WKYT 27

WKYT-TV is the CBS & CW affiliated television station in Lexington, Kentucky, serving the east-central part of Kentucky. Through cable, the station also reaches much of eastern, southern & northern Kentucky. Its transmitter is located in Lexington, east of the intersection of I-75 & US 60. WKYT-TV studios are located at Winchester Road (US 60) and are less than a mile from the studios of competitor WTVQ-TV.

Its newscasts are also carried in the areas of northern Kentucky near Cincinnati on Insight Cable channel 6 weekdays at 6 am, noon, 5-6:30, 11 pm & weekends at 6 & 11 pm (although some newscasts, especially at 6 & 11 pm, may be delayed or not seen, due to sporting events carried on CBS, which are carried on WKRC-TV in that area).

WKYT regularly shows University of Kentucky Wildcats sports events which are popular in this market, as the television flagship station of the Big Blue Sports Network and as part of the Southeastern Conference's contracts with CBS and the SEC Network, syndicated by ESPN Regional Television.

WKYT signed on September 30, 1957 as WKXP-TV, owned by Community Broadcast Partners; Frederic Gregg, Charles Wright & Harry Feingold, principals. It was a primary ABC affiliate, sharing CBS programming with WLEX-TV.

In 1958, Taft Broadcasting Corporation bought the station and changed its calls to WKYT-TV. Kentucky Central Insurance Company bought the station in 1967. It lost ABC when WBLG-TV (channel 62, now WTVQ-TV, channel 36) signed on in 1968; and became a full-time CBS affiliate instead.

In 1993, after a protracted fraud investigation forced Kentucky Central into bankruptcy, WKYT and WYMT were acquired by Gray Television. At this stage WKYT became on air as 'KYT' instead of WKYT.

WKYT has a news share agreement with the local Fox affiliate WDKY-TV (which is owned by the Sinclair Broadcast Group) and produces weekday morning 7 am and nightly 10 pm newscasts for that station. The prime-time newscast debuted in 1995 when Fox requested its affiliates to air local news. The morning newscast was added in March 2007.

WKYT's digital signal is transmitted on UHF channel 36. It was originally assigned to VHF channel 13, but due to reception problems, WKYT moved to the UHF signal in September 2010.

On Wednesday, April 11, 2007, WKYT aired 27 News First at 11 in HD, becoming the first news station in Kentucky to air the local news in HD. The WDKY newscasts were included in the upgrade. On August 21, 2007, WKYT broadcasts from its second digital channel in HD & CWKYT started broadcasting also in HD. This made it one of a handful of stations in the country who transmit their main channel and at least one subchannel in HD. However, although both CBS and the CW prefer 1080i, WKYT's two HD channels were transmitted over-the-air in 720p in order to minimize the loss in image quality (their feeds to cable service providers use the full 1080i). Since the move to digital channel 36 in September 2010, CWKYT's over-the-air transmission reverted to 4:3 SD although the digital cable feed remains in HD and WKYT's main channel remains in 720p.