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XETV-TDT

XETV-TDT (channels 6 and 16) is a television station located in Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico, broadcasting programs from Canal 5 and NU9VE. Its terrestrial signal also covers the San Diego area across the Mexico–United States border. The station is owned by Grupo Televisa, and its technical operations and transmitter facilities are located at Mount San Antonio in Tijuana.

From its initial sign-on in 1953 until 2017, XETV broadcast English-language programming and operated business offices, and later a studio and newsroom, in San Diego. The station's American operations were managed by Bay City Television, a California-based corporation owned by Televisa. It was most recently an affiliate of The CW. XETV ceased its San Diego operations on May 31, 2017; The CW moved its San Diego affiliation from XETV's main channel to a subchannel of KFMB-TV (channel 8.2) the following day; XETV's cable channel 6 was transitioned to KFMB-DT2 on the same date.

Tijuana was the first city outside of Mexico City to receive a television license. A license to broadcast on channel 6 was granted to Jorge I. Rivera for XEAC-TV. Broadcasts were initially scheduled to start in November 1952, becoming the second cross-border television station, after XELD-TV.

XETV came into existence because of a technical quirk affecting stations in San Diego and Los Angeles. Even after the Federal Communications Commission's Sixth Report and Order lifted a four-year-long freeze on awarding television construction permits in 1952, signing on a third television station in the San Diego market proved difficult. While San Diego and Los Angeles are not close enough that one city's stations can be seen clearly over the air in the other, the unique geography of Southern California results in tropospheric propagation. This phenomenon makes co-channel interference a significant enough problem that the two cities must share the VHF band.[citation needed]

By 1952, San Diego (assigned channels 8 and 10) and Los Angeles (assigned channels 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11 and 13) already had all but three channels on the VHF band covered. Channel 3 initially had been deemed unusable as a signal because KEYT-TV in Santa Barbara would travel in a straight line across the Pacific Ocean (it would ultimately be allocated to Tijuana Canal Once outlet XHCPDE-TDT). San Diego's first two television stations, KFMB-TV (channel 8) and KFSD-TV (channel 10, now KGTV), which were respectively affiliated with CBS and NBC, were among the last construction permits issued before the FCC's freeze on new television station licenses went into effect. The UHF band, introduced by the FCC after the freeze, was not seen as a viable option; television set makers were not required to include UHF tuners until 1964 as a result of the passage of the All-Channel Receiver Act. Additionally, several portions of San Diego County are very mountainous, and UHF signals do not carry very well across rugged terrain.[citation needed]

Complicating matters, the Mexican authorities had allocated two VHF channels to neighboring Tijuana – channels 6 and 12. Since these were the last two VHF channels left in the area, the FCC did not accept any new construction permits from San Diego as a courtesy to Mexican authorities. One of the frequencies, channel 6, had originally been assigned to San Diego before the freeze; it was reassigned to Mexico as a result of the Sixth Report and Order.

Although San Diego was large enough to support three television stations, it soon became obvious that the only way to get a third VHF station on the air would be to use one of Tijuana's allocations. The Azcárraga family, owners of Telesistema Mexicano (the forerunner of Televisa), quickly snapped up the concession for channel 6, and signed XETV on the air on April 29, 1953. It is the San Diego area's second-oldest television station after KFMB-TV, which began operations on May 16, 1949.

At its launch, XETV was an independent station, broadcasting programs in both English and Spanish from its studio facilities in Tijuana. Channel 6 also established a business office on Park Boulevard in the University Heights section of San Diego, which handled sales accounts from north of the border. The Azcárragas chose to focus XETV toward San Diego and its English-speaking audience because there were more households in that side of the market that had television sets at the time than there were in Tijuana, which did not get its own all-Spanish station until 1960 when the Azcárragas signed on sister station XEWT-TV (channel 12). Owing to its initial bilingual, bi-national audience, XETV billed itself as "The International Station" during its early years.

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TV station from Tijuana, Mexico, visible in San Diego, California
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