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City | Santa Fe, New Mexico |
Channels | |
Branding | Telemundo Nuevo México; Noticias Telemundo Nuevo México |
Programming | |
Affiliations | |
Ownership | |
Owner |
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KTEL-CD, KRTN-LD, KUPT-LD | |
History | |
First air date | October 31, 1983 |
Former call signs |
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Former channel number(s) | Analog: 2 (VHF, 1983–2009) |
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Call sign meaning | Based on Spanish word casa, meaning "home" or "house" |
Technical information [1] | |
Licensing authority | FCC |
Facility ID | 32311 |
ERP | 380 kW |
HAAT | 1,278 m (4,193 ft) |
Transmitter coordinates | 35°12′49.8″N106°27′3.3″W / 35.213833°N 106.450917°W |
Translator(s) | see § Rebroadcasters |
Links | |
Public license information | |
Website | www |
KASA-TV (channel 2) is a television station licensed to Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States, serving the Albuquerque area and most of the state as an owned-and-operated station of the Spanish-language network Telemundo. KASA-TV's studios are located on Monroe Street NE in Albuquerque; its transmitter is located on Sandia Crest, with translators in much of the state and southwestern Colorado extending its signal and on subchannels of two high-power stations, KTEL-TV in Carlsbad and KUPT in Hobbs.
Channel 2 in Santa Fe was established in 1983 and struggled for its first decade on air as an independent station. It went silent in 1992 during a merger with KGSW-TV, which resulted in 1993 in its relaunch as Fox affiliate KASA-TV. KASA remained the Albuquerque market's Fox affiliate until a merger led to Fox's move to a subchannel of KRQE; at that time, channel 2 and its translators were sold to Lubbock, Texas-based Ramar Communications and switched to Telemundo, which had previously aired on that company's KTEL-CD. Telemundo's parent company, NBCUniversal, purchased all of Ramar's stations in New Mexico in 2021.
The New Mexico Media Co., a group of Santa Fe businessmen backed by California industrialist John J. Pollon, [2] applied on September 10, 1977, for a new television station to serve Santa Fe on very high frequency (VHF) channel 11 (amended two months later to specify channel 2). [3] Both the New Mexico Media application and the other channel 11 bid, which became KCHF, were contested by the Albuquerque television stations for specifying the use of Sandia Crest as the transmitter site, which they contended would have meant an insufficient signal over the city of license. [4]
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved the application on May 10, 1982. [3] By that time, the application had been amended to change the transmitter site to No Name Peak in the Jemez Mountains. [5] [6]
Channel 2 came to the air on October 31, 1983 [7] —a day later than announced, [8] prompting the station to apologize on local radio stations and claim it was "a day late but ... not a single program short" [9] —as independent station KSAF-TV. Based in a new studio building at the corner of St. Francis and St. Michael's Drive in Santa Fe, channel 2 promised a strong signal for Santa Fe and Albuquerque, as well as the first live newscast for New Mexico's capital city; [10] the 9 p.m. newscast was scrapped just three months after launch, with the general manager calling it a "drain" on the station's resources as a startup operation. [11] [12]
In October 1984, a California-based investor group bought into KSAF-TV. [13] The new ownership upgraded the programming by acquiring 600 films from a financially troubled KNAT-TV; in order to avoid confusion with radio station KAFE and "KSFE-TV", a former cable channel in Santa Fe, the call letters were changed to KNMZ-TV (stylized as "KNM2") on March 1, 1985. [14] [15]
The station filed for bankruptcy in August 1987, citing $11 million in assets but $15 million in liabilities. [16] Coronado Communications Company, a subsidiary of the Las Vegas–based Sunbelt Communications Company, purchased channel 2 for $3 million in early 1988. [17] Founding investor Pollon bought back the studio building, and KNMZ-TV moved its Santa Fe offices to smaller quarters on Calle Nava while shifting the bulk of operations to Albuquerque. [18] [19] Coronado also laid off 17 staffers to cut back to the "bare bones" necessary for operation. [20]
Coronado made its own repositioning of channel 2 in 1989, changing the call letters to KKTO-TV. [19]
