KUNA TV Indio CA

According to records kept by the Federal Communications Commission, KESQ-TV is the oldest television station in the Palm Springs area.

 KESQ-TV first went on air as KPLM-TV in 1968, broadcasting as the ABC Television station for the Palm Springs market area. KPLM-TV was named for the “Palm” as in “Palm Springs,” and it changed call letters in late 1979 to KESQ-TV under the new ownership of Esquire Communications, which was the owner of Esquire Magazine.

In the years before purchasing KESQ, the magazine helped pioneer the historical trend of New Journalism by publishing such writers as Norman Mailer, Tim O’Brien, John Sack, Gay Talese, Tom Wolfe, and Terry Southern.

Soon after the sale to Esquire, KESQ-TV began to air a nightly newscast in the mid-1980s and had its call letters set above a tri-color “red-blue-yellow” rainbow logo. It was replaced by a golden “3” in 1994/95, which is the logo we still use today.

KESQ-TV covers a wide area of the low desert area of Southern California’s Coachella Valley, covering the cities of Palm Springs, Palm Desert, Desert Hot Springs, Cathedral City, Rancho Mirage, Indian Wells, La Quinta, Indio, Coachella, Mecca, Thermal, and many more communities in the high desert.