KRMZ

On May 5, 1986, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) granted a construction permit to Constance J. Wodlinger for a new television station on channel 24 in Steamboat Springs. Wodlinger owned radio stations in the Kansas City market.[2] Channel 24 began broadcasting as an independent television station in the second half of December 1987, as KSBS-TV; Wodlinger was joined by several other investors in Steamboat Broadcast System, Inc., which owned the station, including president Thomas Greer.[3] Local programming on channel 24 at launch included Steamboat Breakfast Club, a daily morning show with news and features; a daily news program; and telecourses from Colorado Mountain College.[4] The station filled out its broadcast day with programs from the Satellite Program Network and music videos from Wodlinger-owned Hit Video USA.[5] Greer, who had previously produced a program called Ski TV which aired on ESPN, had plans to start similar stations in other Colorado ski cities.[5] The station sold itself to advertisers seeking to reach ski visitors, noting that it was the only television signal carried in some of the town's hotels.[6]

KSBS-TV was sold in 1991 to Frederick I. Shaffer III for $250,000.[7] Under Shaffer, KSBS-TV primarily broadcast tourist information programming and content from the Resort Sports Network.[8]

Another sale came in March 1995 to GreenTV Corporation, headed by David Drucker. Drucker's purchase marked the first connection between KSBS-TV and a Denver station, since he owned KUBD, Denver's Telemundo affiliate.[9] However, Drucker and his partner in Denver, Charlie Ergen, sold KUBD two months later to Paxson Communications Corporation.[10] Paxson immediately switched that station to the same Infomall TV infomercial programming used on its other stations.[11]

Telemundo moved from KUBD to KSBS-TV, which appeared on two translators in Denver—KMAS-LP (channel 63) and KSBS-LP (channel 18)—and also began a fight to get onto important cable systems in Denver for the first time using must-carry rules.[12] In 1997, TCI added KSBS to its Denver cable systems, replacing Galavisión.[13]

In 2000, KSBS-TV was purchased by Council Tree Communications of Longmont, in which one of the investors was an Alaska Native-owned corporation; the new owners changed the call letters to KMAS-TV for más, the Spanish word for "more".[15] Council Tree then deepened its involvement with Telemundo by making a $181 million investment in exchange for a 17 percent stake in the network—which still was a controlling stake because of ownership restrictions; the transaction also made KMAS-TV a network owned-and-operated station.[16] KMAS-TV then was sold along with the network to NBC in October 2001.[17]

In 2006, Longmont Broadcasting sold its television station in that city, KDEN-TV (channel 25), to NBC, and Telemundo moved there from KMAS-TV and its two translators on March 6, a switch giving Telemundo signal parity with other Denver TV stations.[18] It was the third station purchase made by Telemundo in a year, after its purchase of KBLR-TV in Las Vegas and a license swap that gave Telemundo a full-power signal in Phoenix.[19]

The Steamboat Springs station was now surplus to NBC's needs, and it was taken silent. The chief engineer of KMAS-TV, a former Rocky Mountain PBS employee, suggested that the company donate the station to the public broadcaster.[20] After several visits to the site and the repair of the transmitter, the station returned to the air in August 2007 as KRMZ, the fifth full-service transmitter in the Rocky Mountain PBS network.[20]