KPTH

KPTH (channel 44) is a television station in Sioux City, Iowa, United States, affiliated with Fox and CBS. It is owned by the Sinclair Broadcast Group, which provides certain services to Dabl affiliate KMEG (channel 14) under a shared services agreement (SSA) with Waitt Broadcasting. The two stations share studios along I-29 (postal address says Gold Circle) in Dakota Dunes, South Dakota; KPTH's transmitter is located in unincorporated Plymouth County, Iowa, east of James and US 75 along the Woodbury County line. KPTH has been the Fox affiliate for Sioux City since its construction by Pappas Telecasting in 1999. Its operations were merged with KMEG, then the CBS affiliate, in 2005. After Pappas filed for bankruptcy protection, the station was sold to Titan TV Broadcast Management in 2009 and again to Sinclair in 2013. KPTH absorbed the CBS programming previously on KMEG in 2021. KPTH aired local news from 2006 to 2023. History Pappas Telecasting received a construction permit to build a new station in Sioux City on February 25, 1997, immediately announcing that it planned to put KPTH on the air as a Fox affiliate in early 1998. Work on the tower site in Plymouth County began that October. KPTH began broadcasting May 9, 1999. It operated from offices in South Sioux City, Nebraska, and broadcast from an interim antenna at the level of its planned tower for the first five months. The high-power facility was necessary because two thirds of television households in the Sioux City market lived outside the metropolitan area. It also provided tower space for KMEG and for the digital facilities of KTIV and Iowa Public Television.