On June 24, 1989, Juan Wheeler got the green light to build a TV station in Eagle Pass, Texas, a border town more noteworthy as being across the border from Piedras Negras, Coahuila, Mexico. It took Wheeler two years to apply for a license and more than four more to get it. But the long and convoluted history of KVAW, analog channel 16 and now branded as channel 24, had just begun. Wheeler was just the first in an, ahem, wheel of owners.
Wheeler Ditches Town
Few FCC applications have had quite as much intrigue as the one that crossed their desk in 2000. The short-lived Hispanic Television Network (HTVN) sought to buy the station. There was just one catch: nobody could find Juan Wheeler! As he was thought to have fled the country, HTVN filled out Wheeler's portion of the application and had it signed on his behalf by the Maverick County Sheriff's Office.
The Good Doctor, Multimedios and a Revoked License
When HTVN collapsed, KVAW made its way to the hands of Joseph A. Zavaletta, a doctor from Brownsville. Upon taking over the station in December 2003, the station changed programming sources to the Más Música music video network, which became MTV Tres in 2006.
In 2008, however, Dr. Zavaletta saw a better use for channel 16. He signed an affiliation agreement with Multimedios Televisión, which already had a presence in most of Coahuila's other major cities, and that July, KVAW began its tenure as a Multimedios affiliate. A large local operation was set up to cover Eagle Pass and Piedras Negras, while its cable coverage expanded to Del Rio, Ciudad Acuña and the Cinco Manantiales region (located south of Piedras and including the towns of Cd. Allende, Nava and Villa Unión). It might have been the best era in the station's history. KVAW even began airing local newscasts. Unfortunately, it ended after just seven months, with 30 employees losing their jobs.
The problems that KVAW faced in this time period were largely economic (probably in the face of the Great Recession), though they extended to digital television, in the form of a time-consuming and complicated proposal to move the digital facilities from RF 18 to RF 24. (The station had been operating on 18.1 and touted itself as the first HD station in the area under Multimedios.) Unauthorized operations and STAs piled up, as the station went silent for financial reasons.
There was another, and more personal, reason the finances were tight for the good doctor. He was in the midst of a lengthy battle with cancer. Ultimately,
Dr. Zavaletta passed away on January 25, 2010 in his Brownsville home, at the age of 77.
His estate plowed on with the confusing and murky situation of KVAW at the FCC. It was discovered that in August 2009, KVAW had lost its authorization to broadcast, and so the FCC proceeded to revoke KVAW's license on February 15, 2011. The next month, however, it changed its mind and reinstated the license, as well as the application for a sale to NRT Communications Group, which would be approved that May.
Deep in the Heart of Coahuila
KVAW was NRT's first ever American broadcast station, but it was not its first rodeo in broadcasting. NRT — Núcleo Radio Televisión — had been around for years in Coahuila. NRT owns two radio stations in Monclova — now XHEMF-FM 96.3 and XHWGR-FM 101.1, both with MVS Radio formats — as well as a chain of local cable TV stations and some cable TV systems known as "eiiNRT". The one in Monclova (Canal 4) has the fake callsign
XHRG-TV, but there are additional stations, serving Saltillo (Canal 6), Sabinas and the Región Carbonífera/Coal Region (Canal 10), and Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas (Canal 8).
The RG in XHRG-TV comes from somewhere important: Rolando González, who in turn is related to other González family members with their own broadcast interests. In Saltillo and Ciudad Acuña, there's Grupo RCG (Roberto Casimiro González), which owns television and radio stations in both cities. Roberto's son Roberto G. González is the driving force behind R Communications, an owner and operator of radio stations primarily in the Two Laredos and Rio Grande Valley areas.
Today's KVAW
Today's KVAW is something of an enigma. It has even less of a web presence than the other NRT cable stations. What we do know is:
-It is an all-local station, with some programs shared with the other cable stations. (Its KidVid report in 2016 revealed that the only E/I show they had was
this.)
-A few FB posts show us samples of their programs:
here,
here and
here. (The last one includes a message, which reads in part: "I thought Canal 4 Monclova was low quality, but here's Canal 24 Eagle Pass, Texas, and it's just as bad!")
-It is on the Eagle Pass cable system as channel 7, but has never been carried anywhere else in its DMA of San Antonio. The size of the DMA outside of the SA metro is likely to blame: KYVV in Del Rio had to do quite a bit to get into the SA market, and they had the benefit of an American network.
-In 2014, their official email was
[email protected].
No joke.
-
Here's the only website I know for them. (A bunch of links are broken on it though.)
So yeah, it's definitely the least American station in America.
and now SNL does a spoof on Local TV!