KVIA-TV (channel 7) 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
El Paso, Texas
El Paso (; "the pass") is a city in and the county seat, seat of El Paso County, Texas, El Paso County in the western corner of the U.S. state of Texas. The 2020 population of the city from the United States Census Bureau, U.S. Census Bureau w ...
, United States, affiliated with
ABC
ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script known as the alphabet.
ABC or abc may also refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Broadcasting
* American Broadcasting Company, a commercial U.S. TV broadcaster
** Disney–ABC Television ...
and
The CW Plus
The CW Plus is a secondary national programming service feed of The CW that is fully controlled and 75% owned by Nexstar Media Group, with Paramount Global and Warner Bros. Discovery each owning a 12.5% stake in the network. It is intended primar ...
. Owned by the
News-Press & Gazette Company
The News-Press & Gazette Company (NPG) is a media company based in St. Joseph, Missouri, wholly owned and operated by the Bradley family. It is presided by Brian Bradley and David R. Bradley, with Hank Bradley (retired), Eric Bradley and Kit Bra ...
, the station maintains studios on Rio Bravo Street in northwest El Paso and a transmitter atop the
Franklin Mountains within the El Paso city limits.
After an earlier permittee opted not to build, El Paso's third commercial television station began in 1956 as KILT on channel 13, the only television station built from the ground up by
Gordon McLendon
Gordon Barton McLendon (June 8, 1921 – September 14, 1986Texas State Historical AssociationMcClendon, Gordon Barton/ref>) was a radio broadcaster. Nicknamed "the Maverick of Radio", McLendon is widely credited for perfecting, during the 1950s ...
. It was co-owned with radio station
KELP (920 AM) and became known as KELP-TV in 1957 when McLendon sold his El Paso broadcast holdings. The call sign changed to KVIA-TV in 1976 when Marsh Media acquired the station. To improve ratings, Marsh opted to duplicate the successful formula of its
KVII-TV
KVII-TV (channel 7) is a television station in Amarillo, Texas, United States, affiliated with ABC and The CW Plus. Owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, the station maintains studios at One Broadcast Center between South Pierce and South Buchana ...
in
Amarillo
Amarillo ( ; Spanish language, Spanish for "yellow") is a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the county seat, seat of Potter County, Texas, Potter County. It is the List of cities in Texas by population, 14th-most populous city in Texas and th ...
; in 1981, the station moved from channel 13 to channel 7 in a switch with local public station
KCOS. News-Press & Gazette Company acquired KVIA-TV in 1995, marking its return to the television stations business.
History
Interest in channel 13—the originally authorized third commercial channel in El Paso—dated to the opening of television station applications after the end of the four-year freeze imposed by 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 ...
in 1952. El Paso radio station
KEPO applied for a channel 13 construction permit in July 1952
and received it in October.
KEPO-TV would have been the third television station on air in El Paso after KROD-TV (channel 4, now
KDBC-TV
KDBC-TV (channel 4) is a television station in El Paso, Texas, United States, affiliated with CBS and MyNetworkTV. It is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group alongside Fox affiliate KFOX-TV (channel 14). Both stations share studios on South Alto Mes ...
) and
KTSM-TV
KTSM-TV (channel 9) is a television station in El Paso, Texas, United States, affiliated with NBC and owned by Nexstar Media Group. The station's studios are located on Oregon Street (near El Paso Community College) in northwest El Paso, and it ...
(channel 9).
An antenna atop the Franklin Mountains was announced, as was affiliation with ABC (to match KEPO radio) and the ordering of equipment,
but KEPO management announced on December 23, 1953, that they had surrendered the permit and abandoned their television station plans. Station president Miller Robertson stated, "After a thorough analysis of the TV market here, and considering that two other TV stations already are in operation, we have definitely decided that a third TV station for El Paso is not feasible at this time."
Construction
Within days of KEPO's announcement, another El Paso radio station immediately announced its interest in joining the television fray.
KELP (920 AM) announced on January 2, 1954, that they would apply for channel 13.
