KYAZ (channel 51) is a television station licensed to Katy, Texas, United States, broadcasting the classic television network MeTV to the Houston area. Owned and operated by Weigel Broadcasting, the station maintains studios at One Arena Place on Bissonnet Street on Houston's southwest side, and its transmitter is located near Missouri City, Texas. History Early history The station first signed on the air on November 3, 1993 as KNWS-TV, a 24-hour all-news station that was owned by Johnson Broadcasting. The all-news format featured special segments, and pre-recorded newscasts that were looped, then updated, throughout the day. Throughout that year, the station simulcast live coverage of the O. J. Simpson murder trial from KTLA in Los Angeles. KNWS began cutting back on its news programming in November 1996; following a canceled sale to home shopping operator Global Broadcasting Systems in 1997, the station abandoned its all-news format entirely on January 1, 1998 and became a traditional independent station, broadcasting syndicated classic television series and movies, as well as Houston Astros baseball games (many of the games were also simulcast on sister station KLDT in Lake Dallas, Texas). It also maintained local news updates, using the remains of the station's old newsroom. During this time, the station adopted the slogan "TV 51 Has The Shows You Know". By 2000, however, some of the programming had been dropped in favor of infomercials, a trend that would continue over the next decade. The Astros remained on KNWS until 2008, when the team's game telecasts moved to KTXH (channel 20). Some NBC shows that KPRC-TV (channel 2) declined to air also aired on KNWS. Two such NBC programs were the daytime talk show Leeza, which briefly aired on KNWS in 1998, and the soap opera Passions, which also briefly aired on the station in 2001. In 1996, KNWS carried NBC Sports coverage of Notre Dame football home games as well as the Breeders' Cup. In 2000, KNWS carried Game 6 of the American League Championship Series (coincidentally, the last MLB game aired by NBC to date). During the non-stop coverage of 2005's Hurricane Rita on Houston's news-producing stations, KNWS carried CBS network programs, on behalf of its local affiliate, KHOU (channel 11), which preempted them in order to run special coverage of the storm. KNWS repeated this pattern during Hurricane Ike. Prior to the Una Vez Más sale, KNWS had made plans to add the