A reader recently emailed a picture of a mug he found in a northern Minnesota cabin depicting an apparent TV station pair: The logo says “Bemidji 26, Grand Rapids Hibbing 18.”
There is a present-day station on channel 26 in Bemidji (KFTC). There was also a construction permit for a full-power station on channel 26 in Bemidji in the mid-1980s, but it was never built. This mug was connected to a predecessor of both facilities.
After an initial post here saying that the channels were associated with the KVRR translator network in the 1980’s and 1990’s, some readers replied on social media to point out that the station’s history goes back further than that. With information on the station previously hard to find, one reader even decided to create a Wikipedia entry for the station, K26AC.
In fact, K26AC Bemidji and K18AI Grand Rapids were believed to be the first low-power TV stations to originate programming when they signed on in 1982. Here’s the logo from the mug as seen in a station ID posted in a YouTube video that one reader pointed out:
The stations’ sign-on attracted national attention, with the New York Times reporting that it had 17 full-time and 6 part-time employees as of April 1982. During the day, the station ran syndicated programming including Phil Donahue, the Times reported. After 7 p.m., it ran subscription TV.
Most importantly, it had a news department producing full newscasts.
However, the original effort only lasted 15 months, going to 24-hour subscription programming on April 1, 1983. A YouTube video of its last broadcast details the stations’ history and reasons for ending local programming:
News anchor Duke Skorich, who later moved to the Duluth market, explained on the last newscast that there was not enough advertising support to cover the station’s expenses:
“Over the course of these last few months, we have increased our efforts to make these stations profitable. We expanded our news coverage to the point that we were starting to be recognized as a major source of information for people throughout the Northland. But it has been a costly proposition and the return from the advertisers just wasn’t there. At least not enough to support the type of programming that the management here felt should be available to the viewing public.”
The final newscast includes reports from both WCCO-TV and KSTP-TV, as well as a full half-hour from CNN Headline News. The newscast notes that the station had a news bureau in Hibbing, intended to compete with Duluth-based stations.
Grand Rapids and Hibbing have always been considered to be part of the Duluth market. By the the time K18AI signed on, WIRT/13 Hibbing had already been on the air for 15 years relaying Duluth ABC affiliate WDIO/10 , with regular reports from the Iron Range appearing in WDIO/WIRT newscasts.
(Your reporter has worked at WDIO/WIRT for a combined 12 years, and despite having worked side-by-side with people who directly competed with K26AC/K18AI during its brief run, the topic has sadly never come up.)
In 1982, Bemidji was part of the now-defunct Alexandria market, with KNMT/12 (Walker) relaying NBC/ABC programming and local newscasts from KCMT/7 (Alexandria). The city had also been able to receive multiple Duluth stations via local translators since the 1950s and PBS station KAWE/9 (Bemidji) had signed on in 1980.
K26AC was owned by John Boler, who had previously owned KXJB/4 (Valley City-Fargo) and also helped develop the network now known as Prairie Public.
FCC records indicate that 17 days before K26AC aired its last newscast, Boler filed an application for a full-power station on channel 26 to replace K26AC. A construction permit was granted in July 1983 with the callsign KXBJ, but the full-power station was never built and the permit expired in 1985.
Boler was also the majority owner of a company that initially held the construction permit for what is now KNRR/12 (Pembina). The permit was granted in 1982, over the opposition of other broadcasters, but FCC records indicate KNRR didn’t begin operations until 1986.
While the K26AC experiment with low-power TV did not work out as planned, “LPTV” lives on in a different form in Bemidji: KAWE uses it as an acronym for Lakeland Public TV and has offered nightly newscasts called “Lakeland News” since the early 2000s.
Later, the Bemidji and Grand Rapids stations were among many that relayed Fargo Independent station KVRR across parts of four markets in northern Minnesota in the 1980s. Besides three full-power satellites in Thief River Falls, Pembina, and Jamestown (which still exist today), KVRR was relayed on ten translators. Half were owned by the station.
A screengrab lists the translator network as it existed in 1996, by which time KVRR was a FOX affiliate:
Up until the late 1980s, Alexandria was a separate market from Minneapolis. The Bemidji, Park Rapids, Red Lake, and Walker areas were within the Alexandria market, while the Brainerd and Donnelly translators were in the Minneapolis market, the Grand Rapids translator was in the Duluth market, and the remaining translators were in the Fargo market.
Only Roseau still has a KVRR translator. So what happened to the rest?
- The Alexandria translator was part of the Selective TV system, which switched to different programming.
- The Bemidji translator, K26AC, was knocked off the air when KFTC signed on in 1999. (KFTC is a full-power license, and FCC rules give full-power stations priority.) K26AC had a construction permit to move to channel 34, but the license was deleted by 2001.
- The Brainerd translator went silent in 2008 and its license was deleted in 2009.
- The Devils Lake translator moved to channel 33 in 2003 but had left the air by 2009.
- The Donnelly translator was part of a system operated by the local phone cooperative. The translator licenses were deleted in 2008.
- The Grand Rapids translator, K18AI, switched its source to KQDS-TV (Duluth) in 1999, when KQDS signed on, because Grand Rapids is in the Duluth market. It later moved to channel 29 as K29EB-D and remains on the air today.
- The Park Rapids translator was deleted in 2013.
- The Red Lake translator was part of the system operated by the Red Lake Band of Chippewa, which is still on the air but no longer carries KVRR.
- The Roseau translator is owned by Roseau County. The translator system changed channels a few times due to the first digital transition, and KVRR was last known to be relayed on K26OH-D.
- The Walker translator is owned by Leech Lake TV Corp. It moved to a different channel and now carries KFTC.
At one point, some of these translators were slated to become part of a new TV system that was to have been called the Minnesota Independent Network. It never happened, but that’s a story for a different day.