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The MOVE Fire

This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985 Philadelphia police fired thousands of rounds at the MOVE house, city officials approved dropping an explosive device on the roof, the resulting fire was allowed to burn, 11 people—including five children—died, and 61 homes were destroyed. Philadelphia City Council later called it a “brutal attack carried out by the City of Philadelphia on its own citizens” and acknowledged that no individual faced criminal consequences for the bombing. One timeline correction worth preserving for the BHP record: the major previous MOVE-police confrontation was August 8, 1978, about seven years before the bombing, not a year or two earlier. Officer James Ramp was killed, other police and firefighters were wounded, nine MOVE members were later convicted, and television cameras recorded police beating Delbert Africa during his arrest. The 1985 MOVE Commission later specifically criticized city planners for failing to adequately use lessons from that 1978 confrontation. And that actually strengthens the point you’re making: 1985 did not happen without precedent or institutional memory. There had already been a deadly confrontation with MOVE, years of conflict, negotiations and police involvement before Osage Avenue.

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The Violence That Helped Spark the NAACP

In August 1908, a white mob attacked Springfield, Illinois’s Black community, destroying homes and businesses and lynching two Black men. National outrage over the violence helped spur the movement that created the NAACP the following year.

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Wikipedia

KGCW

KGCW
ATSC 3.0 station
CityBurlington, Iowa
Channels
BrandingQuad Cities CW
Programming
Affiliations
Ownership
Owner
KLJB, WHBF-TV; Tegna: WQAD-TV
History
First air date
January 5, 1988 (1988-01-05)
Former call signs
  • KJMH (1988–2001)
  • KGWB-TV (2001–2006)
  • KGCW-TV (2006–2009)
Former channel numbers
  • Analog: 26 (UHF, 1988–2009)
  • Digital: 41 (UHF, 2003–2020)
Call sign meaning
Grant (previous owner) CW
Technical information[1]
Licensing authority
FCC
7841
ERP1,000 kW
HAAT316.4 m (1,038 ft)
Transmitter coordinates
41°19′39″N 90°22′46″W / 41.32750°N 90.37944°W / 41.32750; -90.37944
Links
Public license information
Websitewww.ourquadcities.com

KGCW (channel 26) is a television station licensed to Burlington, Iowa, United States, serving as the CW network outlet for the Quad Cities area. It is owned by Nexstar Media Group alongside CBS affiliate WHBF-TV (channel 4) and co-managed with Fox affiliate KLJB (channel 18); Nexstar's Tegna subsidiary owns ABC affiliate WQAD-TV (channel 8). KGCW, WHBF-TV and KLJB share studios in the Telco Building on 18th Street in downtown Rock Island, Illinois; KGCW's transmitter is located near Orion, Illinois.

Channel 26 began broadcasting as KJMH, a local station for Burlington, in January 1988 and became a Fox affiliate that July. It was owned by local businessman Steve Hoth, who named it for his wife, JoEllen M. Hoth. In May 1994, the station lost access to Fox programming after the network moved to strip KJMH of its affiliation. It then went off the air that November.

Grant Communications acquired the station and returned it to the air on March 1, 1996, rebroadcasting KLJB-TV in Davenport. In January 2001, channel 26 was split from channel 18 to become the affiliate of The WB in the Quad Cities, where it was seen on cable and a subchannel of KLJB, and its transmitter was relocated from Burlington to a site that offered increased coverage of the Quad Cities. The station became affiliated with The CW in 2006 when The WB and UPN merged. Nexstar acquired the Grant stations in 2014, coinciding with the separate purchase of WHBF-TV.

History

[edit]

KJMH: The Hoth years

[edit]

Burlington Broadcast Company, which was owned by local businessman Steve Hoth, obtained a construction permit for a new television station in Burlington in 1984. The station went unbuilt for three years. An intended November 1987 launch was scrapped because of equipment problems.[2] KJMH—named for JoEllen M. Hoth, Steve's wife[3]—began broadcasting on January 5, 1988.[4][5] The station, airing a mix of independent station programming and (for a time) a local newscast,[3] represented a $1 million investment.[6] It broadcast with an effective radiated power of 200,000 watts from a transmitting facility at Roosevelt Avenue and Winegard Drive in Burlington,[7] sufficient only to reach the Burlington area: Mount Pleasant sat on the edge of the contour, and cities such as Keokuk and Muscatine were outside of its signal range.[4]

