Silver City station seeks move into ABQ market

[AbqAnonymous]

The owners of a construction permit to build a new station in Silver City as KKAB channel 12 is petitioning the FCC to change the city of license to Socorro and operate on a 3 node system with a 1.2kW signal in Truth or Consequences, a second 5kW signal for the Socorro area and it would cover Albuquerque from Sandia Crest with a 35kW signal directed southward. It would still cover Rio Rancho and surrounding areas but it would not cover Santa Fe.

The station is licensed to TV-49 Inc. and owned by Weigel Broadcasting. They were also given two other permits which appear to have been built including another Silver City station KKAD channel 10 and KKAC channel 19 in Carlsbad. I think those were the former KOAT satellites. They both carry Start TV and Story Television in 720p HD along with Catchy Comedy, Movies!, MeTV Toons and Dabl. So it is likely that if this gets built it will provide an local outlet for the Weigel owned networks. For several years Ramar was the their main broadcast partner for this market but after they sold KASA and three LPTV channels to NBC, their TV networks have been dropped after contracts expired with KOB having picked them up but in the case of MeTV it was due to having a subchannel become unexpectedly available with the closure of TrueReal. So Weigel having an O&O in this market could be beneficial.

It could take a few months for the FCC to make a decision on this and maybe a couple years to build this if approved. It would be the first full powered commercial station to be added to this market in 25 years. We'll see what happens in the coming months.

Info: https://enterpriseefiling.fcc.gov/d...&id=25076ff3914ddb8301916af8fc6b49d0&goBack=N

https://fccdata.org/?facid=776244

 

[IM42A]

This reminds me of how KCSG and KMYU in southwestern Utah (Cedar City and St George respectively) became de facto Salt Lake City market stations, rather than spinning off into their own market.

Pretty much the entire state of New Mexico is in the Albuquerque market anyway, through use of full-power satellite stations and translators. Only the Las Cruces area, near El Paso, and a few lightly populated counties on the far eastern edge of the state (Amarillo and Midland markets), fall outside the ABQ market.

 

[genius]

This reminds me of how KCSG and KMYU in southwestern Utah (Cedar City and St George respectively) became de facto Salt Lake City market stations, rather than spinning off into their own market.

Pretty much the entire state of New Mexico is in the Albuquerque market anyway, through use of full-power satellite stations and translators. Only the Las Cruces area, near El Paso, and a few lightly populated counties on the far eastern edge of the state (Amarillo and Midland markets), fall outside the ABQ market.

So true. There was a time back in the day Roswell-Carlsbad almost became its own market back when KAVE, KSWS, and KBIM were sort of their own stations before folding into satellite stations for the ABQ stations.

 

[txchipk]

So true. There was a time back in the day Roswell-Carlsbad almost became its own market back when KAVE, KSWS, and KBIM were sort of their own stations before folding into satellite stations for the ABQ stations.

That was kind of an odd era in that KAVE was a satellite of an El Paso station and KSWS a satellite of a Lubbock station. Now, all three are satellites of Albuquerque stations.

 

[txchipk]

This reminds me of how KCSG and KMYU in southwestern Utah (Cedar City and St George respectively) became de facto Salt Lake City market stations, rather than spinning off into their own market.

What was KMYU was originally KUSG, a KUTV satellite ... These days, if I recall, it runs MNTV on 12.1, but maps a subchannel as 2.1 to continue the KUTV relay. KUTV in turn carries KMYU on its .2. Similar set up to what Nexstar does in a couple of other markets where a former satellite is converted to something and the programing of both stations is carried on the former parent/satellite pair via subchannels -- i.e. Fox KWKT 44 Waco and MNTV KYLE 28 Bryan via 44.1/28.2 and 28.1/44.2, Fox KFTA 24 Fort Smith and NBC KNWA 51 Fayetteville via 24.1/51.2 and 51.1/24.2

Gray has designs on Salt Lake City directly...it got unbuilt KCBU Price via a swap of its Wyoming properties. Now, it seeks to move KCBU right in by reallocating it from channel 11 Price to channel 15 Orem in order to cover SLC. It will be interesting to see what they use that for given they don't have any markets where they don't have a station not with one of the big 4 networks. They do have some assorted Telemundo and independent stations, but they are part of clusters that include a big network affiliate.

