@Raymie --
You are right that Phoenix could sustain another Spanish-speaking station. It seems to me that it depends on preferences for watching tv in English or Spanish. I previously lived in San Antonio. While the are is heavily Hispanic, there was a significant (and growing) number of Hispanics who didn't speak much Spanish and would not watch the Spanish language stations. So, that's also another considerations.
Certainly that's understandable. I think the reason it's been such a hard road to getting Spanish stations on the air is that Phoenix was a very different market when TV station allocations were made.
In most US cities suburbs have a few TV licenses on UHF. All of the Phoenix licenses, except for KPNX (Mesa, and that's a VHF) were licensed to Phoenix proper. The FCC required a separation of 20 miles for stations two channels apart to be occupied; for instance, channel 21 could be in Phoenix proper, as could 27, while a channel 19 or 23 had to be in a suburb.
Phoenix's allocation set by the 90s was: 3, 5, *8, 10, 12 (Mesa); 15, 21, 33, *39, 45, 51, 61. The only change to this was that non-com 39 became commercial when KTAZ was moved to Phoenix from Holbrook in 2006. The FCC originally sought to allocate at least one station to towns/cities above 50,000. Today not only would there be more stations out of Phoenix allocated, but Chandler, Gilbert, Glendale, Scottsdale, Tempe, Peoria and Surprise would probably all have them. There might even be rimshot stations in Pinal County serving Phoenix.
The creation of new, full-power television stations aside from those already on the air is a very slim possibility. The incentive auction and resultant repacking will likely mean that if it's not on the air, there won't be additional space for full-power stations.
In general Arizona's population growth means that we have a lot of inadequate infrastructure. We don't have enough television stations, universities (and for that matter noncom stations) here because we grew too quick too late for much of that to be established. The sale of KASW to a Spanish broadcaster, in my opinion, would offer a windfall to creating a competitive Spanish broadcast market while English-speaking consumers would see benefits in stronger independent stations like KAZT and KTVK.
