KTVT
KTVT, branded CBS Texas, is a television station licensed to Fort Worth, Texas, United States, serving the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. It is owned by the CBS television network through its CBS News and Stations division alongside independent outlet KTXA. The two stations share primary studio facilities on Bridge Street east of downtown Fort Worth; KTVT operates a secondary studio and newsroom—which also houses advertising sales offices for the stations, as well as the Dallas bureau for CBS News—at the CBS Tower on North Central Expressway in Dallas. KTVT's transmitter is located in Cedar Hill, Texas.
History
1955–1971: As an independent station
The allocation originally assigned to VHF channel 10 was contested between three groups that competed for approval by the Federal Communications Commission to be the holder of the construction permit to build and license to operate a new television station on the second commercial VHF allocation to be assigned to Fort Worth. Lechner Television Co. – owned by oil and gas exploration and production entrepreneur Walter W. Lechner—filed the initial permit application on July 3, 1952. One week later on July 11, the Texas State Network—a broadcasting consortium owned by Sid W. Richardson, media executive Gene L. Cagle, mineral rights firm owner R. K. Hanger, company president Charles B. Jordan and D. C. Homburg – filed a separate license application. The Fort Worth Television Co.—a group led by several oilmen including Raymond O. Shaffer, Sterling C. Holloway ; M. J. Neeley, Arch Rowan and F. Kirk Johnson, along with O. P. Newberry —became the third applicant for the license on December 11, 1952.On September 3, 1953, in an approval of proposals submitted by John F. Easley and Eastern TV Corp. to realign the two VHF channel assignments to alleviate interference issues with their proposed stations, the FCC amended its "Sixth Report and Order" assignment table to reassign channel 10 to Waco and move the VHF channel 11 allocation to Fort Worth. All three applicants subsequently amended their license applications to seek assignment on channel 11 instead. The FCC granted the permit to the Texas State Network – now owned by Audacy by way of CBS Radio's 2017 sale of its radio station properties – on September 17, 1954, after the agency formally dismissed the applications by Lechner and the Fort Worth Television Co. The Sid Richardson-led group chose to request KFJZ-TV as the callsign for its television station, using the base callsign that had been used by its existing radio station on 1270 AM since it signed on in 1924.
Channel 11, as KFJZ-TV, first signed on the air at 2:30 p.m. on September 11, 1955, after a launch ceremony culminating in Fort Worth oilman Sid Richardson flipping the ceremonial switch to activate the transmitter. It was the first independent station to sign on in Texas, the fourth television station to sign on in the Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex, which signed on the air on September 29, 1948; ABC affiliate KBTV, which debuted on September 17, 1949; and CBS affiliate KRLD-TV, and the first to debut in the market since the FCC's 1952 lifting of a four-year freeze on new applications for television station licenses. Originally, Channel 11 maintained a 9-hour per day programming schedule, starting with its sign-on at 2:30 p.m. and concluding at its midnight sign-off. The station originally operated from facilities at 4801 West Freeway in Fort Worth.
In 1964, KFJZ-TV moved its transmitter facilities to a tower at the antenna farm in Cedar Hill, which provided a signal that covered the Dallas–Fort Worth market. The transmitter relocation played a major factor in throwing Channel 11 into a three-station competition for the NBC affiliation. The network had been affiliated with WBAP-TV since it signed on nine years earlier; however, the heirs of Fort Worth Star-Telegram founder Amon G. Carter chose to continue his legacy of civic boosterism of Fort Worth by refusing to move WBAP's transmitter facilities from eastern Fort Worth to an area between both cities. The lack of adequate reception throughout the entire Dallas–Fort Worth metropolitan area led NBC to simultaneously maintain an affiliation with WFAA beginning in 1950 to act as its Dallas affiliate. WBAP-TV received a permit for Cedar Hill on March 24, 1964, and were on the air under Program Test Authority in November 1964.
