KMTP-TV, virtual channel 32 (UHF digital channel 28), is an independent non-commercial educational television station licensed to San Francisco, California, United States and serving the San Francisco Bay Area. The station is owned by the Minority Television Project. KMTP's studios are located on Woodside Way in San Mateo, and its transmitter is located on San Bruno Mountain south of San Francisco.
KMTP airs a large amount of multilingual, ethnic programming. The station produces and broadcasts a daily news show, 5 Day News, and also broadcasts programming from Deutsche Welle TV, RT (Russia Today), and the Classic Arts Showcase. KMTP is one of the few non-PBS-affiliated public television stations in the United States, and one of two such stations in the San Francisco Bay Area (the other being KPJK in San Mateo).
History
In 1954, the station began commercially as KSAN-TV on UHF channel 32 as one of the first UHF TV stations in California. Owned by the Patterson family, operators of KSAN radio, the station was a small production studio and broadcast operation housed in the renovated Sutro Mansion in San Francisco and showed an amalgam of boxing and wrestling matches, medical conferences, and old movies. The station went off the air in 1958.
The TV station was purchased by Metromedia in 1968, when the call sign was moved to an FM radio station and the TV station rechristened KNEW-TV, to match its co-owned KNEW radio and to compliment Metromedia's flagship station in New York, WNEW-TV (now Fox-owned WNYW). KNEW-TV ran the syndicated Metromedia talk shows and variety programming of such stars as shock-talker Joe Pyne, and others.
This format was unsuccessful, and by 1970, channel 32 was given to leading public broadcaster KQED (channel 9) and rechristened, this time as KQEC, a member station of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). KQED held onto the station until 1988 when the FCC revoked the license, ruling that it had been off the air too long to remain in the hands of the KQED ownership (KQED kept KQEC off the air for most of 1972 through 1977, and then again for several months in 1979-80), and reassigned the license to Minority Television Project, one of the challengers of the KQEC license.
In the FCC's 2016-2017 Broadcast Incentive Auction #1001, KMTP-TV successfully bid to go off the air for a compensation of $87,824,258. KMTP claimed in a March 31, 2017, press release, that it was negotiating with other broadcast stations in the Bay Area to share a channel. In FCC filings, it claimed a Channel Sharing Agreement had been signed, after completion of the auction, that would enable KMTP to continue broadcasting but on a different channel. This would be seamless for viewers as they would still tune to channel 32.
As of mid-2018, KMTP-TV is available via Bay Area cable TV and satellite providers (usually as channel 32), but it is not being broadcast over-the-air.
| TV stations in California | |
|---|---|
| Independent stations | Public TV stations |
| KBTV-CD, Sacramento | KCET, Los Angeles |
| KCAL, Los Angeles | KMTP, San Francisco |
| KIIO-LD, Los Angeles | KPJK, San Mateo |
| KSCI, Long Beach | |
| KHTV-CD, Los Angeles | |
| KNLA-CD, Los Angeles | |
| KBSV, Ceres | |
| KTSF, San Francisco | |
| KICU, San Francisco/San Jose | |
| KXLA, Rancho Palos Verdes/Los Angeles | |
| KUSI, San Diego | |
| KSKT-CD, San Diego | |
| KDOC, Los Angeles | |
| Broadcast television in the Bay Area, including San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose | |
|---|---|
| English stations | Spanish stations |
| KAXT-CD 1 (Decades) | KDTV-DT 14 (UNI) |
| KTVU 2 (Fox) | KCNZ-CD 28 (LATV) |
| KURK-LD 3 (CMC) | KSTS 48 (TLM) |
| KRON 4 (MNTV) | KEMO 50 (Estrell) |
| KPIX 5 (CBS) | KFSF-DT 66 (UMas) |
| KGO 7 (ABC) | |
| KNTV 11 (NBC) | |
| KQTA-LD 15 (Jewelry) | |
| KOFY 20 (Grit) | |
| KICU 36 (Ind) | |
| KCNS 38 (ShopHQ) | |
| KBCW 44 (CW) | |
| KKPX 65 (ION) | |
| KTLN 68 (H&I) | |
| Public television stations | |
| KQED 9 (PBS) | |
| KRCB 22 (PBS) | |
| KQEH 54 (PBS) | |
| KPJK 60 (Ind) | |
| Religious stations | |
| KQSL-LD 17 (RDI) | |
| KDTS-LD 52 (Daystar) | |