 

[Mark Roberts]

The station is licensed to TV-49 Inc. and owned by Weigel Broadcasting. They were also given two other permits which appear to have been built including another Silver City station KKAD channel 10 and KKAC channel 19 in Carlsbad. I think those were the former KOAT satellites.

The KKAC transmitter is at Artesia, which is where KOCT/KAVE was, so I think it's pretty likely it's the successor of those stations.

That was kind of an odd era in that KAVE was a satellite of an El Paso station and KSWS a satellite of a Lubbock station. Now, all three are satellites of Albuquerque stations.

They didn't start out as satellites, though. KSWS (now KOBR) at one time had one of the tallest towers in the country, on the caprock east of Roswell. It was an NBC affiliate, owned by John Barnett, a local oil man who also put KSWS radio on the air. KAVE-TV was put on the air by KAVE radio and, for its first few years, had coverage limited to Eddy County. It was a CBS affiliate, supplied entirely by film until 1964 when it worked out a deal with a microwave operator to bring a relay in from El Paso. The next year, KAVE-TV built the Artesia facility, giving it coverage of Roswell for the first time. More or less simultaneously, KBIM-TV in Roswell was constructed. It was going to be a CBS affiliate, also with grade-A coverage of Carlsbad. Hence, a problem.

I haven't been able to determine for sure whether the advent of KBIM-TV caused KAVE-TV to change affiliations, but the sequence of events implies it. John Deme, who owned KAVE radio and TV, arranged to affiliate with ABC beginning in 1966, and to start relaying programs from El Paso's KELP, channel 13 (now 7). Soon after the switch, Deme sold the TV station to KELP (John Walton). Deme sold the radio station to someone else six months later, moved to Albuquerque, and bought the silent, bankrupt radio station at 1580 that he soon dubbed KZIA, first as a Top-40 station and then as a talk station that endured for decades.

Meanwhile, Barnett died in 1967; his heirs sold the station the next year. KSWS then became a satellite of KCBD in Lubbock. Even before that, KSWS essentially operated on a Central Time schedule, judging by listings in the New Mexico edition of TV Guide, possibly due to lacking videotape facilities. For example, the Tonight Show started at 9:30 pm local time on KSWS-TV. After the sale of channel 8, KBIM was the only fully local commercial TV station for the Roswell-Carlsbad area. (For public TV, there was KENW out of Portales.) The Hebenstreit family of Albuquerque, owners of KGGM-TV, bought KBIM in 1989. In 1985, KSWS-TV was sold to Hubbard, becoming KOBR and a satellite of KOB. So by the 1990s, only KAVE remained as a southeastern New Mexico satellite of a station not in Albuquerque.

 

[Mark Roberts]

Pretty much the entire state of New Mexico is in the Albuquerque market anyway, through use of full-power satellite stations and translators. Only the Las Cruces area, near El Paso, and a few lightly populated counties on the far eastern edge of the state (Amarillo and Midland markets), fall outside the ABQ market.

Well, just about everything outside the Albuquerque-Santa Fe corridor could be considered lightly populated! New Mexico's a big, empty state.

You're correct, Doña Ana County is in the El Paso market. That said, Albuquerque's KOB still has a translator in Las Cruces.

 

[IM42A]

That was kind of an odd era in that KAVE was a satellite of an El Paso station and KSWS a satellite of a Lubbock station. Now, all three are satellites of Albuquerque stations.

Sounds like the situation in western Nebraska where you have satellites of North Platte, Cheyenne, and at one time, Rapid City stations in the Scottsbluff area, and you have a checkerboard of counties split between the Rapid City, Cheyenne, and Denver TV markets. And on top of that, NBC from Scottsbluff, which is a semi-satellite of KNEP in North Platte, gets rebroadcast on KGWN as Cheyenne's NBC affiliate.

The total population of western Nebraska probably wouldn't fill a pro football stadium, but that said, it's still a mess.

 

[K.M. Richards]

... but that said, it's still a mess.

I think a lot of people are not cognizant of the inherent difficulties of providing even the big four networks' television service to the lightly populated part of the country which largely lie in the Central and Mountain time zones. You almost have to have lived somewhere that had the kind of patchwork you describe to really understand it.

