KXGN-TV

KXGN-TV (channel 5) is a television station in Glendive, Montana, United States, affiliated with CBS. Owned by The Marks Group with a pending sale to Montana State University, it shares studios with radio stations KXGN (1400 AM) and KDZN (96.5 FM) on South Douglas Street in downtown Glendive; KXGN-TV's transmitter is located at Makoshika State Park. The station also airs news and other programs from the Montana Television Network, a network of CBS affiliates in Montana.

KXGN-TV is the only television station in Glendive, reckoned as the smallest television market in the United States. Nielsen Media Research ranks it last of the 210 designated market areas for television in the United States, with just 3,900 households. Its status as the smallest station in the United States has earned it notoriety in the broadcasting industry; over its history, publications including the Los Angeles Times and Sports Illustrated have profiled KXGN-TV. The station's lone local program, which ceased at the end of 2024, was a public affairs program covering issues in eastern Montana, though in the past it produced limited local newscasts, and it provides regional newscasts from CBS affiliate KTVQ in Billings.

The founder of KXGN-TV was Lewis W. Moore, who had moved from Havre to Glendive in 1945 and owned the Rose Theater. In 1948, he started KXGN radio as a hedge against the possible decline of the movie theater business and to reach rural consumers with advertisements for his picture house in Glendive. Because of the radio station, Moore was well positioned to start a television station. On December 21, 1956, his Glendive Broadcasting Corporation filed with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to build a new TV station on channel 5 in Glendive, having previously asked for the channel to be authorized in addition to UHF channel 18. The FCC approved on March 13, 1957, and KXGN-TV began broadcasting on November 1.

We'd go to New York to see the networks, and they'd ask us where we were from. It was bad enough that we should tell them Montana, but when we added Glendive, well, they'd never heard of it.

From the beginning, it was clear that KXGN-TV would be a small station. In a 1959 United States Senate hearing in Helena which focused on the issue of cable television putting some small stations in the Mountain West out of business, Moore noted that KXGN's population served was the smallest "of any TV station in America, perhaps in the world". It initially had no network affiliation at all, struggling to produce five hours of live and filmed programming a day with a staff of nine. In 1962, salvation came when a receiving facility and microwave hookup were built east of Glendive at Wibaux to receive and send on programs from CBS affiliate KDIX-TV in Dickinson, North Dakota. The hookup allowed Moore to raise enough money to relocate the station to its present studio facilities, a former implement dealership, and a higher tower site in 1963.

Moore was also able to get ahead of the cable problem by purchasing a 50 percent stake in the cable system built to serve Glendive with television in 1968, and even after local viewers could subscribe to a choice in programming, KXGN remained popular because of its extensive community service orientation and unduplicated coverage of eastern Montana. By that time, ABC programs were off the schedule; the station had settled into its pattern for the next 40 years of being a primary CBS affiliate with selected NBC programs. CBS would later grant the station permission to air CBS programming from 6 to 9 p.m., as it does today, to improve ratings; this also allowed it to air NBC or other programming in the 9 p.m. hour. Local programming included live bingo five days a week during the winter months and local news specials as needed.

In 1988, Moore put KXGN radio and television on the market in order to complete his retirement. The move came at a tough time for the stations and the market they served. The Burlington Northern railroad had stopped operating through Glendive years prior; low oil prices depressed the region's energy sector; the worst drought since the 1930s negatively impacted the livestock and feed industries; and after Black Monday in 1987, national spot advertising sales dropped precipitously. To cut costs, KXGN dropped the Associated Press newswire, laid off staff, and canceled its public affairs show, the weekly Let's Talk About It. General manager "Dapper Dan" Frenzel, who had worked at the station since 1964, attempted to build a coalition of local buyers to take over the station, but they could not meet Moore's $1 million asking price. Instead, a Michigan man with a penchant for small-town TV struck a deal to purchase the KXGN stations in 1989. Stephen Marks owned WBKB-TV in Alpena, Michigan, also a single-station market, and said he liked one-station areas because they could command all of the available TV revenue in the area.

The sale took longer than Moore had expected because the FCC at the time had a rule that normally barred cross-ownership of radio and television stations. It was not until May 1990 that the FCC granted a waiver, noting the economic conditions inherent in the small-market stations, their extensively integrated operation, and the fact they had been co-owned for the television station's entire history. The commission also cited the availability of other electronic media through two Glendive-licensed radio stations, six other signals, and the cable system (which Moore sold off in 1986), as well as a daily newspaper. Marks added KDZN in 1995; the FCC approved of the purchase of the FM station because of the substantial losses that KXGN AM, then supported entirely by the TV station, and KDZN had incurred in the region's continuing poor economy. KXGN also aired some Fox programming, primarily the NFL on Fox, when Fox gained football rights from CBS in 1994.