For more than four decades, there was only one TV station in Nebraska’s capital city.
The situation in Lincoln was the result of a brief, tumultuous period in which one station bought out its competitor and changed its primary network affiliation twice in a three-month period.
Lincoln is only about 50 miles away from Omaha by air and first received TV service when Omaha’s KMTV/3 and WOW-TV/6 signed on in 1949 carrying CBS and NBC, the dominant networks at the time.
Two Lincoln stations signed on in 1953: KOLN-TV/12 began broadcasting in February followed by KFOR-TV/10 three months later, both taking their callsigns from sister radio stations.
But Lincoln was too close to Omaha for the stations to be allowed to carry CBS or NBC. The original KOLN-TV was a DuMont affiliate while KFOR-TV carried ABC.
After only a few months transmitting from Lincoln, KOLN-TV asked the FCC for permission to move to a new tower about 25 miles west of town and increase power to 316kW, the maximum allowed for analog VHF High TV stations.
The situation changed again when the owner of KOLN-TV bought out KFOR-TV in early 1954. KFOR-TV signed off March 14 after less than a year on the air; KOLN-TV took over the ABC affiliation but continued to carry DuMont programs as well.
Instead of moving channel 12 to the tower west of Lincoln, the new owners instead got permission to move channel 10 to that location and made it the new home of KOLN-TV. Advance newspaper coverage indicated the move was planned for June 1, 1954, but it’s unclear if the move took place on that exact date.
The move allowed KOLN-TV to change networks again. With its transmitter now about 75 miles away from Omaha, KOLN-TV officially became a primary CBS affiliate on June 15, 1954, retaining secondary affiliations with ABC and DuMont.
It was KOLN-TV’s third primary affiliation in three months, but it stuck.
By this time, viewers were probably getting confused — the Lincoln Sunday Journal and Star acknowledged it had received complaints about incorrect program listings amid the fast-changing situation.
Perhaps the newspaper was getting annoyed itself by all of the changes, evidenced by the fact that the affiliation change to CBS was barely mentioned. While earlier developments had been reported with multiple articles, the major network switch was only mentioned as a side note in a column about the “Voice of Firestone” changing radio networks.
But the move was key for KOLN-TV: It was now the only TV station in Lincoln, and it was affiliated with a major network.
Channel 12 was donated to the university, which launched KUON-TV on Nov. 1, 1954.
That’s how it would continue for another 42 years. Lincoln viewers could still receive other network programming from the Omaha stations, some of which included Lincoln in their legal ID’s, but KOLN-TV was the only game in town for Lincoln advertisers.
For ratings and regulatory purposes, Lincoln was paired with the Tri Cities of Kearney, Hastings, and Grand Island, which had ABC and NBC affiliates that could not be received in Lincoln. KOLN-TV was relayed on KGIN/11 to provide CBS service to the Tri Cities.
KOLN-TV remained unchallenged in Lincoln until the 1990’s, when KCAN/8 (Albion) successfully petitioned the FCC to move to Lincoln. Channel 8 had already been an ABC affiliate as a satellite of KCAU/9 (Sioux City) and, earlier, as part of the “NTV” network based at KHGI (Kearney). It was allowed to retain the affiliation when it became Lincoln’s KLKN.
Lincoln received a third commercial TV station in 2006 with the sign-on of WB affiliate KOWH/51, which quickly became CW affiliate KCWL and later FOX affiliate KFXL.
The capital city’s collection of network affiliates finally became complete in 2022* when KSNB-TV/4.1, an NBC affiliate co-owned with KOLN-TV, moved to the reconstructed KOLN tower, marking the first time Lincoln viewers could receive all of the networks from in-market affiliates.
*A reader reminded me that KSNB’s NBC programming became available on a subchannel of KOLN about eight years before the station itself moved closer to Lincoln. 2022 marked the year that all of the networks became available on primary channels.