For the Trinity Broadcasting Corporation, a company owned by broadcaster
Gordon McLendon
Gordon Barton McLendon (June 8, 1921 – September 14, 1986Texas State Historical AssociationMcClendon, Gordon Barton/ref>) was a radio broadcaster. Nicknamed "the Maverick of Radio", McLendon is widely credited for perfecting, during the 1950s ...
, it was the company's second proposed station, as the firm held a construction permit for the never-built
KLIF-TV in
Dallas
Dallas () is the List of municipalities in Texas, third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of metropolitan statistical areas, fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 ...
.
Even though KELP was an English-language radio station, it was announced that the new TV station would broadcast entirely in Spanish,
which would have made KELP-TV the first Spanish-language television station in the United States.
The FCC awarded Trinity the construction permit on March 18, 1954.
However, activity was slowed down when McLendon petitioned the FCC to switch his station to channel 7, which had been reserved for educational use, so as to gain a more competitive dial position; El Paso city schools and
Texas Western College
The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) is a public research university in El Paso, Texas. It is a member of the University of Texas System. UTEP is the second-largest university in the United States to have a majority Mexican American stude ...
supported the proposal.
This proposal was declined by the FCC in January 1955.
Construction activity moved apace on the station, which changed call signs from KELP-TV to KOKE (in September 1954) and then KILT (in 1956), and KILT began broadcasting on September 1, 1956, as an English-language station. This made it the only television station built from the ground up by McLendon, whose only other startup venture was KLIF radio in Dallas. Two months passed before the station affiliated with ABC in early November.
Harris–Alexander and Walton ownership
In March 1957, McLendon sold KELP and KILT to KELP Television Corporation, whose owners—Joseph Harris and Norman Alexander—were the same as
KXLY-AM
KXLY (920 kHz) is a commercial AM radio station in Spokane, Washington. It broadcasts a news/talk radio format with the branding "920 News Now". The station is owned by QueenB Radio, with its license held by Morgan Murphy Media.
Studios and offi ...
-
TV in
Spokane, Washington
Spokane ( ) is the largest city and county seat of Spokane County, Washington, United States. It is in eastern Washington, along the Spokane River, adjacent to the Selkirk Mountains, and west of the Rocky Mountain foothills, south of the Canada ...
, for $750,000. On May 1, the new owners restored the KELP-TV call sign to channel 13 as part of their takeover.
(The KILT call letters were retained by McLendon and placed on
a radio station in Houston that same month.) KELP Television moved the transmitter from its original in-town site, with the studios at 4530 Delta, to the Franklin Mountains in 1960.
After six months of negotiations, Harris and Alexander announced the sale of KELP radio and television to John B. Walton in September 1965.
Walton broke ground that May on a new studio complex in the Executive Park area for the KELP stations, which would contain new color equipment for the TV station.
The new facilities, opened in April 1967, included an outdoor studio complete with a swimming pool and fountain.
The facility was expanded again in 1973.
During this time, Walton also expanded KELP-TV's reach. In 1966, he had bought
KAVE-TV (channel 6) in
Carlsbad, New Mexico
Carlsbad ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Eddy County, New Mexico, Eddy County, New Mexico, United States. As of the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census, the city population was 32,238. Carlsbad is centered at the intersection of U.S. R ...
,
which he originally ran as a
satellite station
A broadcast relay station, also known as a satellite station, relay transmitter, broadcast translator (U.S.), re-broadcaster (Canada), repeater (two-way radio) or complementary station (Mexico), is a broadcast transmitter which repeats (or tran ...
of his
KVKM-TV in
Monahans, Texas
Monahans is a city in and the county seat of Ward County, Texas, United States. A very small portion of the city extends into Winkler County. The population was 6,953 at the 2010 census. In 2018, the population was estimated at 7,669.
History
...
. Three years later, when Walton sold KVKM-TV, KAVE-TV was converted to relaying KELP-TV, which it would do for the next 24 years.
Marsh Media ownership
In March 1975, Marsh Media, a company owned by
Stanley Marsh 3
Stanley Marsh 3 (January 31, 1938 – June 17, 2014) was an American artist, businessman, philanthropist, and prankster from Amarillo, Texas. He is perhaps best known for having been the sponsor of the Cadillac Ranch, an unusual public art exhi ...
