KUTP (channel 45), branded on-air as Fox 10 Xtra, is a
television station
A television station is a set of equipment managed by a business, organisation or other entity, such as an amateur television (ATV) operator, that transmits video content and audio content via radio waves directly from a transmitter on the earth ...
in
Phoenix, Arizona
Phoenix ( ; nv, Hoozdo; es, Fénix or , yuf-x-wal, Banyà:nyuwá) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of cities and towns in Arizona#List of cities and towns, most populous city of the U.S. state of Arizona, with 1 ...
, United States, broadcasting the
MyNetworkTV
MyNetworkTV (unofficially abbreviated MyTV, MyNet, MNT or MNTV, and sometimes referred to as My Network) is an American commercial broadcast television syndication service and former television network owned by Fox Corporation, operated by its ...
programming service. It is
owned and operated
In the broadcasting industry, an owned-and-operated station (frequently abbreviated as an O&O) usually refers to a television or radio station owned by the network with which it is associated. This distinguishes such a station from an affiliate ...
by
Fox Television Stations
Fox Television Stations, LLC (FTS; alternately Fox Television Stations Group, LLC), is a group of television stations located within the United States, which are owned-and-operated by the Fox Broadcasting Company, a subsidiary of the Fox Corp ...
alongside
Fox
Foxes are small to medium-sized, omnivorous mammals belonging to several genera of the family Canidae. They have a flattened skull, upright, triangular ears, a pointed, slightly upturned snout, and a long bushy tail (or ''brush'').
Twelve sp ...
outlet
KSAZ-TV
KSAZ-TV (channel 10) is a television station in Phoenix, Arizona, United States, broadcasting the Fox network. It is owned and operated by the network's Fox Television Stations division alongside MyNetworkTV station KUTP (channel 45). Both st ...
(channel 10). Both stations share studios on West Adams Street in
Downtown Phoenix
Downtown Phoenix is the central business district (CBD) of the City of Phoenix, Arizona, United States. It is located in the heart of the Phoenix metropolitan area or Valley of the Sun. Phoenix, being the county seat of Maricopa County and ...
, while KUTP's transmitter is located atop
South Mountain.
History
Early years
In May 1984, the
Federal Communications Commission
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 ...
(FCC) allocated channel 45 to Phoenix and began taking applications for the channel after
United Television
BHC Communications, Inc. was the holding company for the broadcast property of Chris-Craft Industries. BHC stands for "broadcasting holding company".
History
The firm was originally incorporated in 1977 as BHC, Incorporated by Chris-Craft Ind ...
, a subsidiary of
Chris-Craft Industries, petitioned for the additional slot. United soon got competition for the channel from another twelve applicants, Undeterred, United bought out all of the competitors for a reported $5 million and won a construction permit on December 20, 1984.
United immediately set out to bring Phoenix its third independent station. It originally proposed to become KOLT-TV (as in "
Kolt 45"), but United could not convince radio station
KOLT
Kolt or kolty was a part of a female headgear, hanging on a ryasna at both temples as a sign of family's wealth, common in 11th-13th centuries in Old Rus'. It comprised a pair of metal pieces, joined to form a hollow medallion or star that ...
in
Scottsbluff, Nebraska
Scottsbluff is a city in Scotts Bluff County, in the western part of the state of Nebraska, in the Great Plains region of the United States. The population was 14,436 at the 2020 census. Scottsbluff is the largest city in the Nebraska Panhandl ...
, to give it the rights to share the designation. On December 23, 1985, a year after obtaining the construction permit, KUTP came to air. Along with movies and syndicated programs, United commissioned a revival of ''The
Lloyd Thaxton
Lloyd Thaxton (May 31, 1927 – October 5, 2008) was an American writer, television producer, director, and television host widely known for his syndicated pop music television program of the 1960s, ''The Lloyd Thaxton Show'', which began as a l ...
Show'', last seen in Los Angeles in the late 1960s, as a centerpiece of its programming efforts. In 1988, United made an even more consequential pickup, one that served as the face of the station for viewers for more than 20 years: road games of the
Phoenix Suns
The Phoenix Suns are an American professional basketball team based in Phoenix, Arizona. They compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA), as a member of the league's Western Conference Pacific Division. The Suns are the only team in t ...
.
