KTVU
KTVU is a television station licensed to Oakland, California, United States, serving the San Francisco Bay Area. It is owned and operated by the Fox network through its Fox Television Stations division alongside San Jose–licensed KICU-TV. The two stations share studios at Jack London Square in Oakland; KTVU's transmitter is located at Sutro Tower in San Francisco.
History
As an independent station
The station first signed on the air on March 3, 1958, originally operating as an independent station. The station was originally owned by San Francisco–Oakland Television, Inc., a local firm whose principals were William D. Pabst and Ward D. Ingrim, former executives at the Don Lee Network and KFRC ; and Edwin W. Pauley, a Bay Area businessman who had led a separate group which competed against Pabst and Ingrim for the station's construction permit. The call sign was originally ascribed to have no meaning at all, but several engineers from KTVU, an early UHF station in Stockton, California, came to work for the new station, and purportedly suggested the calls.KTVU's operations were inaugurated with a special live telecast from its temporary studio facility at the former Paris Theatre in downtown Oakland. That June, the station moved into a permanent facility at Jack London Square in western Oakland, which was constructed using material gathered by the Port of Oakland and repurposed from a demolished pier.
Channel 2 was the fourth commercial television station to sign on in the Bay Area, and the first independent station in the market. During its first 15 years on the air, KTVU's transmitter facilities were originally based on a tower on San Bruno Mountain in northern San Mateo County. KTVU moved its transmitter facilities to the Sutro Tower after the structure was completed in 1973.
The Ingrim–Pabst–Pauley group attempted to sell KTVU to NBC in 1960, as the network sought to acquire a television station in the Bay Area to operate alongside KNBC radio. The sale was eventually canceled in October 1961, due to pre-existing concerns over the sale cited by the Federal Communications Commission that were related to NBC's ownership of radio and television stations in Philadelphia. A second sale attempt proved successful in July 1963, when KTVU was sold to Miami Valley Broadcasting Company, precursor to Cox Media Group, for $12.3 million.
Over the station's history as an independent, KTVU's programming schedule consisted mainly of syndicated off-network series, movies, talk shows and religious programs, as well as a sizeable amount of locally produced news, sports, talk and public affairs programming. In 1960, after acquiring camera, projection and slide equipment to transmit programming available in the format, the station began broadcasting its programming in color; much of the programs that it broadcast in color consisted of movies and certain series acquired from the syndication market that were produced in the format, as well as locally produced specials.
In October 1962, a sister station agreement with RKB Mainichi Broadcasting from Fukuoka was signed. The first programs provided by RKB aired in November of that year, both covering the newly-acquired sister city status.
Under Cox's stewardship, channel 2 became the leading independent station in the San Francisco–Oakland market and one of the top-rated independents in the Western United States. KTVU retained this status even as competing independents on the UHF band signed on, including KBHK-TV and KEMO-TV both in early 1968.
KTVU debuted Creature Features on Saturday evenings on January 9, 1971, with Bob Wilkins as a horror host; Wilkins previously hosted similar programs in Sacramento at KCRA-TV and KTXL. An immediate hit, Creature Features topped Saturday Night Live in local ratings, prompting John Belushi and John Landis to guest appear on the program in 1978 promoting National Lampoon's Animal House. Wilkins also interviewed then-local author Anne Rice upon the publication of Interview with the Vampire as well as, among many others, Christopher Lee, William Shatner and local independent filmmaker Ernie Fosselius. Wilkins also hosted Captain Cosmic, presenting Japanese anime including Star Blazers and Ultra Man. Wilkins retired in 1979, ending Captain Cosmic; former San Francisco Chronicle reporter and occasional co-host John Stanley took over hosting Creature Features until its 1982 cancellation.
In the early 1960s, KTVU obtained the local broadcast rights to the Warner Bros. Pictures library; the films it broadcast from the studio primarily consisted of those released during the 1950s, most being presented in color, which aired at 7 p.m. on Sundays. Channel 2 was the first television station in the Bay Area to air such films as A Star Is Born, East of Eden and Rebel Without a Cause. KTVU exercised discretion and limited the number of commercial break interruptions during the movie telecasts, often airing the films uncensored and with commentary, either by a studio host or via slides. The station even televised the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film Hollywood Revue of 1929 with some of the original two-strip Technicolor sequences. During the early 1970s, the station began employing a different programming strategy to stand out from the other independents in the market, acquiring first-run syndicated sitcoms and drama series, several comedies and dramas from the United Kingdom, and various nature series as alternative offerings.