, sued Walton in Texas district court for breach of contract. In 1967, Walton had sold the Marsh family
KVII-TV
KVII-TV (channel 7) is a television station in Amarillo, Texas, United States, affiliated with ABC and The CW Plus. Owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, the station maintains studios at One Broadcast Center between South Pierce and South Buchana ...
, the ABC affiliate in
Amarillo
Amarillo ( ; Spanish language, Spanish for "yellow") is a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the county seat, seat of Potter County, Texas, Potter County. It is the List of cities in Texas by population, 14th-most populous city in Texas and th ...
, and the right of first refusal to purchase several other Walton stations. The Marsh family contended that, even though they had the right to be the lender of first choice, a transfer of stock to Helen B. Walton and the placement of Walton stock as collateral with a bank violated their contract.
In October, Marsh exercised its option to purchase KELP-TV and KAVE-TV from Walton for $3,075,000, separating KELP television from the radio station.
Marsh took control in April 1976, and a new KVIA-TV call sign was adopted on May 1.
Walton and Marsh each supported efforts to establish a public television station in El Paso,
KCOS, on the originally assigned educational channel 7. KVIA-TV and KCOS shared a tower, and Marsh granted half-ownership in a new combined antenna to broadcast channels 7 and 13.
Delays had previously been experienced when channel 13 was sold, as the agreement had to be renegotiated.
The agreement also contained a clause by which, if both parties and the FCC agreed, KVIA and KCOS could swap channel designations, moving KCOS to channel 13 and KVIA-TV to channel 7. The FCC approved of this in June 1981,
and the change took effect on July 10. Reasons cited for the move included placing KVIA-TV between the other two network affiliates—as McLendon had sought to do in 1955—as well as aligning KVIA-TV with the various ABC
owned-and-operated station
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 ...
s—and KVII-TV—that also broadcast on channel 7.
Marsh Media also experimented with more local autonomy for KAVE-TV in Carlsbad. Marsh invested a reported $1 million to set up a local operation in the city to originate regional news coverage for southeastern New Mexico.
On September 2, 1982, KAVE-TV began airing its own evening newscast.
However, Marsh admitted that it had overestimated the regional economy when it conducted a round of layoffs at KAVE-TV the next year, reducing its full-time staff from 22 to 16.
That year, the station switched from broadcasting on Mountain Time to Central Time,
which at the time was used by the other southeastern New Mexico TV stations,
KBIM-TV and
KSWS-TV.
This had the effect of moving the Carlsbad newscasts to 5:30 and 9 p.m. However, Marsh folded the local operation in July 1984, with a company spokesman stating that it "did not prove to be economically feasible".
In 1987, the station changed its call sign to KVIO-TV; six years later, Marsh sold it to Pulitzer Broadcasting, then-owner of fellow ABC affiliate
KOAT-TV
KOAT-TV (channel 7) 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 ...
in
Albuquerque
Albuquerque ( ; ), ; kee, Arawageeki; tow, Vakêêke; zun, Alo:ke:k'ya; apj, Gołgéeki'yé. abbreviated ABQ, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of New Mexico. Its nicknames, The Duke City and Burque, both reference its founding in ...
, which changed its call letters to KOCT and converted it into a satellite of KOAT.
NPG ownership
Marsh Media announced the sale of KVIA-TV to the
News-Press & Gazette Company
The News-Press & Gazette Company (NPG) is a media company based in St. Joseph, Missouri, wholly owned and operated by the Bradley family. It is presided by Brian Bradley and David R. Bradley, with Hank Bradley (retired), Eric Bradley and Kit Bra ...
of
St. Joseph, Missouri
St. Joseph is a city in and the county seat of Buchanan County, Missouri. Small parts of St. Joseph extend into Andrew County. Located on the Missouri River, it is the principal city of the St. Joseph Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includ ...
, in August 1994. For NPG, it marked a return to television; the company had previously owned and sold an eight-station group.
The $19.9 million transaction closed in January 1995.
