KVIA-TV

KVIA-TV (channel 7) is a television station in El Paso, Texas, United States, affiliated with ABC and The CW. Owned by the News-Press & Gazette Company, the station maintains studios on Rio Bravo Street in northwest El Paso and a transmitter atop the Franklin Mountains within the El Paso city limits.

After an earlier permittee opted not to build, El Paso's third commercial television station began in 1956 as KILT on channel 13, the only television station built from the ground up by Gordon McLendon. It was co-owned with radio station KELP (920 AM) and became known as KELP-TV in 1957 when McLendon sold his El Paso broadcast holdings. The call sign changed to KVIA-TV in 1976 when Marsh Media acquired the station. To improve ratings, Marsh opted to duplicate the successful formula of its KVII-TV in Amarillo; in 1981, the station moved from channel 13 to channel 7 in a switch with local public station KCOS. News-Press & Gazette Company acquired KVIA-TV in 1995, marking its return to the television stations business.

Interest in channel 13—the originally authorized third commercial channel in El Paso—dated to the opening of television station applications after the end of the four-year freeze imposed by the Federal Communications Commission in 1952. El Paso radio station KEPO applied for a channel 13 construction permit in July 1952 and received it in October. KEPO-TV would have been the third television station on air in El Paso after KROD-TV (channel 4, now KDBC-TV) and KTSM-TV (channel 9). An antenna atop the Franklin Mountains was announced, as was affiliation with ABC (to match KEPO radio) and the ordering of equipment, but KEPO management announced on December 23, 1953, that they had surrendered the permit and abandoned their television station plans. Station president Miller Robertson stated, "After a thorough analysis of the TV market here, and considering that two other TV stations already are in operation, we have definitely decided that a third TV station for El Paso is not feasible at this time."

Within days of KEPO's announcement, another El Paso radio station immediately announced its interest in joining the television fray. KELP (920 AM) announced on January 2, 1954, that they would apply for channel 13. For the Trinity Broadcasting Corporation, a company owned by broadcaster Gordon McLendon, it was the company's second proposed station, as the firm held a construction permit for the never-built KLIF-TV in Dallas. Even though KELP was an English-language radio station, it was announced that the new TV station would broadcast entirely in Spanish, which would have made KELP-TV the first Spanish-language television station in the United States.

The FCC awarded Trinity the construction permit on March 18, 1954. However, activity was slowed down when McLendon petitioned the FCC to switch his station to channel 7, which had been reserved for educational use, so as to gain a more competitive dial position; El Paso city schools and Texas Western College supported the proposal. This proposal was declined by the FCC in January 1955.

Construction activity moved apace on the station, which changed call signs from KELP-TV to KOKE (in September 1954) and then KILT (in 1956), and KILT began broadcasting on September 1, 1956, as an English-language station. This made it the only television station built from the ground up by McLendon, whose only other startup venture was KLIF radio in Dallas. Two months passed before the station affiliated with ABC in early November.

In March 1957, McLendon sold KELP and KILT to KELP Television Corporation, whose owners—Joseph Harris and Norman Alexander—were the same as KXLY-AM-TV in Spokane, Washington, for $750,000. On May 1, the new owners restored the KELP-TV call sign to channel 13 as part of their takeover. (The KILT call letters were retained by McLendon and placed on a radio station in Houston that same month.) KELP Television moved the transmitter from its original in-town site, with the studios at 4530 Delta, to the Franklin Mountains in 1960.

After six months of negotiations, Harris and Alexander announced the sale of KELP radio and television to John B. Walton in September 1965. Walton broke ground that May on a new studio complex in the Executive Park area for the KELP stations, which would contain new color equipment for the TV station. The new facilities, opened in April 1967, included an outdoor studio complete with a swimming pool and fountain. The facility was expanded again in 1973.