KFPH-DT - History

History

Station KFPH-DT began as an original construction permit granted to Minority Television of Flagstaff, Inc. on October 25, 1984. The station was to transmit from Mount Elden north of the city. However, the next year, the permit was sold to Michael C. Gelfand, M.D. and Del Ray Television Company, Inc., and after several permit extensions and expired permits, Del Ray licensed the station on March 11, 1992 with call letters KKTM. The station's transmitter was located on Mormon Mountain, about 20 miles (30 km) south of Flagstaff, having been granted permission to move there in 1989. KKTM was an independent station that even produced its own newscast covering Flagstaff at one point, albeit with a very low budget and production standards that rivaled Public-access television.

The station changed its call letters to KWBF after becoming a WB affiliate in 1995, but the affiliation was short-lived, as Channel 13 of Flagstaff, Inc., part of Christian Networks, Inc., acquired the station in 1996, with financing assistance from Paxson Communications (now ION Media Networks). Also part of the deal was a time brokerage agreement, under which Paxson Communications would provide programming for the station, and an option for Paxson to acquire the station outright. Paxson exercised that option several months later, and in July 1996, bought the station for its new Infomall Television Network (inTV) service. In 1998, the inTV service was replaced by the new PAX TV Network (now ION Television) and the station's call letters were changed to KBPX to reflect the new network. It was the first PAX TV station in Arizona. KBPX was originally to be the full-service PAX TV outlet, with an LPTV repeater in Phoenix, but in 2001, when Paxson Communications received an allocation for and built KPPX, a full-service PAX TV station licensed to Tolleson, Arizona, they sold KBPX to Equity Broadcasting, who immediately changed the call letters to KDUO and replaced PAX programming with ACN home shopping.

In 2002, Univision bought the station and changed its call letters once again, this time to KFPH, to reflect the station's new programming as part of Univision's new TeleFutura network. The -TV suffix was added to the callsign in 2004; after the DTV transition in 2009, the station elected to retain the -DT suffix for its digital service.

KFPH-TV shut down its analog channel 13 transmitter on September 18, 2008, citing a lack of space at its transmitter site to accommodate the analog transmitter, its former digital channel 27 transmitter, and the digital channel 13 transmitter that it has used since the DTV transition in 2009; additionally, winter weather conditions rendered it impossible to perform work during the last 90 days before the conclusion of the analog-to-digital transition.