By mid-1992, KKTO-TV was economically struggling: Coronado had lost $6.6 million in its ownership of the station, and it warned that it could not continue to operate KKTO-TV much longer. [21] That July, the Providence Journal Company (ProJo)—owners of KGSW-TV (channel 14), New Mexico's Fox affiliate—reached a deal to purchase KKTO from Coronado. The deal was made with the express purpose of moving the Fox affiliation and channel 14 programming to the VHF station, which in turn would move its transmitter to Sandia Crest in a $1 million upgrade. [22] [23] ProJo immediately took control of KKTO under a local marketing agreement, firing its 18 staff and rehiring 10. [23]
Programming from KKTO ceased at midnight on September 6, 1992. [24] That same week, the Associated Press news agency had sued the station for $78,700 in unpaid wire service bills. [25] The FCC approved the ProJo purchase of KKTO in January 1993, along with new KASA-TV call letters for channel 2. [26] On April 5, 1993, at 6 p.m., KGSW-TV signed off channel 14, and KASA-TV began telecasting on channel 2. [27]
In 1997, Belo acquired the Providence Journal Company. However, it found that there was no synergy between KASA-TV and its clusters of stations in Texas, the Pacific Northwest, and the mid-Atlantic states and put the station up for sale, along with KHNL in Honolulu, Hawaii, in May 1999. [28] The Albuquerque and Honolulu operations were purchased by Raycom Media for $88 million. [29] Under Raycom ownership, KASA began airing a 9 p.m. local newscast produced for it by KOB-TV in November 2000. [30]
After purchasing the Liberty Corporation in August 2005, Raycom announced its intent to sell KASA and several other stations. On July 27, 2006, Raycom announced that LIN TV, owner of CBS affiliate KRQE, would purchase KASA for $55 million and take over operations at the end of August. [31] The creation of a television duopoly involving two "Big Four" affiliates—typically the four highest-rated stations in a market, which cannot be commonly owned—was allowed since KASA was New Mexico's fifth-rated station at the time. The deal also saw KASA move out of its Albuquerque studio site—which had been used by KGSW-TV since its start—to KRQE's facility and switch from airing a 9 p.m. newscast produced by KOB to one from KRQE. [32]
While LIN was able to retain both KRQE and KASA in its merger with Media General in 2014, this would prove not to be the case in 2016 when Nexstar Broadcasting Group reached a deal to purchase Media General for $4.6 billion. KASA and KRQE were both ranked among the top four stations in the market during the November 2015 sweeps period, which meant that the company had to divest one of the two stations to comply with the FCC duopoly rules. [33] On June 30, 2016, it agreed to sell KASA-TV and associated translators to Ramar Communications, owner of Telemundo affiliate KTEL-CD (channel 15), Movies! affiliate KUPT-LD (channel 16), and MeTV affiliate KRTN-LD (channel 33), for $2.5 million. [34]
On January 18, 2017, Fox programming moved to a subchannel of KRQE, as Ramar did not acquire the Fox affiliation in the transaction. KASA switched to Telemundo; Ramar also converted its three existing full-power stations in the market—KRTN-TV (channel 33) in Durango, Colorado, KTEL-TV (channel 25) in Carlsbad, and KUPT (channel 29) in Hobbs—into satellites of KASA. [34] [35]
Ramar announced the sale of its entire Albuquerque-market television operation—KASA-TV, the other three full-power stations, and all of their dependent translators—to NBCUniversal on July 30, 2021. The $12.5 million deal gave NBCU Telemundo owned-and-operated stations in 31 markets and marked the end of 23 years of Ramar's ownership of the Telemundo affiliation in the city. [36] [37] The sale was completed on October 5. [38]
Initially, local news on Telemundo Nuevo México originated from the studios of KJTV-TV, formerly owned by Ramar, in Lubbock, Texas, with reports from Albuquerque-based reporters. As part of the sale, NBC entered into a transitional services agreement with Gray Television, which had purchased KJTV-TV and other Ramar television assets in Lubbock earlier in 2021, to continue news production in the short term; [39] in announcing the purchase, NBC declared its intention to start its own local news service for KASA. [36]
On October 18, 2021, Albuquerque's NBC affiliate, KOB, assumed production of the local newscasts. [40]
KASA-TV operates two satellite stations to rebroadcast the station's programming to southeastern New Mexico.
