KFTR-DT

KFTR-DT
Greater Los Angeles
City of license Ontario, California
Branding TeleFutura 46
Channels Digital: 29 (UHF)
Virtual: 46 (PSIP)
Affiliations TeleFutura
Owner Univision Communications, Inc.
(TeleFutura Los Angeles, LLC)
First air date August 16, 1972
Call letters' meaning Keep Watching TeleFuTuRa
Sister station(s) KLVE, KMEX-DT, KRCD, KSCA, KTNQ
Former callsigns KBSA (1972-1977)
KIHS-TV (1984-1987)
KHSC (1987-1992)
KHSC-TV (1992-2001)
KFTR (2001-2004)
KFTR-TV (2004-2009)
Former channel number(s) Analog:
46 (UHF, 1984-2009)
Former affiliations independent (1972-1977 & 1984-1986)
TBN (1973-1974)
Silent (1977-1984) HSN (1986-2002)
Transmitter power 400 kW
Height 937 m
Facility ID 60549
Website TeleFutura

KFTR-DT "TeleFutura 46 Los Angeles" is an Univisión operated television station in the Los Angeles area, operating on digital UHF channel 29.1 (46.1 virtual) and it's 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 doesn't air any local news but advertises the newscasts from KMEX instead.

History

Channel 46 began broadcasting on August 16, 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).

On June 12, 2009, KFTR-TV ended its analog signals for digital signals with past memories from Telefutura along with the static clouding the logo.

As of 2010, KFTR has been transmitting some of their newer shows in HD and also movies from their Cine de las Estrellas programming. In June 2010, they'll be transmitting the 2010 FIFA World Cup making it the first time ever that soccer games are transmitted in HD in this channel.

On December 5, 2010, sister station KMEX-DT had begun Mobile DTV broadcasts of its own signal, and of KFTR-DT. KMEX-DT has two Mobile DTV feeds, one of of subchannel 34.1, labelled "KMEX-MH1", and of sister station KFTR-TV 46.1, labelled "KFTR-MH2", broadcasting at 3.67 Mbps. This is the highest bitrate of any Los Angeles television station mobile feed[1][2]

References

External links