Product Code Database
KQDS-TV (channel 21) is a television station in Duluth, Minnesota, United States, affiliated with the Fox network. Owned by Coastal Television Broadcasting Company, the station has studios on London Road in Duluth (along I-35), and its transmitter is located west of downtown in Hilltop Park. Master control and some internal operations are based out of the studio facilities of co-owned station and fellow Fox affiliate KVRR on South 40th Street and South 9th Avenue in Fargo, North Dakota.
Although its lineup once included syndicated Big Ten college football (since returned as network coverage), most of the station's schedule was filled with programming from the Shop at Home Network by the late 1990s.
In 1998, Red River Broadcasting (via sister company KQDS Acquisition Corporation) purchased KNLD and several area radio stations including KJOQ (1490 AM), KQDS-FM (94.9 FM), WWPE-FM (92.1 FM) and KZIO (94.1 and 104.3 FM), and later changed the television station's call sign to KQDS-TV. The new owners immediately set about giving the station a technical overhaul, but not without controversy. They had won a construction permit for a new tower to replace its old transmitter facility located adjacent to Duluth Central High School, which would give it a coverage area comparable to the other Duluth stations. However, some school and city officials expressed concern about the danger of ice falling from the tower onto the school's parking lot. Eventually, Red River agreed to build the tower further from the parking lot than initially planned.
On September 1, 1999, KQDS-TV activated its new transmitter tower, along with the sign-on of eight translators. That same day, the station became the Duluth–Superior market's first Fox affiliate. Prior to affiliating with the network, Fox programming was available in the market only through cable systems that had carried the network through KMSP-TV (which served as the network's affiliate from 1986 to 1988) and later WFTC (which became an affiliate of the network in late 1988 and lost the network back to KMSP-TV in 2002), with Foxnet being carried in areas where neither station was available via cable. Some areas of the market received Fox on cable from KVRR from Fargo (KQDS' sister station), WLUK from Green Bay (which replaced WGBA-TV in 1995), WGKI from Cadillac, Michigan, or even WKBD from Detroit (prior to that station disaffiliating from the network in 1994).
On November 30, 2021, Forum Communications (owner of ABC affiliate WDAY-TV in Fargo) announced its intent to purchase KQDS, as well as KVRR and its satellites, from Red River Broadcasting for $24 million. Forum had sought a waiver from the FCC allowing it to own a second top–four ranked full-power station in the Fargo–Grand Forks market, though it would not consolidate the newsrooms of WDAY and KVRR. In the absence of FCC action, the deal was terminated in June 2023. On December 1, 2023, it was announced that Red River would sell the stations to the Coastal Television Broadcasting Group; the sale was completed on April 5, 2024.
In its first ratings period in May 2007, KQDS placed third among all evening newscasts in the Duluth market. The station drew more viewers than KBJR's Northland's NewsCenter Tonight at 9 and KDLH's 10 p.m. newscast. In August of that year, after just six months on the air, KQDS's news operation was nominated for three Upper Midwest in the categories of "Best Newscast", "Best News Special" and "Investigative Series". In July 2009, KQDS registered its best newscast ratings period to date, placing third with about 8,650 viewers (about 2,000 fewer viewers than KBJR's 10 p.m. newscast). In the fall of 2009, the station won two regional Emmy Awards for "Best Newscast" and "Overall Station Excellence". On June 28, 2010, KQDS debuted a half-hour weeknight newscast at 6 p.m.
| +Subchannels of KQDS-TV RabbitEars TV Query for KQDS ! Channel ! Res. ! Aspect ! Short name ! Programming |
All translators except for K39GG have been upgraded to digital as of November 1, 2016, and remap to virtual channel 21.
|
|
