KMAX-TV


KMAX-TV, virtual channel 31, is a CW owned-and-operated television station licensed to Sacramento, California, United States. The station is owned by the CBS Television Stations subsidiary of ViacomCBS, as part of a duopoly with Stockton-licensed CBS owned-and-operated station KOVR. The two stations share studios on KOVR Drive in West Sacramento and transmitter facilities in Walnut Grove. There is no separate website for KMAX-TV; instead, it is integrated with that of sister station KOVR.
On cable, KMAX-TV is available locally on Comcast Xfinity channels 12 and 712 in HD, AT&T U-verse channels 31 and 1031 in HD, Consolidated Communications channels 12 and 612 in HD, Spectrum channels 12 and 782 in HD and Wave Broadband channels 11 and 711 in HD in Placer County and channels 7 and 781 in HD in Yolo County.

History

The station first signed on the air on October 5, 1974 as KMUV-TV, operating as an independent station. It originally operated from studio facilities located on Media Place in Sacramento. The station was originally owned by Sid Grayson and had carried an all-movie format to counter-program against the area's other established stations, particularly then-independent KTXL. However, on May 1, 1976, KMUV abandoned its all-movie format and largely began to air Spanish-language programming, along with some English-language religious programs.
On April 2, 1981, Koplar Broadcasting purchased channel 31 and relaunched it on April 6 of that year under the callsign KRBK-TV, formatted as an English-language general entertainment independent to compete directly with KTXL.
Pappas Telecasting purchased the station in 1994. On January 11, 1995, the station changed its call letters to KPWB-TV to reflect its affiliation with The WB Television Network, which launched the same day. Paramount Stations Group bought the station in March 1998, thus resulting in an affiliation swap with KQCA on January 5 of that year, that saw the UPN affiliation move to channel 31, which assumed the present call letters KMAX-TV, while The WB affiliation moved to KQCA. With Paramount's ownership stake in UPN, KMAX became the first English-language station in Sacramento to be owned and operated by a major network. Viacom acquired CBS in 1999, merging Paramount Stations Group with CBS' owned-and-operated stations to form the Viacom Television Stations Group.
Channel 31 was the flagship television home of the NBA's Sacramento Kings from the 1988–89 season until the middle of the 2002–03 season, when the team's owners, the Maloof family, terminated the station's contract due to the Kings forming their own sales and marketing departments and taking the ad sales "in house." KMAX remains the local over-the-air affiliate of the San Francisco Giants Major League Baseball franchise. It also held local broadcast rights to the Oakland Athletics before that team moved all its telecasts to regional sports network Comcast SportsNet California in 2009.
In May 2005, Viacom purchased KOVR from the Sinclair Broadcast Group, creating a duopoly with KMAX; KMAX's operations were also relocated to KOVR's studios in West Sacramento. Seven months later, Viacom divested itself of CBS due to the company's split into two separate entities ; KOVR and KMAX, along with the other CBS and UPN stations operated by Viacom, became part of the newly formed CBS Corporation.
On January 24, 2006, CBS Corporation and Time Warner's Warner Bros. Entertainment announced that they would dissolve UPN and The WB, and move some of their programming to a newly created network, The CW. KMAX, as a CBS-owned UPN station, was tapped to become the market's affiliate of the new network through an 11-station affiliation deal, and became a charter affiliate of The CW on September 18, 2006. The station changed its on-air branding from "UPN 31" to "CW31" one month before The CW's September 18 launch to reflect this. As the Sacramento affiliate of The CW, KMAX-TV airs the Saturday morning educational One Magnificent Morning lineup on a four-hour delay, from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. due to the Saturday edition of Good Day.

Digital television

Digital channels

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:
ChannelVideoAspectPSIP short nameProgramming
31.11080iKMAX-DTMain KMAX-TV programming / The CW
31.2480iLAFF TVLaff
31.3480iCOMETComet
31.4480iStadiumStadium
31.5480iCircleCircle

Analog-to-digital conversion

KMAX-TV shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 31, on June 12, 2009, as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 21, using PSIP to display KMAX-TV's virtual channel as 31 on digital television receivers.

News operation

KMAX-TV presently broadcasts 38 hours of locally produced newscasts each week ; the station does not broadcast any local newscasts on weekend evenings. KMAX is also one of only three CW affiliates that produce a local newscast on weekend mornings, alongside WPIX/New York City and KTLA/Los Angeles. The station's morning newscast Good Day, consistently ranks as the Sacramento area's second highest-rated morning news program—among both local or network shows—behind Today on NBC affiliate KCRA-TV. The station has also maintained a nightly newscast since the 1980s, titled 31 News ; the nightly newscast was cancelled in 1998 due to low ratings. A midday edition of UPN 31 Action News continued to air until 2000, when it was also cancelled, leaving Good Day as the only news program at the time.
After Viacom's acquisition of KOVR, KMAX's news department was merged with KOVR, with reporters appearing on both stations and the Good Day Sacramento set being relocated into the KOVR studio facility. While it does hinder both stations, KOVR and KMAX each produce a weekday morning news block from 5:00 to 7:00 a.m., though KMAX's morning newscast starts at 4:30 and ends at 10:00 a.m. The station expanded its news programming in 2003 with a non-traditional late evening newscast called Good Evening Sacramento, this program was cancelled the following year.
On January 11, 2008, KOVR/KMAX management announced on a viewer blog that KOVR would begin producing a prime time newscast on KMAX-TV. However, owing to cutbacks ordered by CBS corporate management, plans for this broadcast were shelved in late summer 2008. On June 1, 2009, KMAX-TV began broadcasting Good Day Sacramento in high definition; footage shot in-studio is broadcast in high definition, while all news video from on-remote locations was initially broadcast in standard definition. Both KMAX-TV and KOVR currently utilize high-definition cameras for field reports, and most vehicles transmit back high-definition video.
On June 4, 2012, KMAX-TV debuted a half-hour weeknight newscast produced by KOVR at 11 p.m., becoming the station's first traditional evening newscast in over a decade since the 1998 cancellation of its earlier prime time newscast; unlike most CW affiliates, the program broadcasts in the traditional late evening news timeslot of 11 p.m., due to KOVR's hour-long newscast at 10 p.m. On March 14, 2016, KMAX-TV added a half-hour weeknight newscast at 6:30 p.m. to compete with KCRA's long-established 6:30 p.m. newscast. These newscasts, along with Good Day, are translated into Spanish via the station's SAP audio feed. On July 30, 2018, the 11 p.m. newscast was relocated to KOVR, leaving its 6:30 p.m. newscast as the only evening newscast on KMAX.
After sister station KOVR purchased the "CBS 13 Mobile Weather Lab" and "Mobile13" mobile news vehicles in 2014, the station acquired a "Rover" mobile news vehicle in 2015. The "Good Day Rover" and "Mobile13" use a roof mounted robotic camera, various interior cameras, microphones, and a "LIVEU" mobile video broadcast system to transmit live video via mobile broadband connections. Good Day uses the Rover in the early hours of the morning to cover traffic and spot news.

Notable current on-air staff