is a television station licensed to Sante Fe but serving the
Albuquerque, New Mexico DMA. It is a
WB network affilliate, and broadcasts on channel 19.
KWBQ is part of the only major television
Duopoly in Albuquerque. Its owner,
ACME Communications , also owns
KASY , a
UPN network affiliate.
KWBQ offers a general entertainment format with off network sitcoms, talk shows, court shows, reality shows, first run shows from WB and cartoons from Kids WB on weekends.
KWBQ WB 19 signed on in December of 1998. WB originally aired on 50 KASY from the Fall of 1995 to the time of WB 19's sign on. In June of 1999 Acme TV bought KASY from Ramar Communications and terminated KASY's Local Marketing Agreement with KRQE CBS 13 owned by Emmis Communications. Most of the programming inventory airing on KASY was also bought while some of the shows stayed with Emmis to air on KRQE CBS 13.
In the Fall of 1999 KASY dropped its UPN affiliation and broadcast movies and syndicated programming in place of UPN programs. By the end of the year though UPN affiliation was reinstated.
Today Acme therefore owns both WB 19 KWBQ and UPN 50 KASY. In January of 2006 it was announced that UPN and WB would merge. Each network will continue to operate separately until the Fall of 2006 of at which time both will shut down and then form a new network called
CW . On
March 9 ,
2006 , KWBQ was announced as the CW affiliate while KASY (as announced on
March 15 ,
2006 ) will carry
My Network TV programming. (This made ACME the third company, after Capitol Broadcasting and Weigel Broadcasting, to affiliate a duopoly with both The CW and My Network TV.) KWBQ had discussed changing its call letters to reflect the new network affiliation, but decided against it.
