Early years The station first signed on the air on December 28, 1967, as KTSB. It was originally owned by
Ralph C. Wilson Jr., founding owner of the
AFL (now
NFL) franchise
Buffalo Bills. It was the second commercial television station to sign on in the Topeka market, and the first full-powered UHF station in Kansas. The station has been an NBC affiliate from its debut. Unlike most then two-station
markets, KTSB did not take a formal secondary affiliation with ABC, however it did clear a few shows aired by that network. It had little need to air many ABC programs as the network's two closest affiliates—
KMBC-TV in Kansas City and
KQTV in
St. Joseph—both provide over-the-air signals that decently cover Topeka. After sharing ABC programming with
CBS affiliate
WIBW-TV (channel 13) for channel 27's first 16 years of operation, both stations lost the local rights to the network when KLDH (channel 49, now
KTKA-TV) signed on in June 1983, becoming the market's first full-time ABC affiliate. In 1982, George Hatch—owner of the Kansas State Network, a chain of NBC-affiliated stations originating at KARD-TV (now
KSNW) in
Wichita—purchased the station from Wilson. Later that year on August 16, the station changed its call letters to KSNT, as part of an effort to help viewers think of the KSN stations as part of one large network. Over the next few years, the station branded itself under the "KSN" name, but only provided limited
simulcasts with KSNW and its three full-time
satellite stations in western Kansas (
KSNG in
Garden City,
KSNC in
Great Bend and
KSNK in
McCook, Nebraska); as such, KSNT essentially acted as a
de facto semi-satellite of KSNW.
SJL Communications (owned by George Lilly) purchased the station, along with KSNW, from Hatch in 1988; Lilly eventually had part of the microwave system that linked the two stations dismantled in a cost-cutting effort. In 1995,
Davenport, Iowa–based
Lee Enterprises acquired the Kansas State Network group as well as KSNT. On March 9, 2000, Lee Enterprises announced that it would sell its 16 television station properties, in order to focus on its newspaper and online businesses. Exactly two months later on May 9, 2000, Lee sold KSNT to
Indianapolis-based
Emmis Communications, as part of a $562.5 million group deal involving KSNW and its satellite stations, and CBS affiliate
KMTV-TV in
Omaha, Nebraska. On May 15, 2005, Emmis Communications announced that it would sell its 16 television stations in order to concentrate on its portfolio of radio stations. On September 15, Emmis sold KSNT, KSNW and its satellites as well as CBS affiliate
KOIN in
Portland, Oregon, and Fox affiliate
KHON-TV in
Honolulu, Hawaii, to the Montecito Broadcast Group (formerly SJL Broadcast Group) for $259 million; the sale was finalized on January 27, 2006.
New Vision Television ownership, acquisition of KTMJ-CA and LMA with KTKA-TV On July 24, 2007, Montecito announced that it would sell all of its stations (KSNT, KSNW and its satellites, as well as KHON-TV and KOIN) to
New Vision Television. The sale closed on November 1 of that year. Subsequently, on July 7, 2008, New Vision Television announced its intention to buy Fox affiliate
KTMJ-CA (channel 43) and its repeaters—KTLJ-CA (channel 6) in
Junction City, KMJT-LP (channel 15) in
Ogden and KETM-LP (channel 17) in
Emporia—from Montgomery Communications. The purchase was completed on September 1. As a result, KTMJ relocated its operations into KSNT's facilities on Northwest 25th Street. On February 4, 2011, Free State Communications announced that it would sell KTKA to
Los Angeles–based PBC Broadcasting for $1.5 million. As part of the deal, New Vision Television – then-owner of KSNT, and which already maintained
shared services and local marketing agreements with PBC-owned stations in
Youngstown, Ohio, and
Savannah, Georgia, would operate KTKA-TV under a local marketing agreement. Despite objections to the sale by the American Cable Association that alleged the sale could give the virtual
triopoly involving KSNT, KTKA and KTMJ-CA too much leverage in negotiations for
retransmission consent agreements, the
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved the sale on July 21, 2011. PBC officially consummated on the purchase one week later on July 28. Two days later on July 30, KTKA relocated from its existing studio facility on 21st Street and Chelsea Drive in southwestern Topeka, and merged its operations with KSNT and KTMJ-CA at the two stations' facilities on Northwest 25th Street.
Sale to LIN Media, and then Media General, then Nexstar On May 7, 2012,
LIN TV Corporation announced that it would acquire the New Vision Television station group, including KSNT and KTMJ-CD, for $330.4 million and the assumption of $12 million in debt. Along with the outright ownership of KSNT and KTMJ, the agreement included the acquisition of New Vision's shared services agreement with PBC Broadcasting, giving LIN operational control of KTKA-TV. LIN and Vaughan Media (which concurrently purchased the PBC stations) also entered into a joint sales agreement to provide advertising services for KTKA. The sale of New Vision to LIN Media and KTKA's purchase by Vaughan Media was approved by the FCC on October 2, with the transaction closing on October 12, 2012. The deal marked a re-entry into Kansas for LIN, who briefly owned the licenses of Wichita ABC affiliate
KAKE and its satellites in 2000, but never held operational control of the stations. On March 21, 2014,
Media General announced that it would purchase the LIN Media stations, including KSNT, KTMJ-CD, and the SSA/JSA with KTKA-TV, in a $1.6 billion merger. The FCC approved the merger on December 12, 2014, with the deal being consummated on December 19; however as a condition of the sale's approval, Media General was originally required to terminate the joint sales agreement between KTKA-TV and KSNT within two years, due to the FCC's ban on agreement involving the sale of advertising encompassing more than 15% of a separately-owned station's airtime. On September 28, 2015,
Nexstar Broadcasting Group announced it had offered to purchase Media General and its stations, including KSNT and KTMJ. On January 27, 2016, Nexstar announced that it had reached an agreement to acquire Media General. The deal was approved by the FCC on January 11, 2017, and completed on January 17, marking Nexstar's entry into the Topeka market and reuniting KSNT with former sister station and fellow NBC affiliate
KSNF in
Joplin, Missouri.
KSNT-DT2 On April 10, 2006, Montecito Broadcast Group signed an affiliation agreement with
The CW in which KSNT-DT2 would serve as the network's Topeka affiliate. On September 18, 2006, Montecito took over the operations of "Northeast Kansas CW 5" (the channel number referencing its primary cable position in the market on Cox Communications), which originated as a cable-only affiliate of
The WB 100+ Station Group—a national feed of
The WB intended for smaller markets—when it launched on September 21, 1998, under the fictional call letters "WBKS" (branded on-air as "WB5"). Programming on KSNT-DT2 as a CW affiliate was received through The CW's small-market national feed
The CW Plus; as The CW handles programming responsibilities for its CW Plus affiliates during non-network time periods, KSNT only provided local advertising services for the subchannel. On November 1, 2008, KSNT-DT2 disaffiliated from The CW Plus, which moved to the
third digital subchannel of ABC affiliate KTKA-TV, replacing it with a standard-definition simulcast of Fox affiliate KTMJ-CA to provide a digital signal for the
low-power station and to extend its programming to the far northern and eastern fringes of the Topeka market. ==Programming==