| Provo/Salt Lake City, Utah | |
|---|---|
| Channels | Digital: 32 (UHF) |
| Affiliations | Univision |
| Owner | Univision Communications, Inc. (Univision Salt Lake City LLC) |
| First air date | April 17, 2003 |
| Call letters' meaning | UTaH |
| Former callsigns | KCBU (2003-2004) |
| Former channel number(s) | Analog: 32 (UHF, 2003-2009) |
| Former affiliations | independent (2003-2004) |
| Transmitter power | 194 kW |
| Height | 812 m |
| Facility ID | 81451 |
KUTH-DT is a full-service television station in Provo, Utah, and serves as the Univision station for the Salt Lake City, Utah market. It broadcasts in digital on UHF channel 32. The station is network-owned, but was operated by Equity Media Holdings, with all programming and master control originating via satellite from Equity's headquarters in Little Rock, Arkansas. This arrangement ended when the 2009 digital transition was completed on June 12 at which time Univision took over the operations of KUTH outright. It is currently unknown whether KUTH programs its schedule on its own or receives its programming from a Univision-owned station in another market.
Contents |
The station originally signed on April 17, 2003 as KCBU, an independent station owned by Cocola Broadcasting. Univision bought the station in October 2004 and entered into an outsourcing agreement with Equity Broadcasting (which Univision's principals held a stake in at the time) to operate the station. At that time Channel 32 swapped affiliations and call signs with what was then KUTH (Utah's original full-power Univision affiliate on channel 12, licensed to Logan, Utah, which became KUTF in 2005) and became the new Univision affiliate.
When Univision sold the last of its shares in Equity Broadcasting in 2007, KUTH was supposed to go to Equity outright; however, the transfer of KUTH from Univision to Equity never materialized. Later, Univision planned to purchase KUTF to create a duopoly with KUTH but cancelled its plans shortly after Newport Television announced the sale of its Salt Lake City duopoly to High Plains Broadcasting; by that time, private-equity firm Providence Equity Partners owned sizable stakes in both Univision and Newport Television. This cancellation resulted in Newport Television retaining ownership of KTVX and selling only KUCW to High Plains Broadcasting (with Newport Television continuing to control both of those stations).
Because it was granted an original construction permit after the FCC finalized the DTV allotment plan on April 21, 1997 [1], the station did not receive a companion channel for a digital television station. Instead, on June 12, 2009, which was the end of the digital TV conversion period for full-service stations, KUTH turned off its analog signal and turned on its digital signal (called a "flash-cut").
KUTH officially shut down its analog transmitter on June 12 and turned on its digital signal on channel 32 the next day. On June 23 all Univision-owned full-service stations, including KUTH, added the -DT suffix to their legal call signs.
At one point, KUTH's newscasts were produced out of Little Rock, with reports produced in Salt Lake City. The newscasts were canceled in June 2008, after Equity instituted a companywide suspension of news programs.[1] Local newscasts would not return to KUTH until after Univision took full control of the station in mid-2009.
|
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||