Under United Television ownership, the station carried programming from the
Prime Time Entertainment Network
The Prime Time Entertainment Network (PTEN) was an American television network that was operated by the Prime Time Consortium, a joint venture between the Warner Bros. Domestic Television subsidiary of Time Warner and Chris-Craft Industries. Fi ...
programming service from January 1993 to January 1995. In the fall of 1994, United Television and
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film and television production company, production and Distribution (marketing), distribution company and the main namesake division of Paramount Global (formerly ViacomCBS). It is the fifth-oldes ...
announced the formation of the United Paramount Network (
UPN
The United Paramount Network (UPN) was an American broadcast television network that launched on January 16, 1995. It was originally owned by Chris-Craft Industries' United Television. Viacom (through its Paramount Television unit, which pr ...
), lining up independent stations that were owned by both companies at the time as charter affiliates; KUTP affiliated with UPN upon the network's January 16, 1995, debut.
In 2000, Paramount parent company
Viacom Viacom, an abbreviation of Video and Audio Communications, may refer to:
* Viacom (1952–2006), a former American media conglomerate
* Viacom (2005–2019), a former company spun off from the original Viacom
* Viacom18, a joint venture between Par ...
bought Chris-Craft's 50% ownership interest in UPN (which Chris-Craft had wholly owned, until Viacom acquired a stake in the network in 1996); the deal effectively stripped KUTP of its status as one of the network's owned-and-operated stations in the process. On August 12 of that year, Chris-Craft sold its UPN stations to the
Fox Television Stations
Fox Television Stations, LLC (FTS; alternately Fox Television Stations Group, LLC), is a group of television stations located within the United States, which are owned-and-operated by the Fox Broadcasting Company, a subsidiary of the Fox Corp ...
subsidiary of
News Corporation
News Corporation (abbreviated News Corp.), also variously known as News Corporation Limited, was an American multinational mass media corporation controlled by media mogul Rupert Murdoch and headquartered at 1211 Avenue of the Americas in Ne ...
for $5.5 billion; this resulted in the creation of Phoenix's second television duopoly with KSAZ. KUTP merged its operations with KSAZ into that station's studio facilities on West Adams Street.
From UPN to MyNetworkTV
![KUTP logo early 2006](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/09/KUTP_logo_early_2006.svg)
On January 24, 2006, the
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (commonly known as Warner Bros. or abbreviated as WB) is an American film and entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California, and a subsidiary of Warner Bros. D ...
unit of
Time Warner
Warner Media, LLC ( traded as WarnerMedia) was an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate. It was headquartered at the 30 Hudson Yards complex in New York City, United States.
It was originally established in 1972 by ...
and
CBS Corporation
The second incarnation of CBS Corporation (the first being a short-lived rename of the Westinghouse Electric Corporation) was an American multinational media conglomerate with interests primarily in commercial broadcasting, publishing, and t ...
announced that the two companies would shut down UPN and
The WB
The WB Television Network (for Warner Bros., or the "Frog Network", for its former mascot, Michigan J. Frog) was an American television network launched on broadcast television on January 11, 1995, as a joint venture between the Warner Bros. ...
and combine the networks' respective programming to create a new jointly owned broadcast network called
The CW
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the m ...
.
In unveiling the merged network, while WB and UPN affiliates owned by WB minority stakeholder
Tribune Broadcasting
Tribune Broadcasting Company, LLC was an American media company which operated as a subsidiary of Tribune Media, a media conglomerate based in Chicago, Illinois. The group owned and operated television and radio stations throughout the United Sta ...
and by
CBS Television Stations
CBS News and Stations (formerly CBS Television Stations) is a division of the CBS Entertainment Group unit of Paramount Global that owns and operates a group of American television stations. , Paramount owns 28 stations, broken down as follows: ...
were announced as charter outlets, none of the Fox-owned UPN stations—many of which were competitors to these stations—were chosen. Even though neither of these groups were present in Phoenix, as with the rest of the chain, Fox took immediate steps to remove UPN branding and promotions from KUTP, which branded as "PHX 45" for six months. The next month, News Corporation then announced the creation of its own secondary network,
MyNetworkTV
MyNetworkTV (unofficially abbreviated MyTV, MyNet, MNT or MNTV, and sometimes referred to as My Network) is an American commercial broadcast television syndication service and former television network owned by Fox Corporation, operated by its ...
, to serve its own outgoing UPN stations as well as those that had not been selected for The CW. (Phoenix's WB affiliate,
KASW
KASW (channel 61) is a television station in Phoenix, Arizona, United States, affiliated with The CW. It is owned by the E. W. Scripps Company alongside ABC affiliate KNXV-TV (channel 15). Both stations share studios on North 44th Street on t ...
