KSAZ-TV
KSAZ-TV is a television station in Phoenix, Arizona, United States. It is owned and operated by the Fox network through its Fox Television Stations division alongside KUTP, which airs MyNetworkTV programming. The two stations share studios on West Adams Street in Downtown Phoenix; KSAZ-TV's transmitter is located atop South Mountain.
Channel 10 was the third television station established in the Phoenix area, making its first broadcast on October 24, 1953. It was originally allocated as a shared-time channel to stations run by the owners of Phoenix radio stations KOOL and KOY, though both KOOL-TV and KOY-TV operated from the same building. After a year as an independent, it became Phoenix's original ABC affiliate in early 1954. KOOL-TV bought out KOY-TV later in 1954 and absorbed its staff, becoming a full-time station. After switching affiliations to CBS in 1955, KOOL-TV rose to become Phoenix's highest-rated station under the ownership of Gene Autry and Tom Chauncey. A falling-out between Autry and Chauncey ended with the sale of KOOL-TV to the Gulf United Corporation in 1982; separated from its sister radio properties, channel 10 changed its call sign to KTSP-TV. Initially, the station remained the news leader in Phoenix; however, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the station lost ground in the news ratings to an ascendant KTVK, which had poached two key KTSP-TV executives as part of a successful effort to turn itself around. Channel 10's ratings decline was not helped by several visible personnel miscues.
In February 1994, KTSP-TV changed its call letters to KSAZ-TV. Three months later, as part of the first act in a national realignment of network affiliations initiated by then-owner New World Communications, the station announced it would switch from CBS to Fox. Phoenix was one of the most affected markets; the timing of affiliation contract expirations led to three changes in four months. KSAZ lost CBS in September 1994 but did not begin airing Fox programming until December. Coinciding with the switch to Fox was a major expansion of the station's news department, including new morning and prime time newscasts. However, the three months of forced independent status and miscalculations around syndicated programming and new competitors caused the station's ratings to fall dramatically, with some newscasts losing half their viewership.
Fox acquired the New World stations in 1996 and steadied the struggling operation, instituting a flashier style to bring it more in line with its target audience. From 1999 to 2021, future Arizona gubernatorial and senatorial candidate Kari Lake was one of the station's main anchors. By 2020, KSAZ-TV produced twelve hours a day on weekdays of local news programming.
History
Shared-time era and early years
While the Federal Communications Commission worked its way toward ending a years-long freeze on new television station grants initiated in 1948, it issued a near-final version of the table of allocations for Arizona in 1951 that gave Phoenix channels 4, 5, 8, and 10. KOOL, Phoenix's CBS radio affiliate, had previously expressed interest in filing for channel 7 prior to the amended table being released, and on September 27, 1951, it applied for channel 10.KOOL was not alone in its interest. In July 1952, KOY, the home of the Mutual Broadcasting System in Phoenix and one of the oldest stations in the state, filed its own bid. The two bids portended what could have been years of comparative hearings over who got the construction permit. To avoid this, in May 1953, KOOL and KOY struck a deal that would result in both getting construction permits to share time on channel 10. The time-sharing proposal, first used by the FCC in television in grants for channel 10 in Rochester, New York, and suggested to KOOL and KOY by the commission, was approved on May 27, 1953, with KOOL-TV and KOY-TV getting construction permits the same day. Under the proposal, the stations would alternate daytime and evening telecasting.
KOOL was the CBS radio affiliate in Phoenix, and KOOL expressed a desire to similarly align its new television station, but this would not be immediately possible. KPHO-TV, which held both CBS and ABC hookups after KTYL-TV signed on with NBC earlier in May, had just signed a renewal agreement with CBS a month and a half before the construction permits were granted. Even though the two stations would have separate staffs and ownership, much of the physical plant would be shared, including a maximum-power transmitter site on South Mountain. Originally proposing to build television studios behind the KOY radio studios near First Avenue and Roosevelt Street, KOOL and KOY arranged instead in July to buy a former car dealership at Fifth Avenue and Adams Street; KOY wanted to continue using the other site for parking. Studio construction started in August, with KOOL and KOY crews leading the way, and a test pattern went out for the first time on October 19, 1953, ahead of both stations' October 24 launch. The next day, channel 10 carried an opening program featuring KOY and KOOL management, including KOOL majority owner Gene Autry.
As shared-time stations, KOOL-TV and KOY-TV were a conjoined unit: separate staffs, common facilities, and no network affiliation at all. This changed in January 1954, when channel 10 picked up an ABC affiliation; now, each of the three major networks had their own outlet in Phoenix. However, KOY-TV would not last much longer. In March 1954, KOOL reached a deal to buy out KOY's stake in channel 10. KOY general manager Albert D. Johnson believed that the station would do better under one operator instead of two and stated that the goal of the shared-time venture—to avoid lengthy comparative hearings—had been met. The FCC approved of the deal—reported as $400,000 by newspapers and $200,000 to the FCC—on May 5, allowing KOOL-TV to become the sole occupant of channel 10. All staff were retained by the enlarged KOOL-TV. It was the first time any of the post-freeze shared-time arrangements had been wound down.
