KRQE
KRQE is a television station in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States, affiliated with CBS and Fox. Owned by Nexstar Media Group, it is sister to KWBQ and KASY-TV, both owned by Mission Broadcasting with certain services provided by Nexstar through shared services agreements. The three stations share studios on Broadcast Plaza in Albuquerque; KRQE's transmitter is located on Sandia Crest, east of Albuquerque.
KRQE went on the air as KGGM-TV on October 4, 1953. It was owned by the Hebenstreit family alongside KGGM radio and the first Albuquerque TV station to transmit from Sandia Crest. While it was remembered for non-local programs such as Captain Billy, a popular children's show that ended when the host was murdered in 1972, it was a laggard in the area of local news, with low ratings and poor quality. General manager Bruce Hebenstreit produced several made-for-TV movies at the station in an attempt to create a market for its own programming; the movies exacerbated strife within the family, which only ended when Bruce died in 1987. The station made its most credible effort at news to that time when it hired veteran Albuquerque anchor Dick Knipfing; it became a more competitive third-place outlet but lost viewers after Knipfing departed in 1989.
Though KGGM-TV had been at a disadvantage in its coverage of outstate New Mexico, this changed in 1989 when the company acquired KBIM-TV in Roswell, giving it parity with its competitors in southeastern New Mexico and folding Roswell into the Albuquerque television market. The acquisition strained the Hebenstreits' finances and was a major factor in their decision to sell the station to Lee Enterprises in 1991. Seeking a fresh start, Lee changed the call sign from KGGM-TV to KRQE in 1992. Lee added a second full-power satellite by purchasing KREZ-TV in Durango, Colorado, in 1994, and helped build KASY-TV in 1995. In the early 2000s, after Knipfing returned, KRQE experienced a surge in news ratings and began competing for first place under the ownership of Emmis Communications.
LIN TV acquired KRQE and four other Emmis stations in 2005. It acquired KASA-TV, then Albuquerque's Fox affiliate, the next year and brought its operations and newscast under KRQE's control. In the mid-2010s LIN was acquired by Media General and Media General by Nexstar; the latter deal required KASA-TV to be divested, resulting in the Fox affiliation moving to a subchannel of KRQE. The station produces local newscasts for the CBS and Fox subchannels.
KGGM-TV
Construction and early years
When the Federal Communications Commission lifted its multi-year freeze on TV stations, Albuquerque had been assigned two additional VHF television channels: 7 and 13. The New Mexico Broadcasting Company, owner of Albuquerque radio station KGGM, had begun feasibility studies into a TV station in late 1951 and were investigating the suitability of Sandia Crest, a mountain more than high, as a transmission site. It elected to apply for channel 13 and build a tower on the mountain. The construction permit was granted on March 12, 1953, putting into action plans that already existed to combine KGGM's ownership with that of KVSF in Santa Fe and build out the Sandia Crest site. In May, KGGM and Albuquerque's existing TV station, KOB-TV, announced work would begin on the facility, which promised to provide television to previously unserved areas of New Mexico. While they were competitors, KGGM and KOB also joined in the construction of studios. The stations purchased an entire city block at Fourteenth Street and Coal Avenue SW, divided it, and put up studios across the street from each other.KGGM-TV began broadcasting on October 4, 1953. It was Albuquerque's third television station; channel 7 had signed on as KOAT-TV two days prior. KGGM-TV was a CBS affiliate, though at the time of its launch, all programs were on film; live network programming was not available in Albuquerque until 1954. KGGM-TV was first to use the Sandia Crest site, as KOB-TV's facility was still under construction when channel 13 began. It boasted New Mexico's first video tape recorder, installed in 1959, and was the first station in the state to originate a local color program, in 1966.
In its early years, KGGM-TV produced local non-news programming including Women's Club of the Air, Club 13, and Los Tres Caballeros, which station management claimed in 1979 to be the first Spanish-language television program in the United States. In 1956, Robert Ernest "Stretch" Scherer joined the staff of KGGM-TV after short stints at KTBC-TV in Austin, Texas, and KOB-TV. He became the new host of channel 13's children's show, originally titled Captain Seafoam, which became Captain Billy and the USS Seafoam and later Captain Billy. The actor French Stewart, an Albuquerque native, made his first-ever TV appearance as a five-year-old on Captain Billy. In addition to the children's show, Scherer hosted an interview program and KGGM-TV's annual telethon supporting muscular dystrophy organizations. On October 27, 1972, Scherer was shot in the KGGM-TV lobby, dying of his wounds two months later. The lead suspect in the case was believed to suffer from mental illness. Even a year after getting shot, Captain Billy was not replaced.