Station | City of license | Channel | Facility ID | ERP | HAAT | Transmitter coordinates | First air date | Public license information |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
KTEL-TV | Carlsbad | 25 | 83707 | 41 kW | 120 m (394 ft) | 32°26′9.6″N104°11′16″W / 32.436000°N 104.18778°W | October 27, 1997 | |
KUPT | Hobbs | 29 | 27431 | 50 kW | 157 m (515 ft) | 32°43′28″N103°5′48″W / 32.72444°N 103.09667°W | July 5, 1983 |
KASA-TV has 23 low-power rebroadcasters in New Mexico and Colorado. [41] In early 1987, KGSW-TV began building translators in such cities as Alamosa, Durango, and Farmington. [42] Around the same time, the then-KNMZ-TV built its first rebroadcaster, to serve Farmington. [43]
The stations' signals are multiplexed. The use of major channel numbers 15 and 33 for KASA-TV's other subchannels correlates to the other full-power ex-Ramar stations in New Mexico.
Channel | Res. | Aspect | Short name | Programming |
---|---|---|---|---|
2.1 | 1080i | 16:9 | KASA-HD | Telemundo |
15.1 | 480i | TeleX | TeleXitos | |
33.1 | TBD | TBD | ||
47.1 | 720p | COZI HD | Cozi TV (KTEL-CD) |
Channel | Res. | Aspect | Short name | Programming |
---|---|---|---|---|
25.1 | 720p | 16:9 | KTEL-HD | Cozi TV |
25.2 | 480i | COZI | TBD | |
25.3 | CHARGE | TeleXitos | ||
25.4 | KASA-SD | Telemundo |
Channel | Res. | Aspect | Short name | Programming |
---|---|---|---|---|
2.1 | 480i | 16:9 | KASA | Telemundo |
15.1 | MeTV | Cozi TV | ||
29.1 | H & I | TBD | ||
29.2 | KMYL-LD | MyNetworkTV (KMYL-LD) | ||
33.1 | CHARGE | TeleXitos |
KASA-TV shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 2, on June 12, 2009, the official date on which full-power television in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 27, using virtual channel 2. [47]
KOB is a television station in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States, affiliated with NBC. It is owned by Hubbard Broadcasting, whose sister cable channel Reelz is also based in Albuquerque. KOB's studios are located on Broadcast Plaza just west of downtown, and its transmitter is located on Sandia Crest, east of Albuquerque.
KOAT-TV is a television station in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States, affiliated with ABC. Owned by Hearst Television, the station maintains studios on Carlisle Boulevard in Northeast Albuquerque, and its transmitter is located on Sandia Crest, northeast of Albuquerque. 27 repeaters carry its broadcast signal to much of New Mexico as well as southwestern Colorado and northeastern Arizona.
KRQE is a television station in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States, affiliated with CBS and Fox. Owned by Nexstar Media Group, it is sister to Santa Fe–licensed CW affiliate KWBQ and MyNetworkTV affiliate KASY-TV, both owned by Mission Broadcasting with certain services provided by Nexstar through shared services agreements. The three stations share studios on Broadcast Plaza in Albuquerque; KRQE's transmitter is located on Sandia Crest, east of Albuquerque.
KWBQ is a television station licensed to Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States, serving the Albuquerque area as a de facto owned-and-operated station of The CW. The station's transmitter is located atop Sandia Crest. KWBQ is owned by Mission Broadcasting alongside MyNetworkTV affiliate KASY-TV. The two stations share studios with dual CBS/Fox affiliate KRQE on Broadcast Plaza in Albuquerque. Nexstar Media Group, which owns KRQE and holds a majority stake in The CW, provides master control, technical, engineering and accounting services for KWBQ and KASY-TV through a shared services agreement (SSA), though the two stations are otherwise operated separately from KRQE as Mission handles programming, advertising sales and retransmission consent negotiations.
KASY-TV is a television station in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States, affiliated with MyNetworkTV. It is owned by Mission Broadcasting alongside Santa Fe–licensed CW outlet KWBQ and its Roswell-based satellite, KRWB-TV. The two stations share studios with dual CBS/Fox affiliate KRQE on Broadcast Plaza in Albuquerque; KASY-TV's transmitter is located atop Sandia Crest.
KUNM is a public radio station broadcasting on FM 89.9 MHz from high atop Sandia Crest, with broadcasts originating from the third floor of Oñate Hall, on the campus of the University of New Mexico (UNM) in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
KTDO is a television station licensed to Las Cruces, New Mexico, United States, broadcasting the Spanish-language Telemundo network to the El Paso, Texas, area. Owned and operated by NBCUniversal's Telemundo Station Group, the station has studios on Carnegie Avenue in El Paso, and its transmitter is located atop the Franklin Mountains on the El Paso city limits.
