reading a little more the fill in programming is from CW Plus which will move to its own station down the road (on channel 42)
http://talkbusiness.net/2015/06/jonesboro-gets-new-fox-tv-affiliate/
The Jonesboro television market just got a little more crowded with the announcement this weekend of a new FOX affiliate in Northeast Arkansas.
The station, KJNB, is now on the air broadcasting on Channel 39 from Walnut Ridge, chief operating officer Mike Reed told
Talk Business and Politics by email Sunday.
The Mississippi-based group, Waypoint Media, is also working to build a second station to broadcast the signal on channel 42 in downtown Jonesboro.
Reed said the station is working to complete its studio in downtown Jonesboro and is hiring staff for news, weather, sports and advertising.
“Jonesboro is one of the few markets remaining in the U.S. that is under-served by television stations. It is ranked market size 181 out of 212 TV markets which is a sweet spot for our company that owns stations in markets 167, 175, 176, 181, and 189,” Reed said in an email. “KAIT (the ABC affiliate) has been the only station serving Jonesboro until now. This is very rare for a market the size of Jonesboro. Because Jonesboro is ‘short-spaced,’ meaning it is squeezed between Memphis, Little Rock, and Cape Girardeau, there were no other full power station licenses available in the Jonesboro DMA.”
Reed and business partner Bill Christian said they have been able to secure deals with several cable providers in the region to broadcast their signal.
“Our company secured the FOX affiliation agreement by showing that we can cover 93% of the market or more with cable and satellite and over-the-air penetration. We are at a little over 75% penetration right now and once DirecTV begins carriage of our station at the end of this month, we will have achieved 93% coverage,” Reed said.
“This is important to Jonesboro for a multitude of reasons, but the largest reason is that Jonesboro will have a sense of its own identity through the local TV stations rather than being an unserved community by the Memphis TV stations. Memphis advertisers on those stations will no longer solicit the consumer spendable income from the Jonesboro market because their advertisers will no longer reach those households on TV. Jonesboro businesses will now have an affordable in-market advertising solution to get their messages out to viewers in the Jonesboro market about their products and services. KAIT will have competition for those advertisers which will make pricing more affordable and the programming will get better as we all try to do our best to serve the viewers in our market,” he added.
Reed noted that the work to move into the Jonesboro market has been supported.
The announcement is the second major announcement by a television station in Jonesboro this year. KAIT, which started as an independent station in 1963 and became an ABC affiliate in 1965, announced earlier this year that their 8.2 channel would become an NBC affiliate.
KAIT also serves as a content partner for
Talk Business and Politics.
The 8.2 station airs NBC programming as well as the news broadcasts of WMC-TV in Memphis (the NBC affiliate there) and local news updates from KAIT.
The vast majority of Northeast Arkansas is also covered by the Memphis television market, which also includes longtime staples like ABC affiliate WATN, CBS affiliate WREG and FOX affiliate WHBQ.
By adding the FOX affiliate in Jonesboro, many providers will likely drop WHBQ from their cable lineups.
