KXTX-TV

KXTX-TV

Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas United States
City	Dallas, Texas
Branding	Telemundo 39 (general; read as "Telemundo Treinta y Nueve") Noticiero 39 (newscasts)
Channels	Digital: 40 (UHF) Virtual: 39.1 (PSIP)
Subchannels	39.1 Telemundo 39.2 TeleXitos
Affiliations	Telemundo (O&O)
Owner	NBCUniversal (NBC Telemundo License LLC)
First air date	February 5, 1968
Call letters' meaning	X = Christ, or Cross (reflecting past CBN ownership) TX = Texas
Sister station(s)	KXAS-TV
Former callsigns	KDTV (1968–1973)
Former channel number(s)	Analog: 39 (UHF, 1968–2009)
Former affiliations	Independent (1968–1995 & 1995–2001) The WB (January–July 1995)
Transmitter power	1,000 kW
Height	494 m
Facility ID	35994
Transmitter coordinates	32°35′7.3″N 96°58′7.8″W / 32.585361°N 96.968833°W / 32.585361; -96.968833
Licensing authority	FCC
Public license information:	Profile CDBS
Website	www.telemundodallas.com

KXTX-TV, virtual channel 39 (UHF digital channel 40), is a Telemundo owned-and-operated television station serving the Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex that is licensed to Dallas, Texas, United States. The station is owned by the NBCUniversal Owned Television Stations subsidiary of NBCUniversal, as part of a duopoly with NBC owned-and-operated station KXAS-TV (channel 5). The two stations share studio facilities located at The Studios at DFW at the CentrePort Business Park on Amon Carter Boulevard (near the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport) in Fort Worth; KXTX maintains transmitter facilities located south of Belt Line Road in Cedar Hill.

History

Early history

The station first signed on the air on February 5, 1968,^[1] as KDTV; it originally operated as a general entertainment independent station, but also carried some business news programming during the daytime hours on weekdays as well as Japanese cartoons dubbed into English including Speed Racer and Johnny Cypher in Dimension Zero. The station also held broadcast rights to games from the Dallas Blackhawks and Fort Worth Wings, Dallas-Fort Worth Spurs baseball, Dallas Tornado soccer and Dallas Chaparrals basketball teams. It operated from studio facilities on 3900 Harry Hines Boulevard in Dallas. KDTV's Cedar Hill transmitter tower collapsed due to high winds during a severe thunderstorm on May 7, 1969, knocking the station off the air for twelve days, before improvising a temporary transmitter; the station later constructed a new tower at a cost of $450,000, resuming full-power transmissions on October 30, 1969.

The station's founding owner, Doubleday Broadcasting, decided to exit the market in late 1973, out of frustration of its lack of success in trying to make KDTV profitable. It decided to give the station to a nonprofit organization. Doubleday attempted to donate it to Area Education Television Foundation, Inc., the Dallas Independent School District (both owners of KERA-TV (channel 13)) and Berean Fellowship International (which had owned the channel 33 license as KBFI from February to December 1972); however, all three rejected the offer as the new owner would have to assume a large amount of the station's debt. Doubleday would not find an organization that would acquire the station until Christian Broadcasting Network, which already owned KXTX on channel 33, made an offer. Doubleday donated channel 39's programming inventory and broadcast license to CBN on November 9 of that year. CBN returned the channel 33 license to the Federal Communications Commission and combined its existing assets with channel 39, moving the KXTX call letters in the process (the KDTV call letters now reside on an unrelated television station in San Francisco, which is a sister station to Univision owned-and-operated KUVN-DT (channel 23)).

Under CBN ownership

As an independent station under CBN, KXTX ranked behind rival independent KTVT (channel 11) in the ratings. By this point, the station ran cartoons (such as Tom and Jerry and Looney Tunes animated shorts, Scooby-Doo, The Jetsons, Jonny Quest and The Flintstones), off-network classic sitcoms (such as The Brady Bunch, McHale's Navy and The Andy Griffith Show), drama series (such as Star Trek), classic movies and westerns about 12 hours a day. Local programming included Reflect, a public affairs talk show co-hosted by Don Hall and Durline Dunham, which aired every Sunday evening at 6:30 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. It also ran religious programs for about five hours a day during the week, and throughout the day on Sundays. The 700 Club, which is produced by CBN, was also broadcast on the station three times a day each Monday through Friday. The station also ran a variety of older movies from the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. By the end of the 1970s, KXTX was on the air about 20 hours a day and aired secular programming for about 15 hours a day, except on Sundays. In 1980, KXTX reduced religious programs on Sundays from the entire day to only from 6:00-10:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m.-midnight, and began broadcasting secular shows on Sunday afternoons.

By 1983, competitors began overextending themselves to get strong programming. KTXA (channel 21) was converted into a full-time general entertainment station, while channel 33 (now KDAF) began to run a strong lineup by 1986 and KDFI (channel 27) also adopted a full-time general entertainment format in 1984. As a result, KXTX shifted its focus away from cartoons and classic sitcoms, and more toward westerns, family-themed drama series and movies. In 1986, the station was put up for sale along with CBN's other stations, but there were no buyers for KXTX. The station began broadcasting infomercials by 1990. By the early 1990s, KXTX was airing mostly paid programming, a few drama series, westerns, and low-budget movies along with some religious programming. In 1993, LIN Broadcasting, which owned Fort Worth-based NBC affiliate KXAS-TV (channel 5) at the time, began managing the station under a local marketing agreement and added some first-run syndicated programs, as well as rebroadcasts of channel 5's newscasts.

KXTX 39 logo used from 1995 to 2001.