KTVU occasionally aired movies originally assigned an R rating for their theatrical release without editing for strong profanity, nudity or violence, some of which aired during prime time. In 1992, KTVU ran a station-edited version of the 1984 science fiction film Dune, which combined footage from the Alan Smithee television cut with the original theatrical release. KTVU also carried programming from the Operation Prime Time programming service in 1978.
On December 16, 1978, KTVU was uplinked to satellite as a superstation, carried primarily on systems operated by Cox Cable.
Fox affiliation
KTVU, along with Cox-owned WKBD-TV in Detroit and KDNL-TV in St. Louis, agreed to become charter affiliates of Fox upon their October 9, 1986, launch. KTVU was a rarity among the new network's affiliate base as it broadcast on VHF and had an established news department; general manager Kevin O'Brien saw Fox's backing with the 20th Century Fox studio as an advantage, providing the station access to major stars. The network launched with The Late Show with Joan Rivers in late night and did not begin programming in prime time until the following April.Cox Enterprises acquired KICU-TV on November 29, 1999, from a group led by Buffalo Bills owner Ralph Wilson; KICU moved to KTVU's studios in Oakland, while their former studio became home to KTVU's South Bay news bureau.
Becoming a Fox-owned outlet
Reports emerged in August 2013 that Fox Television Stations, the owned-stations division for Fox, was seeking to buy stations in San Francisco and Seattle; Variety reported that Fox desired having owned-stations in markets with NFL teams in the National Football Conference, and followed their purchase of CW affiliate WJZY in Charlotte, North Carolina, which switched to Fox. KTVU was the largest Fox affiliate in the country not owned by the network. Fox's then-parent 21st Century Fox made several offers to buy KTVU, and also considered buying KIRO-TV in Seattle from Cox, but Cox turned down each of these proposals.Fox and Cox Media agreed to an asset swap on June 24, 2014, where Cox sold KTVU and KICU to Fox; in turn, Fox sold to Cox Media both WFXT in Boston and WHBQ-TV in Memphis. As part of the trade, WFXT general manager Gregg Kelly was reassigned to KTVU, while KTVU general manager Tom Raponi moved to WFXT.
Programming
Local productions
From 1958 until the early 1970s, KTVU aired the space-themed afternoon children's program Captain Satellite, which was hosted by Bob March and was set in a fictional spaceship known as the Starfinder II. The series—which was originally produced at Moose Hall in Oakland, before moving to the KTVU studios in 1959—showcased cartoons between segments, as well as film clips provided by NASA and live in-studio visits from astronauts.Until the 1980s, the station produced a series of classic public service shorts titled Bits and Pieces, often featuring two talking puppets, Charley and Humphrey, which Pat McCormick had brought over to KTVU from his tenure at KGO-TV. The shorts, which often aired during children's programs shown on the station, were aimed at delivering positive and educational messages to kids. In the late 1970s, Charley and Humphrey were spun off into a daily children's program on KTVU, which was hosted by McCormick. Channel 2 also served as the Bay Area's originating station for the children's television program franchise Romper Room; originally hosted by Nancy Besst, the half-hour program aired at 8:30 a.m. on weekday mornings for much of the 1980s.
Other local programs that aired on KTVU during its run as an independent station included the film showcase/trivia game show franchise Dialing for Dollars, which was first hosted by Mel Venter and later by Pat McCormick, who later served as a weather anchor at the station; National All-Star Wrestling, which aired on Friday nights during the early and mid-1960s from the KTVU studios or Daly City's Cow Palace and was hosted by Walt Harris; and Roller Derby, which Harris also hosted for many years and featured San Francisco Bay Bombers roller derby games until the demise of the International Roller Derby League in 1973. During the early 2000s, KTVU broadcast the San Francisco Chinese New Year Parade.