KWTV-DT (channel 9) is a
television station
A television station is a set of equipment managed by a business, organisation or other entity, such as an amateur television (ATV) operator, that transmits video content and audio content via radio waves directly from a transmitter on the earth ...
in
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Oklahoma City (), officially the City of Oklahoma City, and often shortened to OKC, is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Oklahoma. The county seat of Oklahoma County, it ranks 20th among United States cities in population, and ...
, United States, affiliated with
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...
. It is the
flagship
A flagship is a vessel used by the commanding officer of a group of naval ships, characteristically a flag officer entitled by custom to fly a distinguishing flag. Used more loosely, it is the lead ship in a fleet of vessels, typically the fi ...
broadcast property of locally based
Griffin Media
Griffin Media is an American media company based in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The company began as a subsidiary of Muskogee-based Griffin Foods, which produces a line of pancake and waffle syrups and other foods.
It owns Oklahoma's two large CBS ...
, and is co-owned with
MyNetworkTV
MyNetworkTV (unofficially abbreviated MyTV, MyNet, MNT or MNTV, and sometimes referred to as My Network) is an American commercial broadcast television syndication service and former television network owned by Fox Corporation, operated by its ...
affiliate
KSBI
KSBI (channel 52) is a television station in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States, affiliated with MyNetworkTV. It is owned by locally based Griffin Media alongside CBS affiliate and company flagship KWTV-DT (channel 9). Both stations share ...
(channel 52). Both stations share studios on West Main Street in downtown Oklahoma City, while KWTV-DT's transmitter is located on the city's northeast side.
History
Early history
John Toole "J. T." Griffin—the owner and president of the Griffin Grocery Company, a
Muskogee-based
wholesaler
Wholesaling or distributing is the sale of goods or merchandise to retailers; to industrial, commercial, institutional or other professional business users; or to other wholesalers (wholesale businesses) and related subordinated services. In g ...
and manufacturer of
condiment
A condiment is a preparation that is added to food, typically after cooking, to impart a specific Flavoring, flavor, to enhance the flavor, or to complement the dish. A table condiment or table sauce is more specifically a condiment that is serv ...
s and baking products, states that he inherited from his father, John Taylor Griffin, after the elder company co-founder died in 1944—became interested in television broadcasting around 1950, after noticing during one of his commutes that many homes in the Oklahoma City area had installed
outdoor antennas to receive the signal of primary
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an Television in the United States, American English-language Commercial broadcasting, commercial television network, broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Enterta ...
affiliate WKY-TV (channel 4, now
KFOR-TV
KFOR-TV (channel 4) is a television station in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States, affiliated with NBC. It is owned by Nexstar Media Group alongside independent station KAUT-TV (channel 43). Both stations share studios in Oklahoma ...
), the first television station ever to sign on in Oklahoma, which began operation on June 6, 1949. In an effort to secure a grant to operate a television station in Oklahoma City, Griffin—who first entered the broadcasting industry in October 1938, when he purchased local radio station KOMA (1520 AM, now
KOKC) from
Hearst Radio for $315,000—filed competing
construction permit
Planning permission or developmental approval refers to the approval needed for construction or expansion (including significant renovation), and sometimes for demolition, in some jurisdictions. It is usually given in the form of a building perm ...
/
license
A license (or licence) is an official permission or permit to do, use, or own something (as well as the document of that permission or permit).
A license is granted by a party (licensor) to another party (licensee) as an element of an agreeme ...
applications to the
Federal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisdiction ...
(FCC) under two separate companies in which he held ownership interests.
On September 5, 1951, the Oklahoma Television Corporation—a consortium led by Griffin (who, along with sister Marjory Griffin Leake and brother-in-law James C. Leake, became the company's majority owners in July 1952, with a collective 92.7% controlling interest) and investors that included former
Oklahoma Governor
The governor of Oklahoma is the head of government of the U.S. state of Oklahoma. Under the Oklahoma Constitution, the governor serves as the head of the Oklahoma executive branch, of the government of Oklahoma. The governor is the ''ex officio ...
