KORO
KORO (channel 28) is a Spanish-language television station in Corpus Christi, Texas, in the United States, affiliated with the Univision network. It is owned by Entravision Communications alongside low-power, Class A UniMás affiliate KCRP-CD (channel 41). The two stations share studios on North Mesquite Street in downtown Corpus Christi, and KORO's transmitter is located between Petronila and Robstown. Branded as Univision 28, with newscasts titled Noticias Univision 28, KORO has been the Corpus Christi market's Spanish-language television station since 1977. Its origin story is distinctive: it was conceived, fought over at the Federal Communications Commission, financed with difficulty and built by a largely local ownership group at a time when Texas had only one other full-time Spanish-language station, and it remained locally owned for more than two decades before its sale to Entravision in 1998.
Call Sign and Identity
KORO's call letters are a word in themselves: oro is Spanish for gold, and the station pronounces its calls in on-air identifications as K-ORO. The name fits a station that has always presented itself as a Spanish-language service first, aimed at the large Hispanic population of Corpus Christi and the surrounding Coastal Bend region of South Texas. Its branding follows the standard pattern of Univision affiliates, combining the network name with its channel number — Univision 28 — and its local newscasts carry the Noticias Univision 28 title. The station's current web presence operates under a Corpus Christi news address associated with its owner's digital news network. Together with KCRP-CD, which carries the sister network UniMás on channel 41, KORO gives Entravision a two-network Spanish-language presence in the market.
Two Applicants for Channel 28
The contest for channel 28 began in 1972, when two groups filed applications with the FCC to build a Spanish-language television station in Corpus Christi. One applicant, U-Anchor Broadcasting, was a subsidiary of an Amarillo-based firm. The other, Telecorpus, was made up mostly of local stockholders, and its board included notable executives of the Spanish International Network — the network known as SIN, the forerunner of Univision — among them Emilio Nicolas Sr. and Danny Villanueva. The ambition behind both applications is worth underlining: at the time, there was only one full-time Spanish-language television station in the entire state of Texas, KWEX-TV in San Antonio. Corpus Christi, a Gulf Coast city with a deep Mexican-American heritage, was an obvious next market, and both groups saw it. The FCC heard the mutually exclusive applications in 1974 and, that November, awarded the construction permit to the local group, Telecorpus.
A Difficult Construction
Winning the permit proved easier than building the station. Two and a half years passed before KORO began broadcasting. Technical and legal delays pushed the launch back, among them a dispute over whether the local cable system could import the signals of Mexican television stations — a question with obvious competitive significance for a new Spanish-language broadcaster trying to establish itself. Concrete steps to put the station into service came during 1976, after the FCC denied the cable company's proposal; Telecorpus negotiated for studio space and purchased equipment. Financing was its own ordeal: three banks turned the company down for loans before a fourth agreed to lend. The experience reflects the scepticism with which Spanish-language broadcasting was still treated by lenders in the 1970s, even in a market where the audience for it was plainly there.
KORO finally began broadcasting on April 19, 1977 — three days later than intended, because a lightning strike damaged a microwave dish. The station originally broadcast from the 600 Building in downtown Corpus Christi. Its nearly 1,000-foot transmission tower was shared with a local radio station. The original owners were local professionals — lawyers, doctors and other business figures among them — and the station operated largely independently while airing the programmes of the Spanish International Network.
The Telecorpus Years: Local Ownership
For its first two decades, KORO was a rarity in American broadcasting of its era: a locally owned Spanish-language station built by community investors rather than by a national group. Telecorpus kept the station through the transformation of its network — SIN was reorganised and renamed Univision in 1987, and KORO's affiliation continued with the new network, making 1987 the start of its formal Univision affiliation. In 1982, the station moved its studios to the facility on North Mesquite Street in downtown Corpus Christi that it still occupies, a move that had itself been long delayed. Local news was part of the service from early on: for many years the station's only live local newscast aired at 5 p.m., providing Spanish-language news for the Coastal Bend at a time when no other local outlet did so.
