KNAT
After a brief period of silence during the transition,[15] channel 23 emerged under Carson ownership as KNAT on August 8, 1982. The station made an early and aggressive push to court advertisers. Carson hosted some at a gala event in Las Vegas, where his company also owned VHF independent KVVU-TV, while the entertainer also briefly appeared in promotional advertisements. That stopped when the general manager of Albuquerque's NBC affiliate, Hubbard Broadcasting-owned KOB-TV (channel 4), complained to the network;[16] to make amends, Carson cut several promotions for The Tonight Show and KOB-TV's late newscasts.[17]
When Peña had flipped KMXN-TV to KLKK-TV in 1980, it was the first independent television station in the Albuquerque market. A year later, competition emerged when KGSW-TV (channel 14) signed on; a year after Carson took over, the two independents were tied at the bottom of the market ratings.[18] After KNAT relaunched, two more independent stations licensed to Santa Fe piled into a crowded market: KNMZ-TV (channel 2)–which later merged with KGSW to become KASA-TV–and KCHF (channel 11), a religious station. As advertising revenues doubled, program costs increased sixfold due to competition between the independent stations.
On April 25, 1985, it was announced that KNAT would go dark on April 27, though it said two buyers were in the process of scouting out the station. The ownership group had changed its name from Carson Communications Corporation to Albuquerque Broadcasting Corporation, removing any mention of the host, after selling KVVU-TV the year prior. General manager Dave Cavileer cited the failure of ownership to market the station and said that "what they paid for programming broke their backs".[19] Competing station executives claimed that, unwilling to provoke Carson's ire, syndicators let the station slide for months without paying fees to purchase programming. Channel 23 ended up on the air several more days while sale talks continued—airing music videos, as most of the other programming had already been returned[20]—however, the station went off the air at midnight on May 1.[21]
It was more than six months after the station went dark that a buyer finally emerged for channel 23: the Trinity Broadcasting Network, which purchased KNAT for $2.25 million.[22] The station returned to the air with TBN programming on December 17, 1985.[23]
Four years later, in December 1989, TBN sold KNAT to All American TV (not to be confused with an unrelated television syndication company of a similar name), a minority-owned firm which owned several other stations that were TBN affiliates.[24] TBN sold KNAT in order to allow the ministry to acquire a station in a market larger than Albuquerque and remain at the FCC's then limit of 12 stations per group owner. TBN reacquired KNAT with its purchase of All American TV in March 2000.[25]
