The Gila River Broadcasting Corporation (GRBC) is a

television network A television network or television broadcaster is a telecommunications network for distribution of television program content, where a central operation provides programming to many television stations or multichannel video programming distributo ...

serving the

Gila River Indian Community The Gila River Indian Community (GRIC) (O'odham language: Keli Akimel Oʼotham, ''meaning "Gila River People"'', Maricopa language: Pee-Posh) is an Indian reservation in the U.S. state of Arizona, lying adjacent to the south side of the city of ...

(GRIC) in south-central

Arizona Arizona ( ; nv, Hoozdo Hahoodzo ; ood, Alĭ ṣonak ) is a state in the Southwestern United States. It is the 6th largest and the 14th most populous of the 50 states. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix. Arizona is part of the Fou ...

, United States. It is owned by the Community through tribal enterprise Gila River Telecommunications. GRBC broadcasts on four low-power

UHF Ultra high frequency (UHF) is the ITU designation for radio frequencies in the range between 300 megahertz (MHz) and 3 gigahertz (GHz), also known as the decimetre band as the wavelengths range from one meter to one tenth of a meter (on ...

stations near the Community's major population centers: KGRQ-LD (channel 21, previously channel 29) at Stotonic Village and KGRF-LD (channel 21, previously channel 19) at Maricopa Village. Both stations use virtual channel 29. In addition, Gila River Telecommunications owns two additional stations licensed to the Community, KGRX-LD and KGRY-LD (channels 19 and 28). These stations, broadcasting from South Mountain and built in 2021, carry GRBC programming, with one in ATSC 1.0 format, and the other in ATSC 3 format. These two stations were initially broadcasting in

ATSC 3.0 ATSC 3.0 is a major version of the ATSC standards for television broadcasting created by the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC). The standards are designed to offer support for newer technologies, including HEVC for video channels of up ...

(Next Gen TV) format and formulated fo
Evoca
subscription based content delivery platform until Evoca ceased operations in late 2022.

History

GRBC launched in December 2014, years after the GRIC (Gila River Indian Community) filed for the new television stations with the

FCC The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisdiction ...

. However, when Gila River Telecommunications was founded in 1989, a television station was planned but found to be cost-prohibitive. Its official launch occurred on April 6, 2015. Programming includes

public service announcement A public service announcement (PSA) is a message in the public interest disseminated by the media without charge to raise public awareness and change behavior. In the UK, they are generally called a public information film (PIF); in Hong Kong, ...

s and tribal content and local and pre-produced live content related to the community.

Master control Master control is the technical hub of a broadcast operation common among most over-the-air television stations and television networks. It is distinct from a production control room (PCR) in television studios where the activities such as switc ...

for GRBC is located at the Gila River Telecommunications facility, on the northern edge of the Community, near

Chandler, Arizona Chandler is a city in Maricopa County, Arizona, United States, and a suburb in the Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA). It is bordered to the north and west by Tempe, to the north by Mesa, to the west by Phoenix, to the ...

. On November 30, 2018, GRBC took a third transmitter, KGRY-LD at Blackwater, silent, as its channel was needed to repack KGRQ. Gila River Telecommunications requested cancellation of KGRY's license on June 5, 2019. It then assigned the call letters KGRY-LD to K28MO-D, a construction permit for a transmitter on South Mountain, and KGRF-LD to the former K19JV-D, a construction permit also at that site.

References

External links

* * * Television stations in Phoenix, Arizona Television channels and stations established in 2015 Gila River Indian Community Native American television 2015 establishments in Arizona First Nations Experience affiliates {{NorthAm-native-stub