KUVI

KUVI-TV

KUVI-TV is a television station serving Bakersfield, California. It is a MyNetworkTV affiliate, and transmits on UHF channel 45. It is the only English-language TV station owned by leading Spanish-language broadcaster, Univision. The station's transmitter is located on Mount Adelaide.

History

The station was granted its broadcast license on May 11 1987 as KDOB-TV, but would not begin regular broadcasts until December 1988. Owned by Dorothy Owens, the station would later be sold to her brother Buck (1929-2006), and change its call letters to KUZZ-TV on March 18 1991. In 1997, Buck Owens sold the station to Univision, and on October 17 1997, the station once again changed its call letters, this time to KUVI. One last change to the call letters came on January 1, 2004, the station chose to add the "-TV" suffix to the letters, hence the current callsign KUVI-TV.

The station became a charter affiliate of UPN in January 1995, and remained with that network for its entire existence.

KUVI at first was tentatively awaiting to affiliate with The CW Television Network , but instead it was announced on June 15, 2006 that it would affiliate with My Network TV, despite the fact that owner Univision was sold to a group led by children's television mogul Haim Saban -- founder of Saban Entertainment and former co-owner of Fox Family Channel with News Corporation before it became ABC-owned ABC Family Channel. Providence Equity Partners, one of the private equity firms which are part of the Saban-led consortium, acquired a 19 percent stake in Univision at that time.

The CW affiliation ended up on KFWB, now officially called KGET-DT2, as of September 18, 2006.

On April 20, 2007, Clear Channel entered into an agreement to sell its entire television stations group (which included KGET) to Newport Television, a broadcasting holding company controlled by Providence Equity Partners. However, with only four full-power stations, Bakersfield does not have enough to legally support a co-owned duopoly operation. As a result, the Federal Communications Commission granted conditional approval of the deal, provided that Providence Equity Partners divest either KGET or its stake in Univision as soon as the sale was finalized. That occurred on March 14, 2008. As it turned out, it was KGET which was divested by Newport Television to High Plains Broadcasting; however, Newport continues to manage that station through a joint sales agreement (JSA).