Roy J. Turner, company executive vice president Edgar T. Bell (who would later serve as channel 9's first
general manager
A general manager (GM) is an executive who has overall responsibility for managing both the revenue and cost elements of a company's income statement, known as profit & loss (P&L) responsibility. A general manager usually oversees most or all of ...
), and Video Independent Theatres president Henry Griffing (who acted as a
trustee
Trustee (or the holding of a trusteeship) is a legal term which, in its broadest sense, is a synonym for anyone in a position of trust and so can refer to any individual who holds property, authority, or a position of trust or responsibility to t ...
on behalf of the regional movie theater operator)—filed an application for a construction permit to build and license to operate a television station on
VHF channel 9. On June 27, 1952, KOMA Inc., a licensee corporation of KOMA radio that was largely owned by Griffin and the Leakes, filed a separate application to operate channel 9. The FCC eventually granted the license to the Oklahoma Television Corporation on July 22, 1953, after the company struck an agreement with KOMA Inc. days prior to merge their respective bids, in exchange for KOMA purchasing 50% of the shares in Oklahoma Television that were owned by that group's original principal investors. (Under FCC procedure, the Commission's Broadcast Bureau board decided on license proposals filed by "survivor" applicants at the next scheduled meeting following the withdrawal of a competing bid.) Instead of using the KOMA calls assigned to the radio station, the Griffin group chose instead to request KWTV (for "
World's
Tallest
Video") as the television station's call letters, in reference to the
transmission tower
A transmission tower, also known as an electricity pylon or simply a pylon in British English and as a hydro tower in Canadian English, is a tall structure, usually a steel lattice tower, used to support an overhead power line.
In electrical gri ...
that was being built behind its studio facility (which was also under construction at the time) on open land near Northeast 74th Street and North Kelley Avenue; the land plot was purchased by KOMA in 1950, with the intention of developing it for a television broadcast facility. (KOMA would vacate its facilities at the now-demolished
Biltmore Hotel in downtown Oklahoma City once the Kelley Avenue building was completed.)
After conducting initial
test pattern
A test card, also known as a test pattern or start-up/closedown test, is a television test signal, typically broadcast at times when the transmitter is active but no program is being broadcast (often at sign-on and sign-off).
Used since the ear ...
transmissions beginning on December 8, KWTV officially signed on the air on December 20, 1953. The station's first broadcast was a special 30-minute ceremony inaugurating channel 9's launch at 7:00 p.m. that evening, respectively featuring speeches from Griffin, Bell and Turner, announcements of station policies, and an introduction of station stockholders and employees.
KWTV was the third and last commercial television station to sign on in the Oklahoma City market during 1953: two
UHF stations—
KTVQ
KTVQ (channel 2) is a television station in Billings, Montana, United States, affiliated with CBS and The CW Plus. Owned by the E. W. Scripps Company, it is part of the Montana Television Network, a statewide network of CBS-affiliated station ...
(channel 25, allocation now occupied by
Fox
Foxes are small to medium-sized, omnivorous mammals belonging to several genera of the family Canidae. They have a flattened skull, upright, triangular ears, a pointed, slightly upturned snout, and a long bushy tail (or ''brush'').
Twelve sp ...
affiliate
KOKH-TV), an
ABC
ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script known as the alphabet.
ABC or abc may also refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Broadcasting
* American Broadcasting Company, a commercial U.S. TV broadcaster
** Disney–ABC Television ...
affiliate that launched on October 28, and KLPR-TV (channel 19, allocation now occupied by
Cornerstone Television
The Cornerstone Television Network is a non-commercial Christian broadcast and satellite television network based in Wall, Pennsylvania, United States. Its founder was Russ Bixler. The network has 44 full-power and 57 low-power affiliate station ...
affiliate
KUOT-CD
KUOT-CD, virtual and UHF digital channel 21 is a low-powered, Class A 3ABN- affiliated television station licensed to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States. Founded March 7, 1995, the station is owned by The Edge Spectrum, Inc.
Digital tel ...
