KXTX-TV (channel 39) is a television station licensed to Dallas, Texas, United States, serving as the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex with programming from the Spanish-language network Telemundo.

The two stations share studios at the CentrePort Business Park in Fort Worth; KXTX-TV's transmitter is located in Cedar Hill, Texas.

Beginning in 1996, the station aired Texas Rangers baseball games as part of a wide-ranging contract between the team and KXAS-TV owner LIN Media.

In 2000, Southwest Sports acquired the license from CBN and immediately attempted to sell KXTX-TV to Pappas Telecasting, which would have used it as a key station in its planned Azteca América network.

The station would broadcast from a tower in Cedar Hill, the primary TV transmission site in the region,[7] and maintain studios at 3900 Harry Hines Boulevard near downtown Dallas.

During the day, KDTV offered Stock Market Observer, a rolling block of business news and information for investors, using equipment developed by Scantlin Electronics.

A 1972 feature on Doubleday & Co. in The New York Times cited Dallas business leaders in finding that the station lacked leadership and broadcasting expertise in management.

[22][a] As a result of KDTV's poor financial condition and a failure to sell the station,[25] Doubleday began negotiating to transfer it to a non-profit organization, with four groups vying over the course of June 1973 to receive the donation.

[26] KERA-TV itself expressed interest in acquiring channel 39, not only as a secondary outlet for its programming but also to move its television production facility to 3900 Harry Hines and leave its existing studios for use by the then-planned KERA FM.

[25][27] Nonetheless, KERA intensively lobbied for the channel, going as far as to enlist the help of journalist and PBS show host Bill Moyers to present its proposal.

The Trinity Foundation had been formed as an outgrowth of a recent prayer breakfast; president Ole Anthony told The Dallas Morning News, "Our purpose is communicating in any way possible the love, grace and sufficiency of Jesus Christ."

[29] The other applicant was the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), which had recently entered Dallas by buying from Berean Fellowship and reactivating the then-silent channel 33, which returned to air as KXTX-TV on April 16.

[42] However, KXTX-TV's deemphasis of religion—by 1984, The 700 Club was airing just once a day in prime time[43]—left a lane open for a new, more purely religious television station in the Metroplex.

[b] These new startups joined KTVT and KXTX-TV to give Dallas–Fort Worth five independent stations, the most of any market in the country; in this battle, channels 27 and 39 lagged in their available cash to buy programs.

Beginning in January 1983, the Copyright Royalty Tribunal raised the rates that cable companies had to pay for importing out-of-market signals by 375 percent.

When the FCC moved to reclassify KXTX as a conventional independent effective at the end of 1990, the station was dropped from cable systems in cities including Wichita Falls,[49] Longview,[50] and Marshall.

[51] For other reasons, KXTX lost its coverage in more far-flung places, including Tulsa, Oklahoma—where it was replaced by co-owned CBN Cable in 1982[52]—and Shreveport, Louisiana, in 1988.

[40][54] In its second attempt to sell channel 39, CBN was hampered by expensive, long-term syndicated program contracts that caused interest in the station to lag.

[63] The station continued to specialize in family-friendly programs—CBN described the lineup in official material as "programs which can be viewed by people of all ages without their becoming offended"—and weekend western movies.

After exchanging lawsuits with The WB over its verbal commitment to that network, the company reached a deal to affiliate KTVT and KSTW in Tacoma, Washington, with CBS.

[75][76] LIN surprised observers by not selling a cable package to Prime Sports Southwest; instead, it set a lineup of 15 games on KXAS and 123 on KXTX.

[77] The Dallas Mavericks of the NBA, also displaced by KTVT switching to CBS, initially moved to KDFI, but after one season, the team signed with KXTX-TV to air 35 games.

[79] On October 12, 1996, an accident caused by a crew installing a new antenna on the structure resulted in the collapse of the station's 1,550-foot (472 m) transmitter tower in Cedar Hill.

[85] This transaction was shortly followed in January 1998 with a deal for Hicks to buy the Rangers,[86] which was unanimously approved by other Major League Baseball owners in June.

[87] Hicks, Muse opted to combine LIN with Chancellor Media, an owner of radio stations also controlled by the firm, in a deal announced in July 1998.

[91][93] As early as February 1998, some advertising buyers had noted to Mediaweek that KXTX could have a strategic advantage over a cable-only service because cable penetration in the market was well below the national average.

[97][98] In addition, it sold the over-the-air broadcast rights for the Rangers and Stars to Fox Sports Net, which would air the games on Fox-owned KDFW-TV and KDFI.

[104] Even though the FCC approved of the deal in November 2000,[104] Pappas's plans to launch Azteca América ran into a series of difficulties, primarily economic.

Rival Univision purchased USA Broadcasting, taking with it major-market stations that could have aided its national reach; meanwhile, Azteca América walked away from a deal to buy WSAH in the New York City market.

[118][119] The hubbing of local news production attracted criticism from the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, including formal statements against NBCUniversal decrying the move.