KUTV
KUTV is a television station in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States, affiliated with CBS. It is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group alongside independent station KJZZ-TV and St. George–licensed MyNetworkTV affiliate KMYU. KUTV's studios are located on Main Street in the Wells Fargo Center in downtown Salt Lake City, with transmitter on Farnsworth Peak in the Oquirrh Mountains, southwest of Salt Lake City, and a large network of translators throughout Utah and in portions of Idaho, Nevada, and Wyoming.
KUTV was the third commercial TV station to start in Salt Lake City, beginning broadcasting in September 1954. It was owned by a consortium of the Carman, Wrathall, and Kearns families, who merged their competing bids to start the station, but the main ownership mainstay for the first four decades of its history was the family of George C. Hatch, who bought a minority stake in the station in 1956 and full ownership in 1971. Originally an ABC affiliate, it switched to NBC in 1960. The station became a solid runner-up in Utah's local news race behind KSL-TV, buoyed by popular on-air personnel such as meteorologist Mark Eubank and anchor Terry Wood. In 1979, the station left downtown Salt Lake City for studios in what became West Valley City.
After the Hatch family bought out other partners in the Ogden Standard-Examiner—which they owned—in 1989, their financial capacity became strained by debt service. KUTV lost Eubank to KSL-TV, and the Hatches sold 88 percent of the station to an investment group led by Veronis Suhler & Associates. VS&A put the station on the market in 1994, ultimately selling its controlling interest to NBC, making it the second station in Utah to be owned and operated by a major network. Within months, it was traded to a joint venture of Westinghouse Broadcasting and CBS as part of a multi-city trade, leaving KUTV to switch to CBS in September 1995. It became a CBS owned-and-operated station after Westinghouse and CBS merged that November. News ratings briefly swooned after the switch, but KUTV recovered to reclaim its previous position as a strong runner-up to KSL-TV. KUTV returned downtown in 2003 to its present studio location.
CBS sold its smaller-market stations in 2007 to Cerberus Capital Management, which formed Four Points Media Group to hold its television interests. In spite of the Great Recession and cutbacks in equipment and personnel, KUTV surpassed KSL-TV to become the market's news leader. During this time, KUSG, a rebroadcaster of KUTV in St. George, became a separate station and is today's KMYU, with broadcast coverage from KUTV's transmitters in the rest of the state. Sinclair Broadcast Group acquired Four Points in 2011 and expanded its Utah operation with its 2016 purchase of KJZZ-TV.
History
Early years
In 1951, a draft revision of a new table of channel allocations suggested that the Federal Communications Commission was not going to allocate further very high frequency channels to Salt Lake City, leading two radio stations, KUTA and KALL, to lobby for its availability. Two stations were already on the air, having been authorized prior to the commission's 1948 freeze on station grants: KDYL-TV on channel 4 and KSL-TV on channel 5. When the FCC ended the freeze on April 14, 1952, and issued a new table of allocations, channel 2 was restored to Salt Lake City. The commission received two applications in January 1953: one from KUTA's parent company, Utah Broadcasting and Television Corporation, and another from the Television Corporation of Utah, owned by the Kearns family and a subsidiary of the publisher of The Salt Lake Tribune. The two firms joined forces in March, each proposing to own half of the new station; this allowed them to avoid a potential comparative hearing. The station was projected to be an ABC affiliate, like KUTA radio, and planned to broadcast from the Oquirrh Mountains, from where the other stations already were broadcasting.The FCC approved the construction permit on March 26, 1953, contingent on The Tribune divesting any ownership interest in KALL. Work began on facilities later that year. KUTA radio moved its headquarters to 179 Motor Avenue, which would also be used as the studio for channel 2, given the call sign KUTV. Motor Avenue, which regained its original name of Social Hall Avenue in 1954, had become the center of activity in Utah television; KSL-TV moved there in 1950, and after KUTA moved, KDYL radio and television announced plans to follow suit.
KUTV began test broadcasts on September 11, 1954, and the station held a dedication event on September 25 ahead of the start of the fall television season the next day. The Carman–Wrathall group that had owned KUTA and half of KUTV gave options to the Kearns-Tribune Corporation and the Standard-Examiner Publishing Corporation, publisher of the Ogden Standard-Examiner, to buy their properties in 1955. The two newspaper firms as well as George C. Hatch and his wife acquired KUTV under these options in a deal announced in December 1955 and approved in March 1956.
In its early years, KUTV was one of ABC's most successful affiliates; a Television Age study of the 1957–58 season found that KUTV had a sign-on-to-sign-off audience share of 41.8 percent, the second-highest of any ABC affiliate in the country. However, in May 1960, KUTV surprised observers by announcing it would switch network affiliations to NBC on October 2, leaving channel 4 to pick up ABC. This puzzled some, who noted that ABC programming had been rating well on KUTV, but George C. Hatch noted that ABC provided no color programming at all, and the station was interested in expanding its color output and local news with NBC. Also cited by sources was a desire by KUTV for a Mountain Time Zone feed of network programming.
