KTAZ
Encyclopedia
KTAZ is a NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...

 Telemundo
Telemundo
Telemundo is an American television network that broadcasts in Spanish. The network is the second-largest Spanish-language content producer in the world, and the second-largest Spanish-language network in the United States, behind Univision....

 owned-and-operated television station
Owned-and-operated station
In the broadcasting industry , an owned-and-operated station usually refers to a television station or radio station that is owned by the network with which it is associated...

 in Phoenix, Arizona
Phoenix, Arizona
Phoenix is the capital, and largest city, of the U.S. state of Arizona, as well as the sixth most populated city in the United States. Phoenix is home to 1,445,632 people according to the official 2010 U.S. Census Bureau data...

, broadcasting in digital
Digital television
Digital television is the transmission of audio and video by digital signals, in contrast to the analog signals used by analog TV...

 on UHF
Ultra high frequency
Ultra-High Frequency designates the ITU Radio frequency range of electromagnetic waves between 300 MHz and 3 GHz , also known as the decimetre band or decimetre wave as the wavelengths range from one to ten decimetres...

 channel 39 from South Mountain
South Mountains (Arizona)
The South Mountains , known locally as simply South Mountain, is a mountain range in central Arizona in south Phoenix, Arizona. It is on public land managed by the city of Phoenix as South Mountain Park...

. KTAZ airs Spanish-language programming from the Telemundo network.

History

The station was granted an original construction permit on January 23, 1998 as KBCZ channel 11 in Holbrook, Arizona
Holbrook, Arizona
-Historical events:*During 1881 & 1882, railroad tracks were laid down and a railroad station was built. The community was then named Holbrook after the first engineer of the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad...

, owned by Channel 11 Television LLC. In 2000, before the permit expired, Channel 11 Television LLC sold the station to Venture Technologies Group LLC, who immediately changed the call letters to KPHZ. They licensed the station on December 5, 2001 as an affiliate for the ACN
ACN Inc.
ACN, Inc. is a Multi-level marketing company that provides telecommunications, television, energy, and other services and also provides Independent Business Owners an opportunity to form a home-based business. Based in Concord, North Carolina, USA, ACN began operations in the U.S in 1993 as...

 shopping channel, but the next year, they sold KPHZ, along with Phoenix
Phoenix, Arizona
Phoenix is the capital, and largest city, of the U.S. state of Arizona, as well as the sixth most populated city in the United States. Phoenix is home to 1,445,632 people according to the official 2010 U.S. Census Bureau data...

 stations KPHZ-LP (now KDTP-LP
KDTP-LP
KDTP-LP is a low-power television station in Phoenix, Arizona, broadcasting locally on channel 58 as a Jewelry Television affiliate. The station is owned by Community Television Educators, Inc., a board set up by Daystar Television Network to manage their non-commercial license in accordance with...

) and KPSW-LP (now KPDF-CA
KPDF-CA
KPDF-CA is a low-power Class A television station in Phoenix, Arizona, broadcasting locally in digital on UHF channel 41 as an Azteca America affiliate...

), to NBC Telemundo, who switched the programming to Telemundo. It was the Telemundo network's second full-service station in Arizona
Arizona
Arizona ; is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the western United States and the mountain west. The capital and largest city is Phoenix...

 (the first being KHRR
KHRR
KHRR is a full-service television station, owned and operated by NBCUniversal, and serving Tucson, Arizona as the Telemundo station. The station broadcasts in digital on UHF channel 40, with 396 kW ERP on its digital signal...

 40 Tucson
Tucson, Arizona
Tucson is a city in and the county seat of Pima County, Arizona, United States. The city is located 118 miles southeast of Phoenix and 60 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border. The 2010 United States Census puts the city's population at 520,116 with a metropolitan area population at 1,020,200...

). On May 27, 2006, NBC Telemundo changed the call letters to KTAZ and moved the license from Holbrook channel 11 to Phoenix channel 39 in a complex deal with the Daystar Television Network
Daystar Television Network
The Daystar Television Network is an American evangelical Christian television religious broadcasting network headquartered near Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex in Bedford, Texas...