KNME-TV, branded New Mexico PBS or NM PBS, is a PBS member television station in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States. Jointly owned by the University of New Mexico and Albuquerque Public Schools, it is a sister station to Santa Fe–licensed KNMD-TV. The two stations share studios on UNM's North Campus on University Boulevard Northeast in Albuquerque; KNME-TV's transmitter is located atop Sandia Crest.
KNAT-TV is a religious television station in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States, owned and operated by the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN). The station's transmitter is located on Sandia Crest.
KJTV-TV is a television station in Lubbock, Texas, United States, affiliated with the Fox network. It is owned by SagamoreHill Broadcasting alongside Wolfforth-licensed low-power, Class A news-formatted independent station KJTV-CD. SagamoreHill maintains a shared services agreement (SSA) with Gray Television, owner of NBC affiliate KCBD and Wolfforth-licensed CW+ affiliate KLCW-TV, for the provision of certain services. KJTV-TV is also sister to four other low-power stations owned by Gray—MyNetworkTV affiliate KMYL-LD, Snyder-licensed Heroes & Icons affiliate KABI-LD, Class A Telemundo affiliate KXTQ-CD, and MeTV affiliate KLBB-LD. The stations share studios at 98th Street and University Avenue in south Lubbock, where KJTV-TV's transmitter is also located.
KREZ-TV is a television station licensed to Durango, Colorado, United States, affiliated with CBS and Fox. It is a satellite of Albuquerque, New Mexico–based KRQE, which is owned by Nexstar Media Group. KREZ-TV's offices are located on Turner Drive in Durango, and its transmitter is located atop Smelter Mountain; its parent station maintains studios on Broadcast Plaza in Albuquerque.
KBIM-TV is a television station licensed to Roswell, New Mexico, United States, affiliated with CBS and Fox. It is a satellite of Albuquerque-based KRQE, which is owned by Nexstar Media Group. KBIM-TV's offices are located on Main Street in Roswell, and its transmitter is located in southeast Chaves County atop the Caprock Escarpment; its parent station maintains studios on Broadcast Plaza in Albuquerque.
KLCW-TV is a television station licensed to Wolfforth, Texas, United States, serving the Lubbock area as an affiliate of The CW Plus. It is owned by Gray Television alongside NBC affiliate KCBD and four low-power stations—MyNetworkTV affiliate KMYL-LD, Snyder-licensed Heroes & Icons affiliate KABI-LD, Class A Telemundo affiliate KXTQ-CD and MeTV affiliate KLBB-LD. Gray also provides certain services to Fox affiliate KJTV-TV and low-power Class A news formatted independent station KJTV-CD under a shared services agreement (SSA) with SagamoreHill Broadcasting. The stations share studios at 98th Street and University Avenue in south Lubbock, where KLCW-TV's transmitter is also located.
Albuquerque is the primary media hub of the US state of New Mexico, which includes Santa Fe and Las Cruces. The vistas and adobe architecture of New Mexico are a major backdrop of Western fiction and the Western genre.
KNML is a sports talk formatted radio station owned by Cumulus Media and licensed to Albuquerque, New Mexico. Its studios are located in Downtown Albuquerque and it utilizes daytime and nighttime transmitters that are located within yards of each other in the southwest quadrant of the city, between the Rio Grande and the Albuquerque International Sunport.
KRTN-LD is a low-power television station in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States, affiliated with the digital multicast network TBD. Owned by the Telemundo Station Group subsidiary of NBCUniversal, it is sister to Telemundo owned-and-operated station KASA-TV, KTEL-CD, and KUPT-LD. KRTN-LD's transmitter is located at Sandia Crest.
KUPT-LD, virtual channels 2 and 16, is a low-power Movies!-affiliated television station licensed to Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States. Owned by the Telemundo Station Group subsidiary of NBCUniversal, it is sister to Telemundo owned-and-operated station KASA-TV, KTEL-CD, and KRTN-LD. KUPT-LD's transmitter is located at Sandia Crest.
KGSW-TV was a television station in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States. It broadcast from 1981 to 1993 and was last owned by The Providence Journal Company (ProJo).
Telemundo Station Group is the division of NBCUniversal Owned TV Stations (NBCUniversal), a subsidiary of Comcast that oversees their Telemundo owned-and-operated television stations and the TeleXitos network. The NBC owned-and-operated stations are held in the separate NBC Owned Television Stations division.