 

[IM42A]

I think a lot of people are not cognizant of the inherent difficulties of providing even the big four networks' television service to the lightly populated part of the country which largely lie in the Central and Mountain time zones. You almost have to have lived somewhere that had the kind of patchwork you describe to really understand it.

And then you have the places that have to get their stations from another time zone. Eastern into Central (or vice versa) isn't so bad, as CTZ prime time is an hour behind ETZ anyway. But Mountain into Pacific or Pacific into Mountain would be a mess, as is Central into Mountain. Mountain into Central, assuming a 7-10 pm prime time lineup, would mirror East Coast viewing habits. As a practical matter, in any of these cases, it's what people there are used to, and probably not many people give any mind to it.

On the CTZ/MTZ and MTZ/PTZ borders, you're not talking about all that many viewers anyway. Time zones boundaries are usually drawn in sparsely populated rural areas for a reason, and where there's a pressing local need (such as in Phenix City AL adjacent to Columbus), the most practical local time (in this case ETZ) is informally observed anyway.

 

[Mark Roberts]

On the CTZ/MTZ and MTZ/PTZ borders, you're not talking about all that many viewers anyway. Time zones boundaries are usually drawn in sparsely populated rural areas for a reason, and where there's a pressing local need (such as in Phenix City AL adjacent to Columbus), the most practical local time (in this case ETZ) is informally observed anyway.

Pertinent to New Mexico, go to rabbitears.info, scroll down to market #225, and see what's available over the air in Clovis and Tucumcari!

* Translators for the Albuquerque NBC, CBS, and Fox affiliates (Fox is on a subchannel of the CBS affiliate)
* Translators for the Amarillo NBC, CBS, and Fox affiliates
* A full-power station in Clovis, KVIH, repeating KVII, with a translator in Tucumcari
* PBS from Eastern New Mexico State University in Portales

Amarillo is in Central Time; all of New Mexico is in Mountain Time. There once was a small piece of New Mexico on Central Time, around Nara Visa on US Highway 54 between Tucumcari and Dalhart, Texas, but that's long gone, at least for 60 years if not more.

The Roswell/Carlsbad situation appears to be more of an accident of who bought what at any given time than the product of deliberate thought, at least until the late 1980s. Even though that part of the state is sometimes called "Little Texas", cable systems in the area have historically favored Albuquerque stations. And the Eddy County Courthouse in Carlsbad has architecture that looks like something straight out of a northern New Mexico pueblo. I think this indicates that the cultural pull of New Mexico is hard to resist, but that could just be my own experiences at play.

 

[IM42A]

Pertinent to New Mexico, go to rabbitears.info, scroll down to market #225, and see what's available over the air in Clovis and Tucumcari!

* Translators for the Albuquerque NBC, CBS, and Fox affiliates (Fox is on a subchannel of the CBS affiliate)
* Translators for the Amarillo NBC, CBS, and Fox affiliates
* A full-power station in Clovis, KVIH, repeating KVII, with a translator in Tucumcari
* PBS from Eastern New Mexico State University in Portales

Amarillo is in Central Time; all of New Mexico is in Mountain Time. There once was a small piece of New Mexico on Central Time, around Nara Visa on US Highway 54 between Tucumcari and Dalhart, Texas, but that's long gone, at least for 60 years if not more.

The Roswell/Carlsbad situation appears to be more of an accident of who bought what at any given time than the product of deliberate thought, at least until the late 1980s. Even though that part of the state is sometimes called "Little Texas", cable systems in the area have historically favored Albuquerque stations. And the Eddy County Courthouse in Carlsbad has architecture that looks like something straight out of a northern New Mexico pueblo. I think this indicates that the cultural pull of New Mexico is hard to resist, but that could just be my own experiences at play.

Dumb question, maybe, but how common is it anymore, for translators (especially O&Os) to exist outside of the home markets of the parent stations?

Unless it were a long pre-existing situation (and maybe even then), wouldn't network affiliates in the markets with the out-of-market translators object, similarly to the way they did to second full-power affiliates in the market (WHAG, WMGM, possibly others) and maybe even satellites of stations in neighboring markets (such as the situation with KENV in Elko NV being a semi-satellite of KRNV Reno, to which KSL in the home market of Salt Lake City objected)?

