| dbo:abstract |
KJJC-TV (channel 16) is a television station in Great Falls, Montana, United States, affiliated with MeTV and owned by KTGF License Corporation. The station's transmitter is located on 47th Avenue SW in unincorporated Cascade County, near the Great Falls International Airport. Station operations are conducted from a facility in Helena, where KJJC-TV is rebroadcast by commonly owned translator KJJC-LD (channel 7). KJJC-TV began broadcasting in September 1986 as KTGF. It was the third commercial station in Great Falls and an NBC affiliate for 19 years; the station produced local news programming in the late 1980s and early 1990s before canceling the effort in 1993. The founding owners, Continental Television Network, later established third stations in Missoula and Butte, which were sold together with KTGF to Max Media in 2001. Max owned the station until it was required to divest KTGF to buy KFBB-TV, the local ABC affiliate. Destiny Communications, a Black-owned company, purchased KTGF as its first television station in 2004. However, within a year, it lost the NBC affiliation to KBGF-LP (channel 50, today's KTGF-LD), an extension of KTVH-DT in Helena, in a decision that NBC had apparently made years prior. As a result, on July 1, 2005, KTGF became an affiliate of Fox, but this lasted just two years before KTGF became an independent station. In 2009, Destiny defaulted on its debt payments, and the license was transferred to a creditor. Roger Lonnquist acquired the station in 2012; it has aired MeTV as its main subchannel since 2013 along with a selection of Christian television channels owned by the Trinity Broadcasting Network. All five subchannels are also broadcast by KINV-LD in Billings. (en) |
