KPNX
KPNX (channel 12) is a television station licensed to Mesa, Arizona, United States, serving the Phoenix area as an affiliate of NBC. The station is owned by Tegna Inc., and maintains studios at the Republic Media building on Van Buren Street in downtown Phoenix (which also houses formerly co-owned newspaper The Arizona Republic); its transmitter is located atop South Mountain on the city's south side. KPNX is also broadcast on satellite station KNAZ-TV (channel 2) in Flagstaff, which formerly was a separate NBC affiliate, and a network of low-power translators across northern and central Arizona. Channel 12 was the second TV station on the air in the Phoenix area, starting in 1953. Originally established in Mesa itself, it was acquired by Phoenix radio station KTAR (620 AM) in 1954 in a maneuver that ended a contest over channel 3 in Phoenix and was co-owned with that outlet for 25 years. It has been owned by Tegna and its predecessor, Gannett, since 1979, when it became KPNX. History Early years On November 1, 1952, Harkins Broadcasting, Inc. filed an application to build a new television station on channel 12 in Mesa, Arizona. Harkins Broadcasting was a joint venture of two movie theater operators, Harkins Theatres and Harry Nace, and owned Mesa radio stations KTYL (1310 AM) and KTYL-FM 104.7. The Federal Communications Commission granted the construction permit on February 18, 1953. At the end of March 1953, the city of Phoenix's parks board approved a South Mountain transmitter, reversing an earlier decision that would have denied television stations not licensed to Phoenix the use of the site and which was protested by television set owners who wanted to be assured reception of all stations from one site. With the site approved by the FCC and the city of Phoenix, construction began nearly immediately. Much of the studio equipment, installed at an expansion to the KTYL facilities on Main Street in Mesa, was already on hand. The station began broadcasting on May 2, with its introductory program being a 19-hour telethon to benefit United Cerebral Palsy. An NBC affiliate from the outset, the station briefly maintained a Phoenix office which closed just two months after launch. Lurking under the embryonic Phoenix television landscape was the absence of one of the state's pioneer radio stations. In 1948, KTAR (620 AM) had filed for Phoenix's channel 3, only to see the FCC plunge television applications into a four-year-long freeze. As early as 1945, KTAR had arranged for exclusive rights to the South Mountain space that would later be used by all of the Phoenix TV stations as a transmitter site—a concession that was overturned in the run-up to KTYL-TV's launch. When the freeze was lifted in 1952, KTAR declared it would be on the air within three months of a construction permit grant, having already selected a site for and broken ground on a proposed television and radio studio at Central Avenue and Portland Street and contracted for equipment to furnish it. It was