KBEH

KBEH, virtual channel 63 (UHF digital channel 24), is a Independent television station serving Los Angeles, California, United States that is licensed to Oxnard. The station is owned by HERO Broadcasting, LLC. KBEH's studios are located on West Century Boulevard in West Los Angeles (near Westchester), and its transmitter is located atop Mount Wilson.

History

The station first signed on the air on August 17, 1985 as independent station KTIE. It was the first television station to operate in Ventura County, since KKOG-TV (channel 16) shut down in 1969. The original owner, Don Sterling (no relation to the Los Angeles Clippers owner of the same name), fighting ongoing losses, sold the station in 1988 to billionaire Meshulam Riklis, the then-husband of actress Pia Zadora. Riklis changed the call letters to KADY-TV in honor of his and Zadora's daughter Kady, who in turn was named for the character Zadora played in Butterfly, financed by Riklis, a role which won Zadora the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actress.^[1] Riklis infused capital to build up the station, but it remained unprofitable.

Riklis achieved his wealth by inventing complicated paper schemes like junk bonds and leveraged buyouts. As Riklis' empire began to unravel, KADY-TV was part of settlements. The subsequent company, E-II Holdings (a group of jilted Riklis investors),^[2][3] discovered this was an unprofitable venture and essentially bailed out on the operation.^[4] The station was then sold to former general manager under Riklis, John Huddy (father of Fox News Channel anchor and former co-host of The Morning Show, Juliet Huddy, who also worked at the station and eventually married news director Dan Green). How Huddy, a former entertainment critic for The Miami Herald and executive producer of Tomorrow, came to own a television station was never clear. While Huddy made some innovative moves, he did not have the financial resources to operate at a loss. One of his improvements to KADY was making it one of the original affiliates of UPN when it launched on January 16, 1995, and another was to duplicate the signal in the Central Coast using leased time on San Luis Obispo's KADE (channel 33; now KTAS). Huddy, in the name of KADY, left bad debts throughout the area business community, including $4 million to Don Sterling,^[5] the original owner and still the building's landlord. After lying in bankruptcy court in July 1996, the property was immediately seized.^[6] Afterwards, Huddy became a successful author of a "True Crime" bestseller.

After a transitional period under court supervision with John Hyde acting as trustee,^[7] a sale to Biltmore Broadcasting was arranged in November 1997.^[8] The UPN affiliation, while serving a portion of the market designated to UPN flagship KCOP-TV (channel 13) came under network criticism. In 2002, KADY dropped its UPN affiliation and became an independent station again. Among the shows seen on the station were rebroadcasts of local newscasts from Santa Barbara ABC affiliate KEYT-TV. KADY was also added to DirecTV's Los Angeles station package.

KBEH logo used while Spanish independent.

In 2004, Blitmore sold the station to Bela, LCC, a Florida-based Spanish-language broadcaster. As a result, in May 2004, the call letters of channel 63 were changed to KBEH, and it was reformatted as a Spanish language independent. To expand the station's coverage area, KBEH began identifying as "Oxnard-Los Angeles", and has gained coverage on local cable providers.^[9] One year later, when MTV Tr3s launched, Bela switched KBEH, KMOH, and KEJR to the network. With such a move, KBEH and KMOH became the network's lone full-power affiliates.

KBEH was one of four independent stations broadcasting at least part of its program schedule in Spanish. Since 2007, KBBC-TV (now KVME-TV), licensed to Bishop and carried as part of the Los Angeles DirecTV coverage, has emerged as a new Spanish/English station for the Los Angeles television market. Bela Broadcasting sold KBEH to HERO Broadcasting in January 2008.^[10]

On January 28, 2012, KBEH began serving as the pilot station of CNN Latino, a news service targeting U.S. Hispanics focusing on news, lifestyle, documentary, talk and debate program as an alternative to traditional Hispanic networks. The service's initial rollout on the station began with a branded programming block of eight hours of customized content from 3 to 11 p.m.

Digital television

Digital channels

The station's digital channel is multiplexed:

Analog-to-digital conversion

KBEH shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 63, on June 12, 2009, as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television.^[12] The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 24, using PSIP to display KBEH's virtual channel as 63 on digital television receivers, which was among the high band UHF channels (52-69) that were removed from broadcasting use as a result of the transition.

Programming

KBEH's programming consists primarily of infomercials, with no locally produced programming (only broadcasting local station identification inserts each hour). In 2013, KBEH joined the ACC Network for broadcasts of selected Atlantic Coast Conference football games syndicated by Raycom Media. It returned such broadcasts to the Los Angeles market after a one-season absence after KCOP-TV had dropped the telecasts. These broadcasts ended in 2014, when they were picked up by KDOC-TV. KDOC previously carried SEC football games, but these broadcasts ended due to the shutdown of SEC TV as a result of the launch of SEC Network.

Repeaters

Because of its original transmitter location on South Mountain (near Santa Paula in Ventura County), KBEH's signal only provided spotty coverage into Los Angeles County. To overcome this, KBEH employed a low-power booster station KBEH1 to broadcast its signal into Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. The analog (and later digital) booster was discontinued in November 2009 when KBEH commenced using its maximum-power facilities at Mt. Harvard (a peak adjacent to Mount Wilson).^[13] It is also seen in Santa Barbara over-the-air on KSBT-LD channel 32 and on local cable systems.

References

External links

Official websites

• KBEH website

Articles

• Multichannel News article on KBEH/KMOH/KEJR switching to MTV Tr3s

TV queries

• Query the FCC's TV station database for KBEH
• BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on KBEH-TV