City San Diego, California | Founded December 5, 1990 | |
Channels Digital: 7 (VHF)
Virtual: 7 (PSIP) Owner Civic Light Television, Inc. Former callsigns K63EN (December 1990-July 2010) Former channel number(s) 63 (December 1990-July 2010) | ||
KZTC-LP is a low-power television station in San Diego, California which operates on digital channel 7. KZTC-LP transmits from Mount Woodson, northeast of Poway, and serves mainly the northwest portion of coastal San Diego County. Its signal can also be seen in other parts of east county San Diego, albeit with some interference. When the station is on the air with its VHF signal on channel 7, it blocks Los Angeles television station, KABC-TV, which has a digital signal on channel 7 which can be received when KZTC is off the air for whatever reason. The station went from airing infomercials to rebroadcasting MundoFox (now defunct) from XHDTV-TDT 49.2 (San Diego), a My Network affiliate, operated by Entravision Communications.
The station's schedule consists of paid programming seven-days a week, twenty-four hours a day. The station's owner, Civic Light Television, claims to have operated low power television operations in the San Diego area since 1990, when the FCC began to authorize television stations of that type. While KZTC's license goes back to 1990 when it operated on UHF channel 63 as "Bay 63" (with the call sign K63EN), it moved to analog VHF channel 7 in July 2010 in order to vacate the defunct channel 52-69 channel space in the Federal Communications Commission UHF revised bandplan.
"Bay 63" originally operated from a small suite in a medical arts building at 2850 6th Avenue in the Hillcrest district of downtown San Diego, adjacent to Balboa Park. The station showed San Diego City Council proceedings and other public domain shows. It was an affiliate of the "Shop At Home" network during the time it operated from downtown San Diego. Because the station operated from the top floor of the building, it was also known for broadcasting nightly the sun setting off San Diego Bay. The station attempted to gain commercial traction by being carried by the predominant San Diego cable TV operator, Cox Communications. But those attempts were unsuccessful despite petition drives and ads put in the local TV listing magazine at the time published in the Sunday edition of the San Diego Union-Tribune.