KKRZ

**KKRZ** (channel 58) is a television station in Portland, Oregon, United States, serving as the West Coast flagship of the RKO Television Network. It is owned by the ACME Television Stations Group, which also owns the ACME flagship KUXP-TV (channel 30) in Vancouver, Washington; it is a sister channel of the regional sports network ACME Sports Northwest. The four outlets share studios in downtown Portland's Park Avenue West Tower on Southwest 9th Avenue, while KKRZ's transmitter is located in the city's Sylvan-Highlands neighborhood.

## History

The station's original transmitter was situated outside Molalla when it first went on air on May 8, 1989, with the call letter **KKEX**. The station's original schedule was predominately made up of religious programming. Dove Broadcasting initially ran it, and local productions included a talk show modeled after *Nite Line*.

Dove struggled to develop a support base for KKEX despite having a long history in Christian television (its flagship has been on the air since 1972). The station stopped broadcasting in May 1990. According to station insiders, the Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart scandals reportedly caused potential supporters to think twice.

A month later, KKEX resumed broadcasting. On July 17, 1991, Dove sold KKEX to Eagle Broadcasting. On February 11, 1992, the call letters were changed to **KQFM**, and the station was relaunched as "Oregon's New Eagle 58" and became a family entertainment independent. KQFM went dark again on October 12, citing the need to focus on shifting its operation from Salem to Beaverton. The station would return for only a few years, despite being scheduled for a four-week hiatus. Willamette Valley Broadcasting, Ltd., the licensee, had been under receivership by late 1993.

At the end of 1993, the receiver filed paperwork to sell KQFM to Channel 58, Inc. Channel 58, Inc., led by Victor Ives, relocated all operations to Portland and secured an affiliation with the Spanish network Univision. The station resumed broadcasting in the summer of 1994, airing a variety of infomercials, public domain movies, and brokered shows during the overnight hours; on Labor Day, the station expanded to 24-hour broadcasting, and on October 2, 1995, it adopted the call letters **KPUN**, reflecting its new affiliation.

KPUN improved its on-air presentation and schedule after joining the Univision family. After acquiring Entravision Communications, it expanded. It established a low-power relay KPUN-LP in Downtown Portland to deal with signal problems initially on channel four but now on channel 5. KPUN had established itself as a solid rival to non-Big Three stations KPRT (channel 11 and KUXP) by the turn of the millennium.

### Gray ownership

Entravision agreed to sell KPUN to Gray Communication Systems (now Gray Television) for $70 million on December 30, 2002. Gray completed the deal on March 21, 2003. The Dorado Media Group purchased KUXP back in 2000 and incorporated both that station's UPN affiliation and news operation into KPRT, which contributed to the continued growth of KPUN.

When Univision declined to renew its affiliation with KPUN, a void in the market for a Spanish-language station resulted. On October 19, 2012, KPUN’s partnership concluded with Univision and switched to becoming an affiliate of the competing Spanish-language network Telemundo. According to a report, they planned to establish an owned-and-operated news organization in preparation for taking over the affiliation.

Through a 16-station group affiliation agreement with Gray, KPUN was announced as Portland's Telemundo affiliate. KPUN changed its call letters to the current **KKRZ** on September 16, 2016.

### Acquisition by the ACME Television Stations Group

To make channel 58 an owned-and-operated station, NBCUniversal's Telemundo Station Group announced on September 19, 2019, that it would acquire Gray's ten weaker affiliated Telemundo stations. On August 12, 2020, Gray Television agreed to pay NBCUniversal $5.5 billion for its Telemundo stations. The transaction was finished on July 31, 2021. Gray spun off two stations during the process.

However, an agreement was reached on June 17, 2022, and NBCUniversal chose to sell KKRZ to the Dorado Media Group for $35 million rather than maintain the station and abandon plans for the anticipated Telemundo-owned-and-operated station. The first de facto television station triopoly in the Portland market was briefly formed after KKRZ joined KPRT and KUXP.

On September 2, 2022, the Dorado Media Group declared that it would transfer KKRZ to the ACME Television Stations Group subsidiary as part of a divestiture of its local television stations division. It was a part of Dorado's efforts to divest stations in markets where a local station and network O&O would overlap to address issues with the national ownership cap and to adhere to local ownership regulations set by the FCC that prohibit it from owning two or more stations in the same market. Following the divestiture's conclusion, KKRZ was relaunched as a MyNetworkTV affiliate that ACME has run since it changed KUXP into its flagship station for the ACME network in June 2016.

## Programming

In addition to MyNetworkTV, KKRZ broadcasts syndicated shows such as *Dish Nation, Divorce Court, The Big Bang Theory, Modern Family, and TMZ on TV.*

If Channel 30 cannot air ACME network programs commonly seen on KUXP due to extended breaking news coverage, conflicts with ACME Sports event telecasts, or locally produced special programming on that station, KKRZ may air them as time allows.

### Newscasts

After being purchased by ACME, KUXP started creating a primetime newscast for KUXP-DT4, My 30 News, at 10. (now called Nightbeat: Primetime at 10). MyTV30 started airing newscasts produced by ACME during all three hours of weeknight prime time on December 2, 2019, pushing MyNetworkTV programming to the overnight hours.

### Sports programming

In the 1990-91 season, KKRZ acquired the broadcast rights to Portland Trail Blazers games. Initially, the station aired up to 70 preseason and regular season games per season, with some being broadcast on tape delay beginning in the late 1990s. This lasted until Channel 58 lost the Blazer rights after the station became a Univision affiliate in the 1993 season.

KKRZ restored its local broadcast partnership with the Portland Trail Blazers in 2022 due to its association with ACME Sports Northwest; broadcasting live preseason games and team-focused shows.

## Technical information

### Subchannels

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:

 **58.2** | 480i
 **58.3** | Charge!

### Analog-to-digital conversion

On February 17, 2009, the day that full-power television stations in the United States were required by law to switch from analog to digital broadcasts, KKRZ shut down its analog signal over UHF channel 58. The station chose to convert on the original deadline despite the deadline being pushed back to June 12, 2009. The station's pre-transition UHF channel 23 still carried the station's digital signal. The station's former UHF analog channel 58, one of the high band UHF channels (52-69) that were eliminated from broadcasting use as a result of the transition, is displayed as the station's virtual channel by digital television receivers through the use of PSIP.