Hebenstreit family management
Though the station had various minority owners in its history, including U.S. senator Clinton P. Anderson and Harriscope Broadcasting, KGGM-TV was mostly owned by the Hebenstreit family of Albuquerque. Anton R. Hebenstreit had started the family in broadcasting in 1928 by buying KGGM radio, then a portable station running out of cash, and permanently locating it in the city.Gilmore Broadcasting Corporation of Kalamazoo, Michigan, announced it had agreed to buy KGGM radio and television in December 1963; the Hebenstreit family regarded this as premature and called off all sale talks. Gilmore sued to force the sale; New Mexico Broadcasting Company's minority stockholders joined the case in support of Gilmore and unsuccessfully asked for the company to be put in receivership. Gilmore settled its suit in June 1965, shortly before a jury trial was to begin. Anton's son Bruce remained primarily in the family's construction holdings until Anton's health failed in the mid-1960s, putting Bruce in charge of New Mexico Broadcasting Company; New Mexico Broadcasting Company's opposition to the Gilmore lawsuit alleged that Gilmore had used A. R. Hebenstreit's poor health to "trick and entrap" the company into a sale. KGGM radio was sold to WKY Television System of Oklahoma City in 1973 and became KRKE on January 1, 1974.
KGGM-TV's broadcast license was the subject of a long-running FCC investigation after two Hispanic organizations challenged it in 1971, claiming the station discriminated against Hispanics. The Alianza Federal de Pueblos Libres, which filed against three local stations, blamed the lack of local programming responsive to the needs of Mexican Americans for creating the conditions that led to rioting in Albuquerque that year. The Coalition for the Enforcement of Equality in Television and Radio Utilization of Time and Hours alleged that only seven of KGGM-TV's 61 employees had Spanish surnames, a proportion lower than the population of Albuquerque, and that its public affairs programming was inadequate. The matter went to a hearing in 1975; while an administrative law judge ruled in favor of the renewal in 1976, the challengers appealed. In 1980, the commission awarded the station a short-term license renewal for one year; it found that the station had been "lacking in candor" about the content of its local news programming. That year, KGGM-TV beat back an attempt by KOB-TV to encourage CBS to move its affiliation to that station.
Members of the Hebenstreit family became integral to many operations of the station. Bruce's son, Andrew, debuted on Captain Billy in 1963 and returned to KGGM-TV in 1973, rising from reporter to anchor to news director. One of John's sisters, Linda Thorne, also worked as a reporter and news anchor; the other, Catherine, by 1983 was the promotions director.
Syndicated program production and TV movies
KGGM built a large, five-story-tall soundstage at its studios in 1977. The stage, divided into two studios, was intended to provide Hollywood-quality facilities for local commercial production and other shows. For Bruce Hebenstreit, the soundstage was a springboard to the production of TV shows intended for national distribution.The first such program was Amy, a country music show featuring singer Amy Gifford. Three years later, Hebenstreit produced a made-for-TV movie at the soundstage, 13 Broadcast Plaza, as the pilot for a possible TV series. The film, starring Anthony Eisley and Lisa Marie from the soap opera General Hospital, was a nighttime soap opera set at a TV station with musical elements similar to A Star Is Born. A movie also titled Amy and starring Lisa Marie was made; Andrew Hebenstreit and Linda Thorne had parts in the film. All of the movies were shot on videotape.
Family strife and KBIM-TV purchase
In 1986, Andrew Hebenstreit succeeded Bruce as the president of the New Mexico Broadcasting Company. Bruce remained chairman, with control over programming, and devoted himself to his movie projects. Despite the first two having been made years prior, 13 Broadcast Plaza, Amy, and a third film, a comedy titled Purgatory Open, had still not been released in any form. In July and August, the latter two films were given trial runs on KGGM-TV.Shortly after taking the job, in mid-August Andrew resigned as president and KGGM-TV news director and moved to Venice, California, after getting in a dispute with Bruce over station operations. Andrew told The Albuquerque Tribune, "I told Bruce his movies made KGGM look like an independent, not a affiliate." At the same time, Linda Thorne resigned as news anchor and was replaced by Allan Hunt, who had acted in Purgatory Open. Thorne was reported to have left because the station was switching its evening news to a co-anchor format.
Thorne and Hebenstreit returned within months of resigning as it became apparent that Bruce Hebenstreit, battling cancer, was in poor health—worse than they had realized at the time. He died on February 9, 1987.
New Mexico Broadcasting Company acquired KBIM-TV in Roswell for $5 million in 1989. KBIM-TV had served as a standalone CBS affiliate for southeastern New Mexico, serving 60,000 television homes KGGM-TV did not reach, and had long maintained corporate ties with KGGM-TV. The chairman of its owner, Holsum Inc., had previously been a director of New Mexico Broadcasting and had previously contemplated a merger, instead deciding to sell for economic reasons. The addition of KBIM-TV gave KGGM-TV access to households its competitors, KOAT-TV and KOB-TV, already reached. It also resulted in the abolition of Roswell as a separate television media market by Arbitron and Nielsen; Roswell households were classified in the Albuquerque market, vaulting it from the 56th- or 65th-largest media market to the 51st.