| Callsign: | KUNP |
| City: | La Grande, Oregon |
| Branding: | Univision Portland |
| Digital: | 16 (UHF) |
| Virtual: | 16 |
| Translators: | KUNP-LD 47 (34 UHF) Portland |
| Owner: | Sinclair Broadcast Group |
| Licensee: | Sinclair LaGrande Licensee, LLC |
| Location: | La Grande–Portland, Oregon |
| Country: | United States |
| Founded: | August 6, 1999 |
| Callsign Meaning: | "Univision Portland" |
| Sister Stations: | KATU |
| Former Callsigns: | KBPD (2001–2002) KPOU (2002–2006) |
| Former Channel Numbers: | Analog: 16 (UHF, 2001–2009) |
| Former Affiliations: | MundoFox/MundoMax (2012–2016) |
| Erp: | 18.95 kW |
| Haat: | 7600NaN0 |
| Facility Id: | 81447 |
| Coordinates: | 45.309°N -117.7327°W |
| Licensing Authority: | FCC |
KUNP (channel 16) is a television station licensed to La Grande, Oregon, United States, affiliated with the Spanish-language network Univision. It is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group alongside Portland-based ABC affiliate KATU (channel 2). The two stations share studios on NE Sandy Boulevard in Portland; KUNP's transmitter is located east of Cove atop Mount Fanny, within eastern Oregon's Wallowa–Whitman National Forest.
Because of the location of its transmitter facilities 240miles from Downtown Portland, KUNP's over-the-air signal is unable to reach Portland proper. To overcome this, its signal is relayed on a low-power translator station, KUNP-LD (channel 47), which serves the immediate Portland area from a transmitter on NW Willamette Stone Park Road (near NW Skyline Boulevard) in the Sylvan-Highlands section of Portland, along with cable and satellite coverage folded into KATU's retransmission consent agreements to cover the market, along with some outlying areas. It also previously relayed its signal via analog translator KABH-LP (channel 15) in Bend. KABH was owned by WatchTV, Inc., alongside its crosstown Portland HSN affiliate KORK-CA, but was operated by Sinclair under a local marketing agreement (LMA). KABH's license was canceled by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on March 19, 2015, for failure to file a license renewal application.
The station was founded on August 6, 1999, and formally signed on the air on December 3, 2001, as KBPD; it changed its call letters to KPOU on May 14, 2002. The call letters changed again to the current KUNP on December 5, 2006. KABH-LP was founded on June 1, 1992, as K15DO, but did not take to the air until November 3, 1993.
KUNP was originally owned by Equity Broadcasting Corporation; it was acquired by Fisher Communications on November 3, 2006, along with KUNS-TV in Seattle. Fisher would associate the two stations with the ABC affiliates it already owned in those markets, KATU and KOMO-TV. At one point, KUNP also had KKEI-CA as another translator prior to the Fisher acquisition. That station now serves Portland as a Telemundo affiliate. That station is also owned by WatchTV, Inc., owner of the now-defunct KABH-LP.
On August 21, 2012, Fisher Communications signed an affiliation agreement with MundoFox, a Spanish-language competitor to Univision that was owned as a joint venture between Fox International Channels and Colombian broadcaster RCN TV, for KUNP and Seattle sister station KUNS to be carried on both stations as digital subchannels starting in late September.[1] MundoFox would eventually rebrand as MundoMax in 2015 before ending all operations on December 1, 2016.
On April 10, 2013, KUNP, KATU, and Fisher Communications's other holdings were acquired by the Sinclair Broadcast Group.[2] [3] The Federal Communications Commission granted its approval of the deal on August 7,[4] and the sale was completed the following day.[5]
On May 8, 2017, Sinclair Broadcast Group entered into an agreement to acquire Tribune Media—owner of CW affiliate KRCW-TV (channel 32)—for $3.9 billion, plus the assumption of $2.7 billion in debt held by Tribune. Sinclair would have been required to sell one of KUNP or KRCW-TV if the deal were to be approved.[6] However, in 2018, the FCC designated the deal for hearing by an administrative law judge; the deal was then terminated by Tribune.
The station's signal is multiplexed:
| 16.1 | KUNP | Main KUNP programming / Univision | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16.2 | TheNest | The Nest | ||
| 16.3 | Charge! | Charge! |
Since KUNP did not sign on-the-air before the April 21, 1997, deadline for the FCC's digital television allotment plan, the station was not granted a companion digital signal. Therefore, on or before June 12, 2009, the station was required to turn off its analog signal and turn on a new digital signal (a method known as a "flash cut") on UHF channel 16. KUNP-LP, as a low-power station, continued to broadcast in analog until April 13, 2012, when it made its flash-cut to digital transmission on UHF channel 47 and changing its callsign suffix from "-LP" to "-LD".
"Must-carry" regulations imposed by the FCC require most cable television providers across the Portland market to carry KUNP on their lineups. In the past under Equity ownership, the station was not available on all cable systems, as many of these providers were under carriage agreements for the national cable feed for the network, which allowed them control of several minutes throughout the day of local commercial time that would not be available if they instead carried KUNP. Equity traditionally depended completely on must-carry to bring its stations to cable providers, and the same was the case with KUNP before the sale of the station to Fisher. Retransmission consent agreements for providers in the Portland market made after Sinclair's purchase of KATU and KUNP effectively made carriage of KUNP compulsory as part of the compensation for carrying KATU (along with its subchannels), though some smaller systems in communities with a relatively low Hispanic population and limited channel capacity have been given a waiver from KUNP carriage.
On April 17, 2012, DirecTV began carrying KUNP's high definition signal as part of its local broadcast station package for the Portland area (on channel 47). Up until that point, the satellite provider only carried the station's standard definition signal.