NBC/CBS affiliate in Brownsville, Texas
KVEO-TV (channel 23) is a television station licensed to Brownsville, Texas, United States, serving the Lower Rio Grande Valley as an affiliate of NBC and CBS. It is owned by Nexstar Media Group alongside Harlingen-licensed primary Antenna TV owned-and-operated station and secondary MyNetworkTV affiliate KGBT-TV (channel 4). Both stations share studios on West Expressway (I-2/US 83) in Harlingen, while KVEO-TV's transmitter is located in Santa Maria, Texas.
History
KVEO signed on the air on December 19, 1981. Before then, the area had been one of the few in the country without a full-time NBC affiliate; the area's original NBC affiliate, Weslaco's KRGV-TV (channel 5), had become a full-time ABC affiliate in 1976. The station was originally owned by a local group of investors called Tierra Del Broadcasting Corporation. In the interim, CBS affiliate KGBT-TV (channel 4) carried NBC programming on a secondary basis. Tierra Del sold the station to Valley Broadcasting in 1984, which in turn sold KVEO to Southwest Multimedia a year later. Southwest Multimedia would then sold it to Associated Broadcasters (later renamed Communications Corporation of America, founded by Thomas R. Galloway and D. Wayne Elmore) in 1990. KVEO added a secondary affiliation with UPN in 1996, replacing previous secondary affiliate KRGV-TV;[2] in 1999, the station lost UPN to XHRIO-TV in Matamoros.[3][4]
On April 24, 2013, Communications Corporation of America announced the sale of its entire group (including KVEO-TV) to the Nexstar Broadcasting Group.[5] The sale was completed on January 1, 2015.[6]
On January 27, 2020, Sinclair Broadcast Group announced that it would sell the non-license assets of KGBT-TV (including its CBS affiliation and syndication contracts) to Nexstar as part of a settlement between the two companies over Sinclair's failed acquisition of Tribune Media, which was ultimately acquired by Nexstar.[7] KGBT-TV's CBS affiliation, news department, and syndicated programming moved to KVEO's second subchannel the next day, thus bringing an end to KGBT-TV's affiliation with the network after 66 years. KGBT-TV's main 4.1 subchannel went dark[1] (it has since been resurrected as a MyNetworkTV/Antenna TV affiliate). On-air operations mostly remained unchanged, though viewers were asked to rescan their sets in order to continue watching CBS. However, few viewers actually lost access to CBS programming due to the high penetration of cable and satellite in the market.
In addition, Nexstar also announced that it would merge KVEO and KGBT-TV's operations at KGBT-TV's facility in Harlingen within a few months.[8]
Programming
Syndicated programming
Syndicated programming (as of September 2020) on KVEO-DT1 includes The Big Bang Theory, The Drew Barrymore Show, Daily Mail TV, Rachael Ray, Dr. Phil, and Jeopardy!. Syndicated programming on KVEO-DT2 includes Wheel of Fortune, The Doctors, Judge Judy, and reruns of Jeopardy!.
Newscasts
At the station's inception, KVEO had a news operation branded as Total 23 News. However, it made almost no headway in the ratings against KGBT and KRGV. Within a few years, the news department was shut down. For the next quarter-century, KVEO was one of the few Big Three stations with no local newscasts.
Local news returned to the station on October 1, 2007, under the NewsCenter 23 branding. The newscasts are produced in high definition, making KVEO the first station in the Rio Grande Valley to do so.
In January 2010, ComCorp announced that it would close KVEO's news department, other than a few reporters. The locally produced newscast would now originate from a ComCorp-controlled station in El Paso, KTSM-TV, using its own staff, with the remaining reporters in Brownsville filing reports. The new newscast, which debuted January 18, 2010, was broadcast live from El Paso, and has continued with the acquisition of both stations by Nexstar.[9][10]
KVEO debuted its new news set for CBS 4 on July 16, 2020 and its new news set for NBC 23 on August 31, 2020. Brenda Medina and Robert Bettes did not sign new contracts with NBC 23. In addition, NBC 23 also debuted several new newscasts, including a morning newscast, a midday newscast, a 4 p.m. newscast, a 6:30 p.m. newscast and weekend newscasts. However, NBC 23's 5 p.m. newscast was dropped around the same time.
[11][12]
Logo used from 2007 to 2018 under the Newscenter 23 branding.
Weather segment
Even before KVEO restarted its news operation, KVEO provided a weather segment at 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. weekday evenings with meteorologist Jason McCleave of WeatherVision. KVEO also broadcasts local forecast segments during Today.
KVEO offered NBC Weather Plus on 23.2 prior to NBCUniversal's acquisition of The Weather Channel and subsequent termination of the Weather Plus service.
