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Branding Telemundo 60 San Antonio (general)
Noticias 60 Telemundo(newscasts) Slogan Más Cerca de Usted
(Closer to You) Channels Digital: 38 (UHF)
Virtual: 60 (PSIP) Affiliations .1: Telemundo (O&O)
.2: TeleXitos
.3: Cozi TV Owner NBCUniversal
(NBC Telemundo License LLC) First air date September 10, 1989; 27 years ago (1989-09-10) | ||
KVDA, virtual channel 60 (UHF digital channel 38), is a Telemundo owned-and-operated television station located in San Antonio, Texas, United States. The station is owned by the NBCUniversal Owned Television Stations subsidiary of NBCUniversal. KVDA maintains studio facilities located on San Pedro Avenue, near the North Shearer Hills neighborhood on the northern side of San Antonio, and its transmitter is located off of Route 181 in northwest Wilson County (northeast of Elmendorf).
Contents
History
The station first signed on the air on September 10, 1989; KVDA has been with Telemundo since the station's sign-on, founded by the network as an owned-and-operated station.
On May 1, 2009, ZGS Communications took over the operations of KVDA and its Fresno sister station KNSO under time brokerage agreements, though NBCUniversal retains the licenses to both stations.
In 2014, NBC reassumed the operations of the station.
Digital channels
The station's digital channel is multiplexed:
Analog-to-digital conversion
KVDA discontinued regular programming on its analog signal, over UHF channel 60, 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 38, using PSIP to display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 60, which was among the high band UHF channels (52-69) that were removed from broadcasting use as a result of the transition.
News operation
KVDA broadcasts five hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with one hour each on weekdays, Saturdays and Sundays).
Telemundo formed a news department for KVDA prior to the station's official sign-on; local newscasts debuted on channel 60 the day the station began operations on September 10, 1989, with the launch of newscasts at 5:00 and 10:00 p.m., under the title Noticiero 60. Within one ratings period, the station was challenging Univision owned-and-operated station KWEX-TV (channel 41) for the position of the top-rated Spanish-language station, which KWEX had held for almost 30 years. In 2007, NBC Universal announced it would reduce budgets company-wide, including its Telemundo O&Os; as part of the cuts, KVDA shut down its news department and replaced its in-house San Antonio-based newscasts with a regional newscast based in a new production center at Dallas sister station KXTX-TV. This move attracted criticism from the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, including formal statements against NBC Universal.
On May 21, 2012, KVDA relaunched in-house news operations with the debut of half-hour evening newscasts at 5:00 and 10:00 p.m. on Mondays through Fridays, that are produced at the station's San Pedro Avenue studios; the locally produced newscasts have been broadcast in high definition from the news department's launch.