KESQ history

In 1972, Cine-Prime, a company engaged in educational television production and distribution, announced that it had purchased the station, though no transfer of control was ever filed.

In 1973, Pacific attempted to sell KPLM-TV to Ralph Andrews Productions, which was scrapped several months later.

In February 1974, Smoke Tree Village filed to evict KPLM-TV from its studios for not paying six months of rent.

Ultimately, in 1975, Pacific Media Corporation filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization, and the principals of a Palm Springs law firm were appointed as receivers; the studios were relocated to Cathedral City.

In late 1977, negotiations were concluded to sell KPLM-TV to Esquire, Inc.

The call letters were changed to KESQ-TV on September 18, 1978.

Esquire purchased KECC-TV in El Centro in 1981.

Gulf was then swallowed by Taft Broadcasting in 1985, when the FCC increased ownership limits on television and radio properties—but KESQ-TV was not included in the transaction, which immediately brought Taft to the limit.

Fitts reached a deal to sell KESQ-TV to its current owner, the News-Press & Gazette Company of St Joseph, Missouri, for $19.4 million in late 1995.

In 1996, the station received FCC approval to move its transmitter to a spot in the San Jacinto Mountains, which would have increased its coverage area to include much of western Riverside County and San Bernardino County.

While in the later years under Fitts, KESQ had briefly run a radio station (920 AM), it returned to the field again when 1400 AM, previously KUNA, was bought by the station and flipped to sports as KESQ at the end of 1997.

In 1998, NPG entered into a local marketing agreement to run KDFX-LP, the low-power Fox affiliate in Palm Springs; it started that station's first local newscast.

The station shut down its analog signal on June 12, 2009, as part of the digital television transition in the United States.

In 2012, NPG bought KPSP-CD, the local CBS affiliate.