Branding UniMás 61 Fresno Affiliations UniMás | Translators KTFF-LD 41 Fresno | |
City Porterville, California Channels Digital: 48 (UHF)
Virtual: 61 (PSIP) Owner Univision Communications
(UniMas Fresno LLC) | ||
KTFF-DT, virtual channel 61 (UHF digital channel 48), is a UniMás owned-and-operated television station serving Fresno, California, United States that is licensed to Porterville. The station is owned by Univision Communications, as part of a duopoly with Univision owned-and-operated station KFTV-DT (channel 21). The two stations share studio facilities located on North Palm and West Herndon Avenues (using Univision Plaza as its street address) in northwestern Fresno, KTFF maintains transmitter facilities located on Blue Ridge in rural northwestern Tulare County.
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The station's programming is simulcast on translator station KTFF-LD, virtual and UHF digital channel 41, in Fresno. KTFF's feed of the network is also used to provide the network nationally on Channel 408 for DirecTV subscribers.
History
The station first signed on the air in May 6, 1992 as KKAK; originally operating as an independent station, the station aired a mix of infomercials, religious and home shopping programs. The station changed its call letters to KKAG in 1994. In 1998, KKAG was sold to Paxson Communications (now Ion Media Networks). On August 31 of that year, the station became an owned-and-operated station of Paxson's family-oriented television network Pax TV upon its launch, and changed its call letters to KPXF. In 2003, Paxson sold KPXF to Univision Communications, creating a duopoly with Univision O&O KFTV (channel 21); after the sale was finalized, the station's calls were changed to KTFF, it also became an owned-and-operated station of Univision's secondary network TeleFutura (which relaunched as UniMás on February 7, 2013).
Univision subsequently purchased Shop at Home affiliate KAJA-LP (channel 68, now on channel 41) from Cocola Broadcasting to become a fill-in translator for KTFF, adopting the KTFF-LD call letters (ironically, the KAJA calls are currently used as a brand name for low-power station K68DJ in Corpus Christi, Texas, which also broadcasts on UHF channel 68).
In 2007, the Federal Communications Commission issued an order concerning KTFF and former owner Paxson Communications, denying a review of the sale of KTFF to Univision; it also implemented a deal with Christian Network, Inc. (CNI), parent company of The Worship Network (which formerly carried its programming on Pax TV's stations as both a late night block and later as a dedicated subchannel service), giving the religious broadcaster the right to program KTFF seven days a week from 1:00 to 6 a.m.. In addition, the station was required to provide a digital channel for CNI’s exclusive use (so long as certain conditions are met), after KTFF signed on its digital signal, if it used two or more subchannel slots. However, as of 2014, KTFF broadcasts UniMás programming at all hours, though the date of its discontinuance of The Worship Network is unknown. It is also unknown if the discontinuance is tied to Pax's successor, Ion Television, discontinuing carriage of The Worship Network in 2010.
Digital channels
The station's digital channel is multiplexed:
Analog-to-digital conversion
KTFF-TV shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 61, on June 12, 2009, the official date in 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 48. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 61, which was among the high band UHF channels (52-69) that were removed from broadcasting use as a result of the transition.