Even though KJMH affiliated with Fox on July 31, 1988,[8] financial precarity was a major issue in the station's early history. Amid reports that the station's payroll checks were bouncing, the general manager resigned in 1991.[9][7] Two years later, in November 1993, Fox moved to strip KJMH of its affiliation. Hoth hired a Chicago law firm to fight the disaffiliation in court but was unsuccessful, and KJMH ceased airing Fox programming in May 1994.[7] The station then aired programming from home shopping service ValueVision and Channel America, which had historically catered to low-power stations.[10]

In November 1994, Hoth announced the sale of 80 percent of the station to Kelley Broadcasting for $405,000; Kelley, a consortium of investors based in Texas, planned to affiliate KJMH with the forthcoming UPN network. Additionally, it was announced that the station would leave the air for four to six weeks for equipment installation and refurbishing.[11] Channel 26 did not return after the four-week period of silence, and financial questions continued to swirl. In February 1995, the law firm that had been hired to fight KJMH's disaffiliation sued for nonpayment.[7] Hoth would later file bankruptcy for Burlington Broadcasting and a related company in October 1996; the then-former licensee of the station owed more than $444,000 against $38,000 in assets.[12]

Grant Broadcasting ownership

[edit]

The Kelley sale was never filed with the FCC; instead, in March 1995, Grant Broadcasting filed to purchase KJMH from Hoth for $400,000.[13] The station was restored to service on March 1, 1996, as a full-time rebroadcaster of Grant-owned KLJB-TV, the Fox affiliate in Davenport.[14]

Grant Broadcasting intended to eventually air separate programming on the station from the start.[3] KLJB-TV had previously acquired the rights to programming from The WB in the Quad Cities market in September 1999 as a result of Superstation WGN ceasing carriage of WB programming nationally; selected WB shows aired in late night time slots on channel 18.[15] In January 2001, The WB programming moved from a secondary affiliation on KLJB–KJMH to channel 26 alone, which was added to Quad Cities cable systems and changed its call sign to KGWB-TV.[16] Initially, KGWB-TV broadcast its own programming for half of the broadcast day, continuing to air KLJB-TV's programming in other time slots.[3]

While branded as channel 26, the Burlington signal was so far from the Quad Cities that another station was allowed to operate on the channel: low-power WBQD-LP debuted in 2002 as the Quad Cities area's UPN affiliate.[17] KGWB-TV programming was made available over-the-air in the Quad Cities as early as 2003 as a subchannel on KLJB-TV's digital signal.[18] After splitting channel 26's programming, Grant invested in a relocation of the KGWB-TV transmitter facility from Burlington to Seaton, Illinois, midway between Burlington and the Quad Cities, to increase the station's availability in the more populous Quad Cities area.[3]

KGWB-TV became the local affiliate of The CW in 2006, upon the merger of The WB and UPN, under new KGCW-TV call letters.[19][20]

Nexstar ownership

[edit]

Grant Broadcasting announced the sale of its stations for $87.5 million to Nexstar Broadcasting Group in November 2013. It was the second acquisition by Nexstar involving a Quad Cities-market television station in six weeks; in September, Nexstar had announced the acquisition of WHBF-TV in Rock Island, Illinois.[21] The Grant purchase closed in December 2014, along with the acquisition of KLJB by Marshall Broadcasting Group under a deal in which Nexstar continued to provide services via a shared services agreement; Nexstar could own WHBF-TV with KGCW outright but not with KLJB, which was one of the top four-rated stations in the market.[22][23] In May 2015, KGCW's Quad Cities simulcast—still needed to serve some viewers who could not receive a strong signal from Seaton—moved from a subchannel of KLJB to a subchannel of WHBF-TV as a consequence of the ownership change, a move that had been anticipated for months.[24][25] Another effect was that KLJB and KGCW could no longer share syndicated programming.[26]

In 2020, KGCW moved its transmitter to a new tower at Orion, from where other Quad Cities stations are broadcast.[27] This coincided with the repack from the 2016 United States wireless spectrum auction, which moved the station to channel 21.[28] As a result, the WHBF-TV subchannel simulcast was discontinued.[29]

In August 2025, Nexstar agreed to acquire Tegna—owner of ABC affiliate WQAD-TV (channel 8)—for $6.2 billion.[30] The deal was completed on March 19, 2026, and included approval for Nexstar to own three full-power station licenses in markets such as the Quad Cities.[31] A temporary restraining order issued one week later by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, later escalated to a preliminary injunction, has prevented WQAD from being integrated into WHBF/KGCW/KLJB.[32][33]

