Koplar Eager For New Life As Fox Affiliate

Perry Sook’s pain is Ted Koplar’s gain.

Sook is CEO of Nexstar Broadcasting and after he failed to renew his affiliation agreement with Fox for KSFX Springfield, Mo. (DMA 74), Koplar stepped up. His KRBK will become the market’s new Fox affiliate on Aug. 1.

Fox and Koplar announced the shuffle yesterday with Sook declining to comment. “We are thrilled,” Koplar told TVNewsCheck. “With a race horse like Fox, we feel we will be very competitive.”

The Fox affiliation promises a turnaround for KRBK, a new station that has been on the air only since last July. As an affiliate of MNT, Fox’s secondary network, KRBK had been struggling, Koplar conceded.

The plan now is to air both networks’ primetime programming — Fox at 7-9 p.m. and MNT at 9-11 p.m.

The major network partnership also has the station thinking about news, Koplar said. “It’s in the cross hairs of something we want to do.”

Although the station currently has no news, he said, it does have TV personalities who have been producing local “vignettes,” including business profiles, that are scattered throughout the broadcast day.

Koplar won KRBK (ch. 49) in an FCC auction three years ago. Although it is licensed to Osage Beach, Mo., some 90 miles north of Springfield, Koplar said that the station has satellite and cable carriage throughout the market. He said he plans to upgrade the station’s broadcast signal to improve over-the-air coverage.

As the local MNT affiliate, KRBK was the natural choice to pick for the Fox affiliation, but Koplar declined to discuss how it came about. Asked if he was paying programming fees to Fox as part of the deal, Koplar said, “We understand the ground rules.”

Fox has been asking affiliates at renewal time for programming fees based on the number of cable and satellite subscribers they serve. The fees (25 cents per sub, per month to start) are, in essence, what Fox believes it deserves of the retransmission consent revenue that most affiliates are now collecting — or should be collecting — from satellite and cable operators.

Fox’s take-it-or-leave-it approach has upset long-standing affiliates, but most have re-upped rather than face the future without a major network affiliation. Nexstar is one of two exceptions. So, far it has refused to renew on Fox’s unbending terms.

It’s KSFX is the third station to lose its Fox affiliates in the last six weeks. It has also lost the affiliation in Evansville, Ind., and Fort Wayne, Ind.

KRBK is the Koplar family’s second go-around in TV broadcasting. It built and operated KPLR St. Louis as a powerful independent from its inception in 1959 to its sale to Acme Communications in 1997. Six years later, Acme sold the station to Tribune.

Koplar Communications, of which Ted Koplar is CEO, also has a programming division, World Events Productions, which has an animated children’s series on Nicktoons, Voltron: The Defender of the Universe.

Another Koplar division, VEIL Interactive, is developing an interactive TV service that will allow viewers to play along with games and contest on TV by downloading an app to their smart phone or tablet. “Our mission is to get people really regaged with the TV station,” Koplar said.

Koplar said that he has not spoken to Sook about the affiliation switch in Springfield.