KFBM-TV (channel 25) is a television station in Bellingham, Washington, United States, serving northwest Washington and the northern Olympic Peninsula as a Fox affiliate. The station is owned by locally-based Dowden Communications, and is a sister station to MyNetworkTV affiliate KMYB-TV (channel 62). The two stations share studios in Hercus House on East Bakerview Road in Bellingham; KFBM's transmitter is located on Mount Constitution on Orcas Island.
Like with many other Bellingham TV stations, KFBM-TV has a large audience in southwestern British Columbia, Canada. This includes Vancouver, a city that is ten times more populous than all of KFBM-TV's entire American viewing area combined.
History[]
The station launched on August 2, 1972, and was owned by the Dowden Oil Company, operating from the renovated, Late Victorian-style Hercus House in Bellingham, now on the National Register of Historic Places. The station's original transmitter and associated equipment was purchased second-hand from the original WHDH-TV in Boston, Massachusetts, which ceased operations earlier that year on March 18. The original transmitter location was in a cornfield owned by Henry Dowden's brother Norman in Van Wyck outside the city limits. Henry was originally skeptical of KFBM-TV being able to succeed, so the house was renovated in a way so the property could be easily converted into an inn, complete with a recreation room and billiard room, in case the station lost money and was forced to shut down. As it turned out, the rooms, nicknamed "Rumpus Alley", would see very little use except for the occasional employee party, but remain in the building to this day.
On October 9, 1986, KFBM joined the newly-established Fox network as a charter affiliate. Although it was now part of a network, as was the case with other Fox stations during the network's early years, KFBM, for all intents and purposes, continued to be programmed as a de facto independent station as Fox's initial programming consisted solely of a late-night talk show, The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers; even when Fox launched its prime time lineup in April 1987, the network only aired programs during that daypart on Saturday and Sundays early on; Fox would gradually debut additional nights of programming over the next six years until it adopted a seven-night-a-week schedule in September 1993.
In August 2020, KFBM-TV was admonished by the FCC for deliberately airing political ads, especially attack ads, during lesser-viewed programs such as the E/I Xploration Station children's programming block and certain local programming as an act of malicious compliance with FCC regulations requiring over-the-air commercial TV stations with licenses issued by the FCC to air political ads by both parties, whether it be attack ads or more traditional political ads. Dowden Communications president Thomas G. Dowden has been outspoken in his criticism of FCC rules regarding political advertising, calling them unfair, and has called for them to be either repealed altogether or replaced with "more fair rules."
Programming[]
Syndicated programing on KFBM includes Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy!, The Real, and Tamron Hall, among others.
Newscasts[]
Currently, KFBM airs 33½ hours of news each week (with 5½ hours each weekday and three hours each on Saturdays and Sundays). KFBM has seen several personnel changes throughout the years, but some personnel have been with KFBM for several years, such as weekday news anchor Dave Brunvand and chief meteorologist Corey Vaillancourt. The news product, for many years, has had a philosophical and political lean towards Libertarianism, and Dowden Communications co-owner, CEO and president Thomas G. Dowden, who hosts the station's nightly call-in talk program Fox 25 Talk, had been active in the Libertarian Party of Washington prior to joining his family in running the company.
In 2019, KFBM got a new news set from FX Design Group.