KIFR (channel 49) is a television station in Visalia, California, United States, serving the Fresno area as a Classic Arts Showcase affiliate. The station is owned by Vita Broadcasting. KIFR's studios are located on North Fresno Street near San Joaquin Memorial High School and the Hammond district just north of downtown Fresno, and its transmitter is located on Blue Ridge in rural Tulare County. Prior to its current ownership, channel 49 (as KNXT) was a Catholic television station for the Central Valley. History In 1985, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) granted an application by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Fresno—which learned of the channel a week before the deadline to file—to build a new non-commercial educational television station on the channel 49 allocation in Visalia, beating out a bid from the Trinity Broadcasting Network and the Tulare County board of education. Construction of the transmitter on Blue Ridge proved to be a test of sensitivity; the tower required environmental approval because the site is a roosting area for the California condor, and the county approved the tower over protests by Native American groups, who argued that the ridge was sacred ground and had been used for centuries as a communication point for smoke signals between tribes on different sides of the Sierra. The station signed on November 2, 1986. (The call letters had previously had a long history in California on the CBS owned-and-operated station on channel 2 in Los Angeles, which became KCBS-TV in 1984.) It did not take long for the diocese's new television station to be a financial drain, in part because it was approved far faster than had been anticipated, as TBN had unexpectedly withdrawn its application. In 1988, less than two years after signing on, priests called for a probe of the diocese's finances, alleging that monies donated by parishioners and entrusted to the diocese were donated for building improvements but instead diverted to diocesan operations including KNXT. That same year, on the occasion of Bishop Joseph J. Madera's quinquennial visit ad limina, the station reported a $263,000 deficit, even though the bishop noted that financial contributions were growing. A group explored a potential sale of channel 49 in 1990 and even recommended its sale to Community Educational Television, the noncommercial stations arm of TBN, for $1 million; two years later, negotiations were held with Joseph Desmond, a buyer who owned 30 KFC restaurants in