KTXL
KTXL is a television station in Sacramento, California, United States, affiliated with the Fox network. The station is owned by Nexstar Media Group and maintains studios on Fruitridge Road near the Oak Park district on the southern side of Sacramento; its transmitter is located in Walnut Grove, California.
KTXL began broadcasting on October 26, 1968. It was an independent station owned by Camellia City Telecasters, a partnership of Jack Matranga and eventually the Business Men's Assurance Company. It offered syndicated programs, cartoons, and sports, as well as movies, amassing one of the largest film libraries for an independent of its size. Cable television signals carried its programming well beyond Sacramento, as far north as Oregon and east to Rapid City, South Dakota. Beginning in 1974, it debuted a 10 p.m. local newscast, the Sacramento market's first. The station survived a challenge to its broadcast license in the 1970s stemming from a forged document it submitted in a case over a competing local station.
KTXL became affiliated with Fox when it launched in 1986, the same year Matranga sold his stake in the station to BMA. Renaissance Communications purchased KTXL in 1988; under its ownership, it was one of the highest-rated Fox affiliates in the country, and the news format was sharpened to make it more compatible with Fox's younger-skewing audience. This continued after Tribune Broadcasting acquired Renaissance in 1996, but the 10 p.m. news remained KTXL's only newscast until it debuted an hour-long morning show in 2005. A flurry of news expansions followed, and by the time Nexstar acquired Tribune in 2019, the station had an extended morning news program and new midday and early evening newscasts. In addition to local news, KTXL produces and partially presents Inside California Politics, a weekly public affairs program aired by all six of Nexstar's California stations.
Prior history of channel 40 in Sacramento
KTXL is the third station to use ultra high frequency channel 40 in Sacramento.Television came to Sacramento on September 30, 1953, when KCCC-TV began telecasting. Based in studios on Garden Highway, it aired programming from all four networks of its day—ABC, CBS, NBC, and the DuMont Television Network. However, as very high frequency stations began telecasting in the Sacramento region, it slowly lost most of its network affiliations. CBS affiliated with KBET-TV, which began in March 1955, and NBC with KCRA-TV, which started six months later. At the same time, DuMont ceased providing network programming. Stockton's KOVR-TV was financially struggling in its attempt to operate as an independent station serving Stockton and San Francisco. In 1956, it filed to move its transmitter to Butte Mountain near Jackson in Amador County, which put it in contention to take the ABC affiliation away from KCCC-TV. This happened six months later, and on May 31, 1957, KCCC-TV ceased broadcasting in what amounted to a partial merger with KOVR. The Stockton station became the ABC affiliate of record for Sacramento.
In 1958, a group of former KCCC-TV employees organized as the Capitol Television Corporation with interest in possibly reviving KCCC-TV. A construction permit was awarded to Capitol in November 1958; while the group initially sought to reclaim the KCCC-TV call sign, the resulting station changed to KVUE shortly before going on the air on November 9, 1959. The undercapitalized independent station folded on March 18, 1960.
History
Construction and early years
The KVUE license remained in force, but when station president Melvyn Lucas filed for a renewal in January 1963, another local group filed a competing application for its own channel 40 station under the name Camellia City Telecasters. Camellia City was owned by Jack Matranga and three other men; Matranga believed that between the existence of the prior channel 40 and forthcoming regulation, there would be enough sets capable of receiving the proposed station. Due to a failure to put the station back on the air, the Federal Communications Commission dismissed the license renewal application for KVUE in December 1963, but it did not grant the Camellia City Telecasters application until March 1965. Though the application was for channel 40, the FCC ordered the station switched to channel 29 in August 1965, only to revert the change the next year.In December 1967, the FCC authorized Camellia City Telecasters to sell a majority stake to Community Cablecasting Corporation, and KTXL announced its construction plans. For studios, the station leased a warehouse at 10th and B streets; the transmitter facility would be at Locke, north of the main Sacramento TV station tower at Walnut Grove. KTXL began broadcasting on October 26, 1968, with a lineup of children's programs, movies, and sports. It also aired NBC and CBS programming not cleared by the local affiliates. As the only independent station in the Sacramento market, it aired sports telecasts that in some cases aired on competing stations in the San Francisco area.
KTXL built a new studio facility on Fruitridge Road in 1969. Later that year, 20 percent of the station was sold to the Business Men's Assurance Company, an insurer based in Kansas City, Missouri. Matranga later recalled that BMA was an "angel" at a time when KTXL's finances were "very dismal". BMA became the 65-percent owner two years later.
In its early years, KTXL offered a variety of non-news local programming. After two years at Modesto's KLOC-TV, children's host Cap'n Mitch joined the channel 40 lineup in 1968. Two years later, Bob Wilkins, who had hosted horror movies at KCRA-TV, moved to KTXL to present the Bob Wilkins Horror Show, which ran until 1981. Cap'n Mitch remained on the air at channel 40 until January 1984, when the station eased him out of on-air duties out of a belief that it no longer needed a host for children's programming and in response to declining viewership.
In addition to the Sacramento area, KTXL was available on cable television systems in parts of California, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Washington state. In 1970, it was added to the cable system serving Reno; Matranga noted that the addition helped Sacramento firms that had stores in Reno. In 1973, Matranga initiated all-night programming in an attempt to entice more cable systems to put KTXL on their lineups. Two years later, Community Television of Utah began offering KTXL, alongside KTVU and KWGN-TV of Denver, to its subscribers on the first cable TV system in Salt Lake City. The next year, KTXL's all-night movies began being seen by cable subscribers in Rapid City, South Dakota, some from Sacramento. Some KTXL programming was included on the Pacific Teletronics microwave channel that also included material from Bay Area independents KTVU, KICU-TV, and KBHK and was distributed to cable systems in Oregon. By 1980, most Bay Area cable systems included KTXL in their lineups.
An attempt by Camellia City Telecasters to contest the arrival of a second independent station in Sacramento placed KTXL's broadcast license in legal jeopardy. KTXL attempted to show to the FCC that Grayson Television, the owner of the then-proposed KMUV-TV, was unqualified to be a broadcast licensee. Camellia City Telecasters submitted a pleading containing what purported to be a telex message from Dun & Bradstreet. The alleged telex claimed that Sidney Grayson was the president of Grayson Television, even though he had previously been convicted of income tax evasion. In actuality, Grayson was not a corporate officer but a general manager. In August 1974, the FCC opened a hearing into charges the teletype was forged. In 1975, Grayson Television sued Camellia City for $7.5 million, claiming the filing was an attempt to prevent KMUV-TV from being constructed. The next year, an administrative law judge issued an initial decision finding against KTXL and recommended its license not be renewed. Shortly after, KMUV won $150,000 in a settlement with Camellia City. The FCC voted in June 1978 to overturn the recommendation and renew the KTXL license. Having survived the license challenge, KTXL constructed an addition to its studios in 1980 that nearly doubled their size from to.
Matranga gained a reputation as a large-scale buyer of movies and syndicated programming. By 1981, KTXL had a film library of 5,000 titles, double what independent stations in comparably sized markets carried, and Matranga was continuing to buy as prices rose, locking in market exclusivity for years to many films. Koplar Communications, owner of channel 31, sued KTXL in 1982, arguing that its spending on hoarding programming inventory was monopolistic and served to starve KRBK of programming. In 1985, KTXL built a new, tower in Walnut Grove, and the next year, it affiliated with the new Fox network. In 1988, Fox added America's Most Wanted to its Sunday night lineup after it outperformed the existing program in the time slot, Werewolf, in a test run conducted on KTXL.