KPNX (channel 12) is a
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 ...
licensed to
Mesa, Arizona
Mesa ( ) is a city in Maricopa County, Arizona, United States. The population was 504,258 at the 2020 census. It is the List of municipalities in Arizona, third-most populous city in Arizona, after Phoenix, Arizona, Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona, T ...
, 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
''The Arizona Republic'' is an American daily newspaper published in Phoenix. Circulated throughout Arizona, it is the state's largest newspaper. Since 2000, it has been owned by the Gannett newspaper chain.
History
Early years
The newspap ...
''); 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
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, internet, wi-fi, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains j ...
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 speculated that
KPHO-TV owner
Meredith Corporation—whose station was the only pre-freeze outlet in the state—might have decided to let KTYL-TV have NBC because of the sense that, as soon as KTAR won a television station, it would sign up with NBC, mirroring the radio station.
However, KTAR's channel 3 picture became cloudy in February 1953, just as the FCC was about to hand down a decision. A new applicant, the Arizona Television Company, filed for the channel. This applicant added a major power broker to its ranks months later:
Ernest McFarland, former senator and soon to be governor. In February 1954, hearings were held on the channel 3 assignment.
The channel 3 contest ended in April 1954, when KTAR announced it would buy KTYL-TV for $250,000, a decision that cleared the way for the Arizona Television Company to build
KTVK.
In announcing the purchase, KTAR owner John J. Louis explained that he wanted to give KTAR a television sister without going through hearings.
When the sale closed in July 1954, KTYL-TV became KVAR; immediately, KTAR-purchased equipment was added to the studios, which were then moved to Phoenix in 1956 over KTVK's objection; the station was also allowed to identify as "Phoenix/Mesa" in 1958. In 1960, a new tower and maximum-power transmitter were commissioned; the prior facility was then sold to
Arizona State University and used to launch educational station
KAET on channel 8 in 1961. In April 1961, the call sign was changed to KTAR-TV, which had not been previously available to the television station because it was licensed to a different location from the radio station.
Growth
In 1968, the Louis family's KTAR and Eller Outdoor Advertising, owned by
Karl Eller, merged into Combined Communications Corporation. Combined then grew into owning other television and radio stations and owned a full complement of seven by 1974, when it merged with Pacific & Southern Broadcasting Company.
In 1978, Combined Communications agreed to merge with the
Gannett Company. The merged company opted to retain channel 12 and divest the Phoenix radio stations; Combined's ownership of the KTAR stations had been
grandfathered earlier in the decade when the FCC forbade common ownership of television and radio stations in top-50 markets, but with the Gannett merger, the KTAR cluster lost its grandfathered protection. The radio stations were traded to Pulitzer Broadcasting in 1979 for
KSD radio in St. Louis and $2 million. KTAR-TV then changed its call sign to KPNX on June 4, 1979, since the radio properties had held the KTAR call letters first.
From 1977 to 1995, channel 12 was run by general manager C.E. "Pep" Cooney, who also did on-air editorials; he then became a senior vice president of Gannett for several years prior to his retirement in 1998. In 1985, it was the first Phoenix TV station to broadcast in stereo.
The fact that KPNX was the only Phoenix station unaffected by a major realignment of network affiliations in 1994 and 1995 fueled a run of success for KPNX and its news department that lasted more than a decade. In 2005, the station had the highest revenue of any in Phoenix: $75 million, representing almost 20 percent of the market.
Newspaper co-ownership

In 2000, Gannett merged with Central Newspapers, owner of ''
The Arizona Republic
''The Arizona Republic'' is an American daily newspaper published in Phoenix. Circulated throughout Arizona, it is the state's largest newspaper. Since 2000, it has been owned by the Gannett newspaper chain.
History
Early years
The newspap ...
'', in the second-largest newspaper deal ever at the time. While the FCC barred the common ownership of newspapers and television stations in the same market, Gannett successfully banked on a potential rule change; even as written at the time before being relaxed in 2003, the issue would not have been pressed until KPNX's license came up for renewal in 2006. With Gannett owning the then-number-one station in Phoenix and the state's largest newspaper, the two merged their websites in 2001.
In January 2011, KPNX left its longtime home on Central Avenue and consolidated its operations with ''The Republic'' at the Republic Media Building on East
Van Buren Street in downtown Phoenix, with the station's local newscasts broadcasting from a streetside studio. The Central Avenue facility was then significantly renovated and became the
Parsons Center for Health and Wellness, the headquarters complex for the Southwest Center for HIV/AIDS.
Tegna ownership
On June 29, 2015, the Gannett Company split in two, with one side specializing in print media and the other side specializing in broadcast and digital media. KPNX was retained by the broadcasting company, which took the name
Tegna. KPNX and ''The Republic'' continue to operate in the same building as separate entities; as a consequence of the split, KPNX regained a separate website, having shared azcentral.com with the newspaper.