At the network's launch on January 11, 1995, KXTX became a charter affiliate of The WB under a temporary arrangement until the network could move to KDAF once Fox programming moved to KDFW (channel 4); since The WB initially aired only one night of programming each week (running on Wednesdays), KXTX was still essentially a de facto independent station. KDAF officially joined The WB on July 5, 1995, rendering channel 39 as a true independent once again. That August, the station served an alternate CBS station, carrying network programs that newfound affiliate KTVT (channel 11) was unable to air. On October 12, 1996, an accident caused by a tower crew collapsed the station's 1,535 feet (468 m) transmitter tower in Cedar Hill; KXTX and three local FM radio stations were briefly knocked off the air before improvising temporary transmitter facilities for many months; KXTX's interim transmitter was located at the nearby tower belonging to KXAS, while the radio stations built on one tower or another.

For years, KXTX was known for its "Western weekends", broadcasting a lineup of classic westerns (including The Lone Ranger, The Rifleman, Bonanza, Rawhide, Little House on the Prairie, Gunsmoke and The Big Valley among others) during the afternoon and early evening hours on Saturday and Sundays. Movies based on these shows often aired on weekend evenings (writer/director, and former Dallas resident, Mike Judge added several references to the "Channel 39" weekend Kung Fu programming in his 1999 movie Office Space). During the mid- to late 1990s, KXTX aired the first few hours of the Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon from 8:00 to 11:00 p.m. (when sister station KXAS took over carriage of the broadcast) on the Sunday night before Labor Day. The LMA between KXTX and KXAS ended in 1997 after NBC bought majority (76%) interest in KXAS.

Purchase by NBC and switch to a Telemundo O&O

Former logo, used from 2002 to 2012.

NBC later bought KXTX outright from CBN in 2001, which ironically made it and KXAS sister stations again. NBC, which acquired Telemundo that year, made KXTX the market's new owned-and-operated station of the Spanish language network on January 1, 2002, displacing the network's longtime Dallas affiliate KFWD (channel 52; which became an English-language independent station, before flipping back to a Spanish format as a MundoFox affiliate in 2012); KXTX also integrated its operations into KXAS's studio facilities on Broadcast Hill in eastern Fort Worth. During the station's last weeks as an English outlet, KXTX broadcast a handful of episodes of even older westerns (such as Jim Bowie) repeatedly, as well as movie marathons of B-movies from Off Beat Cinema.

After KXTX switched to Telemundo, westerns found a home in the Dallas-Fort Worth market for a time on local Pax TV (now Ion Television) station KPXD (channel 68). The rest of the meager programming inventory from KXTX moved over to KFWD, along with some programming from another station, KSTR-TV (channel 49), which also converted to a Spanish format (as an owned-and-operated station of the upstart TeleFutura network) at the same time as KXTX.

On November 19, 2009, a fire in the electrical room at the Fort Worth studios of KXTX and sister station KXAS knocked both stations off the air. Fire alarms went off in the facility at 9:30 p.m., which led to personnel being evacuated from the studio; they were again evacuated when the fire disrupted the 10:00 p.m. newscast on KXTX.^[2]

In June 2012, NBCUniversal announced plans to construct a new 75,000-square-foot facility in Fort Worth (located at the CentrePort Business Park on the former site of Amon Carter Field) to house KXAS, KXTX and NBCUniversal's other Dallas-based operations (including the NBC News Dallas bureau). Construction of the facility began that month,^[3] and was completed in September 2013. Sales and marketing departments, and NBC's ArtWorks graphics firm began migrating to the facility in early October; all other operations – including KXAS and KXTX's news departments – moved to the Carter Boulevard studio by the end of that month.^[4][5]

Digital television

Digital channels

The station's digital channel is multiplexed:

KXTX-TV also has plans to operate a Mobile DTV feed of subchannel 39.1.^[7][8]

Analog-to-digital conversion

KXTX-TV shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 39, at 10:35 p.m. on June 12, 2009, as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television.^[9] The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 40 (KLDT (channel 55, now KAZD) moved its digital signal to channel 39 at the same time).^[10] Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display KXTX-TV's virtual channel as 39 on digital television receivers.

News operation

KXTX-TV presently broadcasts seven hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with one hour each on weekdays, Saturdays and Sundays). After NBC acquired KXTX, the company invested in the creation of a news department for KXTX; within months of the switch, the station debuted Spanish language newscasts at 5:00 and 10:00 p.m. on weeknights.

From 2007 to 2010, the station served as a production hub for newscasts seen on several of its Telemundo O&O sister stations in the Southwestern U.S. (including KVDA in San Antonio and KTMD in Houston). This resulted from budget reductions imposed by NBCUniversal company-wide in 2006, that resulted in the shutdowns of the news departments operated by the affected Telemundo O&Os, whose in-house newscasts were replaced by a regional newscast based out of the facility. This move attracted criticism from the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, including formal statements against NBC Universal.^[11] The stations that were affected have since restored news departments as a result of a benefits package by NBCUniversal that included improvements in its stations' news operations, in order to receive Federal Communications Commission approval of its 2010 merger with Comcast. In 2011 it debuted a weekend evening newscast titled Noticeiro Telemundo Dallas Fin De Semana. Part of the Telemundo relaunch it revamped its newscast title Noticiero Telemundo 39 putting back it channel numbers. On September 18,2014 Telemundo announced launch new 4:30 p.m./4:30 p.m. newscast all of it stations including KXTX which will debut a 4:30 p.m. newscast like all of it other sister station with KTMD-TV some have 5:30 p.m.

Media appearance

KXTX's 1995 to 2001 logo briefly appeared in a scene from the 2000 film Miss Congeniality on a news station microphone.

References

External links

• TelemundoDallas.com - KXTX official website
• Query the FCC's TV station database for KXTX-TV
• BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on KXTX-TV
• Program Information for KXTX at TitanTV.com
• DFW Radio/TV History