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| Channels | |
| Branding | Univision 34 |
| Programming | |
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| Ownership | |
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| History | |
First air date | September 29, 1962 |
Former call signs | KMEX-TV (1962–2009) |
Former channel number(s) |
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| Spanish International Network (1962–1987) | |
Call sign meaning | "Mexico" |
| Technical information[1] | |
Licensing authority | FCC |
| Facility ID | 35123 |
| ERP | 500 kW |
| HAAT | 956 m (3,136 ft) |
| Transmitter coordinates | 34°13′36.1″N 118°4′2.3″W / 34.226694°N 118.067306°W |
| Links | |
Public license information | |
| Website | www |
KMEX-DT (channel 34) is a television station in Los Angeles, serving as the western flagship station of the Spanish-language network Univision. It is owned and operated by TelevisaUnivision alongside Ontario, California–licensed UniMás station KFTR-DT (channel 46). The two stations share studios on Center Drive (overlooking I-405) in Westchester; KMEX-DT's transmitter is located atop Mount Wilson.
KMEX was built by the Spanish International Broadcasting Company, a consortium that included American and Mexican stockholders, and began broadcasting in September 1962. It was the first full-time Spanish-language television station in the state of California and the only one in the Los Angeles area for 23 years. Its programming combined Mexican programs from Telesistema Mexicano, predecessor to Televisa, with local features relevant to the Spanish-speaking community in Los Angeles, such as courses in the English language. Spanish International Broadcasting Company grew to create the national Spanish International Network. In 1964, Danny Villanueva, then a placekicker in the NFL, began an association with the station. After retiring from football, Villanueva became KMEX's news director and later its station manager. Under Villanueva, KMEX adopted an "advocacy journalism" approach to local news and community involvement which has been adopted by much of its portion of the television industry. Ruben Salazar, a former writer for the Los Angeles Times, was working for KMEX when he was killed by riot police in August 1970; the station's retrospective coverage of the event earned it its first of two Peabody Awards.
KMEX and its co-owned stations, owned by Spanish International Communications Corporation (SICC), spent most of the 1980s embroiled in a legal dispute over the permissibility of its partially foreign ownership. In 1985, Federal Communications Commission staff recommended that all of SICC's licenses be revoked. The dispute was settled two years later by a forced sale of the stations and network to a venture of Hallmark Cards and First Chicago Ventures, which renamed the network Univision. Also in that decade, KMEX gained its first full-time competition when channel 52 was sold and switched from subscription programming to full-time Spanish as KVEA. That station's new owners, a group led by Saul Steinberg, used KVEA and other stations as the springboard to launch the competing Telemundo network in 1987. In spite of the new competition, KMEX continued to be the leading Spanish-language local TV station in news coverage and began garnering higher ratings than its English-language counterparts in key demographic groups. Its news presenters included María Elena Salinas and Jorge Ramos, both of whom went on to work for the Univision network. KMEX was the first Spanish-language TV station in the country to air an hour-long local morning show.
Univision grew from one Los Angeles–market station to two in 2002 when it acquired the USA Broadcasting group, including KFTR. In the 2010s, KMEX has had to fend off a challenge from a revitalized KVEA while expanding and refreshing its own news offerings.
- ^ "Facility Technical Data for KMEX-DT". Licensing and Management System. Federal Communications Commission.