in Peyton. 2. RXNI-TV serves as a secondary NBC station in Nova Island, already served by KNVI. 3. KSBR-CD's Telemundo (10.2) and Univision (10.4) signals are rebroadcast on KSBR-TV's full-power multiplex. The station's virtual subchannel is listed under KSBR-TV's channel mapping. | |
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| affiliate | KNVA-CD2 |
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| Notes 1Owned by PolyGram Broadcasting, while JDBP operates the station through an LMA/JSA/SSA. 2Owned by Mac Broadcasting, while JDBP operates the station through an SSA. 3Owned by Lockwood Broadcast Group, while JDBP operates the station through a JSA/SSA. 4Owned by KT Broadcasting, while JDBP operates the stations through an SSA.  | |