KEEF-TV (channel 68) was a short-lived

non-commercial educational A non-commercial educational station (NCE station) is a radio station or television station that does not accept on-air advertisements (television advertisement, TV ads or radio advertisement, radio ads), as defined in the United States by the Fed ...

television station A television station is a set of equipment managed by a business, organisation or other entity such as an amateur television (ATV) operator, that transmits video content and audio content via radio waves directly from a transmitter on the earth's s ...

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, California, United States. It operated briefly in 1987, but was shut down after only a few months of operation and its broadcast construction permit ultimately revoked.

History

Prior use of channel 68 in Los Angeles

Channel 68 was used originally by the Viewer Sponsored Television Foundation as KVST-TV, which broadcast from May 5, 1974, through December 23, 1975. It was a station with a strong community focus and aired alternative programming, much of it leftist in nature. However, it constantly struggled for viewer support and suffered through tumultuous internal politics, leading to its closure.

As KEEF-TV

On February 24, 1983, the

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(FCC) authorized the Black Television Workshop to construct a non-commercial TV station on channel 68 in the Los Angeles area. The station, which was oriented to black and Hispanic viewers, went on the air in June 1987 as KDDE. The station promised a lineup of programs by and for minority viewers—particularly Black viewers—including films from the Caribbean and Africa and British fare from

Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by Channel Four Television Corporation. It is state-owned enterprise, publicly owned but, unlike the BBC, it receives no public funding and is funded en ...

. The station changed its call letters to KEEF-TV on June 15. Problems were very quick to come along. After Mary V. Woodfork, one of the station's board members, made a series of claims against Black Television Workshop head Booker T. Wade's conduct, the FCC ordered the station off the air on August 8, because it broadcast with a different power and antenna height from a different location from that authorized, while it investigated—an unusual move for the commission. The battle tied up the television station, a series of creditors, and a company that had paid for the KEEF-TV transmitter so it could use it to send data. In 1989, a deal was reached to sell the station as a distress sale to Hispanic Christian Communications Network, which proposed a Spanish-language Christian station; the commission dismissed the proposal the next year because a federal appeals court had ruled that policy unconstitutional. In 1991, after the

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upheld the policy, the FCC determined that the station had not been actually built and thus would not have been eligible anyway. The construction permit was ultimately revoked by the FCC on November 19, 1992. A final review was denied by the commission in 1994. Channel 68 was last used in Southern California by KRCA-DT, a digital simulcast of

KRCA KRCA (channel 62) is a television station licensed to Riverside, California, United States, broadcasting the Spanish-language Estrella TV network to the Los Angeles area. It is the flagship television property of Burbank-based Estrella Media. T ...

(channel 62) in

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. As of the end of the 2009 digital television transition, channel 68 was outside the authorized band for television broadcasting in the United States; at which time KRCA moved to channel 35. Since 2018, as part of the FCC's spectrum repack, KRCA has shared VHF channel 7 with

KABC-TV KABC-TV (channel 7) is a television station in Los Angeles, California, United States, serving as the West Coast flagship station of the ABC network. Owned and operated by the network's ABC Owned Television Stations division, the station mai ...

. Plans for the digital transition did not include a digital replacement channel for the former channel 68 allocation in Los Angeles.

References

{{LA TV 1987 disestablishments in California 1987 establishments in California EEF-TV Television channels and stations disestablished in 1987 Television channels and stations established in 1987 EEF-TV