About KTVF 11
The station signed on the air in February 1955 as the first television station serving what at the time was the smallest television market in the United States. The station was a CBS affiliate until April 1, 1996.While primarily a CBS station, KTVF also served as a secondary affiliate for ABC from 1971 to 1985 (when it aired some of ABC's top-rated shows like Marcus Welby, M.D., Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, Three's Company, and Eight is Enough as well as Wide World of Sports, Super Bowl XIX and the Academy Awards) and NBC from 1985 to 1996. During the late 1950s, the station was also briefly affiliated with the NTA Film Network. In 1967, months after the Chena River flood temporarily knocked them off the air, KTVF rebuilt their studios in the Northward Building (where they still remained until 1990) and returned to the air, this time broadcasting in color.
In 1996, KTVF switched affiliations, from CBS to NBC. The reason for the network switch was that rival station KATN—which had the NBC affiliation since signing on a couple weeks after KTVF but had been primarily with ABC since 1984—would be merged with two other ABC stations in Anchorage and Juneau to form ABC Alaska's SuperStation, and that NBC was the dominant network by the 1995–96 season while CBS was in third place. KTVF also carried UPN programming on the weekends from 1995 to 2000. KFXF aired a few CBS shows until K13XD (now KXDF-CD) signed on in August.
KTVF was founded by Alaska broadcasting pioneer Augie Hiebert and his company, Northern Television. It was thus a sister station to KTVA-TV in Anchorage. Hiebert retired in 1997, and his family sold the station to the Ackerley Group in 1999. Ackerley merged with Clear Channel Communications in 2001. Clear Channel sold its entire television division, including KTVF, to Newport Television in 2007.