KFTR-TV

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KFTR-TV
Image:TelefuturaLogo.jpg
Los Angeles, California
City of license Ontario, California
Branding TeleFutura 46
Channels Analog: 46 (UHF)

Digital: 29 (UHF)

Affiliations TeleFutura
Owner Univision Communications, Inc.
(TeleFutura Los Angeles, LLC)
First air date April 21, 1984
Call letters’ meaning TeleFuTuRa
Sister station(s) KLVE, KMEX-TV, KRCD, KSCA, KTNQ
Former callsigns KIHS-TV (1984-1987)
KHSC (1987-1992)
KHSC-TV (1992-2001)
KFTR (2001-2004)
Former affiliations independent (1984-1986)
HSN (1986-2002)
Transmitter Power 2291 kW (analog)
150 kW (digital)
Height 956 m (analog)
930 m (digital)
Facility ID 60549
Transmitter Coordinates 34°13′36.1″N, 118°4′2.3″W
Website TeleFutura

KFTR-TV, "TeleFutura 46 Los Angeles" is an Univisión owned and operated television station in the Los Angeles area, and is the West Coast flagship station of the Telefutura network, its second Spanish language 24-hour network founded in January, 2002. KFTR is licensed to Ontario and serves the Los Angeles area as a sister station to KMEX. Significant programs include sports, particularly boxing and soccer, productions from Mexico and Venezuela and major motion pictures dubbed in Spanish. KFTR does not air any local news but advertises the newscasts from KMEX instead.

Channel 46 began broadcasting in 1972 as KBSA, licensed to Guasti, a community known for vineyards near Ontario. The station originally broadcast as an independent, showing mostly film features. In 1973, the station was the original home of the Trinity Broadcasting Network, then hosted by Paul Crouch and Jim Bakker. When Trinity left KBSA for KLXA, the station was acquired by Berean Bible Ministries and continued to broadcast Christian programming. The sale of KBSA was pending to Hispanic Broadcasters (the station was already broadcasting some programs in Spanish) when KBSA left the air in 1977.

It returned to the air in 1984 as KIHS, a short-lived religious channel. Then owned by HBI Acquisition, the station affiliated with Santa Fe Communications and showed Catholic based programming. In 1986, KIHS started showing movies and sports programming, but was sold later that year to Silver King, and then emerged in 1986 as KHSC-TV, a full-power affiliate of the Home Shopping Network. By 1998, HSN's owners USA Broadcasting had decided to switch all of their over-the-air HSN affiliates to a general entertainment format and was looking to sell the stations to The Walt Disney Company, which would have made Channel 46 a sister to ABC's west coast flagship KABC-TV. However, Univision bought the stations, switching most of them to its second network TeleFutura, including Channel 46 (redubbed KFTR-TV).

There were rumors that Tribune Broadcasting would buy KFTR from Univision, essentially creating a duopoly in Los Angeles with CW affiliate KTLA-TV (channel 5). This did not happen, and with Tribune re-evaluating all its properties, selling instead of buying assets, this is not likely to happen in the near future.

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