KCWT-CD (channel 21) is a low-power,

Class A television station The class A television service is a system for regulating some low-power television (LPTV) stations in the United States. Class A stations are denoted by the broadcast callsign suffix "-CA" (analog) or "-CD" (digital), although very many analog -C ...

licensed to

McAllen, Texas McAllen is the largest city in Hidalgo County, Texas, United States, and the 22nd-most populous city in Texas. It is located at the southern tip of the state in the Rio Grande Valley, on the Mexico–United States border. The city limits extend ...

, United States, serving the

Lower Rio Grande Valley The Lower Rio Grande Valley ( es, Valle del Río Grande), commonly known as the Rio Grande Valley or locally as the Valley or RGV, is a region spanning the border of Texas and Mexico located in a floodplain of the Rio Grande near its mouth. The ...

as an affiliate of

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 prima ...

. The station also carries non-commercial

PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educat ...

programming on its fourth subchannel. KCWT-CD is owned by

Entravision Communications Entravision Communications Corporation is an American media company based in Santa Monica, California. Entravision primarily caters to the Spanish-speaking Hispanic community and owns television and radio stations and outdoor media, in several o ...

alongside Harlingen-licensed Fox affiliate KFXV, channel 60 (and

translators Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''transl ...

KMBH-LD and KXFX-CD), McAllen-licensed

Univision Univision () is an American Spanish-language free-to-air television network owned by TelevisaUnivision. It is the United States' largest provider of Spanish-language content. The network's programming is aimed at the Latino public and includes ...

affiliate KNVO (channel 48), and Class A

UniMás UniMás (, stylized as ''UNIMÁS'', and originally known as TeleFutura from its launch on January 14, 2002, to January 6, 2013) is an American Spanish free-to-air television network owned by TelevisaUnivision. The network's programming, which i ...

affiliate KTFV-CD (channel 32). The stations share studios on North Jackson Road in McAllen, while KCWT-CD's transmitter is located in

La Feria, Texas La Feria is a city in Cameron County, Texas, United States. Its population was 7,302 at the time of the 2010 census. It is part of the Brownsville–Harlingen–Raymondville, the Matamoros–Brownsville, and the McAllen–Edinburg–Mission me ...

. Previously, KCWT was a low-power translator of KXFX-CA and KTFV-CA. Entravision has held the rights to The CW in the market since 2007 on several stations; previous to that, it aired on a cable-only affiliate, "KMHB" (later "Rio Grande Valley's CW").

History

Until 2014, KCWT broadcast on analog channel 30. KCWT launched a digital feed on RF channel 23 that March; however, the station maps to virtual channel 21, as nearby Mexican station XHAB-TDT in

Matamoros, Tamaulipas Matamoros, officially known as Heroica Matamoros, is a city in the northeastern Mexican state of Tamaulipas, and the municipal seat of the homonymous municipality. It is on the southern bank of the Rio Grande, directly across the border from ...

, whose digital broadcasts use RF channel 30, also mapped to virtual channel 30 rather than its analog channel 7 (it now uses virtual channel 8). (Channel 23 is itself unavailable to KCWT as a virtual channel, as it is used in the Rio Grande Valley by

KVEO-TV KVEO-TV (channel 23) is a television station licensed to Brownsville, Texas, United States, serving the Lower Rio Grande Valley as a dual affiliate of NBC and CBS. It is owned by Nexstar Media Group alongside Harlingen-licensed primary Ante ...

.) Even before then, KCWT, as had previous CW affiliate KSFE-LD (channel 67, now Fox affiliate KMBH-LD), has long branded as "CW 21" in reflection of its channel 21 slot on area cable systems. After sister station

XHRIO-TDT XHRIO-TDT (channel 15) was a television station in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico, which served the Lower Rio Grande Valley, Rio Grande Valley area in southern Texas, southern Texas, United States. The station was 98%-owned by Mexican-based Televi ...

(channel 15) ceased operations on December 31, 2021, KCWT became the sole CW+ affiliate in the Rio Grande Valley.

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 ...

References

External links

YourCWRioGrandeValley.com
- Official website
PBS.org website regarding DT4 PBS feed
The CW affiliates PBS member stations Low-power television stations in the United States Television stations in the Lower Rio Grande Valley Television channels and stations established in 1998 Entravision Communications stations {{Texas-tv-station-stub