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Monday 8am - 5pm Tuesday 8am - 5pm Wednesday 8am - 5pm Thursday 8am - 5pm Friday 8am - 5pm

KENW-TV/FM Eastern New Mexico University

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Portales, NM
KENW-TV/FM Eastern New Mexico University

KENW has been serving Eastern New Mexico and West Texas for over 45 years. Thank You for your many

Address

1500 South Avenue K 52 Broadcast Center
Portales, NM
88130

Opening Hours

Monday	8am - 5pm
Tuesday	8am - 5pm
Wednesday	8am - 5pm
Thursday	8am - 5pm
Friday	8am - 5pm

Telephone

+15755622112

Website

http://kenw.org/

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KENW-TV/FM at ENMU

KENW-FM had a humble beginning in the attic of the Administration Building here at Eastern New Mexico University. In 1968, construction of the KENW-FM studios in the attic was aided by student volunteers; sound proofing was accomplished by tacking up large, waffled, egg case separators discarded from the university cafeteria. The FM station was on the air daily from 7 a.m. until around 10 p.m. and was operated totally by university students. The format was classical music, along with informational programs from international broadcast organizations, with some newscasts read by student announcers from copy produced by the UPI teletype machine located next to the front door leading into the attic studio.

On air, our low powered KENW-FM station identified itself as coming from “The Tower Room” in the Administration Building on the Campus of Eastern New Mexico University in Portales, NM. This was considered a much more dignified statement rather than saying that we were coming to you from the “attic” of the Administration Building. On Saturdays, during the live broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera Season (December through April), the station was able to broadcast the opera by using a telephone line to bring the opera from New York City to Portales. The frequency response was not great, but opera buffs were thrilled to hear the live broadcasts.

Later, a carrier-current AM station was put on the air using the 680 KHz AM transmitter that was donated from the radio station in Los Alamos. That transmitter had been used during World War II to serve the city of Los Alamos with a type of broadcasting that could not be heard outside of the city (this was done to keep Los Alamos and its secret wartime mission hidden). When the KENW-AM station was put into service, it was very popular with the student operators because the AM station played the really good music.

KENW-TV also began broadcasting in the fall of 1968 by feeding a black and white picture to the cable company in Portales. The KENW-TV studio was located in the old Student Union Building which had been renamed the Communication Building and repurposed to house, among other things, the Anthropology Department, University Duplicating, and the TV studio. It broadcast Monday through Friday from early afternoon until 9 p.m. Since the station had only one 16 mm film chain and one video tape recorder, the local programs went out mostly live. Informational and travel films made up the rest of the schedule. A very popular daily children’s program was the locally produced “The Princess and the Magic Mirror,” featuring student actors playing the parts of the Princess and the animal puppets: Andy Antelope, Monty Moose, and Zachariah Zebra.

In the Summer of 1974, the newly hired TV staff began organizing the station in a new metal building specifically built to be the Broadcast Center. It was located on what had been a field for raising peanuts, located across the street from the University Purchasing Office. After KENW-TV’s initial broadcast at 5 p.m. on September 1st, 1974, the station began producing and broadcasting local TV productions, some of which are still being produced today. You Should Know and News 3 NM (originally named News, then High Plains Report, and then Scene 3 News). Creative Living (first named Creative Woman) started in 1976 and SportsLook began soon after. These local productions are still being produced today. Creative Living with Sheryl Borden is the only weekly public television program produced in New Mexico that is distributed nationwide.

In the Spring of 2006, we moved from the old metal building Broadcast Center to a brand new, state of the art facility in the newly constructed Communication Building, located on the corner of Sesame Street DR and Ave. N. Not only was the building new, but so was the technology; KENW-TV converted from single channel analog television service to multi-channel digital television, eventually moving to the present four-channel service.