videotape in 1962. In 1967, it became the first television station in Southern Colorado to broadcast local programming in color. When sister stations KOA-TV-AM-FM were sold off to General Electric in 1968, Metropolitan sold KOAA to local owner Sangre De Cristo Broadcasting Corporation (with shares owned by William Grant, Helen T. White, and Mahlon T. White) in a separate deal. KOAA floundered through the early and mid-1970s, largely because of reception problems in the northern part of the market. When channel 5 moved its transmitter closer to Colorado Springs after Pueblo and Colorado Springs were merged into separate markets, it had to conform its signal to protect KGWN-TV in Cheyenne, Wyoming. As a result, while most of Colorado Springs received the channel 5 signal very well, it was barely viewable in northern Colorado Springs and that city's northern suburbs because of the area's rugged terrain. Most viewers in the northern portion of the market couldn't get a clear signal from KOAA until cable arrived in the market in the 1970s. This posed a problem for KOAA, as the Colorado Springs area began an unprecedented period of growth that continues to this day while Pueblo remained relatively unchanged. It did not help matters that NBC spent most of the 1970s at the bottom of the ratings. KOAA finally rebounded in 1977 when the Evening Post Publishing Company of Charleston, South Carolina bought the station and brought in former ABC executive John Gilbert as general manager (the licensee would be renamed Sangre De Cristo Communications Incorporated). Evening Post's broadcasting arm eventually evolved into Cordillera Communications and continued to be a subsidiary of Evening Post Publishing Company. Soon after Gilbert's arrival, KOAA opened a studio and sales office in Colorado Springs and steadily beefed up its news operation. In 1980, KOAA signed on K30AA, a 132,500-watt translator on channel 30 in Colorado Springs, bringing a clear signal to the northern part of that city for the first time ever. For the next three decades, it branded itself as "5/30" (denoting both the main and Colorado Springs translator channels). It was also during this time that KOAA adopted the Eyewitness News format that was popular with TV stations nationwide during the 1970s and 1980s. The station's resurgence came around the same time that NBC rebounded to become the highest-rated network in the country. Cordillera announced on October 29, 2018, that it would sell most