XHAS-TDT (channel 33) 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 ...
in
Tijuana
Tijuana is the most populous city of the Mexican state of Baja California, located on the northwestern Pacific Coast of Mexico. Tijuana is the municipal seat of the Tijuana Municipality, the hub of the Tijuana metropolitan area and the most popu ...
, Baja California, Mexico, carrying
Estrella TV
Estrella TV () is an American Spanish-language broadcast television network owned by the Estrella Media subsidiary of HPS Investment Partners, LLC. The network primarily features programs, the vast majority of which are produced by the networ ...
. It is owned by a Mexican company whose largest single investor is
Entravision Communications
Entravision Communications Corporation is an American media company based in Santa Monica, California. Entravision primarily caters to the Spanish language in the United States, Spanish-speaking Hispanic and Latino Americans, Hispanic community ...
, a U.S.-based broadcaster with radio and television stations in
San Diego
San Diego ( , ) is a city on the Pacific coast of Southern California, adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a population of over 1.4 million, it is the List of United States cities by population, eighth-most populous city in t ...
, including
Univision
Univision () is an American Spanish-language terrestrial television, free-to-air television network owned by TelevisaUnivision. It is the United States' largest provider of Spanish-language content. The network's programming is aimed at the L ...
affiliate
KBNT-CD (channel 17), and a similar interest in
Milenio Televisión affiliate
XHDTV-TDT (channel 49). XHAS-TDT's transmitter is on Mount San Antonio in Tijuana.
XHAS began broadcasting in 1981 and initially devoted most of its time to rebroadcasting programs from
XEW television in
Mexico City
Mexico City is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Mexico, largest city of Mexico, as well as the List of North American cities by population, most populous city in North America. It is one of the most important cultural and finan ...
. It joined
Telemundo
Telemundo (; formerly NetSpan) is an American Spanish-language terrestrial television network owned by NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises, a division of NBCUniversal, which in turn is a wholly owned subsidiary of Comcast. It provides content ...
in 1990 and continued to broadcast its programming until 2017, when Telemundo parent
NBCUniversal
NBCUniversal Media, LLC (abbreviated as NBCU and Trade name, doing business as NBCUniversal or Comcast NBCUniversal since 2013) is an American Multinational corporation, multinational mass media and Show business, entertainment conglomerate (comp ...
opted to take the network in-house. It then switched to airing
Azteca América programming.
History
While XHAS began operations in 1981, its history stretched back to the late 1960s. In March 1968, Mario Rincón Espinosa, the head of Tele Nacional, S.A., requested and received a concession to build a UHF station in Tijuana. At this time, the callsign XHAS-TV and channel number 33 were assigned, with a visual effective radiated power of 105 kW. With the technical parameters set, Tele Nacional set out to build the station, and after some delays, it submitted the technical details in 1970. The next year, Rincón Espinosa was granted authorization to cut power in half; on several occasions in 1976, the
Secretariat of Communications and Transportation (SCT) reached out to seek revised technical information and was not given a response. In July 1978, the ''
Diario Oficial'' ran a notification warning that the SCT would begin an administrative proceeding to revoke the concession.
The station first signed on the air in the fall of 1981 after receiving a new concession that September. It originally operated as a rebroadcaster of
Televisa
Grupo Televisa, S.A.B., simply known as Televisa, is a Mexican telecommunications and broadcasting company. A major Latin American mass media corporation, it often presents itself as the largest producer of Spanish-language content.
In April ...
's
XEW television for all but two hours a day, when it aired a limited slate of Mexican movies and independent programs.
In 1985, XHAS began to air a local newscast titled . It subcontracted a company, Logovisión, to produce the program, which got viewers' attention for its independence—and Televisa's attention for allegedly disrespecting Mexican institutions.
was regarded as more unbiased in its coverage than Televisa's newscasts; it beat
XEWT's news in local surveys and reported news of voting irregularities in the 1989 Baja California gubernatorial elections. Televisa retaliated by pulling programs from the XHAS local block, the only time when it could sell its own advertising. The station began taking programs from
Imevisión
The Instituto Mexicano de la Televisión (''Mexican Television Institute''), known commercially as Imevisión after 1985, was a state broadcaster and federal government agency of Mexico. At its height, Imevisión programmed two national networks ...
to fill the local window instead. In September 1990, given the uneasy state of relations between station and network, XHAS switched its affiliation to the U.S.-based Spanish-language network
Telemundo
Telemundo (; formerly NetSpan) is an American Spanish-language terrestrial television network owned by NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises, a division of NBCUniversal, which in turn is a wholly owned subsidiary of Comcast. It provides content ...
