KVEA

KVEA (channel 52) is a television station licensed to Corona, California, United States, serving the Los Angeles area. It is the West Coast flagship station of the Spanish-language network Telemundo, owned and operated by NBCUniversal's Telemundo Station Group alongside NBC West Coast flagship KNBC (channel 4). The two stations share studios at the Brokaw News Center in the northwest corner of the Universal Studios Hollywood lot off Lankershim Boulevard in Universal City; KVEA's transmitter is located atop Mount Wilson.

Channel 52 was established as KMTW, an independent station owned by Kaiser Broadcasting, which became KBSC-TV in 1968. Kaiser explored several pay television systems to operate using the station, but none materialized until Oak Industries acquired the station and made it the first and most successful operation in ON TV, boasting as many as 400,000 subscribers at its zenith. As subscription television declined, Oak sold KBSC-TV in 1985 to a group that relaunched it as Spanish-language KVEA and was instrumental in the foundation of Telemundo.

On November 14, 1962, the Federal Communications Commission granted Kaiser Broadcasting, a division of Kaiser Industries, a construction permit for a new channel 52 television station to be licensed to Corona. The station, named KICB before construction, signed on as KMTW from studios and a transmitter on Mount Wilson on June 29, 1966.

Kaiser had developed a chain of independent television stations in large cities that generally lacked independent stations at the outset. The Kaiser independents in such cities as Detroit (WKBD-TV), Philadelphia (WKBS-TV), and Cleveland (WKBF-TV), for instance, were typically the first or second such non-network outlets in operation. Los Angeles presented a very different market with three network stations, four VHF independents already operating, and (with KMTW activated) four UHF stations. Kaiser knew it would need a different approach. Before signing on, it took an option on the Phonevision subscription television system developed by Zenith Electronics and licensed by Teco, gaining the right to use it in the Los Angeles market. However, Phonevision's ability to be used nationally and legal cases over subscription television in California had left the system unapproved by the time channel 52 started broadcasting. Instead, KMTW subsisted on public service films, travelogues, and other cheap fare.

On February 20, 1968, KMTW became KBSC-TV, representing its ownership (Kaiser Broadcasting) and region (Southern California). The Phonevision agreement expired in 1970, and the FCC gave approval the next year for Kaiser to begin using studios at 5746 Sunset Boulevard—Metromedia Square, home to KTTV.

The gulf between KBSC-TV and its sister stations grew wider. In August 1972, Kaiser transferred the licenses for five of its stations to a partnership with Field Communications, of which it would own 77.5 percent. KBSC-TV was held out of the joint venture because it was scheduled to be sold. Two months later, Kaiser announced it would seek to sell the station to the Pay Television Corporation in a transaction filed with the FCC in February 1973. The largest owner of Pay Television Corporation was Jean Marieanne McDonald. The application remained pending at the FCC for nearly two years; ultimately, the company opted to franchise its technology and not be a station owner, resulting in the purchase being canceled in February 1975.

In December 1975, Kaiser filed to sell KBSC-TV to Oak Broadcasting Systems, a joint venture of television equipment manufacturer Oak Industries and Jerry Perenchio. The $1.2 million transaction, which closed the next year, set the course for channel 52 to become the first station in their planned subscription television venture, as Oak moved the studios from Metromedia Square to a site on Grand Central Avenue in Glendale.

On April 1, 1977, 500 test subscribers in the San Fernando Valley became the first customers of ON TV, a subscription service broadcast over KBSC-TV that offered unedited, uninterrupted motion pictures, as well as limited slates of Los Angeles Dodgers, California Angels, Los Angeles Lakers and Los Angeles Kings games, during evening hours. It was the second subscription television system in operation, with Wometco Home Theater having launched in New York City the previous month. Japanese- and Korean-language programs that were seen on channel 52 under leased-time arrangements migrated to a new station, KSCI (channel 18), when it launched on June 30; this allowed ON TV to air during evening hours beginning at 8 p.m.