The new channel 30

After four years, Equity Broadcasting has pulled the plug on its KQOK-TV, an independent station licensed to Shawnee which never quite caught on with its mix of jewelry sales and religious programming. Back in May, Equity signed a deal to transfer the station license to Oklahoma City-based Tyler Media, which operates four radio stations here; Tyler didn't announce at the time what they planned to do with a television license.

Now they have. The call letters are changing to KTUZ-TV, which matches their Spanish-language KTUZ-FM, and the station will be affiliated with NBC's Telemundo network, the second-largest Spanish-language TV service and one which hasn't been seen on the air or on basic cable in this market before. (Rival Univision has no local affiliate but has had a continuous presence on cable.)

Equity, during the time it owned the channel 30 facility, worked diligently to get the station picked up on area cable feeds, and if I understand FCC rules, Tyler doesn't have to renegotiate with cable carriers until existing contracts run out; they'll automatically take over the existing channel (on Cox systems, it's channel 5).

With channel 30 comes the license for a digital-TV facility, which will operate on channel 29.

Posted at 4:11 PM to Overmodulation