KMEX-DT - History

History

KMEX-TV first began broadcasting on September 30, 1962 as a Spanish-language television station. In the late 1960s, KMEX broadcast "Escuela," a four-times-per-week program that taught basic English to viewers of all nationalities. Ginger Cory, a Los Angeles school district teacher, was the host. Students mailed written exercises to her for grading. Many in southern California's non-English speaking community came to consider Ms. Cory a friend and counselor.

On June 12, 2009 at 11:59 pm, after transmitting some past KMEX broadcasts from 1962 onward and a brief countdown to "La Era Digital", KMEX discontinued its analog TV broadcasts and became a digital-only station. Following the analog-to-digital transition, KMEX moved its digital signal back to channel 34. Digital channel 35, currently used by KMEX-DT will be the final digital channel assignment for KRCA-DT. KRCA is required to abandon its pre-transition digital channel 68, as it lies outside of the post transition core channels 2 through 51.

As of 2010, KMEX has been transmitting its programming in HD. In June 2010, they transmitted the 2010 FIFA World Cup making it the first time ever that soccer games were transmitted in HD on this channel. Recently, they started to broadcast their newscasts in HD for the first time.

On December 5, 2010, KMEX-DT has begun Mobile DTV broadcasts of its own signal, and of sister station KFTR-DT. KMEX-DT has two Mobile DTV feeds, one of subchannel 34.1, labelled "KMEX-MH1", and of sister station KFTR-DT 46.1, labelled "KFTR-MH2", broadcasting at 3.67 Mbit/s. This is the highest bitrate of any Los Angeles television station mobile feed.