KREX-TV

KREX-TV (channel 5) is a television station in Grand Junction, Colorado, United States, serving as the CBS affiliate for Colorado's Western Slope region. It is owned by Nexstar Media Group and operated alongside Fox affiliate KFQX (channel 4) and KGJT-CD (channel 27). The three stations share studios on Hillcrest Avenue in Grand Junction, where KREX-TV's transmitter is also located.

This station began broadcasting programming on May 30, 1954, as KFXJ-TV before becoming KREX-TV in 1956. Owned by Rex Howell, who had brought radio to the area by relocating KFXJ radio to Grand Junction in 1930, it was the only television station on the Western Slope for 25 years; though it aired programming from all major networks, its primary affiliation was CBS. The establishment of satellite stations KREY-TV in Montrose (1956) and KREZ-TV in Durango (1965) extended the station's reach. ABC programs moved to KJCT (channel 8) in 1979, but KREX-TV continued as an affiliate of CBS and NBC until KKCO (channel 11) began in 1996. Aside from a period between 1966 and 1970, Howell was the primary owner of KREX-TV until his death in 1978.

Withers Broadcasting acquired KREX-TV in 1985; it added a third satellite, KREG-TV in Glenwood Springs, in 1987 but sold off KREZ-TV in 1995. Under Withers, KREX acquired the franchise to broadcast Fox programming to the Western Slope, which became KFQX. Hoak Media bought the station in 2003. Its studios burned to the ground in a 2008 fire; after reporting for the station's website and later using facilities at Western Colorado Community College, the facility was rebuilt in 2009. Nexstar acquired the station in 2014 after most of Hoak was bought by Gray Television, owner of KKCO.