Back in the day, when market boundaries weren't as well-defined as they are now, many such translators existed (WLOS Asheville NC got all the way up to London KY via translator), but I have to wonder how common it is anymore. And I do know that ABC at least tolerates long-existing second affiliates in a handful of cases (such as WWSB Sarasota FL in the Tampa market and WOTV Battle Creek MI in the Grand Rapids-Kalamazoo market).

 

[K.M. Richards]

Unless it were a long pre-existing situation (and maybe even then), wouldn't network affiliates in the markets with the out-of-market translators object, similarly to the way they did to second full-power affiliates in the market (WHAG, WMGM, possibly others) and maybe even satellites of stations in neighboring markets (such as the situation with KENV in Elko NV being a semi-satellite of KRNV Reno, to which KSL in the home market of Salt Lake City objected)?

Generally speaking, neither the affiliates or the networks themselves object, because for the most part that is the only way the programs (and more importantly, the ads) get to the areas served.

Translators have always been pretty much confined to areas where OTA reception of stations directly is terrain shielded or similarly impossible. And there's about a 0% chance of cable having been wired in those areas, either.

Officially, KENV was affiliated with NBC from its sign-on in 1997 until 2018, when the network refused to renew its contract. I cannot find anything that indicates KSL-TV had anything to do with that, and what little I did turn up indicated that they disclaimed having anything to do with NBC's decision. If you have a source that I overlooked, I'm sure we'd all appreciate a link to same.

 

[IM42A]

Generally speaking, neither the affiliates or the networks themselves object, because for the most part that is the only way the programs (and more importantly, the ads) get to the areas served.

Translators have always been pretty much confined to areas where OTA reception of stations directly is terrain shielded or similarly impossible. And there's about a 0% chance of cable having been wired in those areas, either.

Officially, KENV was affiliated with NBC from its sign-on in 1997 until 2018, when the network refused to renew its contract. I cannot find anything that indicates KSL-TV had anything to do with that, and what little I did turn up indicated that they disclaimed having anything to do with NBC's decision. If you have a source that I overlooked, I'm sure we'd all appreciate a link to same.

It was my understanding, and I do not know where I read this (and cannot find a link to it), that once KSL found out that there was a second affiliate on the far end of the market --- again, my source speculated that perhaps they didn't know and somehow found out --- they objected and NBC pulled the affiliation. Or it could have been a unilateral decision by NBC (I know KENV certainly didn't want it!) without KSL playing a part in it.

I will see if I can find that article. I did find this about KSL possibly being unaware of KENV's existence before the affiliation issue coming up:

KENV (Elko, NV) Losing Affiliation, Shuttering News Dept.

It is possible that I read this and interpreted it to mean that KSL played a part in KENV losing NBC, or I may have read that somewhere else. I've been following the TV business, as a hobby, for over 50 years, and have read and heard a lot, and it's possible that this was one time that I misinterpreted something along the way.

Edited to add: I see this that says KSL categorically disavowed having anything to do with the affiliation loss. I'll go with this. (Sorry, I don't know how to flag text within web pages, it's about halfway down.)

KENV (Elko, NV) Losing Affiliation, Shuttering News Dept.

 

[fybush]

As someone who travels all over the place, I am always fascinated by some of these edge cases.

Reinforcing some earlier points that have already been made: these are all tiny population pockets. Pretty much anywhere that has 50,000 or more TV homes is now fully served by Big 4 affiliates that are in-market thanks to DTV subchannels. So those cases like Watertown NY, Elmira, Jackson TN and Lafayette IN where some networks came from a larger adjacent market are largely gone now.

The translators that remain on the air for commercial TV these days are mostly operated by local translator districts out west, not by individual stations. My impression is that where these signals still survive, they are serving extremely tiny communities, sometimes just a few dozen people. If you're a station in Las Vegas, which adds hundreds of new households in-market every week, do you care if a translator district 110 miles away that serves 50 people carries your signal? Probably not.

(This also puts KENV in perspective. I would guarantee there's more growth in a month in the core SLC market than the total off-air population KENV ever reached. It can't ever have been a very big deal for KSL.)