 (see below). KTAZ temporarily kept the Daystar programming and the Telemundo programming remained on KDTP-CA (now KDPH-LP) channel 48 while KTAZ's permanent facilities were being constructed, but on August 9, 2006, KTAZ resumed Telemundo programming, and Daystar programming began airing on KDTP-CA. The FCC licensed the changes to KTAZ on November 7, 2006.

License swap

By 2004, NBC Telemundo concluded that in a small town like Holbrook (2000 population: 4917), KPHZ was losing money and would likely have to be shut down. At the same time, they determined that their Phoenix
Phoenix, Arizona
Phoenix is the capital, and largest city, of the U.S. state of Arizona, as well as the sixth most populated city in the United States. Phoenix is home to 1,445,632 people according to the official 2010 U.S. Census Bureau data...

-based Class A
Class A television service
The class A television service is a system for regulating some low-power television stations in the United States. Class A stations are denoted by the broadcast callsign suffix "-CA" or "-CD" , although very many analog -CA stations have a digital companion channel that was assigned the -LD...

 LPTV station, KDRX-CA (now KDPH-LP), could not adequately compete with Univision's
Univision
Univision is a Spanish-language television network in the United States. It has the largest audience of Spanish language television viewers according to Nielsen ratings. Randy Falco, COO, has been in charge of the company since the departure of Univision Communications president and CEO Joe Uva...

 full-power station KTVW-TV
KTVW-TV
KTVW-DT is a Univision-owned and operated station located in Phoenix, Arizona. It broadcasts in digital on UHF channel 33 from its transmitter atop South Mountain in Phoenix. Its signal is repeated on several low-power translator stations in northern and eastern Arizona and is carried on all...

.

NBC Telemundo reached an agreement with Daystar, and together filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission
Federal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, created, Congressional statute , and with the majority of its commissioners appointed by the current President. The FCC works towards six goals in the areas of broadband, competition, the spectrum, the...

 (FCC) to move the KPHZ license from Holbrook to Phoenix, where it would broadcast on channel 39. Daystar's KDTP
KDTP
This article is about the full-service Daystar station on channel 11 in Holbrook, Arizona. See KDPH-LP for the Daystar station on channel 48 in Phoenix and KDTP-LP for the JTV station on channel 58 in Phoenix....

 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 Phoenix channel 39 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, NBC Telemundo would transfer KDRX-CA and KPHZ-LP to Daystar, preserving a Daystar Television Network outlet in Phoenix.

The FCC 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-service Spanish-language TV stations in the Phoenix market outweighed the loss of the non-commercial reservation. http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-05-175A1.txt http://azbilingualed.org/News_2005a/stronger_signal_to_expand_reachoftelemundo.htm. In April 2006, the FCC granted construction permits to move the licenses. There were a few complications with the move, requiring newly-named KTAZ to move to a different broadcast tower, but the move was completed on July 23, 2006.
http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/news/tvstations/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002876296

Digital television

As KTAZ was granted an original construction permit
Construction permit
A construction permit or building permit is a permit required in most jurisdictions for new construction, or adding on to pre-existing structures, and in some cases for major renovations. Generally, the new construction must be inspected during construction and after completion to ensure compliance...

 after the FCC finalized the digital television
Digital television
Digital television is the transmission of audio and video by digital signals, in contrast to the analog signals used by analog TV...

 allotment plan on April 21, 1997 http://www.transmitter.com/FCC97115/chanplan.html, the station did not receive a companion channel for digital signals, meaning it had to flash-cut
Flash-cut
A flash-cut, also called flash-cutover, is an immediate change in a complex system, with no phase-in period.Some telephone area codes were split immediately, rather than being phased in with a permissive dialing period. An example is telephone area code 213, which was split into 213 and 714 all at...

its signal from analog to digital, which was completed on February 17, 2009.

External links

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