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r $3.6 Millir..k .L..H•jst Its 2nd-Place RatingBy Rex Graham Daily Times Staff KIVA-TV’s owner, Stephen Adams, probably felt down on his luck two weeks ago when the station’s transmitter failed. The Channel 12 signal vanished for three days.Adams’ luck changed, however. Last Saturday Hubbard Broadcasting, the owner of KOB-TV in Albuquerque, signed an agreement to buy KIVA for $3.6 million. Adams paid less than $2 million for it two years ago, according to the station’s general manager.The transformer was patched up, but now local viewers and advertisers are concerned that the Albuquerque stationBriefsNuclear Geophysical of New Mexico is contemplating an expansion into the Four Comers area, according to a company announcement. The president of the firm, Jack Wommack, said, “After detailed research, our statistics show growth potential and steady growth for this region in the next four years.’’ Nuclear Geophysical uses advanced gamma radiation and radon gas detection methods to locate underground gas and oil deposits. It now has offices in Roswell and Midland, Texas.Texaco U.S.A. announced a new field discovery of natural gas and condensate in the Williston Basin in Divide County, North Dakota. The wildcat, 10,800-foot deep well tested at a daily rate of 2.98 million cubic feet of natural gas and 624 barrels of 53.6-degree API gravity condensate through a twenty sixty-fourths-inch choke with flow tubing pressure at 1,700 pounds per square inch.Mountain Bell has announced that it is burying telephone cables in the Aztec-Farmington area. The $450,000 project is expected to be completed by October. Included in the project are about 20 miles of cable along U.S. 550 from Aztec to the Colorado border, including the Cedar Hill area, and along the Navajo Dam Road. Mountain Bell’s district operations manager Bill Chagnon said the projects will expand phone service in the area, but he said the work has been slowed because of uncharted gas and other utility lines. Chagnon asked residents along the proposed underground routes with knowledge of unrecorded utility lines to call 327-6329.Rotary drilling rigs actually making hole in NewMexico on Monday dropped to 61 from 115 a year ago, according to the Hughes Tool Company. There were 64 rigs drilling on May 2 and 59 active rigs on April 11, the company said. Nationwide, there were 1,948 rigs making hole on Monday compared to 3,222 a year ago.£FSouthern Union Companyreported $14.9 million in net earnings for the first three months of 1983, a 6 percent increase com-ared to the same period last year ed G. Hansen, president and chief executive officer, said the company’s utility operation improved because of rate increases and colder weather in certain of service areas. A company statement said it is still selling less pipeline gas, while gas processing showed an increase in earnings for the first quarter while crude oil refining and financial services registered losses.Barbara Hoefer has been named cashier of SanJuan National Bank by bank President Dennis Peterson. Ms. Hoefer had worked for Western Bank and is president of the Four Comers chapter of the American Institute of Banking.The New Mexico Transportation Department announced that permits for oversized-overweight movements by motor vehicle, truck or other transporting method will not be authorized during the Memorial Day weekend beginning at 2 p.m. May 28. The directive was made in an attempt to minimize the number ofarvMrtants Trunk traffic affected will resume at davliffhtmay reduce local news coverage. Federal Communications Commission approval of the sale is expected by fall.At a luncheon Friday at the Farmington Country Club, KOB officials said KIVA’s ancient transmitter and other equipment will be replaced. A new, two-way microwave link with Albuquerque will be added for live reports from Farmington.Stanley S. Hubbard, president of Hubbard Broadcasting and KOB, said the periodic glitches will cease.Mike Clark, vice president and general manager at KIVA, said that a succession of owners that bought the ailing station had no idea of the sation’s run-down condition before they bought it. With KOB’s purchase, the station has changed hands three times in as many years. Like the owners before him, Adams said he would make needed improvements. Some have been made, many have not.Hubbard said this time the promises will be kept, and the Farmington satellite is intended to improve KOB’s second-place positi i in the fierce Albuquerque ratings war. Since KOB is an NBC affiliate, it is now barred by the FCC from transmitting its signal to Roswell and Farmington because they already had NBC affiliates.The new KOB acquisitons and the automatic increase in viewers may pull the second-place station ahead of KOAT.Hubbard said KOB’s 6 p.m. news broadcast trails KOAT-TV, an ABC affiliate, by “a couple of points.”“We’re going to spend very significant dollars up there,” he said. “We’re not carpetbaggers going to milk the thing. We’re not used to monkeying around. The day we take over is the day the new transmitter hits the air.”Hubbard Broadcasting recently signed an agreement to buy KSWS-TV in Roswell.“We will spend up to $lt4 million more in Farmington, and I’m guessing,” Hubbard said, “but whatever has to be done, we will do it.”Clark, said at the time of the purchase, KOB officials knew little about the tastes of local viewers. “The question is how much they can pipe in before people get upset,” Clark said. “The people in Roswell said they didn’t want to be an arm of Albuquerque and the people here feel the same way.” Hubbard said after he purchased KSWS-TV in Roswell several weeks ago, he was concerned that KOAT or KGGM-TV might buy KIVA as a counter move.I called him (Adams) up and it took us eight minutes to make the deal,” he said. “He wanted out and we wanted in.” KOB employees were told about the sale on Monday, two days after it was announced to the public.For Hubbard’s $3.6 million offer, Adams got out. (After the sale Adams reportedly left for a three-week vacation and broadcasting conference in Europe and was unavailable for comment.)