I can think of only a few good examples of translator systems that bring in "outside" signals that no longer show up on cable or satellite. I'm pretty sure there's still a WNEP Scranton translator into State College, which is otherwise entirely served by Altoona-Johnstown stations. Along the Colorado River, Las Vegas has translator coverage into Kingman and Lake Havasu, Arizona, which is all Phoenix on cable. And I think KTTC in Rochester MN still has its legacy translator over in La Crescent, which is La Crosse-Eau Claire on cable.

The "edge case" markets that fascinate me the most in my travels are the North Plattes and Scottsbluffs and Twin Falls. It's a pretty good bet that if those hadn't ever become one-station markets going into the 1960s, that today they wouldn't be markets at all. They'd either have no OTA service, translators from Denver or Kearney, or maybe they'd be like western Kansas or Roswell, where once independent stations have become full satellites of Wichita or Albuquerque.

These are also the markets where you still end up with some legacy signals on cable that differ somewhat from what's carried OTA.

Group ownership has changed a lot of these scenarios, of course - once Gray started buying everything west of Omaha, it became easier to rationalize two "stations" (NBC fed from Hastings studios and CBS fed from Lincoln) to serve all of central and western Nebraska instead of the old patchwork of separate tiny NBC stations in multiple cities.

In any event, it's a marvelous patchwork of local chaos out there that's more interesting to me these days than the Canadian "Bell and Corus own everything" system to our north.

 

[IM42A]

As someone who travels all over the place, I am always fascinated by some of these edge cases.

Reinforcing some earlier points that have already been made: these are all tiny population pockets. Pretty much anywhere that has 50,000 or more TV homes is now fully served by Big 4 affiliates that are in-market thanks to DTV subchannels. So those cases like Watertown NY, Elmira, Jackson TN and Lafayette IN where some networks came from a larger adjacent market are largely gone now.

This, and LPTVs, sometimes free-standing, sometimes owned by a full-power station (and often simulcast on one of that station's subchannels, e.g. WHSV Harrisonburg VA and its phalanx of LPTVs, ditto WTAP Parkersburg WV, another Gray station with a similar setup).

The translators that remain on the air for commercial TV these days are mostly operated by local translator districts out west, not by individual stations. My impression is that where these signals still survive, they are serving extremely tiny communities, sometimes just a few dozen people. If you're a station in Las Vegas, which adds hundreds of new households in-market every week, do you care if a translator district 110 miles away that serves 50 people carries your signal? Probably not.

(This also puts KENV in perspective. I would guarantee there's more growth in a month in the core SLC market than the total off-air population KENV ever reached. It can't ever have been a very big deal for KSL.)

As a kind of side thought, suppose that Elko County were peeled off SLC and made part of the Reno market. That's 50K+ population for the entire county. That could take the SLC market down one, or in a really tight situation, two notches on the list of markets by size.

These are also the markets where you still end up with some legacy signals on cable that differ somewhat from what's carried OTA.

WECT Wilmington NC being carried on cable in Fayetteville and Dunn come immediately to mind. At one time WECT's transmitter was further inland and the station billed itself as "Wilmington-Fayetteville", again, before the markets became pretty much set in stone. Fayetteville is now securely within the Raleigh-Durham market. (And there was a huge swath of both North and South Carolina that was sucking air where NBC was concerned, either having weak affiliates in RDU, in the case of the Florence market, none at all. WECT filled in a lot of gaps, indeed, up into the 1980s, Horry County was considered as part of the Wilmington market.)

 

[Mark Roberts]

Bringing this back to New Mexico, the Albuquerque stations have in the past couple of decades been acquiring translators that had been independently owned. Presumably this is done to retain control and ensure that the market boundaries remain stable.

Hearst gave up its full-power stations in Farmington, Silver City, and Carlsbad several years ago and replaced them with translators, apparently for administrative convenience - i.e. no need for public files for translators. Hubbard and Nexstar haven't followed suit.

Related and adjacent, the situation in La Plata County, Colorado - Durango - is notable. I don't have the details readily at hand but I recall that satellite TV operators have an exemption to provide Denver stations in the market as well as Albuquerque stations, a situation originally instigated by the county board of supervisors due to public demand. Even though Durango and La Plata County are included in the Albuquerque market, local residents felt that local programming from Albuquerque wasn't relevant to them. While it's noncommercial, KRMU in Durango is a repeater for Rocky Mountain PBS (KRMA) in Denver.