Azteca America Moves to Cox Limited Basic (Jan 23, 2005)

Cox Cable has announced in November that it will be moving Azteca America, a U.S.-based Spanish language broadcast network, from its digital lineup to its limited basic lineup available for all paying subscribers.

KGTV 10 will be partnering with KZDF-LP channel 41, a low power station out of North County and already broadcasting Azteca America programming into North County, and rebrand the call letters of the station as KZSD-LP.

The channel will sign on Cox and Time Warner cable channel 15 on January 25 and feature nightly news from Mexico. Coming later in 2006, a KGTV-produced local Spanish newscast will be added.

KZSD-LP will displace KGTV's News Channel 15 from its longtime slot. NC15 will move to channel 110 as "10 News Channel" on the Cox digital tier and 210 on Time Warner digital.

KZSD goes by the moniker Azteca America San Diego and is linked from the 10news.com website at http://www.10news.com/azteca/index.html.

Derek Dalton, the VP/GM of KGTV 10, says that the McGraw-Hill Broadcasting station has acquired the Azteca America San Diego affilliate recently from owner/seller Laurie Mintz to become a second local broadcast channel to be operated from the KGTV building.

KGTV becomes the fourth major San Diego-based broadcaster to operate a second TV channel. Earlier this year, the owner of KNSD 7/39 bought a low-power channel 43 operating in the South County part and is broadcasting a local Spanish-language variety format along with weekend Padres games and programming from NBC-owned KWHY among other sources. Bay City Television, operator of the Mexico-owned XETV 6, is also operating another Mexico-owned XHUPN 13/49 since about 2002 and often runs programs seen on Fox 6 there as well. KBNT 17 is owned by Entravision, which operates the Mexican-owned XHAS 33 out ot Tijuana; Channel 17 airs Univision programming and XHAS airs Telemundo programming, both U.S.-based Spanish language networks.

Annotations Jan 23, 2006.

In the past 25 years, the San Diego-Tijuana area has gone from just one television station featuring Spanish language programming, a part-time XEWT 12 that one ran from 4pm-MID, to over a dozen scattered all over the San Diego-Tijuana area. The channel lineup for Spanish-language television as of 2006:

TV Channel: 3

TV Channel: 9

TV Channel: 12

TV Channel: 17

Univision

TV Channel: 21

TV Channel: 27

TV Channel: 29

TV Channel: 33

Telemundo

TV Channel: 36

TeleFutura

TV Channel: 41

Azteca America

TV Channel: 43

TV Channel: 45

TV Channel: 46

Telemundo

TV Channel: 49

Univision

TV Channel: 57

TV Channel: 61

TV Channel: 62

Univision