, then signed an affiliation agreement with The CW.) Coinciding with the September 2006 launch of MyNetworkTV, Fox announced that KUTP would begin producing a local interactive dating show, ''My Dating Place'', which aired on weeknights.
On August 7, 2017, KUTP was re-branded as ''Fox 10 Xtra'', a brand extension of KSAZ-TV, adding a two-hour block of the latter's live streaming
YouTube
YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...
channel ''Fox 10 News Now'' Monday through Friday between 10 a.m. and 12 noon.
Local programming
Newscasts
KSAZ-TV produces a 7 p.m. newscast, ''Fox 10 Xtra News at 7'', for air on KUTP; this program, the station's first regular newscast, debuted in July 2018. In addition, the station airs two hours of LiveNow from Fox, the Fox television stations' over-the-top streaming news offering, which originated as ''Fox 10 News Now'' in Phoenix.
In February 2022, KUTP began simulcast programming from
Fox Weather
Fox Weather is a digital broadcast television network and streaming channel operated by Fox Corporation which launched on October 25, 2021 to provide weather forecasts and information for the United States. The service is available through select ...
. This programming airs from 1 to 2 p.m. on weekdays, and from 4 to 6 a.m. on Sundays.
Sports programming
For 23 years, from
1988
File:1988 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The oil platform Piper Alpha explodes and collapses in the North Sea, killing 165 workers; The USS Vincennes (CG-49) mistakenly shoots down Iran Air Flight 655; Australia celebrates its Australian ...
to
2011
File:2011 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: a protester partaking in Occupy Wall Street heralds the beginning of the Occupy movement; protests against Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, who was killed that October; a young man celebrate ...
, KUTP served as the
over-the-air television home of the
NBA
The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a professional basketball league in North America. The league is composed of 30 teams (29 in the United States and 1 in Canada) and is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United St ...
's Phoenix Suns, televising all road games that did not have exclusive rights held by a national broadcast or cable television network, as well as selected home games, averaging at least 45 game telecasts each season. KUTP produced its own broadcast graphics, in conjunction with the Suns until the 2010–11 NBA season; this role of the regional television broadcaster of Suns games was taken over thereafter by corporate sibling Fox Sports Arizona (now
Bally Sports Arizona
Bally Sports Arizona (BSAZ) is an American regional sports network owned by Diamond Sports Group, a joint venture between Sinclair Broadcast Group and Entertainment Studios, and operates as an affiliate of Bally Sports. The channel broadcasts pro ...
), starting with the
2011–12 season.
Basketball returned to channel 45 in 2019 when
Grand Canyon University
Grand Canyon University (GCU) is a private for-profit Christian university in Phoenix, Arizona. Based on student enrollment, Grand Canyon University was the largest Christian university in the world in 2018, with 20,000 attending students on ...
entered into a deal to move
men's basketball coverage from
YurView Arizona
YurView Arizona (formerly known as Cox 7) is an American cable television, cable television channel serving Phoenix, Arizona, United States. The station is owned by Cox Communications. The station's studio facilities are located on the northwest ...
, a cable channel, to KUTP; the games are produced by Sneaky Big Studios for GCU and KUTP. The agreement was renewed for the 2021–22 season, adding women's basketball and men's baseball broadcasts. The agreement was expanded for the 2022–23 season, adding a softball broadcast for the first time.
Technical information
Subchannels
The station's digital signal is
multiplexed
In telecommunications and computer networking, multiplexing (sometimes contracted to muxing) is a method by which multiple analog or digital signals are combined into one signal over a shared medium. The aim is to share a scarce resource - a ...
:
Analog-to-digital conversion
KUTP shut down its analog signal, over
UHF channel 45, at 8:30 a.m. on June 12, 2009, the official date in which full-power television stations in the United States
transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal continued to broadcast on its pre-transition UHF channel 26.
Through the use of
PSIP
The Program and System Information Protocol (PSIP) is the MPEG (a video and audio industry group) and privately defined program-specific information originally defined by General Instrument for the DigiCipher 2 system and later extended for the AT ...
, digital television receivers display the station's
virtual channel
In most telecommunications organizations, a virtual channel is a method of remapping the ''program number'' as used in H.222 Program Association Tables and Program Mapping Tables to a channel number that can be entered via digits on a receiver's ...
as its former UHF analog channel 45.
Translators
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kutp
Fox Television Stations
Buzzr affiliates
Movies! affiliates
MyNetworkTV affiliates
Decades (TV network) affiliates
Start TV affiliates
Television channels and stations established in 1985
1985 establishments in Arizona
UTP