“I’m not sure they knew it before they came in,” Clark said, “but they know it now: people here just don’t want tosubmit to Albuquerque.”But Clark, who has stayed with KIVA through two owners, said the KOB purchase could benefit northwest New Mexico. “The live capability from Farmington to Albuquerque will give this part of the state a lot more exposure,” he said.Area cable TV subscribers can watch the three Albuquerque stations now, and KIVA News Director Richard Draper said while more state and regional news will be welcomed by non-cable viewers, a cut in local news broadcasts would be resented. “Certainly it wouldn’t be good if the paper died,” Draper said, “and it wouldn’t be good if (local) TV (news broadcasts) died.”Until FCC approval is given, KOB officials are not allowed to outline all their plans.“How much local news coverage we’ll have, we can’t say,” Hubbard said. “There is no way the people in Farmington and Roswell can be pawns in the ratings game, though. The only way we can benefit is if we give better service than what those people get now.”KIVA has limped along on equipment most stations junked years ago. It has been dogged by poor quality signals and irate viewers.Two years ago, when the Super Bowl was cut off late in the fourth quarter with the score tied, a KIVA employee said one fan called and threatened to blow up the building, located about 2 miles south of Farmington on the Bisti Highway. The threat wasn’t carried out, but Draper said ratings have fallen.Farmington (N.M.) Dolly flmoi Saturday, May 14, fttj—AS(Staff Photo by ionat John)Bye Bye KIVALocal news broadcasts will be fed via micro- sale of KIVA to Hubbard Broadcasting iswave to KOB-TV in Albuquerque after the finalized sometime this fall.KIVA’s troubles have also discouraged advertising. Its gross revenues now total about $800,000 per year, according to Hubbard.In front of about 150 businessmen attending the Friday luncheon at the Country Club, Hubbard turned to KIVA’s general manager and commented, “I don’t think the station has ever made a nickel, has it Mike?”“Not as far as I know,” Gark responded.Hubbard Broadcasting also owns KSTP-TV in Minneapolis, its flagship station. Like Hubbard, Adams lives in Minneapolis and the two are friends. Adams owns Associated Bankers and a Metropolitan Insurance Agency there as well as WGTU-TV in Traverse City, Mich., and a satellite in Sault St, Marie, Mich. Adams also owns three radio stations in the Midwest and is negotiating to buy three more television stations in the south and east, according to Gark.UA W Leadership to ChangeDETROIT (AP) - The United Auto Workers union, its membership depleted by layoffs and plant closings in the auto industry, faces a dramatic change of leadership at its convention next week as seven top officials, including the president, step down.President Douglas A. Fraser, 66, and the other officials must retire because a union rule bars re-election of officers after they reach age 65.They are the last of the union’s top leaders to have worked with Walter Reuther, the late former union president who was largely responsible for shaping the 47-year-old UAW into what it is today.The changes in top leadership come at a critical time.Membership has dropped to about 1.1 million from a peak of 1.53 million in 1969.The decline has caused hardship among the union’s 1,500 U.S. and Canadian locals, some of which will ask during the convention for a larger share of dues money collected monthly from workers.Another problem stems from the domestic industry sales slump which began in 1979. Even now, with sales rebounding, automakers’ newlyinstituted plant efficiencies are allowing more cars to be produced with fewer workers.The formal changeover of leadership, which includesfive of 17 regional directors, will come after elections Wednesday at the union’s 27th constitutional convention, which opens Sunday in Dallas.Oil and Gas LeasesTo Be Sold TuesdaySANTA FE — A total of 45 tracts of state land that has known oil and gas potential will be offered at the state Land Office’s monthly sale of oil and gas leases here nextweek.Twenty tracts are being offered for lease in areas outside known producing areas.State Land Commissioner Jim Baca said any successful bidders will have to pay the bonus they bid, plus the first year’s rent, on the land they lease. Both five and 10-year leases are being offered, with the state receiving either a one-sixth or a one-eighth royalty on oil or gas produced from operations under the leases.The sale will be by sealed and oral bids beginning at 10 a.m. Tuesday, in Morgan Hall, the auditorium of the state Land Office Building here. The 45 tracts withinknnwn nil and east nrndupinffbeing offered by oral bidding, Baca said.The afternoon session will be devoted to selling leases on an additional 20 tracts, totaling 9,526.22 acres, of state trust lands that are outside known producing areas.In all, the state Land Office is offering leases on 22,846.52 acres of state trust land at the monthly sale, Baca said.With Your Own High Quality Satellite SystemGRAND OPENINGSALEPrecision 8’ DishPOJor Mount 100 0 LWA Auto Tech500 Receiver ONLY * * FREE INSTALLATION DURING MAY * *10’ Dish tor Super Sharp Quality Add $300.00Luxor Wireless Remote ReceiverMtl Dish DrivesTHE PROOF IS IN THE PICTURE2810 E. 20th 326-7307Showroom Open Tues.-Fri. 12-8 P.M. Sat. 10-6 P.M.iProfessional Diet Systems2501 £ 20th Hutton Plaza Suite CLOSE WEIGHTTable Food Diet• Medically Approved• Professional Counseling• Men Women-Teens
Newspaper Details
Farmington Daily Times
Farmington, New Mexico, US
Sat, May 14, 1983
Page 12
Full Page
Clipped by
Sammi B.
NA 05 Dec 2021
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