Телеканал KASA: Тарихы мен дамуы

Telemundo TV station in Santa Fe, New Mexico

KASA TV (channel 2), branded Telemundo Nuevo México, is a television station licensed to Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States, serving the Albuquerque area and most of the state as an owned and operated station of the Spanish language network Telemundo. KASA TV's studios are located on Monroe Street NE in Albuquerque; its transmitter is located on Sandia Crest, with translators in much of the state and southwestern Colorado extending its signal. Channel 2 in Santa Fe was established in 1983 and struggled for its first decade on air as an independent station. It went silent in 1992 during a merger with KGSW TV, which resulted in 1993 in its relaunch as Fox affiliate KASA TV. KASA remained the Albuquerque market's Fox affiliate until a merger led to Fox's move to a subchannel of KRQE; at that time, channel 2 and its translators were sold to Lubbock, Texas based Ramar Communications and switched to Telemundo, which had previously aired on that company's KTEL CD. Telemundo's parent company, NBCUniversal, purchased all of Ramar's stations in New Mexico in 2021.

The New Mexico Media Co., a group of Santa Fe businessmen backed by California industrialist John J. Pollon, applied on September 10, 1977, for a new television station to serve Santa Fe on very high frequency (VHF) channel 11 (amended two months later to specify channel 2). Both the New Mexico Media application and the other channel 11 bid, which became KCHF, were contested by the Albuquerque television stations for specifying the use of Sandia Crest as the transmitter site, which they contended would have meant an insufficient signal over the city of license. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved the application on May 10, 1982. By that time, the application had been amended to change the transmitter site to No Name Peak in the Jemez Mountains. Channel 2 came to the air on October 31, 1983—a day later than announced, prompting the station to apologize on local radio stations and claim it was "a day late but not a single program short"—as independent station KSAF TV. Based in a new studio building at the corner of St. Francis and St. Michael's Drive in Santa Fe, channel 2 promised a strong signal for Santa Fe and Albuquerque, as well as the first live newscast for New Mexico's capital city; the 9 p. m. newscast was scrapped just three months after launch, with the general manager calling it a "drain" on the station's resources as a startup operation. In October 1984, a California based investor group bought into KSAF TV. The new ownership upgraded the programming by acquiring 600 films from a financially troubled KNAT TV; in order to avoid confusion with radio station KAFE and "KSFE TV", a former cable channel in Santa Fe, the call letters were changed to KNMZ TV (stylized as "KNM2") on March 1, 1985. The station filed for bankruptcy in August 1987, citing $11 million in assets but $15 million in liabilities. Coronado Communications Company, a subsidiary of the Las Vegas–based Sunbelt Communications Company, purchased channel 2 for $3 million in early 1988. Founding investor Pollon bought back the studio building, and KNMZ TV moved its Santa Fe offices to smaller quarters on Calle Nava while shifting the bulk of operations to Albuquerque. Coronado also laid off 17 staffers to cut back to the "bare bones" necessary for operation. Coronado made its own repositioning of channel 2 in 1989, changing the call letters to KKTO TV.

While LIN was able to retain both KRQE and KASA in its merger with Media General in 2014, this would prove not to be the case in 2016 when Nexstar Broadcasting Group reached a deal to purchase Media General for $4.6 billion. KASA and KRQE were both ranked among the top four stations in the market during the November 2015 sweeps period, which meant that the company had to divest one of the two stations to comply with the FCC duopoly rules. On June 30, 2016, it agreed to sell KASA TV and associated translators to Ramar Communications, owner of Telemundo affiliate KTEL CD (channel 15), Movies! affiliate KUPT LD (channel 16), and MeTV affiliate KRTN LD (channel 33), for $2.5 million. On January 18, 2017, Fox programming moved to a subchannel of KRQE, as Ramar did not acquire the Fox affiliation in the transaction. KASA switched to Telemundo; Ramar also converted its three existing full power stations in the market—KRTN TV (channel 33) in Durango, Colorado, KTEL TV (channel 25) in Carlsbad, and KUPT (channel 29) in Hobbs—into satellites of KASA. Ramar announced the sale of its entire Albuquerque market television operation—KASA TV, the other three full power stations, and all of their dependent translators—to NBCUniversal on July 30, 2021. The $12.5 million deal gave NBCU Telemundo O&O stations in 31 markets and marked the end of 23 years of Ramar's ownership of the Telemundo affiliation in the city. The sale was completed on October 5.

The station's signal is multiplexed. The use of major channel numbers 15 and 33 for the other subchannels correlates to the other full power ex Ramar stations in New Mexico. + Subchannels of KASA TV Channel Res. Aspect Short name Programming 2.1 720p 16:9 KASA HD Telemundo 15.1 480i TeleX TeleXitos 33.1 4:3 TBD TBD 47.1 16:9 COZI HD Cozi TV (KTEL CD)

KASA TV shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 2, on June 12, 2009, the official date on which full power television 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 27, using virtual channel 2.