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Some articles I've found detailing problems that Fox affiliate KOIA-TV\KYOU-TV, Ch. 15 in Ottumwa, IA had (Also includes an article about K42AM.)

R

Route66Fan

From "The Des Moines Register", 12-30-1984.
Ottumwa, IA's local power TV approach.jpg
From "The Des Moines Register", 1-19-1986.
1-19-1986 The Des Moines Register.jpg
From "The Des Moines Register", 2-16-1986.2-16-1986 The Des Moines Register.jpg
From "The Des Moines Register", 8-21-1986.
8-21-1986 The Des Moines Register.jpg
From "The Cedar Rapids Gazette", 8-22-1986.
8-22-1986 The Cedar Rapids Gazette.jpg
One more in "Part 2".
 
Also from the old Jeff Kadet's K1MOD TV DX page, a screenshot of an ID from KYOU-TV's LPTV predecessor, K42AM, from the mid 1980's.
medium_42-k42am~%20%20%20ottumwa,%20ia%20%20%20103%20mi%20%20%2015.8%20kw.jpg
 
KYOU's transmitter is actually in the Cedar Rapids-Waterloo DMA. I wonder if they attempted to become a two-market FOX affiliate in the early to mid 1990s when KOCR was in awful shape (that station was in such dire straits that they sold the NFL rights to KGAN for the 1994 season).

Here's likely why KOIA decided to affiliate with FOX instead of CBS or NBC:
At the time KOIA first came on, it appeared that the Quincy-Hannibal and Kirksville-Ottumwa markets would merge to form one large market (they were complimentary markets, as Kirksville-Ottumwa only had ABC (KTVO; which briefly moved their tower closer to Hannibal and Quincy before retreating to its original tower after the new one collapsed) while Quincy-Hannibal had CBS (KHQA) and NBC (WGEM); ABC in the Quincy-Hannibal market came from KTVI, KTVO, or WQAD depending on location while in Kirksville-Ottumwa, CBS came from KHQA, KGAN, KCTV, or KCCI and NBC came from WGEM, WHO, or WDAF
 
The Ottumwa area was my old home turf once upon a time. The rumor mill in the late 80s/early 90s about the KOCR situation in Cedar Rapids was that FOX wanted KYOU to site its transmitter as far to the northeast of Ottumwa as possible to get a usable signal into Cedar Rapids and Iowa City as it could while still theoretically be able to service Ottumwa, although there was considerable terrain shadowing there. Or, maybe it was more the idea of KYOU, but in any event, FOX went along with the odd tower siting.

So it stands for now, two miles north of its home DMA boundary. It's a 1200 footer that will probably never be rebuilt if it falls. KYOU is still very much tied to Cedar Rapids with its common ownership with Gray's KCRG, which I suspect is providing a lot of the day-to-day operational support for KYOU, though I don't know how much.
 
KYOU's master control is probably centralcasted in either Cedar Rapids or even elsewhere in the Gray Television circuit...
Of course, once KOCR went on the air, they too had a run of cursed operation. They built a 500 ft tower without permission of the FCC or FAA, and their programming was decent at the start but the quality went down as time went on. There was someone on here once who said that before KOCR was evicted in '94, they got to the point of running VHS movie rentals on the air. Talk about a violation of federal laws.
 
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