It was a phone call from a friend of Ted Koplar, then president of Koplar Communications, about a construction permit that returned the Koplar family to the broadcast world. Harold Koplar, Ted’s father, had launched KPLR-TV in 1959. The station was America’s first independent Very High Frequency (VHF) station, and by 1997, had become the top-ranked independent television station in the country. Along the way, the station installed the first broadcast facility with a license from the FCC for ownership and operation of a satellite earth station.
“It would be fair to say the company was more or less dormant for a good 10 years,” says Bob Koplar, son of Ted Koplar and current president of Koplar Communications.
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In 2007 Koplar Communications acquired a construction permit from the FCC and built a new television station from the ground up. Koplar Communications is now an active part of the local broadcast scene in the U.S. Midwest, and is also continuing to use satellite.
“You’ve got way more competition from all kinds of sources than we used to as a TV station. Nowadays you are competing against Netflix, you’re competing against any number of streaming services, Facebook — people’s attention is totally divided right now,” says Bob.
Today Koplar Communications has three programming streams: Fox on the main channel, MeTV as first multicast, and MOVIES! as second multicast.
“Programming distribution is practically all done via satellite. I don’t know how we would do it without the satellite infrastructure, and I don’t see what’s going to come along to change that, to be honest,” he says.
“As a consumer I look at all the different areas satellite affects our lives, everything from self driving cars that are GPS-based; now you can get internet on planes, which used to be ground based and is now moving to satellite. It’s becoming more and more of a satellite-based society,” he says. “The prospect of providing broadband to remote areas in Africa — I can’t even say the sky is the limit. The sky is not the limit; space is the limit. It’s truly a satellite-based future, at least from where I stand.” VS
