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KULR-TV (channel 8) is a television station in Billings, Montana, United States, affiliated with NBC and owned by the Cowles Company. The station's studios are located on Overland Avenue in the Homestead Business Park section of Billings, and its transmitter is located on Coburn Hill southeast of downtown.
KULR-TV was the second TV station on the air in Billings; it began broadcasting as KGHL-TV, co-owned with KGHL radio, on March 15, 1958. The station was renamed KULR-TV in 1963 when it was separated from the radio stations. It was an ABC affiliate from 1969 to 1987, when it returned to NBC. KULR-TV was purchased by Max Media in 2004 and by Cowles in 2013. Since the late 1980s, its newscasts have been a distant second-place finisher to KTVQ.
The FCC lifted the stay on construction of KGHL-TV on April 19, 1957. Midland Empire Broadcasting Company officials announced they would begin construction immediately on studios co-located with the radio station on Broadway. However, the company instead decided to build new facilities on North 30th Street to house both stations; the KGHL-TV transmitter was also built southeast of Billings. KGHL-TV began broadcasting on March 15, 1958, as an affiliate of NBC.
Paul Crain, one of the two principals in Crain-Snyder Television, died at the age of 43 in 1964. Two years later, Crain-Snyder sold KULR-TV to the Harriscope Broadcasting Corporation, which owned KFBB-TV in Great Falls and KTWO-TV in Casper, Wyoming; the FCC approved of the $350,000 purchase in March 1967.
Harriscope agreed in 1967 to change the primary network affiliation for KULR-TV and KFBB-TV in Great Falls to ABC at the end of each station's existing affiliation contract; KULR's switch took effect January 1, 1969, at which point NBC was relegated to secondary status. Even though it was a primary ABC affiliate, ABC's evening network newscast was not aired until 1971, when Harriscope began airing the ABC and NBC evening newscasts on KULR-TV and KTWO-TV in Casper. By later in the 1970s, KTVQ had first call rights to NBC shows, with KULR-TV having secondary choice; in 1979, KTVQ aired 10 prime time shows from NBC and KULR another five. In 1980, some NBC programs moved to the newly built KHMT (channel 4), though it was not until 1982 that NBC had a primary affiliate again in Billings.
KULR-TV announced in 1983 that the station would relocate to a new building in the Homestead Business Park that would provide upgraded technical facilities and twice the space for its 40 employees; the structure was completed in 1984.
Dix Communications sold KULR-TV, along with KFBB-TV in Great Falls, to Max Media on June 16, 2004, for $12.25 million. Dix chairman Robert Dix said that the sale made sense, as KULR and KFBB were the company's last two television stations. On September 30, 2013, the Cowles Company announced that it would acquire Max Media's Montana television station cluster (comprising KULR and ABC affiliates KWYB in Butte, KFBB-TV in Great Falls, KHBB-LD in Helena and KTMF in Missoula) for $18 million. The sale was completed on November 29.
However, changes at KTVQ were eventually successful in unseating KULR. In 1984, a major overhaul of MTN's regional network news format shifted the center of the network from Great Falls to Billings. Ratings started to climb, though it was not until KTVQ replaced unpopular anchorman Dean Phillips with Montana native Gus Koernig that it surpassed KULR-TV in viewership. Rye departed channel 8 in 1990 and successfully ran for the Montana State Senate, returning to KULR after the legislature's 1993 session. Rye's return failed to restore KULR to ratings leadership as KTVQ continued to hold a two-to-one viewership advantage for its newscasts. In 2001, the station realigned its early evening newscasts from one local program at 5:30 p.m. to separate 5 and 6 p.m. half-hours, by which time the 5:30 newscast was being beaten three-to-one by KTVQ.
In October 2022, its newscasts were rebranded as NonStop Local as part of a group-wide rebranding by Cowles.
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In February 2009, the four commercial stations in the Billings market were refused FCC permission to end analog broadcasts and operate as digital-only effective on the originally-scheduled February 17, 2009, date.
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