KREZ-TV

KREZ-TV (channel 6) is a television station licensed to Durango, Colorado, United States, affiliated with CBS and Fox. It is a satellite of Albuquerque, New Mexico–based KRQE (channel 13), which is owned by Nexstar Media Group. KREZ-TV's offices are located on Turner Drive in Durango, and its transmitter is located atop Smelter Mountain; its parent station maintains studios on Broadcast Plaza in Albuquerque.

KREZ-TV
Satellite of KRQE,
Albuquerque–Santa Fe, New Mexico
CityDurango, Colorado
Channels
BrandingKREZ News 6
Programming
Affiliations
Ownership
Owner
History
First air date
September 15, 1963 (1963-09-15)
Former call signs
  • KFJT-TV (CP, 1962–1963)[1]
  • KJFL-TV (1963–1964)
Former channel number(s)
Analog: 6 (VHF, 1963–2009)
Technical information[2]
Licensing authority
FCC
Facility ID48589
ERP46 kW
HAAT90.4 m (297 ft)
Transmitter coordinates37°15′46″N 107°54′0.2″W
Translator(s)see § Translators
Links
Public license information
Websitewww.krqe.com

KBIM-TV (channel 10) in Roswell, New Mexico, also serves as a satellite of KRQE. These satellite operations provide additional news bureaus for KRQE and sell advertising time to local sponsors.

History

The station began operations on September 15, 1963, as KJFL-TV, a free-standing local independent station owned by Jeter Telecasting;[3] it went off the air after its facilities were destroyed in a February 1964 fire,[4] and the station was sold, rebuilt and returned to the air on September 9, 1965, as KREZ-TV, a satellite of CBS affiliate KREX-TV (channel 5) in Grand Junction, Colorado.[5] KREZ operated as such for nearly 30 years (with many attempts at regional news along the way) before being sold to Davenport, Iowa-based Lee Enterprises and becoming a KRQE satellite in 1995.[6]

In 1998, Lee Enterprises rebranded the combination of KRQE, KREZ-TV, and KBIM-TV as "CBS Southwest" and revamped the Durango and Roswell stations' news services to produce inserts into KRQE's early evening newscasts.[7] Two years later, Lee would exit broadcasting and sell KRQE, KREZ-TV, KBIM-TV, and most of its other television properties to Emmis Communications; in 2005, Emmis, in its own exit from television, sold its New Mexico outlets to LIN TV Corporation.

A deal to sell KREZ to Native American Broadcasting, LLC was reached in April 2011;[8] upon the sale's completion, KREZ was to become a full-scale independent station (with plans for extensive local programming), and change its call letters to KSWZ-TV.[9] However, the sale was never finalized, and KREZ remains a KRQE satellite.

On March 21, 2014, it was announced that Media General would acquire LIN.[10] The merger was completed on December 19.[11] Just over a year later, on January 27, 2016, it was announced that the Nexstar Broadcasting Group would buy Media General for $4.6 billion. After selling then-Fox affiliate KASA-TV to Ramar Communications, KRQE and its satellites became part of "Nexstar Media Group."[12] The sale was completed on January 17, 2017, reuniting KREZ with former parent station KREX.[13]

Technical information

Subchannels

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:

Subchannels of KREZ-TV[14]
Channel Res. Aspect Short name Programming
6.1 1080i16:9KREZ-HDCBS
6.2 720pFoxNMFox

Analog-to-digital conversion

KREZ-TV shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 6, on June 12, 2009, the official date on which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 15,[15] using PSIP to display KREZ-TV's virtual channel as 6 on digital television receivers.

Translators

References
  1. "FCC History Cards for KREZ-TV".
  2. "Facility Technical Data for KREZ-TV". Licensing and Management System. Federal Communications Commission.
  3. Broadcasting Yearbook 1964 (PDF). 1964. p. A-10. Retrieved May 15, 2011.
  4. "And the West is History". February 18, 2014. Retrieved September 2, 2020.
  5. "New TV stations" (PDF). Broadcasting. September 20, 1965. Retrieved May 15, 2011.
  6. "Application Search Details". CDBS Public Access. Federal Communications Commission. December 9, 2021. Retrieved December 9, 2021.
  7. "CBS Southwest". Albuquerque Journal. Albuquerque, New Mexico. August 9, 1998. p. 52. Retrieved December 7, 2021 – via Newspapers.com.
  8. "LIN sends an Albuquerque TV satellite out of its orbit". Television Business Report. April 22, 2011. Retrieved April 23, 2011.
  9. "Local company agrees to buy KREZ-TV". The Durango Herald. May 8, 2011. Retrieved May 15, 2011.
  10. Sruthi Ramakrishnan (March 21, 2014). "Media General to buy LIN Media for $1.6 billion". Reuters. Retrieved March 21, 2014.
  11. Media General Completes Merger With LIN Media Archived December 19, 2014, at the Wayback Machine, Press Release, Media General, Retrieved December 19, 2014
  12. "Nexstar Broadcasting Group Enters into Definitive Agreement to Acquire Media General for $4.6 Billion in Accretive Cash and Stock Transaction". Archived from the original on January 30, 2016. Retrieved January 28, 2016.
  13. Nexstar Broadcasting Group Completes Acquisition of Media General Creating Nexstar Media Group, The Nation’s Second Largest Television Broadcaster Nexstar Media Group, January 17, 2017. Retrieved January 17, 2017.
  14. "RabbitEars TV Query for KREZ". Retrieved December 5, 2021.
  15. "DTV Tentative Channel Designations for the First and the Second Rounds" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on August 29, 2013. Retrieved March 24, 2012.
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