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KIVA YUMA - EL Centro

R

rickityone

Does anybody know any of the history of KIVA Yuma El Centro?

Every time I pass through the Welcome To California border check station I look over and see the building, now windowless, but still looking stout, that was the home of KIVA, I believe.

My dad, who passed away 10 years ago was Long Lines manager for AT&T in Southern California. At the time of KIVA's construction, network television all passed through AT&T plants on its way to local stations. My dad supervised the installation of KIVA's network connections.

So sitting there always makes me think of my dad who loved radio, was a ham from a long time ago, Morse code only, I have his key here in our part 15 AM/internet station studio. He was an early on ham broadcaster, his call letters W6NVC - issued to west of the Mississippi. He remained active until nearly the time of his death, using his Hallicrafters transmitter.

So what the heck happened to KIVA - not a big enough market to support a television station?

Rickity
gulchradio.com
 
Thanks for the tip.

No, I don't have much from the telephone days except my dads tool pouch and tools from when he worked in El Centro and San Diego.

In 1960 he got transferred to San Bernardino and managed the large plant there where all long distance telephone in Southern California passed through. A huge windowless building right in the center of General Telephone territory. He got me into the building, which had heavy security due to March AFB and all sorts of military communications passing through. He took me to the console area where network tv streamed through - that was pretty exciting, a number of the monitors had just, for instance the CBS eye on until some feed came down, others were busy.

KIVA was earlier than I thought, so I was 9 when my dad was working there.

Thanks again.

Rickity
 
I worked at that old transmitter building in 1966, then downtown at KIVA's studios 'til 68. We got our network feed by microwave, from off-air receivers on top of Santiago Peak in Orange County. They were part of Merill's system that was distributing indy signals to cable systems all over the southwest. Both ABC and NBC's signals went to El Centro, were switched remotely there, then got to Yuma by way of Black Mountain.

During that same time period, I worked weekends at KYUM radio which was at 560 in those days. We had a long-lines feed there, bringing NBC radio. So that may be the long-lines feed in question.
 
From all the above postings and links, I believe KIVA-TV may have had
a Telco line from Burbank for the NBC left coast feed back in the 1950s
from whatever time the link was completed after KIVA went on the air.
At least that's what I've seen on the Telco map pages in the 1950s-era
Broadcasting Yearbooks on DE's site (www.americanradiohistory.com).

From JayElDee's new post, I will guess that when Bruce Merrill got control
of KIVA (sometime earlier in the 1960s?) he must have dumped the Telco
line due to its cost, and rigged up the combo of off-air pickup/microwave
hops for the apparently "dirty" feeds of KNBC-TV and KABC-TV.
 
To add a little more to the above...

From the story on one of the broadcasting101.ws pages
(which all appear to be down at the moment) on bringing
the World Series to Yuma at a point early on in KIVA-TV's
history, the network link time line would have begun with
the jury-rigged combo of off-air pickups and microwave
links to pick up KNBC-TV El Lay--an earlier version of what
JayElDee described as being in place in the mid-1960s.

It appears KIVA had a Telco line from NBC Burbank at least by
1958, per the AT&T map in the 1958 yearbook, and continued
to be shown on the maps through the 1963 yearbook, to match
the info in rickityone's original post.

The Telco maps appear to have been discontinued as of the
1964 yearbook, however the NBC-TV network section's listing
of affiliates notes KIVA's feed was (again) an off-air pickup of
KNBC--hence the "new owner Bruce Merrill dumps Telco line
to save money" theory. Recommend you check out the Yuma
09/11/67 thread in the Classic TV section--JayElDee goes into
greater detail about KIVA's network feeds and its on-air operation
in the mid- and late 1960s. Very fascinating. And I thought
Tucson TV was "small market/end of the line" back then. ;)
 
oldiesfan6479 said:
From JayElDee's new post, I will guess that when Bruce Merrill got control
of KIVA (sometime earlier in the 1960s?)
Click to expand...

February 1961.
 
I should have mentioned that, while the California inspection station site was just a transmitter facility by '66, it was the original KIVA studio facility. The studios and offices were still there, but vacant (except for the mice and the snakes) when I was in that outpost. We had a DuMont transmitter with an aural section that used an oddball scheme for maintaining frequency, using a reference crystal and some sort of comparator that produced an error voltage that then operated a motor that actually cranked a capacitor to adjust frequency. The bloody thing rarely worked right and I used to have to hand-tweak modulator freq every half hour or so. Most of the transmitter ops couldn't be bothered, and it wasn't uncommon for the aural to drift so far off frequency our viewers would lose sound. Our 'alert system' consisted of noting that all the incoming phone lines downtown had lit up.

There was a tale told about an FCC visit shortly after I left. The guy was supposedly on his way somewhere else, monitored KIVA off air and couldn't believe the frequency drift he was seeing, so he pulled in because he had to see what the heck the situation was. Upon looking at the transmitter facility, he supposedly said that it was a miracle we were on the air, and he didn't have the heart to write a citation.
 
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