Because of the lack of available programming from the syndication market that complies with Family Radio's programming philosophy, KFTL instead ran religious programming about six hours a day, with programming from the Home Shopping Network filling the remainder of the schedule.
In the late 1990s, it began running a few hours of public domainmovies and sitcoms each day. Family Radio never grew into television as planned; as a result, the organization sold KFTL in 2003 to Univision Communications, which turned it into a Spanish-language station as an owned-and-operated station of Telefutura (which was relaunched as UniMás in January 2013). The station also modified its call letters to KTFK. As a result, KTFK became the fourth station in the Sacramento market overall to be owned and operated by its affiliated network.
Family Radio later bought a San Francisco low-power station, K30BI, which now carries the call letters KCNZ-CD. Initially, KCNZ-CD was reprogrammed and carried similar programming to that which aired on the former KFTL.
There is no 64.2 on this multiplex, as it is broadcast from KUVS-DT.
On September 27, 2021, a new digital network called Digi-TV was launched on KFTK's fifth subchannel (64.5).[3] It was short-lived as the network ceased operations on August 1, 2022.
Analog-to-digital conversion
KTFK-TV ended transmission of analog television over UHF channel 64 on May 8, 2009, due to equipment failure, and informed the FCC there was insufficient time before the June 12 shutoff to do repairs.[4] Despite losing its analog transmitter, KTFK continued digital broadcasting on its transitional digital channel 62, until the June 12 cutoff. On June 13, 2009, it began broadcasting on its permanent DTV channel, UHF channel 26.[5]
As part of the analog-to-digital transition, KTFK-TV moved its broadcast location from an antenna on Mount Diablo, which it shared with KTNC-TV, to an antenna on the KXTV/KOVRcandelabra in Walnut Grove. This move was necessary because transmissions from Mount Diablo can be received in both the San Francisco and Sacramentomarkets, and there were no channels remaining for KTFK to use that would be free of interference in both markets. Moving broadcasting to Walnut Grove prevented potential interference with San Francisco Bay Area stations.[6]
1These stations are owned by Mission Broadcasting but operated by Nexstar under an LMA. 2These stations are owned by Londen Media Group but operated by Nexstar under a TBA. 3Paramount Global and Warner Bros. Discovery still own a combined 25 percent stake in The CW, however the network is operated entirely by Nexstar. 4These stations are owned by Vaughan Media but operated by Nexstar under an LMA. 5TelevisaUnivision owns the licenses to these stations but the stations themselves are operated by Entravision Communications (of which the company owns a 10 percent stake) under an LMA.