KPLM-TV On June 1, 1966, Pacific Media Corporation filed an application for a construction permit to build a new television station to operate on channel 27 in Palm Springs. Three months after Pacific filed, the
Federal Communications Commission issued a report and order changing the allocation to channel 42, a move necessitated to avoid interference to
channel 28 in Los Angeles. Channel 42 received another bid in December, when Palm Springs Communications Corporation, co-owned with local radio station KCMJ, filed for a station. After Palm Springs Communications reached a settlement agreement with Pacific Media, the latter was awarded the permit on October 11, 1967. The new station took the call letters KPLM-TV and immediately began construction and talks with the major networks on affiliation. Channel 42 set up shop in the Smoke Tree Village shopping center, the station joined the ABC network and secured channel 3 on all the cable systems in the area for its debut on October 5, 1968. KPLM-TV was the only television station in Palm Springs for just three weeks. In parallel with the battle for channel 42, channel 36 was also contested; on the morning of October 26, NBC affiliate
KMIR-TV began broadcasting. Channel 42 was not an immediate financial success. In 1972, Cine-Prime, a company engaged in educational television production and distribution, announced that it had purchased the station, though no transfer of control was ever filed. In 1973, Pacific attempted to sell KPLM-TV to
Ralph Andrews Productions, which was scrapped several months later. In February 1974, Smoke Tree Village filed to evict KPLM-TV from its studios for not paying six months of rent. Ultimately, in 1975, Pacific Media Corporation filed for
Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization, and the principals of a Palm Springs law firm were appointed as receivers; the studios were relocated to
Cathedral City.
Esquire years In late 1977, negotiations were concluded to sell KPLM-TV to
Esquire, Inc. The $800,000 purchase marked Esquire's return to broadcasting after owning and selling
WQXI radio in
Atlanta in the 1960s. The call letters were changed to KESQ-TV on September 18, 1978. Esquire purchased
KECC-TV in
El Centro in 1981. It attempted to sell both stations to Cimarron Broadcasting, an Oklahoma group headed by
Harry Nilsson, in 1983, but Cimarron lacked the capital to make the purchase, and the deal fell apart in March 1984. However, Esquire, which had become wholly owned by
Gulf+Western, was anxious to divest itself of the small-market TV station which the large conglomerate did not want and sold it to
Gulf Broadcasting of
Dallas, an unrelated concern, two months later; the El Centro station was not included. Gulf was then swallowed by
Taft Broadcasting in 1985, when the FCC increased ownership limits on television and radio properties—but KESQ-TV was not included in the transaction, which immediately brought Taft to the limit. Instead, KESQ-TV was sold to E. Grant Fitts, who had been the chairman of the broadcasting division.
Expansion under NPG Fitts reached a deal to sell KESQ-TV to its current owner, the
News-Press & Gazette Company of
St. Joseph, Missouri, for $19.4 million in late 1995. Under NPG, KESQ-TV's operation expanded to include additional low-power TV stations.
KUNA-LP, a Telemundo affiliate, launched in 1997. In 1998, NPG entered into a
local marketing agreement to run
KDFX-LP, the low-power Fox affiliate in Palm Springs; it started that station's first local newscast. A local affiliate of
The WB followed in 2000. In 2012, NPG bought KPSP-CD, the local
CBS affiliate. In 2013, KESQ-TV moved into a new state-of-the-art studio in
Thousand Palms. While in the later years under Fitts, KESQ had briefly run a radio station (
920 AM), it returned to the field again when 1400 AM, previously KUNA, was bought by the station and flipped to sports as
KESQ at the end of 1997. In the late 1990s, KESQ-TV flirted with another kind of expansion. In 1996, the station received FCC approval to move its transmitter to a spot in the
San Jacinto Mountains, which would have increased its coverage area to include much of western
Riverside County and
San Bernardino County. Riverside County was looking for a station to increase coverage of the local area beyond what Los Angeles stations offered. However, the problem posed a puzzle to the station. The expanded coverage would be entirely in the Los Angeles television market, and ABC threatened KESQ with disaffiliation were the move to come to fruition and cut into the market of its
KABC-TV. The local chapter of the
Sierra Club also objected to the site on environmental grounds; these two challenges doomed the proposal. The station shut down its analog signal on June 12, 2009, as part of the
digital television transition in the United States. ==News operation==