is a TV station of Nippon News Network (NNN) and Nippon Television Network System (NNS) in Hokkaidō, Japan. Headquartered in Sapporo, the capital city of Hokkaidō prefecture, the TV station was established on April 8, 1958. It is usually called "STV" for short, which is used as a name in a number of TV programs. Since December 15, 1962, the company has worked as both television and radio station until July 12, 2005, when the radio section was split into the was established. Currently, the STV Radio is a radio station of National Radio Network (NRN) in Hokkaidō, Japan. The license of the radio broadcasting was succeeded to the STV Radio, and started radio broadcasting on October 1, 2005. History Early stages In early 1957, Youzo Kurosawa (then president of the Hokkai Shimbun), Yoshjiro Kikuchi (then president of the Hokkaido Charcoal Steamship Company), and Yoshitaro Hagiwara (president of the Hokkaido Charcoal Steamship Company), considered the formation of a second private television station in Hokkaido. Japan's national newspapers (Yomiuri Shimbun, Asahi Shimbun, Mainichi Shimbun, and Sankei Shimbun) attempted to enter the Hokkaido market at the time by combining two major sectors, television and newspapers, with the goal of creating a private television station. This is unquestionably a serious danger to Hokkaido's native newspaper, the Hokkai Shimbun. Hokkai Shimbun and an unnamed Hokkaido firm sought for a commercial TV broadcasting license under the name "Sapporo TV" in April 1957. And received their license on October of the same year. Founding and early years The company was founded on April 8, 1958.STV began its TV broadcasts on April 1 the following year airing for at least 9 hours a day. STV started as a dual affiliated station with NNN as their primary affiliate and FNN as their secondary affiliate. The network also aired certain programming from Nippon Educational Television (currently TV Asahi) alongside HBC. Prior to its official TV broadcasts, STV also applied a radio broadcasting license in 1958 (which was later rejected). The broadcaster applied for a license again on February 17, 1961 and was granted on July 10, 1962 becoming the only broadcaster in Japan to start TV broadcasts then radio broadcasts (STV Radio started broadcasting on December 15, 1962). Nippon Educational Programs stopped providing programs to STV after it moved remaining programs to HBC sometime in 1962. On March 20, 1966, STV started to air programs in color. STV joined