| |
|---|---|
| City | Hopkinsville, Kentucky |
| Channels | |
| Programming | |
| Affiliations | Defunct |
| Ownership | |
| Owner | Doxa Communications, Inc. |
| History | |
First air date | October 1984[1] |
Last air date | 1985 |
| Religious Independent (1985–1986)[2] | |
| Technical information | |
| ERP | 254.7 kW |
| HAAT | 113.4 m (372 ft) |
WNKJ-TV (channel 51) was a television station in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, United States. Owned by Doxa Communications, Inc., the station had studios on East 18th Street in downtown Hopkinsville. Its transmitter was located along U.S. Highway 41 about 3.8 miles (6.1 km) southeast of the city.
In December 1982, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued a construction permit to Pennyrile Christian Community, owner of WNKJ radio, for the purpose of establishing a religious independent television station on UHF channel 51.[3] The station signed on the air in October 1984.[1] Except for W64BR (later W64AV), a low-powered translator of Kentucky Educational Television (KET) transmitter WKMA-TV of Madisonville, it was the second television station ever to sign on in the Hopkinsville area. after W43AG, which at the time was under ownership of the Kentucky New Era newspaper, signed on the air earlier that year. Hopkinsville was and still is considered to be in the Nashville, Tennessee, media market, and only the Nashville area's big three network affiliates (e.g. WKRN, WSMV and WTVF), along with Madisonville-based WLCN (later WB/CW affiliate WAZE-TV), provided the best-quality signal coverage at the time of WNKJ's existence. ABC affiliate WBKO in Bowling Green, Kentucky, had also been providing at least Grade B signal coverage in the Christian County area as Hopkinsville was as far west as that signal can reach.
The station's programming lineup consisted of religious programs, old sitcoms, a few movies and cartoons in barter syndication.
In spite of an acceptable terrestrial signal with 254,700 watts effective radiated power, due to poor viewership, the station went dark in 1985. The station's broadcast license was returned to the FCC in 1986. This made W43AG (later WKAG-CA) the sole locally based television station in Hopkinsville until it went off the air in 2011.
In the early 1990s, another television station was also slated to go on the air on UHF channel 51 under a different licensee, with the callsign of WKKT-TV. The licensee, which filed an application with the FCC in 1988, never made it to the air, at least according to Broadcasting Yearbooks from 1988 to 1993.