KXAN-TV

KXAN-TV (channel 36) is a television station in Austin, Texas, United States, affiliated with NBC. It is owned by Nexstar Media Group alongside Llano-licensed MyNetworkTV affiliate KBVO (channel 14); Nexstar also provides certain services to KNVA (channel 54), a de facto owned-and-operated station of The CW, under a local marketing agreement (LMA) with Vaughan Media. The three stations share studios on West Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in the Old West Austin section, just west of the University of Texas at Austin campus and just north of downtown; the studios and offices consist of a setup which includes the main studio and newsroom, and an unconnected auxiliary office building across the street. KXAN-TV's transmitter is located at the West Austin Antenna Farm north of West Lake Hills.

The station first signed on the air on February 12, 1965, as KHFI-TV, broadcasting on UHF channel 42. It was owned by the Kingsbury family, along with KHFI radio (970 AM, now KJFK at 1490; and 98.3 FM, now KVET-FM at 98.1). KHFI was the second television station in Austin, signing on a little more than twelve years after KTBC-TV (channel 7). Although Austin was big enough to support three television stations as early as the 1950s, KTBC was the only VHF license in the area. Until 1964, UHF stations could only be seen with an expensive converter, and even then picture quality left much to be desired. Additionally, UHF signals usually do not travel very far over long distances or over rugged terrain. This made several potential owners skittish about the prospects for UHF in a market that stretched from Mason in the west to La Grange in the east, and also included much of the Hill Country.

KHFI-TV logically should have signed on as Austin's NBC station, since up to that time all three networks had been shoehorned on KTBC, then a primary CBS affiliate. However, due to contractual obligations, it spent more than a year-and-a-half as an independent station before joining NBC in 1966. Unlike most affiliates with the network in then two-station markets, KHFI did not take on a secondary ABC affiliation (KTBC instead took on the secondary ABC affiliation, until a third station, KVUE signed on in 1971, taking on the ABC affiliation). The Kingsburys would later bring in Henry Tippie as a partner and on January 15, 1973, were granted permission from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to move KHFI-TV to channel 36.

With the channel change came a new set of call letters, KTVV. The station also boosted its transmitter power to five million watts, which more than doubled its coverage area, and for a time billed itself as the most powerful TV station in the Southwest with these changes. What was then known as LIN Broadcasting purchased the station in 1979. The call letters were changed to the current KXAN-TV on October 15, 1987, in reference to then-sister station and fellow NBC affiliate (now owned-and-operated station) KXAS-TV in Fort Worth. Even with the increased power, channel 36's signal was marginal in some parts of the Hill Country such as Fredericksburg. On September 6, 1991, LIN signed on KLNO in Llano to improve KXAN's reach in the Hill Country. It changed that station's call letters to KXAM-TV after about a month on the air and later to the current KBVO on August 3, 2009. This call sign, named after the University of Texas' mascot "Bevo", was formerly used on the current channel 42—which is now CBS affiliate KEYE-TV—from December 1983 to July 1995, and is shared with channel 14's repeater KBVO-CD.

KXAN is one of two stations in Austin (the other being KVUE, channel 24) to retain its original network affiliation in the wake of a network swap between KTBC and Fox station KBVO (now KEYE-TV, channel 42) in 1995, the result of Fox's affiliation deal with New World Communications due to that network acquiring rights to NFL games. On October 21, 2009, KBVO became a separate station after picking up the MyNetworkTV affiliation from KNVA. That station carried the network as a secondary affiliation (airing on KNVA on Monday through Saturday nights from 9 to 11 p.m.), known on-air as "MyNetworkTV on The CW Austin", from its launch on September 5, 2006. In mid-September 2009, that station moved MyNetworkTV programs an hour later from 10 p.m. to midnight to make room for a nightly 9 p.m. newscast to compete with KTBC's established prime time newscast. To date, KNVA was one of two stations in the United States to carry The CW and MyNetworkTV (the other being KWKB in Iowa City, Iowa, which until 2011 was the only station that carried the full schedules of both netlets/programming services).

KXAN's current tower was activated in 1996, replacing an older structure that had been built in 1964. Of the fifteen towers on the hill, the channel 36 tower is the tallest and the highest structure in Austin. In addition to its transmission antenna, the mast also incorporates a camera with views of downtown to the east and the hills to the west.

On March 21, 2014, it was announced that Media General would acquire LIN. The merger was completed on December 19, 2014, and KXAN joined the Media General station portfolio. Just over a year after that deal was completed, on January 27, 2016, Media General announced that it had entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by Nexstar Broadcasting Group (which is based in Irving and already owns many other stations in Texas), in a deal valued at $17.14 per-share, valuing the company at $4.6 billion plus the assumption of $2.3 billion debt. The combined company would be known as Nexstar Media Group, and own 171 stations (including KXAN-TV), serving an estimated 39% of households. The merger also marked a re-entry into Austin for Nexstar, which had managed CBS affiliate KEYE-TV under a groupwide agreement with the Four Points Media Group before that company's stations were sold to Sinclair at the beginning of 2012. The deal was finalized on January 17, 2017.

KXAN-TV presently broadcasts 31 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with five hours each weekday and three hours each on Saturdays and Sundays).