Las Vegas to get its third independent TV station MORE COMPETITION - Jim Williams, KBLR-TV general manager, at station. By Ken White Review-Journal I t doesn’t look like a television station yet. Furniture is being unpacked, the control room is slowly taking shape, and the small studio is still just an empty room without lights or cameras. But as of April 1, Las "Vegas' newest independent television station KBLR- TV, Channel 39, will be on the air, ac cording to principal owner Glen Rose of the Rose Development Co. Inc., a San Francisco Bay Area firm. “I hope it isn’t April Fools’,” says Rose, who has put an undisclosed amount, of money into the expensive project. Channel 39 will be the third indepen dent television station in Las Vegas, the second on the UHF band. The other inde pendents are KRLR-TV, Channel 21 on the UHF band and KVVU-TV, Channel 5. The new station will broadcast with what Rose calls the most powerful signal in the city — 1,330,000 kilowatts. The tower was placed atop Black Mountain last week. No cable station number has been assigned, but Prime Cable officials and KBLR General Manager Jim Wil liams currently are holding discussions. Programming will consist mainly of movies- Rose calls the station “The Las Vegas Movie Channel,” and promises 10 hours of movies a day, beginning in the morning, with a double feature in the evening and movies in the late night time slot. In addition to Hollywood movies from the 1970s and 1980s, Rose has lined up such programs as “Hee Haw,” “Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling,” truck pulls and fish ing shows to fill the remainder of the broadcast day. No local programming has been sched uled, and no newscast Is planned. Sales Manager Floyd Price says the sta tion “will be community oriented. -We want to get involved in the community and let people know we’re concerned about the community,” he said. Rose believes there’s a place in the La*s Vegas television market for movies, “and we plan to stay with that format.” Initial ly, no one will introduce the movies, al though a host may be added in the sum mer. But is there room in Las Vegas .for another station? “This is a terrific market,” Rose said. “It’s 95th in market size, but 57th in the country in ad revenue, so it’s very condu cive to business. This is a really growing area and we’re trying to grow with it.” Ironically, most of the hard work of cracking the marketplace already has been done for the station by Channel 21- Channel 21, which went on the air in 1984, bad the tough task of getting homes tuned up to the UHF signal Channel 39 doesn’t have to go through that process. Instead, it has to let people know it’s there, and to pull in enough of an audi ence to make the Nielsen and Arbitron ratings, which in turn determines ad reve nue — and the station’s future. Channel 21 began by broadcasting 24 hours of music videos, a ploy that got it noticed immediately. From there it slowly Please see STAT10N/6F