; the newscast moved from 10 p.m. to 11 p.m. as a result of the changes. The Telemundo affiliation switch also resulted in a letter from the SCT, asking it to explain its "arbitrary" affiliation change.
In December 1994, new management at XHAS fired the team and built their own news department; after five months on local radio, moved to
XHJK and Televisión Azteca, where it remained for eight years. Entravision acquired operating control in 2000, resulting in a lawsuit from Telemundo, which claimed it had
right of first refusal
Right of first refusal (ROFR or RFR) is a contractual right that gives its holder the option to enter a business transaction with the owner of something, according to specified terms, before the owner is entitled to enter into that transactio ...
and wanted to purchase the outlet for $30 million. A weekday 6 p.m. newscast launched in 2002.
XHAS carried 109 Spanish-language telecasts of the
San Diego Padres
The San Diego Padres are an American professional baseball team based in San Diego. The Padres compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (baseball), National League (NL) National League West, West Division. ...
in the 2005 season.
In January 2017, NBC announced that it was hiring people for
KNSD with the intention of launching a new Telemundo O&O station in San Diego, replacing XHAS-TDT (whose affiliation expired on June 30, 2017). Telemundo programming moved to a subchannel of KNSD (now
KUAN-LD) on July 1, 2017, at midnight. At the same time, XHAS became an affiliate of
Azteca América; the network, which had been affiliated with
KZSD-LP
KZSD-LD (channel 20) is a low-power television station in San Diego, California, United States. It is a translator of ABC affiliate KGTV (channel 10) which is owned by the E. W. Scripps Company. KZSD-LD's transmitter is located on San Miguel ...
, was carried on a subchannel of sister station XHDTV-TDT from March 15, 2017, until XHAS joined the network.
It was announced in October 2022 that Intermedia, owner of
XHILA-TDT in
Mexicali
Mexicali (; ) is the capital city of the States of Mexico, Mexican state of Baja California. The city, which is the seat of the Mexicali Municipality, has a population of 689,775, according to the 2010 census, while the Calexico–Mexicali, Cale ...
, would take over programming for the station on November 2, to be called "Canal 33".
Technical information
Subchannels
The station's signal is
multiplexed
In telecommunications and computer networking, multiplexing (sometimes contracted to muxing) is a method by which multiple analog or digital signals are combined into one signal over a shared medium. The aim is to share a scarce resource— ...
:
RPC: Authorization for Multiprogramming - XHAS-TDT
Note that a proposed DT3 of Telemundo in SD was denied.
Analog-to-digital transition
While the United States completed its transition to full-power digital television on June 12, 2009, Mexico made the transition over a period of several years four years later, XHAS-TV discontinued its analog signal on May 28, 2013, as all television stations in the Tijuana metropolitan area were required to convert to digital-exclusive broadcasts on that date as part of a pilot program; the stations were later ordered to resume analog transmissions until July 18, 2013, due to concerns about the interaction of the shutoff with state elections.
Newscasts
XHAS-TDT presently broadcasts hours of local newscasts each week (with 90 minutes each weekday); the station does not produce newscasts on Saturdays or Sundays. The station broadcasts an hour-long local newscast each weeknight at 5 p.m. and a half-hour newscast at 11 p.m. Previously, when the station was affiliated with Telemundo prior to switching to KUAN, the station aired newscasts at 5:30, 6 and 11 p.m. While it competes with the local newscasts on Univision-affiliated sister station KBNT-CD seen in the same timeslots, as the two stations share studio facilities in Entravision's building, XHAS focuses its newscasts more on issues affecting Tijuana (competing against locally programmed XEWT-TDT (channel 12)), while KBNT-CD focuses more on San Diego.
When Telemundo and XHAS parted ways, the newscasts on XHAS were renamed (News Now Border), after the series of news portals run by Entravision.
References
External links
noticiasya.com/frontera
– XHAS-TV official website
{{English Mexico
LATV affiliates
HAS-TDT
Television stations in San Diego
Television channels and stations established in 1981
1981 establishments in Mexico
Spanish-language television stations in California
Entravision Communications stations