KASW
KASW, virtual channel 61, is a CW-affiliated television station licensed to Phoenix, Arizona, United States. The station is owned by the E. W. Scripps Company, as part of a duopoly with ABC affiliate KNXV-TV. KASW's studios are located on East Missouri Avenue in Uptown Phoenix, and its transmitter is located on South Mountain on the city's south side. Master control and most internal operations are based at KNXV-TV's studios along North 44th Street on the city's east side. There is no separate website for KASW; instead, it is integrated with that of sister station KNXV-TV.
KASW's signal is relayed across northern and eastern Arizona through a small network of five translators.
History
Prior history of UHF channel 61 in Phoenix
Prior to KASW's sign-on, the UHF channel 61 frequency in the Phoenix market was originally occupied by low-power station K61CA; that station carried a locally programmed music video format and operated from March 1983 until December 1984.In 1988, K61CA was owned by Channel 61 Development Corporation and was a satellite-fed relay of KSTS-TV, a Telemundo affiliate in San Jose, California.
WB affiliation
By 1991, preparations had been made to sign on another independent station in Phoenix, under the callsign KAIK. The station's construction permit and eventual license bore these calls into 1994, until the license was purchased by the Brooks family the following year, after which the call letters were changed to KASW. The station first signed on the air on September 22, 1995; just prior to its sign-on, the Brooks entered into a local marketing agreement with MAC America Communications, then-owners of KTVK.KTVK had acquired a large inventory of syndicated programs as it transitioned to a news-intensive independent station. However, it didn't have enough time to air it all. As part of the LMA with the Brooks family, MAC America leased KASW's entire broadcast day and moved much of this excess programming to channel 61. The programming included cartoons, classic sitcoms, older movies and a few recent sitcoms. KASW also joined The WB; KTVK had nominally been that network's Phoenix affiliate, but aired WB programming on Saturday nights between the network's launch and September 1995.
Toward the end of 1995, KTVK had also moved Fox Kids and other syndicated programs to KASW. These changes allowed KTVK to reinstate its Saturday morning newscasts, while KASW began airing a half-hour 9 p.m. newscast produced by KTVK, which was discontinued in 1997. When Belo bought most of MAC America's television properties in 1999, the local marketing agreement with KASW was included in the transaction. This move further boosted its programming quality. After the Federal Communications Commission started allowing duopolies in 2000, Belo bought KASW outright.
Due to changes in the industry, from about 1998 to about 2004, KASW began to gradually shift its programming away from classic sitcoms, movies and cartoons. The station began to phase in more talk shows, reality shows and court shows to its schedule. It finally dropped weekday cartoons in January 2006, when The WB discontinued the Kids' WB weekday afternoon lineup.
From The WB to The CW
On January 24, 2006, the Warner Bros. unit of Time Warner and CBS Corporation announced that the two companies would shut down The WB and UPN and combine the networks' respective programming to create a new "fifth" network called The CW, which would launch on September 18, 2006. On March 8, Belo signed an affiliation agreement with the network for KASW to become The CW's Phoenix charter affiliate; the market's UPN affiliate KUTP became an owned-and-operated station of MyNetworkTV thirteen days before the launch of The CW on September 5.KASW only tweaked its branding to reflect its new network affiliation, keeping the "6" that represents its cable channel position in the area on Cox Communications. The station also aired its own CW "man-on-the-street" promos before the switch. The images and links on its website, Quick6.com, were revamped a week before the change and feature a new "Quick6" logo.
The station ran Vortexx, a successor of The CW4Kids, later known as Toonzai on Saturday mornings. It also aired children's programming from 4Kids TV on Sunday mornings until the block was discontinued by Fox on December 27, 2008. These properties, in one form or another, were carried on KTVK when that station was the market's original charter affiliate of The WB in 1995 and were moved to KASW in September 1995 and 1996, respectively. The same situation occurred in other markets, in which a station picked up the rights to the 4Kids lineup from an existing Fox affiliate or due to rejection by stations that Fox inherited from New World Communications.
