abstract
| - KTBN-TV channel 40 is the Santa Ana, California-licensed flagship television station of the Trinity Broadcasting Network, a Christian religious broadcaster. The station is based in the TBN network headquarters in nearby Tustin, California. Channel 40 first aired on January 5, 1967 as KLXA-TV, licensed to Fontana, and one of the Los Angeles area's first Spanish-language stations. Paul Crouch, founder of TBN, began renting time on the station in 1973. He took over the station's operations later in the year and purchased it outright in 1974. Trinity Broadcasting continued to use the KLXA call sign until November 1977, when the station officially became KTBN-TV. Its city of license changed to Santa Ana in 1983. Today, as is the case with TBN's other owned and operated stations, KTBN airs almost no local programming except for Southern California-specific public affairs programs. Today, it serves the entire Los Angeles metropolitan area with a full powered signal, with low-powered satellite stations carrying the signal to other areas in Southern California (such as Palm Springs (K40ID), Bakersfield (K21FP), Ventura (K45DU), and Santa Barbara (K15DB)). With the station being available on cable systems throughout Southern California, KTBN is not carried on either Dish Network nor DirecTV's local Southern California package at TBN's request; instead the national feed is carried. The digital signal, which went on the air in 2004, is broadcast on channel 23, making reception difficult in some areas, due to interference from the digital signals of both KVMD in Twentynine Palms and XETV in San Diego. KTBN has a pending request with the FCC to change its digital allotment to channel 33, which would displace KJLA's low-power analog translator KSMV-LP.
|