Corpus Christi

National Communications will acquire Corpus Christi Fox-affiliate KUQI from High Maintenance Broadcasting, the two companies announced today.

The deal is expected to be approved by the FCC in the second half of 2012. After it completion, National will “enter into sales, programming and other shared services agreements with London Broadcasting Company,” according to a statement. London Broadcasting is the owner of KIII, the ABC-affiliate in Corpus Christi.

KUQI does not currently have a news department, but the station simulcasts the 9 p.m. newscasts from Houston’s KRIV.

“We are excited to be entering the Corpus Christi market and look forward to building upon the platform that currently exists,” National Communications president Lester Langley said in a statement. Read more

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KIII is expanding its weekday morning newscast.  Beginning this week, the Corpus Christi ABC-affiliate is adding an extra thirty minutes to its morning show, moving its start time to 5:00 a.m.

“We are proud to be able to provide an additional half-hour of morning news to the viewers of South Texas,” KIII news director Richard Longoria said, announcing the programming change. “We’ll continue to make sure our viewers have all the information they need to get their day going.”

The change to the morning newscast, which will continue to be anchored by John Thomas and Caitlin Espinosa, comes two weeks after the station introduced veteran Texas broadcast executive Dan Robbins as its vice president and general manager. Read more

Veteran Texas broadcast executive Dan Robbins has been named vice president and general manager of KIII in Corpus Christi.  Robbins has been serving as the station’s interim GM for the past several weeks.

Robbins came to KIII from KBMT in Beaumont-Port Arthur, where he served as the vice president and general manager of the London Broadcasting-owned station for a little over two years.

During his over three decade-long career, Robbins has managed stations in Abilene, Tyler, El Paso, Midland, Waco, and Brownsville, as well as Corpus Christi.

“I’m very excited to be back in Corpus,” Robbins.  “Both my wife and I love it here.” Read more

KIII reporter Kim Passoth got much more than she was expecting when she and a videographer went to a South Texas trailer park, following up on a family whose house was burned down a month ago.

While speaking with the owner of the property, Passoth discovered an animal hoarding situation on an adjacent property, and was caught in the middle of a heated argument between the owner and her uncle (video inside). Read more

Four Corpus Christi stations have been dropped from Time Warner Cable after Cordillera Communications, the stations’ owner, was unable to reach a new retrans agreement with the cable provider.

TWC subscribers in Corpus Christi are now unable to watch NBC-affiliate KRIS, Telemundo-affiliate KAJA, and independent station KDF, as well as the local CW-affiliate, which airs on KRIS’s digital subchannel.

“Time Warner has chosen to drop these stations, even though we continue to work towards a new agreement,” reads a statement on KRIS’s website, posted just before the old retrans agreement expired at midnight, last night.