CBS affiliation and Autry-Chauncey ownership
On December 29, 1954, KOOL-TV announced it had secured the CBS affiliation in Phoenix, to begin on June 15, 1955. KPHO-TV, whose two-year affiliation agreement ended at that time, was blindsided by the move, but it was a natural fit. Not only was KOOL radio already CBS in Phoenix, but Gene Autry had deep ties to CBS radio and television, as well as Columbia Records. ABC soon found a new home: startup outlet KTVK, which joined that network on March 1, 1955.As a full-time CBS affiliate, it was now able to feature Autry's show Gene Autry's Melody Ranch on its schedule. Tom Chauncey, who also owned the biggest Arabian horse ranch in Phoenix, was a minority partner with Autry. Over the years, KOOL-TV ran nearly the entire CBS schedule; Chauncey was a fierce loyalist to the network. In addition to local news, channel 10 produced a series of other local programs, such as the bilingual children's program Niños Contentos and investigative and feature series Chapter 10 and Copperstate Cavalcade.
Phoenix audiences' loyalty to KOOL-TV was proven in 1971. That September, a group of Valley business leaders led by Del Webb, organized as the Valley of the Sun Broadcasting Company, filed an application for a competing channel 10 proposal to KOOL-TV's license renewal; this group proposed to return the channel to Phoenix-based ownership. However, the KOOL-TV license challenge was met with a decidedly cool reception by viewers and power brokers alike. Senators Barry Goldwater and Paul Fannin and governor Jack Williams threw their support behind KOOL; Goldwater noted he often cited KOOL as an example of a quality television station, Fannin was "amazed" to learn of the counterproposal, and Williams—a former broadcaster—lauded its "record of public service" and inclusion of minority groups. Further, hundreds of phone calls and letters in support of KOOL were received by the station. Ten days after the application was first made public, Valley of the Sun abandoned their channel 10 bid. It was later revealed that the same Washington law firm had backed a string of similar license challenges to other stations across the country. After the license challenge was rebuffed, Chauncey became the majority stakeholder as a result of a sale of shares by Autry.
In 1978, KOOL AM was sold to Stauffer Communications of Topeka, Kansas, with the FM and television stations remaining under the Autry–Chauncey ownership. However, cracks began to form in the longtime ownership partnership of KOOL-FM-TV. That same year, Autry allegedly began to try and induce Chauncey to reach an agreement with Signal Oil upon which the latter company would have the option to buy Chauncey's stake at his death. Chauncey then began negotiating to buy Autry out. These talks ended in April 1981 when Autry sold half of his 48.11-percent stake in the company to the Gulf United Corporation of Jacksonville, Florida. That May, Autry sued Chauncey, alleging that he had mismanaged the assets of KOOL Radio-Television, Inc., to the tune of millions of dollars and had diverted company funds to Arabian horses, cars, and airplanes. Chauncey then filed a countersuit, accusing Autry and Gulf of racketeering and trying to pressure longtime manager Homer Lane, who owned a small but pivotal stake in the firm, to sell. In the wake of the dueling lawsuits, and as early as November 1981, speculation began to circulate that Chauncey and Lane were nearing a sale of their stakes to Gulf.
Gulf, Taft, and Great American
On June 8, 1982, Tom Chauncey and Gulf United announced that the latter was buying out the remaining shares in KOOL-TV, with KOOL-FM to be retained by Chauncey and split from the firm; the dueling lawsuits would be dropped when the FCC approved the transaction.The sale closed on October 1, 1982, a month after receiving FCC approval, and major changes followed at channel 10. The first was a change in call sign, as the FM retained the KOOL designation. The next morning, KOOL-TV became KTSP-TV; while Gulf claimed that it stood for "Tempe, Scottsdale, Phoenix", the more likely reason was that it mirrored another channel 10 station owned by Gulf, WTSP in St. Petersburg, Florida. Homer Lane, the general manager and minority owner, was replaced by Jack Sander, hired from WTOL in Toledo, Ohio. Gulf also invested in new production equipment to give KTSP a more high-tech look, and it completed a project started under Chauncey to replace the transmitter and tower on South Mountain.
In 1985, Taft Broadcasting acquired Gulf Broadcasting, which had been spun out of Gulf United two years prior. The deal included the entire chain, but so interested was Taft in Phoenix that it obtained an option to buy KTSP-TV alone for $250 million if the entire Gulf deal were to collapse, and KTSP-TV was the most expensive of the properties it purchased from Gulf. Not long after Taft acquired Gulf, however, a major management change occurred that would have long-term ramifications in Phoenix television. KTVK, which had until that time been a perennial third-place finisher in local news, poached Bill Miller, channel 10's news director, to be its station manager and hired Phil Alvidrez, the KTSP-TV assistant news director, to run its newsroom. The two hires by channel 3 were partly responsible for KTVK climbing to the top of the Phoenix television market in the late 1980s and early 1990s. On October 12, 1987, Taft was restructured into Great American Broadcasting after the company went through a hostile takeover by investors led by Carl Lindner. KTSP nearly lost its CBS affiliation in 1988; CBS was in negotiations to purchase KPHO from Meredith Corporation. Network officials were interested in buying a station in a fast-growing Sun Belt market. However, talks foundered when neither party could agree to a purchase price.
Other subsidiaries of Great American Communications Corporation filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1993, a move that did not affect the television and radio holdings. The station changed its call sign to KSAZ-TV on February 12, 1994, to match its new slogan, "The Spirit of Arizona".