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| City | Lake Dallas, Texas |
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| History | |
First air date | March 18, 1997 (27 years ago) (1997-03-18) |
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Call sign meaning | Azteca América Dallas (former affiliation) |
| Technical information[2] | |
Licensing authority | FCC |
| Facility ID | 17433 |
| ERP | 1,000kW |
| HAAT | 510 m (1,673 ft) |
| Transmitter coordinates | 32°35′15″N96°58′0″W / 32.58750°N 96.96667°W /32.58750; -96.96667 |
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KAZD (channel 55) is atelevision station licensed toLake Dallas, Texas, United States, serving theDallas–Fort Worth metroplex with a simulcast ofSpectrum News 1. Owned byWeigel Broadcasting, KAZD maintains offices on McKinney Avenue indowntown Dallas, and its transmitter is located south of Belt Line Road inCedar Hill.
The UHF channel 55 allocation in theDallas–Fort Worth market was formerly occupied by KLDT (standing for either "Lake Dallas, Texas" or "Lake Dallas Television"), which signed on the air onDecember 25, 1990. The station was founded as ajoint venture between Opal Thornton and Johnson Broadcasting (owned by businessman Doug Johnson). The station's programming originally consisted ofChristian-orientedmusic videos, before converting to a generalreligious format. The station's original transmitter site was located inLewisville.
Thornton, unable to find programming resources and operating capital, attempted to add Dallas-based preacherRobert Tilton as a partner, with KLDT to serve as the flagship television outlet for his "Word of Faith" ministry. However, Tilton's poor record with theFederal Communications Commission (FCC) prevented this, and the request was dropped by 1991 amidst an exposé on Tilton and other televangelists that aired on theABCnewsmagazinePrimetime Live. KLDT was noted for a hefty $15,500 fine that was imposed by the FCC in 1995 for failing to adequately staff its main studio, for not making its public inspection file freely available, and for other filing violations.[3] The station lost its license in the mid-1990s.
The current channel 55 was founded on March 18, 1997, as KAVB, with the granting of the original construction permit to Johnson Broadcasting of Dallas, LLC. The application was mutually exclusive with the license renewal application of the first KLDT station,[4] but the FCC granted the Johnson Broadcasting application and did not renew the license of the previous station.
Shortly after its sign-on, the station quickly changed its call letters to KLDT. Originally served as an affiliate of the America's Collectibles Networkhome shopping service (nowJewelry Television), the station soon relegated shopping programming to the nighttime hours, and began broadcastingsyndicated classic television series andmovies, as well asbusiness news programming fromBloomberg Television, collegiate sporting events syndicated byESPN Plus,Lone Star Parkhorse racing, andHouston AstrosMajor League Baseball games simulcast fromsister station KNWS-TV (nowKYAZ) inHouston. During this time, the station adopted the slogan "TV55 Has the Shows You Know".
By 2000, KLDT quietly dropped most of its entertainment programming in favor ofinfomercials, or shopping programming from ACN. However, that same year, the station received a much needed shot in the arm. KLDT subsequently became theflagship station of theHispanic Television Network, which aired programming targeted towards Hispanic viewers fromMexico. Due to several missteps, the network ceased operations in 2003 and the station again broadcast home shopping programs, affiliating withShopNBC.[citation needed]
By this time, most of the station's sports programming had moved to formerTelemundo affiliateKFWD (channel 52), which became a general entertainmentindependent in January 2002. In2005, KLDT became the temporary broadcaster of theFC DallasMajor League Soccer team, whose game telecasts also eventually moved to KFWD. The station eventually dropped its ShopNBC affiliation and began to fill its empty timeslots with infomercials and religious programming. Two weeks prior to shutting down its analog signal, KLDT became an affiliate ofGems TV. In 2008, KLDT reverted to an infomercial format, this time through theOnTV4U and WizeBuys networks; on November 2, 2009, KLDT re-affiliated with ShopNBC.