On June 13, 2013, Belo announced that KTVK and KASW would be acquired by the Gannett Company, owner of KPNX and the Arizona Republic. Since this would give Gannett control of three stations in the Phoenix market, Gannett announced that it would spin off KTVK and KASW to Sander Media, LLC. While Gannett intended to provide services to the stations through a shared services agreement, KTVK and KASW's operations would have remained largely separate from KPNX and the Republic. On December 23, 2013, shortly after the approval and completion of the Gannett/Belo deal, the Meredith Corporation announced that it would purchase KTVK and the non-license assets of KASW from Sander Media and Gannett in a $407.5 million deal. As Meredith already owns CBS affiliate KPHO-TV, the KASW license was instead sold to SagamoreHill Broadcasting, with Meredith operating the station under a shared services agreement.
Sale to Nexstar and separation from KTVK
The FCC approved the sale of KASW and KTVK to SagamoreHill and Meredith on June 17, 2014, and the deal closed two days later. The two companies also agreed to voluntarily divest KASW to an independent buyer within 90 days of the deal's closure; on October 23, 2014, Meredith and SagamoreHill announced that it would sell KASW to Nexstar Broadcasting Group for $68 million, giving the company its first station in the Phoenix market. The FCC approved the sale to Nexstar on December 19, and the sale was consummated on January 30, 2015, ending a nearly 20-year partnership between KASW and KTVK, which launched channel 61 in 1995. The station began migrating out of KTVK's facilities in September 2015.Sale to Scripps
On March 20, 2019, as part of its proposed acquisition of Tribune Media, Nexstar announced that it would sell KASW and seven other stations to the Cincinnati-based E. W. Scripps Company, owner of local ABC affiliate KNXV-TV. The sale would create the third duopoly in the Phoenix market after Fox Television Stations' KSAZ-TV/KUTP and Meredith Corporation's KPHO-TV/KTVK. The sale was approved by the FCC on September 16 and was completed on September 19.Digital television
Digital channels
The station's digital signal is multiplexed:| Channel | Video | Aspect | PSIP Short Name | Programming |
| 61.1 | 1080i | KASW-DT | Main KASW programming / The CW | |
| 61.2 | 720p | HSN | HSN | |
| 61.3 | 480i | Grit | Grit | |
| 61.4 | 480i | Escape | Court TV Mystery |
Analog-to-digital conversion
KASW shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 61, at 4:30 a.m. on June 12, 2009, the official date in which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal continued to broadcast on its pre-transition UHF channel 49. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 61, which was among the high band UHF channels that were removed from broadcasting use as a result of the transition.Programming
Syndicated programming
In addition to the CW network schedule, Syndicated programming featured on KASW includes Two and a Half Men, Judge Mathis, Lauren Lake's Paternity Court, The Simpsons, 2 Broke Girls, and Friends among others. Though KASW aired 4Kids TV and its previous iterations until Fox discontinued their children's program blocks in December 2008, KASW declined to pick up its successor block, Weekend Marketplace, which now airs on independent station KAZT-TV.Sports programming
KASW served as the former over-the-air broadcast home of the NHL's Phoenix Coyotes, airing the team's games from the time that the franchise moved to Phoenix in 1996 until 2006, when the Coyotes the move of their over-the-air telecasts to KAZT-TV. The station also became the first ever broadcast home of the Arizona Rattlers from 1999 to the 2004 season until the Rattlers moved their broadcasts to Fox Sports Arizona in the 2005 season. In 2018, the Rattlers announced they would be airing their home games on KASW for the 2019 season. KASW also carried a 2013 Arizona Cardinals wild card playoff game airing on and produced by ESPN on January 3, 2014 in order to ensure local over-the-air coverage of the game.From 2014 to 2019, KASW served as the Phoenix affiliate for Raycom Sports' ACC Network.
From 2015 to 2018, the station broadcast Major League Soccer games involving Real Salt Lake, simulcasting from Salt Lake City's MyNetworkTV affiliate KMYU. In 2019, KASW became the official broadcast partner of Phoenix Rising FC of the USL Championship.