Local programming
Newscasts

KTAR-TV was the Phoenix pioneer of the so-called "happy talk" news format when it reformatted its newscasts under the ''
Action News'' format in late 1973, with longtime anchor Ray Thompson paired alongside Bob Hughes, weatherman Dewey Hopper (last with
Air America Radio affiliate
KPHX and a longtime weather forecaster in Sacramento) and sportscaster Ted Brown. By 1980, the station had moved into a solid second-place position behind
KOOL-TV. The "Action News" moniker was dropped in 1986. KTVK's rise in the late 1980s and early 1990s led to a more competitive environment.
In 1994, KPNX was the only station unaffected by a major realignment of network affiliations in the Phoenix market. This status and the strength of NBC in the late 1990s helped to catalyze a decade of ratings success for channel 12, which put together nearly 50 consecutive ratings book wins at 10 p.m. from 1996 to 2007, even while NBC's ratings faltered toward the end of the run. It was the first station in the state to convert its news production to high definition in 2006.
Channel 12 began using a helicopter in 1978; it was the market's second, and it was piloted by Jerry Foster, who was hired from KOOL-TV. "Sky 12" was frequently called upon for search and rescue missions, and Foster received a
Harmon Trophy in 1981. He left KPNX in 1988 and later worked at KTVK, his career ending when he was indicted on methamphetamine charges in 1996.
On March 1, 2009, KPNX began to share a news helicopter operated by Helicopters Inc., as part of an agreement with KPHO-TV and KTVK; the helicopter was named "News Chopper 20", as a combination of the channel numbers of the three stations (3, 5 and 12). All four Phoenix television newsrooms now share a helicopter.
Sports programming
Karl Eller, who owned the company that became Combined Communications, was also one of the original founding owners of the city's first major professional sports team, the
NBA's
Phoenix Suns. Channel 12 carried Suns games from the team's
1968 inception until 1973; KPHO-TV aired the Suns for six seasons until they returned to KPNX from 1979 to 1985, when the game telecasts moved to then-
independent station
An independent station is a broadcast station, usually a television station, not affiliated with a larger broadcast television network, network. As such, it only broadcasts broadcast syndication, syndicated programs it has purchased; brokered pr ...
KNXV-TV.
In 2017, KPNX acquired the rights to preseason games of the
Arizona Cardinals
The Arizona Cardinals are a professional American football team based in the Phoenix metropolitan area. The Cardinals compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC West, West division. The ...
and also began airing team-oriented programming, rights which moved to
KPHO-TV in 2024. In
2025
So far, the year has seen the continuation of major armed conflicts, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Sudanese civil war (2023–present), Sudanese civil war, and the Gaza war. Internal crises in Bangladesh post-resignation v ...
, KPNX will simulcast 10 regular-season
Arizona Diamondbacks games, all on Friday nights.
Former on-air staff
*
Pat Finn – weathercaster and host of ''Finn & Friends'', 1983–1985
*
Jineane Ford – anchor, 1991–2007
*
Kari Lake – anchor, 1994–1998
*
Mike Hambrick – anchor, 1978–1979
*
Sean McLaughlin – chief meteorologist, 1992–2004
*
Fred Roggin – sports anchor, 1979–1980
*
Ric Romero – investigative reporter, 1980s
*
Mary Kim Titla – reporter, 1993–2005
*
Rick DeBruhl – reporter, 1978–2009
Technical information
Subchannels
The station's signal is
multiplexed:
On July 8, 2021—the same date that KPNX moved to UHF—the station's ATSC 3.0 signal also moved from the low-power KFPH-CD multiplex to
KASW. As part of a simultaneous rebalancing of KASW's subchannels, KASW's subchannel of
Grit was moved to the KPNX multiplex.
Analog-to-digital conversion
In 1997, the FCC allocated UHF channel 36 as KPNX's companion digital channel, construction on the digital transmitter began the following year. KPNX signed on its digital signal in June 2000. KPNX shut down its analog signal, over
VHF channel 12, at 10:12 p.m. (during the station's 10 p.m. newscast) on June 12, 2009, the official date on which full-power television stations in the United States
transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. At 10:38 p.m. on that date, the station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition
UHF channel 36 to VHF channel 12.
In 2021, the FCC approved KPNX's move from VHF channel 12 to UHF channel 18, which went into effect on July 8.
Translators
KPNX's signal is additionally rebroadcast over the following translators:
*
Bullhead City: K08PK-D
*
Camp Verde: K25MK-D
*
Chloride: K25PJ-D
*
Dolan Springs: K35EI-D
*
Globe
A globe is a spherical Earth, spherical Model#Physical model, model of Earth, of some other astronomical object, celestial body, or of the celestial sphere. Globes serve purposes similar to maps, but, unlike maps, they do not distort the surface ...
: K26OD-D
*
Golden Valley: K21EG-D
*
Kingman: K35MX-D
*
Lake Havasu City: K28PO-D
*
Meadview: K23DK-D
*
Payson: KPSN-LD 22
*
Peach Springs: K26GF-D
*
Prescott: K06AE-D
Notes
References
External links
Official website
{{Authority control
1953 establishments in Arizona
PNX
NBC affiliates
The Nest (TV network) affiliates
Quest (American TV network) affiliates
Tegna Inc.
Television channels and stations established in 1953
PNX
True Crime Network affiliates