Technical information and subchannels

[edit]
Subchannels provided by KGCW (ATSC 1.0)[34][35]
Subchannel Res.Tooltip Display resolution Short name Programming ATSC 1.0 host
26.1 720p KGCW-DT The CW KLJB
26.2 480i Rewind Rewind TV WHBF-TV
26.3 Laff Laff
26.4 CBS-SD CBS (WHBF-TV) in SD KLJB
  Simulcast of subchannels of another station

ATSC 3.0 lighthouse

[edit]
Subchannels of KGCW (ATSC 3.0)[36]
Subchannel Short name Programming
4.1 WHBF CBS (WHBF-TV)
6.1 KWQC NBC (KWQC-TV) DRM
18.1 KLJB Fox (KLJB)
26.1 KGCW The CW
  Subchannel broadcast with digital rights management

The station began ATSC 3.0 broadcasting on December 19, 2024.

Analog-to-digital conversion

[edit]

KGCW was the only Quad Cities-market station to cease analog broadcasts on February 17, 2009, the original date on which full-power television stations in the United States were to transition from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate.[37] The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 41, using virtual channel 26.[38]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ "Facility Technical Data for KGCW". Licensing and Management System. Federal Communications Commission.
  2. ^ "New Burlington TV station delays debut". The Des Moines Register. Des Moines, Iowa. December 21, 1987. p. 21. Archived from the original on March 1, 2023. Retrieved March 1, 2023 – via Newspapers.com.
  3. ^ a b c d e Martin, Stephen A. (February 8, 2001). "Local TV station breaks with Davenport's format". The Hawk Eye.
  4. ^ a b "KJMH" (PDF). Television Factbook. 1990. p. A-448. Archived (PDF) from the original on January 31, 2023. Retrieved March 1, 2023.
  5. ^ Delaney, Steve (January 5, 1988). "KJMH-26 signs on; anticipates 24-hour service". The Hawk Eye. p. 3A.
  6. ^ "Fine Tuning: New Burlington UHF station set to debut". The Des Moines Register. Des Moines, Iowa. November 23, 1987. p. 1T. Archived from the original on December 27, 2022. Retrieved March 1, 2023 – via Newspapers.com.
  7. ^ a b c d "A look at KJMH". The Hawk Eye. January 5, 2000.
  8. ^ Wilson, Bob (July 26, 1988). "Bob Wilson". The Hawk Eye. p. 2A.
  9. ^ George, Gene (July 28, 1991). "KJMH battles start-up gremlins: Station's owner optimistic after stormy 3 1/2 years". The Hawk Eye. pp. 1D, 3D.
  10. ^ Gysi, Chuck (May 7, 1994). "KJMH, Fox part company". The Hawk Eye. p. 3A.
  11. ^ Delaney, Steve (November 9, 1994). "Texas group buys local TV station". The Hawk Eye. p. 7B.
  12. ^ Augspurger, Mike (November 22, 1996). "The former owner of KJMH-TV 26...". The Hawk Eye.
  13. ^ "Changing Hands" (PDF). Broadcasting & Cable. March 27, 1995. p. 56. ProQuest 1014764519. Archived (PDF) from the original on January 31, 2023. Retrieved March 1, 2023.
  14. ^ Delaney, Steve (March 4, 1996). "Burlington lands Fox affiliate". The Hawk Eye. p. 1D.
  15. ^ Leary, Sean (September 26, 1999). "KLJB comes to the rescue of the vampire slayer". The Dispatch. Moline, Illinois. p. H1, H4. Archived from the original on March 1, 2023. Retrieved February 28, 2023 – via Newspapers.com.
  16. ^ Burke, David (December 31, 2000). "WB makes its home in Quad-Cities". Quad-City Times. Davenport, Iowa. p. TV Times 4. Archived from the original on March 1, 2023. Retrieved February 28, 2023 – via Newspapers.com.
  17. ^ Burke, David (May 18, 2002). "UPN station should be in the Q-C by this summer". Quad-City Times. p. A1, A2. Retrieved February 28, 2023 – via Newspapers.com.
  18. ^ "Television". Quad-City Times. August 24, 2003. p. Answer Book 33. Archived from the original on March 1, 2023. Retrieved February 28, 2023 – via Newspapers.com.
  19. ^ Burke, David (March 30, 2006). "Networks sort out programming; KGWB lands The CW". Quad-City Times. p. A10. Archived from the original on March 1, 2023. Retrieved February 28, 2023 – via Newspapers.com.
  20. ^ "Television". Quad-City Times. August 20, 2006. p. Answer Book 36. Archived from the original on March 1, 2023. Retrieved February 28, 2023 – via Newspapers.com.
