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| City | Paradise, Nevada |
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| Programming | |
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| History | |
| Founded | 1988 (1988) |
First air date | April 20, 1989 (1989-04-20) |
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Call sign meaning | Initials of wife of station founder Glenn Rose |
| Technical information[1] | |
Licensing authority | FCC |
| Facility ID | 63768 |
| ERP | 1,000kW |
| HAAT | 371 m (1,217 ft) |
| Transmitter coordinates | 36°0′34.43″N115°0′23″W / 36.0095639°N 115.00639°W /36.0095639; -115.00639 (KBLR) |
| Links | |
Public license information | |
| Website | www |
KBLR (channel 39) is atelevision station licensed toParadise, Nevada, United States, broadcasting the Spanish languageTelemundo network to theLas Vegas area.Owned and operated byNBCUniversal'sTelemundo Station Group, KBLR maintains studios on Polaris Avenue in Las Vegas, and a transmitter on Black Mountain nearHenderson.
The station was founded in 1988 by Glenn Rose, an entrepreneur who found early success as afranchisee inSouthern California ofNutrisystem and used the wealth from that effort to found KBLR, a station whosecall letters were inspired by the initials of his wife.
During its first two years of operation, it aired a schedule heavy onpublic domain movies and TV shows,professional wrestling, and programs no other Las Vegas stations wanted to air. A lack of compelling programming and competition from three other independent stations, includingFox-affiliatedKVVU-TV, left KBLR unable to carve out a niche in the market. After a proposed sale to a company known as The Gaming Network fell through in December 1990, the station added programming fromChannel America, a service primarily used by low-power stations.[2]
After dropping much of its programming to carry the contractual minimum with Channel America and air primarily Christian programming in February 1991,[3] the station went dark on July 12, 1991.[4] The station then became the centerpiece of a proposal by Source Venture Capital to relaunch KBLR as a western superstation with content fromWillie Nelson's Outlaw Channel and purchased British series,[5] which was slated for an October 15 launch that was postponed several times and ultimately scrapped when Rose's investors would not go along with the deal.[6]
In 1993, Rose sold the station to a partnership known as Summit Media, headed by Scott Gentry, to be converted to the first full-powerSpanish-language television station in Las Vegas and a Telemundo affiliate. At the time, the only Spanish-language outlet in the area wasK27AF "KAFT-TV" (not to be confused withthe PBS station in Fayetteville, Arkansas), affiliated withUnivision.[7] The station resumed broadcasting on March 1, 1994.[8]
On February 23, 2005, NBC bought Telemundo affiliate KBLR from Summit Media for $32.1 million.[9][10] The sale was completed on May 24, 2005.[11]
In August 2008, KBLR confirmed reports from theLas Vegas Sun and announced at the city council meeting that its studio facility would be moving toNeonopolis on Fremont Street, which is part of theFremont Street Experience. The station's studios were 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 arepeater inReno, Nevada,K52FF (channel 52); 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.
Sometime in the late-2010s, the station moved its studios from Neonopolis to Polaris Avenue in Las Vegas.
As the first full-power Spanish station in Las Vegas, the station launched local news, at first at 6 p.m. and then 11 p.m. during the week and then with weekend news. Previously, in 1994, it had launched a dubbed repeat of the 5 p.m. newscast fromKLAS-TV at 6 p.m.[8]
As part of budget cuts at NBCUniversal, all Telemundo newscast production was shifted to the news hub inDallas in 2007. In late 2010, most Telemundo stations restored locally produced news, but KBLR's newscasts continued to be produced elsewhere, this time toKTAZ inPhoenix, 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.[12] The newscast was produced utilizing the technical resources ofNBC affiliateKSNV (channel 3), owned bySinclair Broadcast Group.[13]
The station's signal ismultiplexed:
| Channel | Res. | Aspect | Short name | Programming |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 39.1 | 1080i | 16:9 | KBLR-HD | Telemundo |
| 39.2 | 480i | TelEx | TeleXitos | |
| 39.3 | CRIMES | NBC True CRMZ | ||
| 39.4 | COZI | Cozi TV | ||
| 39.5 | Oxygen | Oxygen | ||
| 39.6 | Nosey | Nosey |
KBLR shut down its analog signal, overUHF channel 39, on June 12, 2009, the official date on which full-power television stations in the United Statestransitioned 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,[15] at which point it was licensed to move to channel 20.
Broadcast television stations by affiliation in the state ofNevada | ||
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Includes stations in out-of-state TV markets, but reaching a portion of Nevada | ||
| ABC | ||
| CBS | ||
| Fox | ||
| NBC | ||
| The CW | ||
| Ion Television | ||
| Independent | ||
| PBS | ||
| Religious | ||
| Spanish | ||
| Other stations | ||
| ATSC 3.0 | ||
