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KTAZ, virtual and UHF digital channel 39, is a Telemundo owned-and-operated television station located in Phoenix, Arizona, United States. The station is owned by the NBCUniversal Owned Television Stations subsidiary of NBCUniversal. KTAZ maintains studio facilities located on South 33rd Place in Phoenix, and its transmitter is located atop South Mountain.

History

In 1986, the FCC designated VHF channel 11 as a commercial allotment for Holbrook. The allotment lay vacant until April 1996, when Channel 11 LLC, applied for a permit to build a TV station. The application was granted on January 23, 1998, and in March, Channel 11 requested KBCZ for its call sign.,[1][2] In August 2000, Channel 11 struck an agreement to sell the station to Venture Technologies Group, LLC, which was approved in November and consummated in December.[3] Venture immediately changed the call letters to KPHZ and requested a waiver of the Main Studio Rule so that they could operate their new station out of existing facilities in Phoenix, used for stations KPHZ-LP (channel 58, now KDTP-LP channel 48) and KPSW-LP (channel 41, now KPDF-CA), instead of having the added expense of studio facilities in Holbrook.[4] Venture signed the station on air in January 2001 as an affiliate of the home shopping channel America's Collectibles Network (ACN) - now Jewelry Television (JTV). The FCC granted a license to KPHZ on December 5, 2001.[5] The station was never profitable, and in April 2002, shortly after its acquisition by NBC, Telemundo reached an agreement with Venture to acquire KPHZ, along with Venture's two Phoenix low power stations.[6][7] The FCC granted the request on August 23 and the purchase was consummated on September 26.[8] KPHZ was Telemundo's second full-power station in Arizona, after KHRR in Tucson), but it continued to air ACN programming until July 2003, when it switched to Telemundo programming.

License swap

By 2004, NBCUniversal concluded that in a small town like Holbrook (which had a population of 4,917, according to the 2000 U.S. Census), KPHZ was losing money and would likely have to be shut down. At the same time, the company had determined that its Phoenix-based Class A LPTV station, KDRX-CA (channel 48, now KDPH-LP), could not adequately compete with Univision's full-power station KTVW-TV.

NBCUniversal reached an agreement with the Daystar Television Network, and the two broadcasters together filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission to move the KPHZ license from Holbrook to Phoenix, where it would broadcast on channel 39. Daystar's KDTP license would move from Phoenix to Holbrook, broadcasting on channel 11. It was an unusual and complicated request that involved not only a swap of cities of license and frequencies, but would also require removing the non-commercial reservation from channel 39 in Phoenix and creating a non-commercial reservation on channel 11 in Holbrook. Holbrook already had a non-commercial allocation on channel 18 which had never been built, and most likely never would be. In addition, NBCUniversal would transfer KDRX-CA and KPHZ-LP to Daystar, preserving a Daystar outlet in Phoenix.

The Federal Communications Commission is extremely reluctant to remove a non-commercial reservation from a market, and naturally, Univision objected to the proposal, but in October 2005, the FCC agreed to allow the switch, saying that the benefit of having competing full-power Spanish-language television stations in the Phoenix market outweighed the loss of the non-commercial reservation.[2][9] In April 2006, the FCC granted construction permits to move the licenses.

On May 27, 2006, the KTAZ call letters were moved to the channel 39 license. There were a few complications with the move, requiring newly named KTAZ to move to a different broadcast tower. KTAZ temporarily kept the Daystar programming and the Telemundo programming remained on channel 11, which became KDTP-CA (now KDPH-LP), while KTAZ's permanent transmitter facilities were being constructed; the move was completed on July 23, 2006,[10] and on August 9, KTAZ resumed carrying Telemundo programming, and Daystar programming began airing on KDTP-CA. The FCC licensed the changes to KTAZ on November 7, 2006.

Digital television

Digital channels

The station's digital channel is multiplexed:

Channel Video Aspect PSIP Short Name Programming[11]
39.1 16:9 1080i KTAZ DT Main KTAZ programming / Telemundo
39.2 4:3 480i Exitos TeleXitos
39.3 16:9 COZI Cozi TV

Analog-to-digital transition

Because it was granted an original construction permit after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) finalized the DTV allotment plan on April 21, 1997,[12] the station did not receive a companion channel for its digital signal. Instead, at the end of the digital conversion period for full-power television stations, KTAZ was required to turn off its analog signal and turn on its digital signal (called a "flash-cut"). The station's digital signal went into operation on its former analog-era UHF channel 39 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.

News

The first news on Telemundo Phoenix debuted in October 1997, produced by local ABC affiliate KNXV. Several years later, after then-KDRX had moved into KNXV's former studio facilities, the station began to produce its own news. Under cost-cutting measures in 2007, KTAZ's news began to be produced from a news hub in Dallas; the production of the shows was restored to Phoenix several years later, and until 2014, KTAZ additionally produced the local newscasts seen on KBLR in Las Vegas. That later ended in July 2014 when KBLR debuted its own local newscast. On July 26, 2014, KTAZ began producing weekend newscasts to air at 4:30pm and 10pm.[13]

KTAZ's newscasts are also aired on KHRR in Tucson. Tucson news and weather is incorporated into the broadcasts.

References

  1. ^ Application Search Details, FCC CDBS Database January 23, 1998
  2. ^ Call Sign History, FCC CDBS Database
  3. ^ Application Search Details, FCC CDBS Database November 14, 2000
  4. ^ Legal Action Information, FCC CDBS Database December 13, 2000
  5. ^ Application Search Details, FCC CDBS Database December 5, 2001
  6. ^ Joint Petition to Amend the Television Table of Allotments, FCC Request for Rule Making August 7, 2003
  7. ^ Application for Consent to Assignment of Broadcast Station Construction Permit or License, FCC CDBS Database April 26, 2002
  8. ^ Application Search Details, FCC CDBS Database August 23, 2002
  9. ^ Stronger signal to expand reach of Telemundo, AZBilingualed (via The Arizona Republic), October 29, 2005.
  10. ^ [1]
  11. ^ RabbitEars TV Query for KTAZ
  12. ^ Final Digital TV (DTV) Channel Plan from FCC97-115, Doug Lung's RF Technology Page May 28, 1997
  13. ^ Telemundo Arizona Adds Weekend Newscast, TVNewsCheck July 24, 2014
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