While KVIA briefly experienced personnel turmoil in 1999 upon the departure of general manager Art Olivas,
it rebounded under his replacement, Kevin Lovell, a former weekend sports anchor in the early 1980s who returned to KVIA in 1995 and remained with the station until his 2022 retirement.
In 2006, KVIA started a second
digital subchannel
In broadcasting, digital subchannels are a method of transmitting more than one independent program stream simultaneously from the same digital radio or television station on the same radio frequency channel. This is done by using data compress ...
to carry
The CW Plus
The CW Plus is a secondary national programming service feed of The CW that is fully controlled and 75% owned by Nexstar Media Group, with Paramount Global and Warner Bros. Discovery each owning a 12.5% stake in the network. It is intended primar ...
. Neither of the predecessor networks,
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 ...
or
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. ...
, had been seen over-the-air in the Sun City since 2002, when the local affiliate for both networks, KKWB, was sold and became Spanish-language
KTFN
KTFN (channel 65) is a television station in El Paso, Texas, United States, affiliated with the Spanish-language UniMás network. It is owned by Entravision Communications alongside Univision affiliate KINT-TV (channel 26). Both stations share ...
.
Time Warner Cable
Time Warner Cable, Inc. (TWC) was an American cable television company. Before it was acquired by Charter Communications on May 18, 2016, it was ranked the second largest cable company in the United States by revenue behind only Comcast, operat ...
did not broadcast the subchannel to its El Paso-area subscribers until April 2007.
News operation
When Marsh purchased the then-KELP-TV, its local newscasts were in third place in the El Paso market.
The company sought to replicate the success it had in Amarillo, where KVII-TV had been turned around from a distant third into one of the nation's highest-rated ABC affiliates and commanded 65% of the local news audience.
Jim Pratt was sent from Amarillo to El Paso to lead an overhaul of the KVIA-TV news operation. The ''Pro News'' title and "happy talk" format used in Amarillo were brought to El Paso, creating what one ''
El Paso Times
The ''El Paso Times'' is the newspaper for the US city of El Paso, Texas. The newspaper has an approximate daily circulation of 65,000 and 125,000 on Sundays.
The paper is the only English-language daily in El Paso (when the '' El Paso Herald-Po ...
'' columnist called a "volatile
menudo" between out-of-town and local personnel.
Shortly after, morale hit a highly visible nadir, as channel 13's ratings gains did not match those of the ABC network. During a commercial break in the late newscast on December 31, 1977, Pratt and co-anchor Al Hinojos engaged in a fist fight over scriptwriting duties. When the newscast returned, Hinojos had left the set.
Pratt resigned days later and was replaced by Hinojos.
Ratings began to improve in the late 1970s. By early 1979, the 6 p.m. newscast had inched up to second place and the 10 p.m. newscast into a tie for first.
While KDBC-TV remained the news leader in El Paso, the three stations engaged in fierce competition throughout the 1980s for viewers.
In 1988, KVIA-TV broke through and began a run as the number-one station in early and late evening news,
and five years later, KDBC-TV anchor
Estela Casas
Estela Casas (born 1961) as an American health advocate for cancer awareness and former news anchor in El Paso, Texas. She was part of the "longest running anchor team in El Paso television history." Casas is an inductee of the El Paso Women's Hal ...
left that station to become the new main female anchor on KVIA's newscasts, joining channel 7 mainstay Gary Warner.
However, the 1990s would eventually belong to a revitalized KTSM-TV in the news ratings. In 1991, several employees defected to channel 9, where they reunited with Richard Pearson, a former KVIA general manager who departed to head up KTSM radio and television.
The two stations traded ratings wins for much of the decade,
but by 1998, channel 9 had emerged as the clear leader in the market.
The Casas–Warner tandem continued on the air until 2008, when Warner retired after a 34-year association with the station dating to 1974 (preceded by a year at KELP radio), only interrupted by a brief stint with
CNN
CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by ...
.
By 2012, KVIA-TV had returned to being the news ratings leader in the market among English-language stations.
