| Callsign: | KREZ-TV |
| City: | Durango, Colorado |
| Branding: | KREZ News 6 |
| Digital: | 15 (UHF) |
| Virtual: | 6 |
| Translators: | see |
| Country: | United States |
| Former Channel Numbers: | Analog: 6 (VHF, 1963–2009) |
| Owner: | Nexstar Media Group |
| Licensee: | Nexstar Media Inc. |
| Erp: | 46 kW |
| Haat: | 90.40NaN0 |
| Facility Id: | 48589 |
| Coordinates: | 37.2628°N -107.9001°W |
| Licensing Authority: | FCC |
KREZ-TV (channel 6) is a television station licensed to Durango, Colorado, United States, affiliated with CBS and Fox. It is a satellite of Albuquerque, New Mexico–based KRQE (channel 13), which is owned by Nexstar Media Group. KREZ-TV's offices are located on Turner Drive in Durango, and its transmitter is located atop Smelter Mountain; its parent station maintains studios on Broadcast Plaza in Albuquerque.
KBIM-TV (channel 10) in Roswell, New Mexico, also serves as a satellite of KRQE. These satellite operations provide additional news bureaus for KRQE and sell advertising time to local sponsors.
The station began operations on September 15, 1963, as KJFL-TV, a free-standing local independent station owned by Jeter Telecasting;[1] it went off the air after its facilities were destroyed in a February 1964 fire,[2] and the station was sold, rebuilt and returned to the air on September 9, 1965, as KREZ-TV, a satellite of CBS affiliate KREX-TV (channel 5) in Grand Junction, Colorado.[3] KREZ operated as such for nearly 30 years (with many attempts at regional news along the way) before being sold to Davenport, Iowa-based Lee Enterprises and becoming a KRQE satellite in 1995.[4]
In 1998, Lee Enterprises rebranded the combination of KRQE, KREZ-TV, and KBIM-TV as "CBS Southwest" and revamped the Durango and Roswell stations' news services to produce inserts into KRQE's early evening newscasts.[5] Two years later, Lee would exit broadcasting and sell KRQE, KREZ-TV, KBIM-TV, and most of its other television properties to Emmis Communications; in 2005, Emmis, in its own exit from television, sold its New Mexico outlets to LIN TV Corporation.
A deal to sell KREZ to Native American Broadcasting, LLC was reached in April 2011;[6] upon the sale's completion, KREZ was to become a full-scale independent station (with plans for extensive local programming), and change its call letters to KSWZ-TV.[7] However, the sale was never finalized, and KREZ remains a KRQE satellite.
On March 21, 2014, it was announced that Media General would acquire LIN.[8] The merger was completed on December 19.[9] Just over a year later, on January 27, 2016, it was announced that the Nexstar Broadcasting Group would buy Media General for $4.6 billion. After selling then-Fox affiliate KASA-TV to Ramar Communications, KRQE and its satellites became part of "Nexstar Media Group."[10] The sale was completed on January 17, 2017, reuniting KREZ with former parent station KREX.[11]
The station's signal is multiplexed:
| 6.1 | KREZ-HD | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6.2 | FoxNM | Fox |
KREZ-TV shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 6, on June 12, 2009, the official date on which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 15,[13] using virtual channel 6.