The split-station arrangement frustrated NBC to the point where in early 1957, it threatened to terminate its affiliation contract with WBAP-TV if it did not agree to move its transmitter eastward to provide a signal that covered Dallas and Fort Worth. WFAA's corporate parent A.H. Belo first approached the network with an offer to become the Metroplex's exclusive NBC affiliate. The Roosevelts also submitted an offer to move the network's programming to KFJZ-TV. Neither station won out, as the Carter heirs would reluctantly agree to NBC's demands to retain the affiliation and move the WBAP-TV transmitter to an existing candelabra tower shared by WFAA and KRLD-TV, operating it at a higher effective radiated power strong enough to adequately cover central and eastern Dallas County and adjacent areas that had only rimshot signal coverage of the station. WBAP-TV became the exclusive NBC affiliate for the entire Dallas–Fort Worth market on September 1, 1957, with WFAA remaining an ABC affiliate; Channel 11, meanwhile, continued as an independent station, filling its schedule with syndicated and locally produced programs. During the late 1950s, KFJZ-TV briefly maintained an affiliation with the NTA Film Network.
In 1959, Mr. Richardson, through Texas State Network gave KFJZ-TV and KFJZ an FM radio sister, when it signed on KFJZ-FM. In May 1960, the Texas State Network sold Channel 11 to the NAFI Telecasting Corporation for $4 million; the two radio stations were not included in the transaction, which was completed on August 1 of that year. Subsequently, the station's call letters were changed to KTVT on September 1; the change was made due to an FCC rule in effect at the time that prohibited separately owned broadcast stations in the same market from sharing the same base call letters.
On February 23, 1962, NAFI Telecasting sold KTVT for $4 million to the WKY Television System subsidiary of the Oklahoma Publishing Company, then owned by the family of Daily Oklahoman founder Edward K. Gaylord, who originally named the unit after its flagship television and radio stations—WKY-TV and WKY —in the company's headquarters of Oklahoma City. The transaction made KTVT the largest television station by market size to be owned by the media company, which OPUBCO would later rename Gaylord Broadcasting. Under the stewardship of Gaylord and James R. Terrell, whom the company appointed as the station's vice president and general manager, Channel 11 became the leading independent station in the Southwestern United States; at the time, it carried a broad range of cartoons, off-network sitcoms, Westerns and drama series, movies and public affairs programming.
In July 1966, KTVT began broadcasting its programming in color, after the station acquired camera, projection and slide equipment to broadcast local and acquired programming in the format; KTVT inaugurated its color telecasts with the station's broadcast of the Miss Texas Pageant, its first local program to be produced in the format.
Like Gaylord's other independent stations, KTVT's programming was mainly aimed at rural and suburban residents in the Metroplex's outer portions. Channel 11 was further aided in its status as it was a VHF station, whereas its future competitors would transmit on the UHF band. KTVT gained its first major competitor in February 1968, when Doubleday Broadcasting signed on KMEC, which featured a broad mix of general entertainment and sports programs. The Christian Broadcasting Network entered into the mix in January 1973, when it launched KXTX-TV, with a schedule that featured a mix of family-oriented secular programs and religious programs. However, the former of the two would struggle, leading Doubleday to donate the UHF channel 39 license to CBN in exchange for acquiring KXTX's license for UHF channel 33; while KXTX continued to grow after the call sign and intellectual unit were transferred to Channel 39 in November 1973, KDTV could not compete with either KXTX nor KTVT and shut down nine weeks later.
1971–1993: Expansion into a regional superstation
KTVT's popularity also spread outside of the Metroplex beginning in the late 1970s, when the station began making its signal available to cable television providers throughout Texas and in surrounding states. This attained it a new status as a superstation along the lines of WTBS in Atlanta, WGN-TV in Chicago and WOR-TV in New York City ; its signal was transmitted to about 400 cable systems and to C-band satellite subscribers across the country, mainly in the Southwestern U.S. At its height, the station was available on nearly every cable provider in Texas and Oklahoma, as well as large swaths of Louisiana, Arkansas and New Mexico.KTVT remained the Dallas–Fort Worth market's leading independent station into the 1980s, even as it gained three additional UHF independent competitors launched over the course of six months in the early 1980s. National Business Network Inc. returned channel 33 to the air as KNBN-TV on September 29, 1980; however, that station did not begin to make any real headway against KTVT in the ratings during its tenure under local ownership. KTVT gained a fourth independent competitor six days later on October 6, when Grant Broadcasting signed on KTXA. A fifth competitor arrived on January 26, 1981, when Liberty Television signed on KTWS-TV. KTVT and KXTX—the latter of which had also expanded into a regional superstation around this time—went head to head to achieve status as the strongest independent station in North Texas, with its three younger competitors lagging behind, and were the only independents in the market that were able to turn a profit.