The local ownership era ended for reasons the owners themselves stated plainly. Citing industry consolidation and the expense of the coming conversion to digital television, Telecorpus sold KORO to Entravision Communications in 1998. The sale, reported that April, transferred a station founded by Corpus Christi investors to a California-based group that was assembling the largest Univision affiliate group in the country outside the network's own owned stations. KORO has remained an Entravision station ever since, operated through Entravision Holdings, LLC.
Local News: From One Newscast to Two
Local news is the core of KORO's service to Corpus Christi. For the station's first twenty years, its live local output consisted of a single early-evening newscast at 5 p.m. That changed at the beginning of 1997, when KORO launched a 10 p.m. newscast under the Noticias 28 name, adding a late-evening edition to its weekday service. The paired 5 p.m. and 10 p.m. newscasts — presented over the years under titles built around Noticias Univision 28 — gave Spanish-speaking viewers in the market local news at the two times of day when local television news matters most, covering Corpus Christi and the Coastal Bend in Spanish: city and county government, weather on the Gulf Coast, including the region's exposure to tropical storms and hurricanes, community events and sports. Under Entravision ownership, the newscasts continued as the station's signature local product, with the group supplying shared resources and its digital news platforms carrying KORO's journalism online.
The Univision Affiliation and Network Change
KORO's network history tracks the history of Spanish-language network television in the United States. The station signed on carrying the Spanish International Network, the Mexico-linked service that was the first Spanish-language network in the country and that supplied telenovelas, variety, sports and news to a small group of stations in markets with large Spanish-speaking populations. When SIN's station group was reorganised as Univision in 1987, KORO became a Univision affiliate, and it has held that affiliation continuously since. Univision grew into the leading Spanish-language network in the United States, and KORO's schedule grew with it: network news, prime-time telenovelas and entertainment, football coverage and special events form the backbone of the broadcast day around the station's local newscasts. The station thus offers a direct line of continuity from the SIN era of the 1970s to the modern Univision — few affiliates can trace an unbroken relationship with the network and its predecessor across that whole span.
Market and Sister Station
Corpus Christi is a mid-sized television market on the Texas Gulf Coast, and KORO operates within Entravision's cluster there. Its sister station, KCRP-CD (channel 41), is a low-power Class A station affiliated with UniMás, Univision's sister network, giving the market both of the group's Spanish-language networks over the air. The two stations share the North Mesquite Street studios in downtown Corpus Christi. KORO's transmitter, located between the communities of Petronila and Robstown southwest of the city, is positioned to cover the metropolitan area and the surrounding counties of the Coastal Bend from a single site. In a market where a large share of the population is Hispanic and Spanish is a daily language of home and commerce, KORO's role extends beyond entertainment: its newscasts and its owner's community presence make it one of the principal Spanish-language information sources for the region, including during severe weather on the Gulf Coast.
Technical Information and Digital Transition
KORO shut down its analogue signal on UHF channel 28 on June 12, 2009, the date on which full-power stations in the United States completed the federally mandated transition to digital broadcasting. Its digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 27, with receivers displaying its virtual channel as 28, its familiar analogue position. The station's licensed effective radiated power is 1,000 kW, with a height above average terrain of 287.3 metres, from its transmitter site between Petronila and Robstown; its FCC facility ID is 64877.
The digital signal is multiplexed. The main subchannel, 28.1, carries Univision in high definition. Additional subchannels have carried services including Ion Mystery, Ion Plus, Bounce TV and Majestad TV, with the precise line-up varying over time as digital multicast agreements change. The multiplex illustrates the second life that digital broadcasting gave a station like KORO: a single licence that in the analogue era carried one Spanish-language service now delivers the Univision feed in high definition alongside several additional programme streams to over-the-air households across the Corpus Christi area, while the station approaches the fiftieth anniversary of its hard-won April 1977 sign-on.
