City La Grande, Oregon Translators KUNP-LD 47 Portland | Branding Univision Portland Affiliations Univision | |
Channels Digital: 16 (UHF)
Virtual: 16 (PSIP) Subchannels 16.1 Univision
16.2 TBD
16.3 Charge! | ||
KUNP, UHF digital channel 16, is a Univision-affiliated television station serving Portland, Oregon, United States, and that is licensed to La Grande. The station also serves the Bend and Salem, Oregon, and Vancouver, Washington, metropolitan areas. The station is owned by the Sinclair Broadcast Group, as part of a duopoly with ABC affiliate KATU (channel 2). The two stations share studios and offices located in northeastern Portland. KUNP's transmitter is located east of Cove atop of Mt. Fanny, within eastern Oregon's Wallowa–Whitman National Forest.
Contents
- History
- Cable and satellite availability
- Digital channels
- Analog to digital conversion
- TV subchannels
- News operation
- News team
- References
Because of the location of its transmitter facilities 240 miles (390 km) from Downtown Portland, KUNP relies on a translator station to relay its signal: KUNP-LD (UHF channel 47) in Portland, operating with an effective radiated power of 15 kilowatts, along with cable and satellite coverage folded into KATU's carriage agreements to cover the market, along with some outlying areas. It also previously relayed its signal via KABH-LP (UHF channel 15) in Bend, operating with an effective radiated power of 84 kilowatts. KABH was jointly owned by WatchTV, Inc. alongside its crosstown Portland HSN affiliate KORK-CA, but was operated by Sinclair under a local marketing agreement. KABH's license was cancelled by the FCC on March 19, 2015 for failure to file a license renewal application.
History
The station was founded on August 6, 1999, and formally signed on the air in December 2001 as KBPD; it changed its call letters to KPOU on May 14, 2002. The call letters changed again to the current KUNP on December 15, 2006. KABH-LP was founded on June 1, 1992 as K15DO, but did not take to the air until November 3, 1993.
KUNP was originally owned by Equity Broadcasting Corporation; it was acquired by Fisher Communications on November 3, 2006, along with KUNS-TV in Seattle. Fisher would associate the two stations with the ABC affiliates it already owned in those markets, KATU and KOMO-TV. At one point, KUNP also had KKEI-CA as another translator prior to the Fisher acquisition. That station now serves Portland as a Telemundo affiliate. That station is also owned by WatchTV, Inc., owner of the now-defunct KABH-LP.
On August 21, 2012, Fisher Communications signed an affiliation agreement with MundoFox, a Spanish-language competitor to Univision that was owned as a joint venture between Fox International Channels and Colombian broadcaster RCN TV, for KUNP and Seattle sister station KUNS to be carried on both stations as digital subchannels starting in late September. On April 11, 2013, Fisher announced that it would sell its television and radio station properties, including KUNP, to the Sinclair Broadcast Group. The deal was completed on August 8, 2013. MundoFox would eventually rebrand as MundoMax in 2015 before ending all operations on December 1, 2016. This left KUNP-DT2 vacant until mid-February 2017, when it became a charter carrier of Sinclair's English language network TBD.
Cable and satellite availability
"Must-carry" regulations imposed by the Federal Communications Commission require most cable television providers across northwest Oregon to carry KUNP on their lineups. In the past under Equity ownership, the station was not available on all cable systems, as many of these providers were under carriage agreements for the national cable feed for the network, which allowed them control of several minutes throughout the day of local commercial time that would not be available if they instead carried KUNP. Equity traditionally depended completely on must-carry to bring their stations to cable providers, and the same was the case with KUNP before the sale of the station to Fisher. Retransmission consent agreements for providers in the Portland market made after Sinclair's purchase of KATU and KUNP effectively made carriage of KUNP compulsory to carry KATU (along with its subchannels), though some smaller systems with a low Spanish-speaking population have been given a waiver from KUNP carriage.
On April 17, 2012, DirecTV began carrying KUNP's high definition signal as part of its local broadcast station package for the Portland area (on channel 47). Up until that point, the satellite provider only carried the station's standard definition signal.
Digital channels
The station's digital channel is multiplexed:
Analog-to-digital conversion
Since KUNP did not sign on-the-air before the April 21, 1997, deadline for the FCC's digital television allotment plan, the station was not granted a companion digital signal. Therefore, on or before June 12, 2009, the station was required to turn off its analog signal and turn on a new digital signal (a method known as a "flash cut") – on UHF channel 16. KUNP-LP, as a low-power station, continued to broadcast in analog until April 13, 2012, when it made its' flash-cut to digital transmission on UHF channel 47 and changing its' callsign suffix from '-LP' to '-LD'.
TV subchannels
On December 31, 2014, KUNP added a third subchannel to its lineup and began broadcasting English-language Grit on that subchannel.
On February 13, 2017, KUNP added TBD to its second subchannel.
News operation
In 2006 former parent company Fisher Communications was part of a Hispanic journalist million dollar deal in media. It started a newscast on Seattle's Univision station KUNS-TV which then went to Portland. The newscast aired Monday through Friday at 6 pm and 11pm. It was anchored by Jaime Méndez in Seattle and Roxy de la Torre in Portland. Weather and sports segments came from Seattle where KUNS-TV sister and Fisher Communications building also with KOMO-TV. Later a new anchor came to Noticas Noreste: Teresa Gonazlez who was at sister station KUNS-TV but did the weather for Noticias Noreste both in Portland and Seattle. She became a co-anchor for Jaime Méndez who did the sports segment for both Portland and Seattle. In 2013 a new anchorman's set was designed.