KTAB-TV
CBS affiliate in Abilene, Texas
KTAB-TV (channel 32) is a television station in Abilene, Texas, United States, affiliated with CBS and Telemundo. It is owned by Nexstar Media Group and operated alongside NBC affiliate KRBC-TV (channel 9); Nexstar's Tegna subsidiary owns Fox affiliate KXVA (channel 15). KTAB-TV and KRBC-TV share studios on South 14th Street in western Abilene; KTAB-TV's transmitter is located on Texas State Highway 36 in neighboring Callahan County.
KTAB-TV went on the air in October 1979 as Abilene's third commercial station, bringing the full CBS schedule to the Big Country. It was built by a consortium headed by Bill Terry, who had been KRBC-TV's general manager, and several of that station's on-air personalities moved to the new channel 32. The news product was immediately successful and within five years supplanted KRBC as the area's local news leader. By the mid-1980s, KTAB was the market's dominant station for local news, attracting some of the highest ratings in the country. The station was sold several times in the 1980s and 1990s, including an 11-year ownership tenure by Shamrock Broadcasting, before being purchased by Nexstar in 1999. Nexstar acquired the non-license assets of KRBC-TV in 2003 and merged the two operations together in that station's studios in 2004.
History
Big Country TV Inc., a group majority-owned and led by KRBC-TV general manager Bill Terry, filed with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in March 1978 for a construction permit to build a new TV station on ultra high frequency (UHF) channel 32 in Abilene.
“KTAB-TV” enters the record as cBS affiliate in Abilene, Texas. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what KTAB-TV, affiliate and Abilene can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“KTAB-TV” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, KTAB-TV, affiliate and Abilene provides the most credible route into that argument.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6338452. Authority coordinates are 32.277, -99.597. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1979, 1999, 2003 and 2004.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “KTAB-TV”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow KTAB-TV primary sources, KTAB-TV archive and KTAB-TV research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “KTAB-TV”?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “KTAB-TV” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.