KBLR (TV)


KBLR, virtual channel 39, is a Telemundo owned-and-operated television station serving Las Vegas, Nevada, United States that is licensed to the nearby unincorporated community of Paradise. The station is owned by the Telemundo Station Group subsidiary of NBCUniversal. KBLR's studios are located on Fremont Street in downtown Las Vegas, and its transmitter is located on Black Mountain near Henderson.

History

The station was founded in 1988 by Glenn Rose, an entrepreneur who found early success as a franchisee in Southern California of Nutrisystem and used the wealth from that effort to found KBLR, a station whose call letters were inspired by the initials of his wife. During its first two years of operation, it mainly carried ethnic programming for several underserved audiences in the area, including African-American and Asian-American audiences, though it found more strength programming for the area's surging Hispanic audience. The station also carried second-run programming such as and public domain B movies.
In 1993, Rose sold the station to a partnership known as Summit Media. Scott Gentry would build the station from its early roots into the first full-power Spanish-language television station in Las Vegas, eventually taking on a Telemundo affiliation as time went on.

Sale to NBC

On February 23, 2005, NBC bought Telemundo affiliate KBLR from Summit American for $32.1 million.
The sale was completed on May 24, 2005.
In August 2008, KBLR confirmed reports from the Las Vegas Sun and announced at the city council meeting that its studio facility would be moving to Neonopolis on Fremont Street, which is part of the Fremont Street Experience. The station's studios was first occupied on January 20 with full completion on February 22, 2009. KBLR began broadcast operations from the new facility that day at 4:45 a.m.
The station previously had a repeater in Reno, Nevada, K52FF ; this station has since gone dark, and its license canceled.
As a result of the sale to NBCUniversal, KBLR is the only network owned-and-operated station in the Las Vegas media market.

Digital television

Digital channels

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:
ChannelVideoAspectPSIP Short NameProgramming
39.11080iKBLR-HDMain KBLR programming / Telemundo
39.2480iTelExTeleXitos
39.3480iLocalXLx
39.4480i16:9COZICozi TV

Analog-to-digital conversion

KBLR shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 39, 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 40 until August 22, 2018, at which point it was licensed to move to channel 20. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 39.

News operation

As the first full power Spanish station in Las Vegas, the station launched local news, at first at 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. during the week and then with weekend news.
As part of budget cuts at NBCUniversal, all Telemundo newscast production was shifted to the news hub in Dallas in 2007. In late 2010, most Telemundo stations restored locally produced news, but KBLR's newscasts continued to be produced elsewhere, this time to KTAZ in Phoenix, which utilized Las Vegas-area reporters and Phoenix-based anchor talent. The 6 p.m. program was presented live, while the 11 p.m. broadcast was pre-taped.
On June 30, 2014, KBLR debuted locally produced 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. newscasts, hiring more than a dozen new staffers including anchor Beatriz Moncayo and weather presenter Leticia Castro. The newscast was produced utilizing the technical resources of NBC affiliate KSNV, owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group.