KSTU (channel 13) is a television station in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States, affiliated with the Fox network. It is owned by the E. W. Scripps Company alongside Provo-licensed Ion Television owned-and-operated KUPX-TV (channel 16). KSTU's studios are located on West Amelia Earhart Drive in the northwestern section of Salt Lake City, and its transmitter is located on Farnsworth Peak in the Oquirrh Mountains, southwest of Salt Lake City. More than 80 dependent translators carry its signal throughout Utah and portions of neighboring states.
KSTU went on the air in 1978 as the first modern independent station in Salt Lake City. Broadcasting on channel 20, it was also the first commercial UHF outlet in the state. It was built by and named for Springfield Television, the Massachusetts-based firm that owned it. KSTU was sold to Adams Communications in 1984 and affiliated with Fox at its launch in 1986.
While KSTU was starting on channel 20, a decade-long proceeding began to assign VHF channel 13 to Salt Lake City, which was made available in 1980. Eight applicants submitted bids; Mountain West Television, a consortium of mostly local partners, emerged with the construction permit after buying out its competitors' interests. In what the partners later described as coerced action coordinated by their legal counsel and financial backers, the company bought KSTU instead of building and staffing its own station. As a result, KSTU and its programming moved to channel 13 in November 1987.
Between 1989 and 2007, KSTU was owned and operated by Fox. During this time, in 1991, the station began producing local newscasts, which subsequent owners would build on to give the station a large emphasis on news. After Fox spun off its smaller owned-and-operated stations in 2007, KSTU has been owned in succession by Local TV LLC, Tribune Media, and Scripps.
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