 On April 20, 1977, the Texas Consumer Education and Communications Development Committee, related to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brownsville, filed an application to build a new television station on noncommercially reserved channel 44 in Harlingen; however, in October, TCECDC modified its application to specify channel 60—thus becoming a noncommercial station operating on a non-reserved commercial channel.The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) granted the committee a construction permit on January 24, 1979.The call letters KZLN were assigned in June for the new educational television outlet.