KTUZ-TV


KTUZ-TV, virtual channel 30, is a Telemundo-affiliated television station serving Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States that is licensed to Shawnee. It is the flagship station of locally based Tyler Media Group, and is part of a duopoly with Woodward-licensed Univision affiliate KUOK, channel 36. It is also a sister station to low-powered Estrella TV affiliate KOCY-LP.
The three stations share studios near Southeast 51st Street and Shields Boulevard in south Oklahoma City; KTUZ-TV's transmitter is located near 86th Street and Ridgeway Road in northeast Oklahoma City. On cable, the station is carried on Cox Communications channel 5 and AT&T U-verse channel 30, and on Cox digital cable channel 792 in high definition.

History

A construction permit application to build a television station on UHF channel 30 was submitted to the Federal Communications Commission by a group called OKC-30 Television, LLC on July 30, 1996, with the callsign KAQS assigned to the license on September 27. The station's callsign was later changed to KQOK on August 17, 2000. The station signed on the air three months later on November 10, branded as "OK30", under the ownership of Little Rock-based Equity Broadcasting Corporation. Under Equity ownership, the station held a primary affiliation with home shopping channel America's Collectibles Network, and also carried some religious programs and children's television series compliant with the FCC's educational programming guidelines. For a brief period, KQOK also aired reruns of the classic western series Bonanza and national newscasts produced by the Independent News Network.
In early 2004 Equity Broadcasting acquired KUOK in Woodward, and low-power stations KCHM-LP and K69EK in Oklahoma City, and KOKT-LP in Sulphur. On May 27 of that year, Equity sold KQOK to Oklahoma City-based Tyler Media Group, becoming the company's first television station property. Under Tyler Media, channel 30 became a Telemundo affiliate on December 27, 2004; the station's affiliation switch had been delayed from an original target date of December 1. Equity had earlier switched the affiliations of KUOK and the low-power stations in Oklahoma City and Sulphur to Univision on May 8, converting the latter three stations into translator stations of KUOK. The station's callsign was also changed to KTUZ-TV. To accommodate the station's plans to launch local programming catering to Oklahoma's Latino community, Tyler Media expanded the company's existing Shields Boulevard facility, constructing two production studios for use for KTUZ's news and public affairs programming, and a third, larger studio for varied usage, including possible use for town hall events. The company also hired around ten employees to help manage KTUZ-TV's operations.
Prior to the analog television shutdown, KTUZ-TV's analog and digital signal patterns offered different coverage across Central Oklahoma; the station's analog transmitter was located near SE 179th and East Westminster Drive in northeastern Cleveland County, near Moore. It provided city-grade coverage to Norman and Moore, but only provided "rimshot" coverage to Oklahoma City proper. Its analog signal was marginal at best in central portions of the city, and could not be seen at all in many of the northern suburbs. Despite this, the station did not offer a low-power repeater to give it a city-grade signal throughout the immediate Oklahoma City area. The digital signal, however provides city-grade coverage to the entire Oklahoma City metropolitan area as that transmitter is located in the northeast side of the city, where most of the market's television stations maintain their transmitters.
On April 16, 2009, in a bankruptcy auction held by Equity Media Holdings following the withdrawal of an offer to sell the stations and Equity-owned stations in five other markets to Luken Communications, Tyler acquired KUOK and its translator stations for $800,000, which created a duopoly with KTUZ-TV and the third television duopoly in the Oklahoma City market. The deal, which was approved by the FCC on July 1, placed KUOK in the unique position of being the junior partner in a duopoly with a Telemundo-affiliated station, a rarity given that Univision is the longer established and, on a national level, higher rated of the two networks.

Digital television

Digital channels

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:
ChannelVideoAspectPSIP Short NameProgramming
30.11080iKTUZMain KTUZ-TV programming / Telemundo
36.11080iKUOKSimulcast of KUOK/KUOK-CD / Univision
48.11080iKOCYSimulcast of KOCY-LP / Estrella TV

Analog-to-digital conversion

KTUZ-TV discontinued regular programming on its analog signal, over UHF channel 30, on June 12, 2009, as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 29, using PSIP to display KTUZ-TV's virtual channel as 30 on digital television receivers.

Programming

In addition to airing Telemundo network programming and newscasts, KTUZ also airs some locally produced programs: the station produces a weekly discussion program Nuestra Oklahoma, airing Sundays at 10 a.m. with an encore presentation at 10 p.m. It also airs a local sports show on Saturday nights called Fiesta Deportiva, airing immediately following Telemundo's national sports program Titulares Telemundo at 10:30 p.m.
From the 2005 affiliation switch until September 2007, the station also aired Studio Z, a weekly music video program hosted by KTUZ-FM personality Blanca Estela Ramirez, showcasing videos from Latin music artists. In September 2007, KTUZ-TV and KTUZ-FM became the first Spanish-language stations to simulcast college football games in Spanish, when both aired a University of Oklahoma football game.
KTUZ has tended to preempt more Telemundo programming than other affiliates; the network's weekend schedule is more susceptible to this. Until November 2011, KTUZ preempted Nitido on Saturday mornings and Fotogenicas on Sunday mornings as well as the Sunday edition of Titulares Telemundo and the network's early late-night movie; however with the exception of the Sunday Titulares Telemundo telecast ; for the most part, KTUZ preempted these programs mainly for infomercials. The station's preemptions today are not as prevalent, and are now only done mainly to broadcast locally produced shows and religious programs, although KTUZ-TV does replace Telemundo's overnight informercial block with Spanish-dubbed infomercials that the station itself leases time to air.

News operation

KTUZ-TV presently broadcasts five hours of locally produced newscasts each week. KTUZ, along with independent station KAUT-TV are the only stations in the Oklahoma City market with weekday-only newscasts. After switching to Telemundo, KTUZ had no full-fledged newscasts other than two-minute daily news and weather updates that were produced out of a small studio which aired during the network's daytime and primetime programs. However, the station expressed interest in airing regular newscasts from the affiliation switch. One of the anchors seen in these updates was Flory Mata.
KTUZ's news operation, originally branded as T30 Noticias, began in October 2006. In its news department's beginnings, the station only ran a weeknight 10:00 p.m. newscast, with programming supplied by Telemundo continuing to air in the early evenings. A 5:00 p.m. newscast was added in early 2007. The newscasts initially used a logo that was radically different from the station's network-standardized logo, but a new graphics package was instituted in September 2007 with a logo more closely aligned with the station's regular branding.
In August 2011, the station's newscasts were rebranded as Accion Oklahoma ; with the change, the station introduced a new set and graphics for its newscasts. On August 2013, Tyler Media appointed Martin Bedoya as news director for the program, who intended to improve the quality of Accion Oklahomas content as well as the station's newsroom operations. On March 26, 2016, following the expansion of the national newscast Noticiero Telemundo, to weekends, KTUZ launched half-hour editions of Accion Oklahoma on Saturdays and Sundays at 4:30 p.m. and 10:30 p.m..