Johnson Broadcasting filed forChapter 11 bankruptcy protection in October 2008. One year later, impatient creditors asked the bankruptcy court to allow the sale of KLDT and KNWS. Una Vez Más Holdings, LLCemerged as the leading bidder.[5] The sale to Una Vez Más was approved by the bankruptcy court on December 29, 2009,[6] and finally received FCC approval on September 27, 2010, after the FCC rejected a petition to deny the sale made by theSpanish Broadcasting System.[7] On September 30, 2010, Una Vez Mas requested a call sign change to KAZD in order reflect its intended affiliation withAzteca América.[8] Plans for KLDT had originally called for the station to carry theRetro Television Network to its seconddigital subchannel (54.2),[9] but due to the bankruptcy filing, those plans were immediately scrapped.
The station broadcast all of its program audio on asecond audio program feed until February 2009. In April 2010, KLDT became an affiliate of the Liquidation Channel (nowShop LC). With the exception of two religious programs and one children's program, the majority of KLDT's programming consisted of infomercials and the Liquidation Channel feed. However, in mid-November 2010. KLDT switched to infomercials (although it continued to carry religious programming). Throughout the years, KLDT had suffered several technical setbacks, almost to the point where they had to go off the air for several hours. The station formally changed its call letters to KAZD on December 30, 2010, and became an affiliate of Azteca América at 9 p.m. on that date.
In 2014, Una Vez Mas' TV assets (including KAZD) were then sold to Northstar Media,LLC. In turn,HC2 Holdings acquired Northstar Media in addition to Azteca América on November 29, 2017, making KAZD an Azteca owned-and-operated station.[10]
On September 14, 2020, Weigel Broadcasting announced that it would buy three of HC2's TV properties (including KAZD and its longtime Houston sister KYAZ) as well as a low-power station. The sale was consummated on December 29, making this the fourth ownership change in 11 years and Weigel's first entry into the Dallas–Fort Worth market.[11][12] KAZD and KYAZ became MeTV owned-and-operated stations on March 29, 2021. On May 14, 2021,Decades was added to the DT2 subchannel, moved fromKDFW-DT2. On September 27, 2021, MeTV's secondary network, MeTV Plus, launched on KAZD-DT4 as well as sister station KYAZ-DT2.
On July 15, 2022, a simulcast of Spectrum News 1 Dallas/Fort Worth was added to KAZD-DT1, with MeTV moving to KAZD-DT2 and Decades moving to KAZD-DT6. Previously, Spectrum News 1 Dallas/Fort Worth was only available to subscribers of theSpectrum cable service owned and operated byCharter Communications. With the local station having must-carry status on competing providers, Spectrum News 1 Dallas/Fort Worth became the second Spectrum News channel to be available to systems other than Spectrum.
The station's signal ismultiplexed:
| Channel | Res. | Aspect | Short name | Programming |
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| 55.1 | 720p | 16:9 | News1 | Simulcast ofSpectrum News 1 |
| 55.2 | MeTV | MeTV | ||
| 55.3 | TOONS | MeTV Toons[14] | ||
| 55.4 | 480i | MeTV+ | MeTV+ | |
| 55.5 | STORY | Story Television | ||
| 55.6 | CATCHY | Catchy Comedy |
On May 22, 2006, KAZD—as KLDT—signed on its digital signal on UHF channel 54.[15] This would be key, asQualcomm, which was launching its ill-fatedMediaFLO service on 716–722 MHz (the frequency corresponding to UHF channel 55), would request them to stop using channel 55. On November 17, 2006, the Federal Communications Commission gave permission for KLDT to shut off its analog transmitter facilities and "flash-cut" to its final digital channel at the end of thedigital transition period.[16]
KLDT shut down its analog signal, overUHF channel 55, on January 1, 2007.[17] The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 54 in the interim, becoming the first station in the market to broadcast exclusively in digital.[18] On June 12, 2009, KLDT relocated its digital signal to UHF channel 39 after KXTX shut down its analog signal on that channel, usingvirtual channel 54 from 2007 to 2010; in December 2010, what is now KAZD changed its virtual channel to 55. UHF TV channels 52 through 69 were removed from television broadcast use as a part of the transition from analog to digital.