On July 1, 1984, Tulsa, Oklahoma–based United Video Satellite Group—which already distributed fellow independent WGN-TV in Chicago and planned to uplink its New York City sister station WPIX via satellite as national superstations—uplinked the KTVT signal to the Satcom IV satellite for distribution to cable and satellite subscribers throughout the Southwestern United States, in a move by Gaylord to persuade the providers that imported the station's signal by microwave relay to begin transmitting KTVT by satellite. For about six years afterward, the KTVT satellite signal carried the same programming schedule as that seen in the Metroplex. In addition to being available via cable, this signal was also distributed directly to satellite dish owners. Around that time, KTVT further cemented this status by referencing the station in continuity as "Channel 11, The Super Ones".
KTVT was one of the few long-tenured major market independents that did not align with the fledgling Fox Broadcasting Company in the run-up to the network's launch in October 1986. It, however, was eliminated from contention in becoming a Fox station from the start, as network parent News Corporation had purchased KRLD-TV as part of its merger with Metromedia in May 1985, six months prior to the Rupert Murdoch-owned media company's announcement of the formation of the Fox network. KDAF and the other five former Metromedia stations served as the nuclei for the new network as the original members of the Fox Television Stations, its group of owned-and-operated stations. However, even without the presence of KDAF, KTVT would have likely passed on the Fox affiliation in any event. Most of the smaller markets that were within KTVT's vast cable footprint—with the minor exceptions of areas such as the adjacent Ada–Sherman and, until former CBS affiliate KLMG-TV switched to the network in 1991, Tyler–Longview–Nacogdoches markets—had enough commercial television stations to allow Fox to maintain an exclusive affiliation, meaning that it would have made little sense to have KTVT as a multi-market Fox affiliate. In late 1985, the station relocated its operations to its current facility at 5233 Bridge Street, as a construction project that would widen the West Freeway into a four-lane highway forced KTVT to move from its original studios, which were torn down to make way for the additional freeway lanes.
As KTVT gained regional exposure, the station became vulnerable in the Dallas–Fort Worth area and underestimated the ability of UHF competitor KTXA to acquire top-rated syndicated programs. Out of the companies that owned the market's independents, the group that owned KTXA at the time, Grant Broadcasting, was particularly aggressive in its programming acquisitions by leveraging its independent stations elsewhere around the country for the strongest programs that were entering into syndication; as a result, Grant-owned KTXA edged ahead of KTVT in the ratings by the fall of 1984. Not to stay outdone, after Gaylord appointed KSTW general manager Charles L. Edwards as KTVT's executive vice president and general manager in 1984, the station began making its own moves in acquiring stronger first-run and off-network syndicated programming, gaining the rights to series such as The Cosby Show, Night Court and Cheers. The station's ratings improved under the stewardship of Edwards, resulting in KTVT retaking its status as the top-rated independent station in the market by the time of his retirement in 1989.
On May 19, 1988, the FCC passed the Syndication Exclusivity Rights Rule, a law that required cable television providers to black out syndicated programs aired on any out-of-market stations carried on their systems, if a television station has obtained the exclusive rights to air a particular program in a given market. Gaylord was not willing to create a dedicated feed that included substitute programs that would replace shows aired on KTVT locally in certain time slots that could not air outside of its primary viewing area due to market exclusivity claims by various stations ; as such, when the law went into effect on January 1, 1990, cable providers in some areas throughout the South Central U.S. chose to drop KTVT from their lineups.
In December 1993, Gaylord engaged in discussions with Time Warner on a potential agreement to affiliate KTVT and sister independent stations KHTV in Houston, WVTV in Milwaukee and KSTW in the Seattle–Tacoma area into charter affiliates of The WB, a network announced one month earlier on November 2 and founded as a venture between Time Warner's Warner Bros. Television unit and the Tribune Company, which was one of two television networks originally proposed to launch in the fall of 1994—along with the United Paramount Network —created to target the younger-skewing audiences courted by Fox and, to a lesser extent, to compete with ABC, NBC and CBS. Gaylord had not yet signed the proposed agreement when another planned affiliation transaction took place that resulted in the shift of two existing networks from their longtime station partners.