The long road to construction

In 1986, the Federal Communications Commission added a channel 2 assignment to Fredericksburg, located 67 miles (108 km) from Austin and 63 miles (101 km) from San Antonio; the allotment was possible without interfering with channel 2 stations in Nuevo Laredo to the south, Midland to the west, Denton to the north, and Houston to the east.^[3] The availability of a VHF station that could potentially serve two media markets attracted attention from prospective owners. In June 1987, the FCC designated twelve applicants for comparative hearing.^[4] Some of the applicants, notably the Telemundo network, dropped out in the months following the hearing designation order. Administrative law judge Edward Luton made his initial decision on who should be granted the channel out of six contenders in June 1989; he selected Stonewall Television, owned by Marquis Whittington and Robert Simmons.^[4][3] The FCC's review board overturned this decision in 1993 and gave the nod to Fredericksburg Channel 2,^[4] an applicant whose principal stakeholders were former San Antonio Spurs owner Red McCombs and Bob Roth, a former manager and son of the owner of KONO-TV channel 12 in San Antonio in the 1950s and 1960s.^[5]

As appeals continued on the 1993 decision, tragedy struck. On October 20, 1995, Roth took two executives from the Hearst Corporation to scout the area and view the proposed transmitter site.^[5] The car they were traveling in was involved in a head-on collision south of Stonewall; Roth died at the age of 73. No one was wearing seat belts at the time of the accident.^[6]

In 1996, Fredericksburg Channel 2 merged with one of its five competing applicants: Global Information Technologies of Austin, a company owned by Carmen and Saleem Tawil. The Tawils had previously built and sold a low-power independent TV station in Austin, K13VC.^[7] In August 1997, the FCC approved the combined application of Fredericksburg Channel 2 and Global and dismissed the other applicants, one of which, Frontier Broadcasting, challenged the dismissal in federal appeals court; Frontier had its application dismissed over transmitter site issues in 1989.^[7] With a construction permit in hand, the partnership, taking the name of Corridor Television, began building channel 2 in 1998.^[8] The call letters KBEJ, a sequential assignment, were given to the construction permit in May 1998.^[9][10]

As a UPN affiliate

As early as 1997,^[7] UPN was seen as the most likely affiliation for KBEJ to pursue. By 2000, the network had already experienced problems keeping an affiliate in both San Antonio and Austin. When it launched in 1995, the network was affiliated with KRRT channel 35 for the San Antonio market and the Hill Country Paramount Network, a chain of low-power TV stations, serving Austin. Both had been lost. Sinclair Broadcast Group, owner of KRRT, switched its UPN affiliates to The WB in a group deal announced in 1997,^[11] and UPN did not have a San Antonio affiliate after that time;^[9] KMOL-TV, the NBC affiliate that was co-owned with UPN itself by United Television, was airing the network in late-night hours.^[12] In 1998, UPN had dropped the Hill Country Paramount Network for K13VC on six days' notice because K13VC, unlike the previous affiliate, had cable carriage.^[13]

In addition to a UPN affiliation, Corridor contracted with Belo, which owned Austin's KVUE and San Antonio's KENS, to operate channel 2, which began broadcasting August 3, 2000.^[12] Belo provided management services from KENS^[12] and technical services from its headquarters in Dallas.^[14] In addition to UPN and syndicated programming, the star attraction of the new KBEJ was a package of 31 San Antonio Spurs games; that year, KENS and KBEJ had won the rights to the Spurs from their previous carriers, KSAT and KRRT.^[12]

Cable carriage proved to be a difficulty at the outset for KBEJ. Before launch, and even as transmitter tests were being conducted, the FCC had yet to rule on which market the new station, equidistant from San Antonio and Austin, was to be placed in.^[15] The original designation was Austin, but it would take the new channel longer to find cable carriage there than in San Antonio, where it was added by Time Warner Cable on October 28, right before the start of the NBA season.^[16] It was not until August 2, 2001, that KBEJ made an appearance on Time Warner Cable's Austin system after pressure from viewers and an agreement with Belo.^[17]

By the time Austin cable viewers could get KBEJ, however, the Spurs had soured on channel 2. Residents of the south side of San Antonio, further away from Fredericksburg, complained of signal difficulties. The transmitter was located to the north of the city, whereas the other stations were to its south.^[18] The Spurs had averaged an 8.5 rating on KRRT in the 1999–2000 season; by February 2001, they were pulling a 5.5 on KBEJ, whereas ratings for KENS games held steady.^[18] Before the 2001–2002 season, the Spurs moved back to KRRT,^[19] even though KBEJ had held a multi-year contract for the games.^[20]

As a CW affiliate

KCWX logo as a CW affiliate, used from September 18, 2006, to the termination of the Belo LMA in April 2010

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, The CW. On March 28, Corridor Television signed an agreement to make KBEJ San Antonio's CW affiliate.^[21] Three weeks later, on April 18, The CW announced it had affiliated with Austin's WB affiliate, KNVA.^[22] On April 7, 2006, KBEJ changed to KCWX, reflecting its new affiliation.^[23]

With The CW boasting affiliates for both San Antonio and Austin, KCWX became a San Antonio-market station exclusively.^[24] For a short time thereafter, KCWX remained on Austin cable, with CW programming blacked out to protect KNVA.^[25]

Because it was granted an original construction permit after the FCC finalized the DTV allotment plan on April 21, 1997, the station did not receive a companion channel for a digital television station.^[26] Instead, the station was required to flash-cut—bring a digital signal into service when it left the air in analog. It initially selected channel 8, to which Austin station KTBC objected, and then chose channel 5. This channel was occupied by the analog signal of KENS. In January 2009, the station began operating at reduced power, with one of its two transmitters deactivated, to allow for conversion work at its transmitter site. Corridor planned to turn off the second transmitter on February 10, 2009, with the station being seen on cable only for a week. These plans were disrupted by Congress's decision to postpone the transition by four months. The second transmitter was instead turned off on June 12, 2009. Due to difficulties scheduling installers for tower work, the final digital signal was not ready until July 2009.^[27]

Switch to MyNetworkTV

Sinclair Broadcast Group disclosed in its 2009 annual report for 2009, released in March 2010, that it had signed the month before to move the CW affiliation to KMYS—the former KRRT—on September 1, 2010.^[28] The affiliation switch was eventually moved up two days to August 30; on that date, the MyNetworkTV affiliation moved to KCWX.^[29] With the then-pending loss of its CW affiliation, Belo terminated its LMA with Corridor Television on April 24, 2010, forcing Corridor to operate KCWX on its own from Austin.^[27]

Subchannels

The station's signal is multiplexed: