In just about every small business startup, the work is done by a few dedicated staffers who put in crazy hours, wear multiple hats and forgo immediate paychecks to create something from nothing. The bills are (barely) paid, and there’s more hustle than actual income, but the future looks bright.
Starting a TV station from scratch is no different. And that includes KCDO, or “K3,” formerly a tiny VHF station in Sterling, set to debut this morning on Comcast’s Channel 3 in Denver and Loveland.
This is what the mom-and-pop television station looks like:
Master control is a computer on a desk in the back of a small, old house in a residential neighborhood in Denver. Commercials go for $10 to $30. On the screen, a young Perry Mason grandstands as Ironsides, an even younger James Garner grins as Rockford. “Magnum, P.I.,” “Quincy” and “Dragnet” forever chase bad guys with outmoded lapels and hairstyles.
A morning agriculture program, “AgDay,” runs at 5:30 and 8 a.m., and a northern Colorado news program airs at 10 p.m. Infomercials fill out the schedule.
Four people run the place. Marcia Freeman is the traffic department, scheduling the commercials and programs; her brother Dirk Freeman is the landlord and architect of the system (their dad built the transmission tower in a field in Fort Morgan back in the day); Jim McLaughlin is operations manager; and Greg Armstrong, a savvy dreamer who used to be general manager at KTVD Channel 20, oversees the business.
His daughters appear in the required station identification spots.
KCDO is a full-power independent TV station, one of only a few left in the country. The signal began life in 1963 as a satellite of a CBS station in Cheyenne.
But things are about to change. The newly prominent station will benefit from its low-dial position on Comcast, a prime spot for viewers surfing the channels. The cable pickup gives the station immediate access to 500,000-plus homes in the Denver system.
To viewers stumbling across the programming, KCDO suddenly will appear like any other TV station. The Rocky’s Auto commercials will look no different on Channel 3 than they do on Channel 9. The fact that they’ll air at a fraction of the price won’t be obvious. That there’s no major network affiliation, as KUSA has with NBC, won’t be readily apparent, either. The station acquires programming from RetroTV, a supplier of 1950s-’80s reruns.
“Last week I made money,” Armstrong said. He approaches that goal week by week.
Armstrong has nurtured the operation literally from the ground up: He found the land for the tower, spent three years pursuing tower approval from the Federal Communications Commission and negotiated under the cable “must- carry” rules to be part of the Comcast lineup.
Cable operators have fought the “must-carry” requirement for years, but the federal government mandates that any broadcaster who qualifies for a full-power license is eligible to be carried.
And so the tiny upstart station has a home locally on Comcast, the country’s largest cable operator.
Armstrong can’t afford to subscribe to the Nielsen ratings, but already he senses growth from folks picking up the signal via antennas: “We know more people are ordering products, so there must be more people watching.”
When he’s not wearing his FCC and Comcast negotiating hat, he’s also the guy who answers the phone when viewers call, curious about the signal and shocked to get a real person on the line.
What he has been hearing from some is appreciation for family-friendly material that barely hints at cleavage.
“It’s not going to be a ‘Dancing With the Stars’-type audience, but we can make a living with a small, targeted audience,” Armstrong said.
His goal is 1.3 million homes in the Denver area. That dream is very real now. Comcast confirmed the station will launch in Longmont and Greeley on May 11, and in Fort Collins on June 1.
“We’ll have the same distribution on the Front Range as all the big stations but without the overhead. I’m still working out of my house.”
More syndicated reruns — “The Beverly Hillbillies,” “Mork & Mindy,” “Mission Impossible,” “Get Smart,” “Hogan’s Heroes,” “Hawaii Five-O,” “Streets of San Francisco” and “The Untouchables” — will join the roster within six weeks.
“A long distribution process will be completed with a good channel position,” Armstrong said. “Then I gotta figure out what we’re gonna be when we grow up.”
Joanne Ostrow: 303-954-1830 or jostrow@denverpost.com
