Early years
The New Mexico Media Co., a group of Santa Fe businessmen backed by California industrialist John J. Pollon,[1] 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).[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.[3]
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.[4][5]
Channel 2 came to the air on October 31, 1983[6]—a day later than announced,[7] prompting the station to apologize on local radio stations and claim it was "a day late but ... not a single program short"[8]—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;[9] 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.[10][11]
In October 1984, a California-based investor group bought into KSAF-TV.[12] 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.[13][14]
The station filed for bankruptcy in August 1987, citing $11 million in assets but $15 million in liabilities.[15] Coronado Communications Company, a subsidiary of the Las Vegas–based Sunbelt Communications Company, purchased channel 2 for $3 million in early 1988.[16] 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.[17] Coronado also laid off 17 staffers to cut back to the "bare bones" necessary for operation.[18]
Coronado made its own repositioning of channel 2 in 1989, changing the call letters to KKTO-TV.[19]
Merger with KGSW-TV and Fox era
By mid-1992, KKTO-TV was economically struggling: Coronado had lost $6.6 million in its ownership of the station, and it warned that it could not continue to operate KKTO-TV much longer.[20] That July, the Providence Journal Company (ProJo)—owners of KGSW-TV (channel 14), New Mexico's Fox affiliate—reached a deal to purchase KKTO from Coronado. The deal was made with the express purpose of moving the Fox affiliation and channel 14 programming to the VHF station, which in turn would move its transmitter to Sandia Crest in a $1 million upgrade.[21][22] ProJo immediately took control of KKTO under a local marketing agreement, firing its 18 staff and rehiring 10.
Programming from KKTO ceased at midnight on September 6, 1992.[23] That same week, the Associated Press news agency had sued the station for $78,700 in unpaid wire service bills.[24]
The Telemundo era
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.[32] 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.[33]
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
