KVEA-TV BROADCASTS START SUNDAY : CHANNEL 52 GETTING A SPANISH ACCENT

Los Angeles television station Channel 52 gets a new name, a new look and, most significantly, a new sound on Sunday.

What was KBSC-TV--for most of its recent past the home station for the ON-TV subscription service--has changed ownership and become KVEA-TV. It begins broadcasting Sunday as the area’s second full-time Spanish-language station.

Rather than directly challenging well-established KMEX-TV Channel 34, however, the owners of the new station are promoting KVEA-TV as an additional source of entertainment and information for the area’s large and growing Latino population.

“Financially, the market is more than ripe for a second station. Our success does not have to come at the expense of Channel 34,” said Paul Niedermeyer, general manager of KVEA-TV. “I give them (KMEX-TV) a lot of acknowledgment and respect for all the pioneering work they’ve done over the years; they have certainly done a lot of good. But no matter how sincere and devoted a station is, there’s no way with an audience of 3, 4, 5 million that it can be enough things to satisfy all those different, diverse people.”

While Niedermeyer and other executives at the new company believe there are more than enough viewers and advertisers to permit both stations to coexist peacefully and profitably, they said that there is bound to be some rivalry.

“The competition will make 34 better, it will make us better--and the ultimate winner of this friendly battle will be the Hispanic audience,” said Frank Cruz, a former reporter and news anchor at KNBC-TV Channel 4 who has joined KVEA-TV as vice president.

His assessment is shared by Danny Villanueva, general manager at KMEX-TV. “I’m looking forward to it,” he said. “I think we can all work together to help the Hispanic community. As long as that is their motivation--to help the community--I think they will be successful.”

Channel 52 at one time offered a part-time schedule of Spanish-language programs, as KSCI-TV Channel 18 does today, but it dropped them when the ON-TV pay service went to 24 hours a day. Earlier this year ON-TV was folded into the SelecTV subscription service, which is broadcast over the Channel 22 frequency. KBSC-TV was then sold by Oak Industries to Estrella Communications, Inc.

Joseph Wallach, president and chief executive officer of Estrella, said he chose to return Channel 52 to a Spanish-language format because he believes there is room in the market for a station that can counterprogram KMEX-TV, an affiliate of the Spanish International Network, in much the same way that English-language independent KTLA-TV counterprograms network-owned KCBS-TV, KNBC-TV and KABC-TV.

Niedermeyer said that KVEA-TV’s program schedule will differ from KMEX-TV’s in three noteworthy ways. First, while KMEX-TV obtains the majority of its programming from Mexico, KVEA-TV will be carrying shows from a broader range of Latin American countries.

Second, KVEA-TV will offer a block of children’s programming on weekday afternoons.

Third, KVEA-TV will be showing U.S.-made movies and series that have been dubbed in Spanish. Among the titles it has scheduled are the films “Dr. Zhivago,” “Mutiny on the Bounty,” “The Defiant Ones,” “North by Northwest” and “Singin’ in the Rain,” and the series “Medical Center,” “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” and “Daktari.”

KVEA-TV also will produce a local magazine show, “VEA L.A.,” which will air weekdays from 5:30 to 6 p.m., and a 15-minute local newscast, “VEA Noticias,” airing weeknights at 11 p.m.

There are plans to expand the local production commitment as time and money allow, Wallach said. He said he hopes to add an information show for women to the daytime schedule early next year and said that he would like the station eventually to be producing comedy and drama programs that reflect the Latino experience in Los Angeles.

After a special opening-day schedule that begins at 1 p.m., KVEA-TV will begin a broadcast schedule that will run from 10 a.m. to 12:15 a.m. on weekdays, from 11 a.m. to midnight on Saturdays and from 1 p.m. to midnight on Sundays.