Hatch ownership
In 1970, the Kearns-Tribune Corporation traded its 35-percent stake in KUTV and two downtown office buildings for 40 percent of its outstanding stock that had been held by two descendants of Thomas Kearns residing in California. The Hatch family and Standard Corporation bought them out shortly thereafter, making KUTV entirely Utah-owned. In the decade that followed, growth in the news operation prompted the Hatches to seek a new studio location. It acquired the former headquarters of TeleMation on 3600 West and began broadcasting from the site in March 1979. This area, unincorporated at the time, became part of West Valley City in 1980.KUTV played a key role for NBC in the distribution of programming to affiliates in other Mountain West states; all prime time shows for broadcast in Idaho and Montana went through KUTV's control room. In 1978, an error and a shortage of tape machines meant that viewers of KTVB in Boise, Idaho, inadvertently received a censored version of part of the three-part TV movie Loose Change that KUTV had edited for air in the Salt Lake City market. Management of the Boise station criticized KUTV for having "dictated" the alteration to the program.
Changing ownership
In 1989, the Standard Corporation announced a major reorganization in which the Hatch family assumed control of the company by buying shares from the Glasmann family. This transaction required borrowing and left the family with substantial debt service; general manager Jeffrey Hatch noted that the television industry was suffering during this period from the cancellation of advertising for news coverage during the Gulf War and a downturn in the national economy. It marked the beginning of the end for the Hatch family's media ownership. The Standard-Examiner was sold to Sandusky Newspapers; KALL radio was sold; and George C. Hatch brokered a deal to sell a stake in KUTV to Veronis Suhler & Associates, a New York–based investment banker.In August 1993, KUTV Inc. and TeleScene, a production company owned by the Hatches, were merged into a new company that also included VS&A-owned WOKR in Rochester, New York. VS&A became the majority owner of the stations in the transaction. In June 1994, VS&A moved to put the properties up for sale in order to seek other business ventures.
Affiliation switch to CBS and move downtown
KUTV came on the market at an opportune time. One month prior, in May 1994, a deal between Fox and New World Communications sparked a national realignment in network affiliations in markets across the country. As a result, valuations for network affiliates began to rise. Where KUTV had been rumored to be sold for about $70 million, by August reports suggested a sale price could exceed $100 million and that major station groups including Hearst and Scripps-Howard Broadcasting were interested. On August 16, NBC announced it would purchase VS&A's 88 percent controlling interest in KUTV, valuing the station and TeleScene at $109 million. This made KUTV the second owned-and-operated station in Salt Lake City; KSTU was owned by Fox at the time. It was by some margin the smallest station owned by NBC; Salt Lake City was the 37th market at the time. NBC expressed long-term interest in a possible regional cable news venture for the Rocky Mountain region between KUTV and the station it owned in Denver, KCNC-TV; it named KCNC president Roger Ogden, who had known the Hatches for years, to the transition team that would have integrated it into the stations group.Almost as soon as KUTV's sale to NBC was announced, its future became uncertain because of developments elsewhere. In July, CBS and Westinghouse Broadcasting had agreed to change Group W's five-station group to CBS affiliation. This included the Group W–owned NBC affiliate in Philadelphia, KYW-TV, where CBS already owned WCAU. CBS put WCAU on the market. However, when Fox bought its existing Philadelphia affiliate, NBC became the only logical buyer, and talks began in earnest over a swap of stations between the two networks. An August 26 headline on the front page of The Salt Lake Tribune noted "KUTV Now Pawn In Network Fight For Philly Station". A draft outline leaked to Mediaweek in early September had NBC offering KUTV and KCNC-TV to CBS, along with the channel 4 signal in Miami, in exchange for WCAU and the weaker channel 6 facility in Miami. Salt Lake City's existing CBS affiliate, KSL-TV, began negotiations with NBC. This was largely confirmed on November 21, 1994, with KUTV being sold to a partnership of Group W and CBS, even though the NBC purchase was still pending at the FCC. In December, KSL and NBC reached an affiliation agreement.
KUTV became a CBS affiliate on September 10, 1995. When it joined the network, viewers in Salt Lake City saw The Bold and the Beautiful for the first time, as KSL never carried the soap opera. One NBC program remained on KUTV's schedule. KSL-TV aired SportsBeat Saturday, a sports highlights show, on Saturday late nights, so it did not pick up Saturday Night Live. KUTV continued to air the program through January 1996, when it was discontinued. The remaining links to the Hatch era were severed after the switch. A new general manager, David Phillips, was installed; Jeffrey Hatch remained president through the end of 1995, and Diane Orr—another member of the Hatch family—was replaced as news director. In August, a month before the affiliation switch took effect, Westinghouse announced it would acquire CBS for $5.4 billion. The deal closed in November, making KUTV a CBS owned-and-operated station. TeleScene continued to be co-owned with the station until it was sold in 1999.
Beginning in early 2002, the Redevelopment Agency of Salt Lake City began inquiring with local TV stations to see if any were interested in moving to studios on Main Street, which at the time was a priority for economic development. KUTV was the only interested station at the necessary cost, and with public and private funding, the station agreed in March 2003 to move to Wells Fargo Center. Beginning in October, the station began broadcasting from the building, with newscasts originating from a streetside studio.