Branding UniMás 17 | Founded July 13, 2005 | |
Channels Digital: 18 (UHF)
Virtual: 17 (PSIP) Affiliations .1: UniMás (O&O)
.2: Escape
.4: Laff Owner Univision Communications
(UniMas Partnership San Antonio) First air date September 28, 2006; 10 years ago (2006-09-28) | ||
KNIC-DT, virtual channel 17 (UHF digital channel 18, is a UniMás owned-and-operated television station serving San Antonio, Texas, United States that is licensed to Blanco. The station is owned by Univision Communications, as part of a duopoly with Univision owned-and-operated station KWEX-DT (channel 41). The two stations share studio facilities located on Durango Boulevard in the Southtown district of downtown San Antonio; KNIC-DT maintains transmitter facilities located on Hogan Drive in Timberwood Park. Although Blanco is geographically within the Austin market, that city has its own UniMás station, KTFO-CD.
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History
KNIC-DT's history traces back to the March 1991 sign-on of K17BY, a low-power television station that San Antonio-based Clear Channel Communications was issued a construction permit to build on March 23, 1988; operating on UHF channel 17, Clear Channel sold the station in March 1991 to Nicolas Communications. In November 1997, the station changed its calls to KNIC-LP (in reference to its owners); Nicolas Communications sold KNIC-CA in November 2001 (the station received approval to upgrade its license to Class A status that same month) to Univision Communications, a sale that was completed in January 2002; that month, it became a charter affiliate of Univision's secondary network, TeleFutura (which relaunched as UniMás on February 7, 2013).
Univision had applied for a license to build a full-power television station in 2000 on UHF channel 52 in Blanco; after the Federal Communications Commission awarded Univision the license at auction, Univison requested that the FCC move the allocation to UHF channel 17; the request was granted in February 2003.[1] KNIC-TV was founded on July 13, 2005. The formal application for KNIC-TV called for Univision to either move KNIC-CA to another channel, or to shut it down outright,[2] KNIC-CA moved to channel 34 under special temporary authorization, before it ceased operations on September 28, 2006. KNIC-DT was one of the few television stations to have been built and signed on by Univision Communications.
Digital channels
The station's digital channel is multiplexed:
Analog-to-digital conversion
Because it was granted an original construction permit after the FCC finalized the DTV allotment plan on April 21, 1997 [3], the station did not receive a companion channel for a digital television station. KNIC-TV discontinued regular programming on its analog signal, over UHF channel 17, on June 12, 2009. The station "flash-cut" its digital signal into operation UHF channel 18, using PSIP to display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 17.