KESQ TV: История телеканала в долине Коачелла

ABC affiliate in Palm Springs, California

KESQ TV (channel 42) is a television station licensed to Palm Springs, California, United States, serving as the ABC affiliate for the Coachella Valley. It is owned by the News Press & Gazette Company (NPG) alongside five low power stations: CBS affiliate KPSP CD (channel 38), Fox affiliate KDFX CD (channel 33), CW+ affiliate KCWQ LD (channel 2), Telemundo affiliate KUNA LD (channel 15), and independent station KYAV LD (channel 12). The six stations share studios on Dunham Way in Thousand Palms; KESQ TV's transmitter is located on Edom Hill northeast of Cathedral City and I 10. Along with other major Coachella Valley television stations, KESQ TV identifies itself on air using its cable designation, channel 3, because of the exceptionally high cable penetration rate in the area.

On June 1, 1966, Pacific Media Corporation filed an application for a construction permit to build a new television station to operate on channel 27 in Palm Springs. Three months after Pacific filed, the Federal Communications Commission issued a report and order changing the allocation to channel 42, a move necessitated to avoid interference to channel 28 in Los Angeles. Channel 42 received another bid in December, when Palm Springs Communications Corporation, co owned with local radio station KCMJ, filed for a station. After Palm Springs Communications reached a settlement agreement with Pacific Media, the latter was awarded the permit on October 11, 1967. The new station took the call letters KPLM TV and immediately began construction and talks with the major networks on affiliation. Channel 42 set up shop in the Smoke Tree Village shopping center, the station joined the ABC network and secured channel 3 on all the cable systems in the area for its debut on October 5, 1968. KPLM TV was the only television station in Palm Springs for just three weeks. In parallel with the battle for channel 42, channel 36 was also contested; on the morning of October 26, NBC affiliate KMIR TV began broadcasting. Channel 42 was not an immediate financial success. In 1972, Cine Prime, a company engaged in educational television production and distribution, announced that it had purchased the station, though no transfer of control was ever filed. In 1973, Pacific attempted to sell KPLM TV to Ralph Andrews Productions, which was scrapped several months later. In February 1974, Smoke Tree Village filed to evict KPLM TV from its studios for not paying six months of rent. Ultimately, in 1975, Pacific Media Corporation filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization, and the principals of a Palm Springs law firm were appointed as receivers; the studios were relocated to Cathedral City.

In late 1977, negotiations were concluded to sell KPLM TV to Esquire, Inc. The $800,000 purchase marked Esquire's return to broadcasting after owning and selling WQXI radio in Atlanta in the 1960s. The call letters were changed to KESQ TV on September 18, 1978. Esquire purchased KECC TV in El Centro in 1981. It attempted to sell both stations to Cimarron Broadcasting, an Oklahoma group headed by Harry Nilsson, in 1983, but Cimarron lacked the capital to make the purchase, and the deal fell apart in March 1984. However, Esquire, which had become wholly owned by Gulf+Western, was anxious to divest itself of the small market TV station which the large conglomerate did not want and sold it to Gulf Broadcasting of Dallas, an unrelated concern, two months later; the El Centro station was not included. Gulf was then swallowed by Taft Broadcasting in 1985, when the FCC increased ownership limits on television and radio properties—but KESQ TV was not included in the transaction, which immediately brought Taft to the limit. Instead, KESQ TV was sold to E. Grant Fitts, who had been the chairman of the broadcasting division.

Fitts reached a deal to sell KESQ TV to its current owner, the News Press & Gazette Company of St. Joseph, Missouri, for $19.4 million in late 1995. Under NPG, KESQ TV's operation expanded to include additional low power TV stations. KUNA LP, a Telemundo affiliate, launched in 1997. In 1998, NPG entered into a local marketing agreement to run KDFX LP, the low power Fox affiliate in Palm Springs; it started that station's first local newscast. A local affiliate of The WB followed in 2000. In 2012, NPG bought KPSP CD, the local CBS affiliate. In 2013, KESQ TV moved into a new state of the art studio in Thousand Palms. While in the later years under Fitts, KESQ had briefly run a radio station (920 AM), it returned to the field again when 1400 AM, previously KUNA, was bought by the station and flipped to sports as KESQ at the end of 1997. In the late 1990s, KESQ TV flirted with another kind of expansion. In 1996, the station received FCC approval to move its transmitter to a spot in the San Jacinto Mountains, which would have increased its coverage area to include much of western Riverside County and San Bernardino County. Riverside County was looking for a station to increase coverage of the local area beyond what Los Angeles stations offered. However, the problem posed a puzzle to the station. The expanded coverage would be entirely in the Los Angeles television market, and ABC threatened KESQ with disaffiliation were the move to come to fruition and cut into the market of its KABC TV. The local chapter of the Sierra Club also objected to the site on environmental grounds; these two challenges doomed the proposal. The station shut down its analog signal on June 12, 2009, as part of the digital television transition in the United States.

KESQ has generally had the highest rated local news department in the market, competing against KMIR, since the 1980s. In addition to programs simulcast on KESQ and KPSP, the station airs morning and 10 p. m. newscasts for KDFX CD, started in 1999, and Spanish language news airing on KUNA LD. In 2018, KPSP's separate local news brand was dropped, and KPSP began simulcasting existing KESQ newscasts.