San Antonio, Texas United States |
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Branding | KENS 5 (general) KENS 5 Eyewitness News (newscasts) (callsign pronounced as a word, "KENS") |
Slogan |
Coverage You Can Count On; South Texas' #1 Newscast; San Antonio's News Leader |
Channels |
Digital: 39 (UHF) Virtual: 5 () |
Affiliations |
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Owner |
Tegna Media (KENS-TV, Inc.) |
First air date | February 15, 1950 |
Call letters' meaning |
K Express-News Station |
Former callsigns |
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Former channel number(s) |
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Former affiliations |
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Transmitter power | 1,000 kW |
Height | 441 m |
Facility ID | 26304 |
Transmitter coordinates | 29°16′11″N 98°15′55″W / 29.26972°N 98.26528°WCoordinates: 29°16′11″N 98°15′55″W / 29.26972°N 98.26528°W |
Licensing authority | FCC |
Public license information: |
Profile CDBS |
Website | Kens5.com |
KENS, virtual channel 5 (UHF digital channel 39), is a CBS-affiliated television station located in San Antonio, Texas, United States. The station is owned by Tegna, Inc. KENS maintains studio facilities located on Fredericksburg Road (Spur 345) in the Mockingbird Hill neighborhood of northwest San Antonio, and its transmitter is located off of Route 181 in northwest Wilson County (northeast of Elmendorf).
The station first signed on the air on February 15, 1950 as KEYL; channel 5 was the second television station to sign on in the San Antonio market, debuting three months after primary NBC affiliate WOAI-TV (channel 4). The station has been a primary CBS affiliate since its sign-on, however it initially carried secondary affiliations with DuMont, ABC and the Paramount Television Network – the former two affiliations were shared with WOAI-TV. The station was originally owned alongside KABC radio (680 AM, now KKYX). KEYL was one of Paramount's strongest affiliates, carrying nearly the network's entire lineup. Among the Paramount programs that KEYL aired were Armchair Detective,Latin Cruise,Hollywood Reel,Hollywood Wrestling,Time For Beany and Movietown, RSVP.
In 1951, Storer Broadcasting (which had good relations with CBS) bought KEYL and KABC. On February 1, 1954, channel 5 changed its call letters to KGBS-TV; KABC's calls were subsequently changed to match its television sister, as KGBS, on March 1. In November of that year, Storer was forced to sell KGBS-AM-TV to the San Antonio Express-News, in order to complete the company's purchase of WXEL-TV (now WJW) in Cleveland, Ohio as keeping KGBS-TV would have put the company one station over the Federal Communications Commission's ownership regulations that went into effect that year which limited the number of television stations that can be owned by one company to seven, with no more than five of those allocated to the VHF band (at the time, newspapers could own television and/or radio stations in the same market provided that such ownership complied with the FCC-mandated ownership limits of each property in effect at the time). The Express-News then changed the call letters of the television and radio stations to KENS-TV and KENS (the -TV suffix was dropped from the callsign of the television station following the digital television transition on June 12, 2009, when several other Belo stations dropped the suffix from their legal call signs; Storer later re-used the KGBS calls on what is now KTNQ and KAMP-FM in Los Angeles).