KQDS-TV

KQDS-TV (channel 21) is a television station in Duluth, Minnesota, United States, affiliated with the Fox network. Owned by Coastal Television Broadcasting Company, the station has studios on London Road in Duluth (along I-35), and its transmitter is located west of downtown in Hilltop Park. Master control and some internal operations are based out of the studio facilities of co-owned station and fellow Fox affiliate KVRR on South 40th Street and South 9th Avenue in Fargo, North Dakota.

History

The station first signed on the air on March 21, 1995, as KNLD, the Duluth–Superior market's first independent station. Very few people knew it was actually on the air at this time, as it transmitted at low power with an extremely limited schedule of programming, usually airing for only three hours per day each morning—the minimum required by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to cover the license, due to ongoing negotiations with Granite Broadcasting, owner of KBJR-TV. While the Northland had grown large enough to support an independent station at least a decade earlier, it is a very large market geographically. UHF stations do not cover large areas very well. Additionally, the major stations in the market need sizable networks of translators to adequately cover the market, and the cost of building a translator network scared off perspective owners. By the 1990s, cable television—a must for acceptable television in much of this market—had gained enough penetration to make an independent station viable. In addition, two independent stations from the Minneapolis–Saint Paul market—KMSP-TV and WFTC—were present on some of the area's cable providers.

Although its lineup once included syndicated Big Ten college football (since returned as network coverage), most of the station's schedule was filled with programming from the Shop at Home Network by the late 1990s.