  21. ^ Malone, Michael (September 16, 2013). "Nexstar to Acquire Citadel's Iowa Stations for $88 Million". Broadcasting & Cable. Archived from the original on September 21, 2013. Retrieved September 16, 2013.
  22. ^ "Nexstar Selling 3 Fox Affils For $58.5 Million". TVNewsCheck. Archived from the original on June 25, 2014. Retrieved June 7, 2014.
  23. ^ "Consummation Notice". Consolidated Database System. Federal Communications Commission. Archived from the original on January 20, 2015. Retrieved December 3, 2014.
  24. ^ Burke, David (November 10, 2014). "Big changes likely ahead for 3 Quad-City television stations". Quad-City Times. Lee Enterprises. Archived from the original on December 24, 2014. Retrieved May 22, 2015.
  25. ^ "Important Programming Note". Quad Cities CW (Facebook). May 14, 2015. Archived from the original on March 1, 2023. Retrieved February 28, 2023. You spoke and we listened! We are happy to announce that KGCW-TV, the Quad Cities CW, is now being broadcast on channel 4.2. You will remember that FCC Ownership Rules forced us to take The CW off of the channel 18 transport stream (18.2), leaving the station largely unavailable to many over-the-air viewers who were unable to access it on 26.1. So, after overcoming some technical and operational hurdles, as of Thursday afternoon, the Quad Cities CW is now available on channel 4.2. A channel re-scan on your digital tuner will likely be necessary.
  26. ^ Burke, David (August 7, 2015). "'Local 4' adding 4 p.m. newscast this fall". Quad-City Times. Archived from the original on August 8, 2015. Retrieved January 1, 2016.
  27. ^ Hoke, Owen (February 12, 2020). "KGCW tower in Orion assembled via helicopter". OurQuadCities. Archived from the original on July 11, 2022. Retrieved March 1, 2023.
  28. ^ "FCC TV Spectrum Phase Assignment Table" (CSV). Federal Communications Commission. April 13, 2017. Archived from the original on April 17, 2017. Retrieved April 17, 2017.
  29. ^ "Watch the Quad Cities' CW on Channel 26.1!". Quad Cities CW (Facebook). July 8, 2020. Archived from the original on March 1, 2023. Retrieved February 28, 2023. Recently, some viewers have wondered why they can no longer watch KGCW, The Quad Cities' CW on channel 4.2. KGCW has always been available on channel 26.1, but the KGCW broadcast tower was in Seton, IL and many viewers had issues receiving a clear and consistent signal. In March, the KGCW began broadcasting from Orion, IL and the signal has been more reliable for Quad City viewers. So Monday, WHBF changed 4.2 programming to Court TV in an effort to provide a larger variety of free program choices to Quad City television viewers.
  30. ^ Miller, Mark K. (August 19, 2025). "Nexstar Buying Tegna For $6.2 Billion". TVNewsCheck. Archived from the original on August 19, 2025. Retrieved August 19, 2025.
  31. ^ Johnson, Ted (March 19, 2026). "Nexstar Closes Tegna Merger Following FCC And DOJ Approval". Deadline. Retrieved March 20, 2026.
  32. ^ Svirnovskiy, Gregory (March 28, 2026). "Nexstar-Tegna deal on ice after judge issues temporary restraining order". POLITICO. Retrieved April 17, 2026.
  33. ^ Johnson, Ted; Hayes, Dade; Patten, Dominic (April 18, 2026). "Nexstar-Tegna Merger Frozen As Antitrust Battle Continues; CA AG Says "This Merger Is Illegal, Plain & Simple"". Deadline. Retrieved April 18, 2026.
  34. ^ "RabbitEars TV Query for KLJB". RabbitEars. Retrieved December 19, 2024.
  35. ^ "RabbitEars TV Query for WHBF". RabbitEars. Retrieved December 19, 2024.
  36. ^ "RabbitEars TV Query for KGCW". RabbitEars. Archived from the original on May 24, 2022. Retrieved March 1, 2023.
  37. ^ "Quad-City station among hundreds that will pull the plug on analog". The Muscatine Journal. Associated Press. February 11, 2009. p. 2A. Archived from the original on March 1, 2023. Retrieved March 1, 2023 – via Newspapers.com.
  38. ^ "DTV Tentative Channel Designations for the First and Second Rounds" (PDF). Federal Communications Commission. May 23, 2006. p. 9. Archived from the original (PDF) on August 29, 2013. Retrieved August 29, 2021.
[edit]

Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.