Notable former on-air staff
*
Tom Costello (now at
NBC News
NBC News is the news division of the American broadcast television network NBC. The division operates under NBCUniversal Television and Streaming, a division of NBCUniversal, which is, in turn, a subsidiary of Comcast. The news division's var ...
)
*
Patricio G. Espinoza
Patricio G. Espinoza, (born in Quito, Ecuador), is a journalist best known for his Spanish-language investigative TV news reports, newspaper columns and Hispanic community contributions in the United States. Espinoza is an active freelance contr ...
(now at
KXLN-DT
KXLN-DT (channel 45) is a television station licensed to Rosenberg, Texas, United States, broadcasting the Spanish-language Univision network to the Houston area. It is owned and operated by TelevisaUnivision alongside Alvin-licensed UniMás out ...
in
Houston
Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 in ...
)
*
Indra Petersons
Indra Valija Petersons (born June 22, 1980) is an American meteorologist. She formerly worked as the weather anchor for CNN's early morning program "New Day". She is also formerly a meteorologist for KABC-TV in Los Angeles, where she was born an ...
(now with
NBC News
NBC News is the news division of the American broadcast television network NBC. The division operates under NBCUniversal Television and Streaming, a division of NBCUniversal, which is, in turn, a subsidiary of Comcast. The news division's var ...
)
*
Art Rascon
Art Rascon (born December 4, 1962) is an American former news anchor for Disney-owned KTRK in Houston, Texas. Prior to joining KTRK, he worked as a CBS News correspondent on assignments that included international reporting for the CBS Evening Ne ...
(later with
CBS News
CBS News is the news division of the American television and radio service CBS. CBS News television programs include the ''CBS Evening News'', ''CBS Mornings'', news magazine programs '' CBS News Sunday Morning'', '' 60 Minutes'', and '' 48 H ...
and at
KTRK-TV
KTRK-TV (channel 13) is a television station in Houston, Texas, United States, airing programming from the ABC network. Owned and operated by the network's ABC Owned Television Stations division, the station maintains studios on Bissonnet Street ...
in Houston)
Technical information
Subchannels
The station's digital channel 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
KVIA-TV shut down its analog signal, over
VHF channel 7, at 12:30 p.m. on June 12, 2009, the official date in which full-power television in the United States
transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition
UHF channel 17 to VHF channel 7 for post-transition operations.
Due to reports of reception issues with its signal, KVIA was granted permission by 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 ...
to operate a secondary signal on its former UHF digital channel 17 under special temporary authorization on July 23, 2009. Tests were conducted of signal strength from the VHF and UHF transmitters. KVIA later filed a petition to the FCC to permanently operate its digital signal exclusively on UHF channel 17, which the commission approved in 2011. The license to operate on channel 17 was issued on October 10, 2014.
Translators
KVIA-TV maintains three translators that rebroadcast its signal into communities in southern New Mexico.
The Alamogordo translator began broadcasting while the station was still KELP-TV; the Deming translator was built in the late 1970s, and the Las Cruces translator was added in 1986.
*
Alamogordo
Alamogordo () is the seat of Otero County, New Mexico, United States. A city in the Tularosa Basin of the Chihuahuan Desert, it is bordered on the east by the Sacramento Mountains and to the west by Holloman Air Force Base. The population was ...
: K21LR-D
*
Deming: K31KB-D
*
Las Cruces,
Organ: K19LZ-D
See also
*
Channel 17 digital TV stations in the United States
*
Channel 7 virtual TV stations in the United States
The following television stations operate on virtual channel 7 in the United States:
* K04RX-D in Preston, Idaho
* K05CF-D in Weaverville, California
* K05DQ-D in Burney, etc., California
* K05EM-D in Paradise, California
* K05FW-D in Girdwoo ...
References
External links
*
* – KVIA-DT2
* Technical information for translators: , ,
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kvia-Tv
ABC network affiliates
Ion Television affiliates
Azteca América network affiliates
Newsy affiliates
Defy TV affiliates
TrueReal affiliates
Television channels and stations established in 1956
News-Press & Gazette Company
VIA-TV
1956 establishments in Texas