Wikipedia

KGCW

KGCW (channel 26) is a television station licensed to Burlington, Iowa, United States, serving as the CW network outlet for the Quad Cities area. It is owned by Nexstar Media Group alongside CBS affiliate WHBF-TV (channel 4) and co-managed with Fox affiliate KLJB (channel 18); Nexstar's Tegna subsidiary owns ABC affiliate WQAD-TV (channel 8). KGCW, WHBF-TV and KLJB share studios in the Telco Building on 18th Street in downtown Rock Island, Illinois; KGCW's transmitter is located near Orion, Illinois. Channel 26 began broadcasting as KJMH, a local station for Burlington, in January 1988 and became a Fox affiliate that July. It was owned by local businessman Steve Hoth, who named it for his wife, JoEllen M. Hoth. In May 1994, the station lost access to Fox programming after the network moved to strip KJMH of its affiliation. It then went off the air that November. Grant Communications acquired the station and returned it to the air on March 1, 1996, rebroadcasting KLJB-TV in Davenport. In January 2001, channel 26 was split from channel 18 to become the affiliate of The WB in the Quad Cities, where it was seen on cable and a subchannel of KLJB, and its transmitter was relocated from Burlington to a site that offered increased coverage of the Quad Cities. The station became affiliated with The CW in 2006 when The WB and UPN merged. Nexstar acquired the Grant stations in 2014, coinciding with the separate purchase of WHBF-TV.

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Wikipedia

KLJB

KLJB (channel 18) is a television station licensed to Davenport, Iowa, United States, serving as the Fox affiliate for the Quad Cities area. It is owned by Mission Broadcasting and operated by Nexstar Media Group alongside CBS affiliate WHBF-TV (channel 4) and CW station KGCW (channel 26); Nexstar's Tegna subsidiary owns ABC affiliate WQAD-TV (channel 8). KLJB, WHBF-TV, and KGCW share studios in the Telco Building on 18th Street in downtown Rock Island; KLJB's transmitter is located near Orion, Illinois. KLJB began broadcasting in 1985 as the first independent station in the Quad Cities area, owned by a group of local and out-of-area partners. The station affiliated with Fox when it launched in 1986, though it left the network in March 1988 before returning two years later because of the popularity of The Simpsons. After emerging from bankruptcy in 1990, it was purchased by Grant Communications, which owned mostly mid-market independent stations and Fox affiliates. The station began airing local news programming at the end of 1999 in a partnership with a Davenport production company that evolved into the Independent News Network, specializing in the outsourced production of local TV newscasts. Grant expanded with the launch of The WB programming in 1999, which was spun off as a separate station (KGWB-TV, now KGCW) in 2001. Black-owned Marshall Broadcasting Group acquired the station in 2014 as part of Nexstar's acquisition of Grant; Nexstar entered into a shared services agreement to provide services. Nexstar-owned WHBF began producing the station's newscast at the end of 2015. Mission purchased Marshall's stations in 2019 after the latter company filed for bankruptcy.

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WROC-TV (channel 8) is a television station in Rochester, New York, United States, affiliated with CBS and owned by Nexstar Media Group. The station's studios are located on Humboldt Street in downtown Rochester, and its transmitter is located on Pinnacle Hill in Brighton, New York. Prior to 2021, the WROC studios hosted the master control operations of Nexstar's "virtual triopoly" in the Quad Cities television market of southeastern Iowa and west-central Illinois, which includes fellow CBS affiliate WHBF-TV, CW owned-and-operated station KGCW, and Fox-affiliated LMA partner KLJB.

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Wikipedia

WHBF-TV

WHBF-TV (channel 4) is a television station licensed to Rock Island, Illinois, United States, serving as the CBS affiliate for the Quad Cities area. It is owned by Nexstar Media Group alongside CW station KGCW (channel 26) and co-managed with Fox affiliate KLJB (channel 18); Nexstar's Tegna subsidiary owns ABC affiliate WQAD-TV (channel 8). WHBF-TV, KGCW and KLJB share studios in the Telco Building on 18th Street in downtown Rock Island; WHBF-TV's transmitter is located in Bettendorf, Iowa.

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Greenwood / Black Wall Street

Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.

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TRIVIA QUESTION OF THE DAY

Who became the first Black woman to travel into space?

Mae Jemison, aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour in 1992.