), a
DuMont Television Network
The DuMont Television Network (also known as the DuMont Network, DuMont Television, simply DuMont/Du Mont, or (incorrectly) Dumont ) was one of America's pioneer commercial television networks, rivaling NBC and CBS for the distinction of being ...
affiliate that debuted on November 8—would eventually cease operations within three years of their respective debuts. Originally broadcasting daily from 6:00 a.m. to midnight, channel 9 has been a CBS television affiliate since its debut (WKY-TV aired select CBS programming until November 14); the affiliation owed to KOMA radio's longtime partnership with the
CBS Radio Network
CBS News Radio, formerly known as CBS Radio News and historically known as the CBS Radio Network, is a radio network that provides news to more than 1,000 radio stations throughout the United States. The network is owned by Paramount Global. It ...
, which had been affiliated with its then-radio sister since 1929. KWTV also maintained a secondary affiliation with DuMont, from which WKY-TV had also carried selected programs, until the network discontinued operations in August 1956. On October 15, 1956, KWTV began carrying programming from the
NTA Film Network
The NTA Film Network was an early American television network founded by Ely Landau in 1956. The network was not a full-time television network like CBS, NBC, or ABC. Rather, it operated on a part-time basis, broadcasting films and several first ...
; channel 9 served as the programming service's secondary Oklahoma City affiliate, offering a limited schedule of drama and comedy series. (Most of NTA other shows were shown on WKY-TV, while ABC affiliate KGEO-TV only aired its ''NTA Film Spectacular''
anthology series
An anthology series is a radio, television, video game or film series that spans different genres and presents a different story and a different set of characters in each different episode, season, segment, or short. These usually have a differ ...
.) This relationship lasted until
National Telefilm Associates
National Telefilm Associates (NTA) was an audio-visual marketing company primarily concerned with the syndication of American film libraries to television, including the Republic Pictures film library. It was successful enough on cable television ...
discontinued the service in November 1961, when KWTV became exclusively affiliated with CBS.
Channel 9—which is one of the few television stations in the United States to have had the same callsign, ownership, primary network affiliation and over-the-air channel allocation throughout its history—temporarily transmitted its signal from KOMA's broadcast tower near the television station's Kelley Avenue studios. KWTV activated its permanent transmission facility in September 1954; at , the tower—which cost $650,000 to construct and weighed —became the tallest man-made structure and the tallest free-standing broadcast tower in the world at that time. (It would be surpassed for the title in December 1956, when
Roswell, New Mexico
Roswell () is a city in, and the County seat, seat of, Chaves County, New Mexico, Chaves County in the U.S. state of New Mexico. Chaves County forms the entirety of the List of micropolitan areas in New Mexico, Roswell micropolitan area. As of ...
-based KSWS-TV
ow_KOBR.html"_;"title="KOBR.html"_;"title="ow_KOBR">ow_KOBR">KOBR.html"_;"title="ow_KOBR">ow_KOBRactivated_a__KOBR-TV_Tower.html" ;"title="KOBR">ow_KOBR.html" ;"title="KOBR.html" ;"title="ow KOBR">ow KOBR">KOBR.html" ;"title="ow KOBR">ow KOBRactivated a KOBR-TV Tower">guy-wired tower in Caprock, New Mexico.) To commemorate the new tower, an event that KWTV management estimated had 5,000 attendees, an amateur photography competition was held in which the winning pictures of the tower (with photography equipment donated by local camera stores being awarded to the finalists) would be chosen for inclusion in station publicity advertisements. A young
Johnny Carson
John William Carson (October 23, 1925 – January 23, 2005) was an American television host, comedian, writer and producer. He is best known as the host of ''The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson'' (1962–1992). Carson received six Pr ...
, then the host of the CBS
game show
A game show is a genre of broadcast viewing entertainment (radio, television, internet, stage or other) where contestants compete for a reward. These programs can either be participatory or Let's Play, demonstrative and are typically directed b ...
''Earn Your Vacation'', served as
master of ceremonies for the tower's dedication. The
Oklahoma Educational Television Authority
The Oklahoma Educational Television Authority (OETA) is a state network of PBS member television stations serving the U.S. state of Oklahoma. The authority operates as a statutory corporation that holds the licenses for all of the PBS stati ...
(OETA)—which, per an agreement with the Oklahoma Television Corporation, was granted free use of the land near the KWTV studio and transmitter—became a tenant on the tower in April 1956, when the
educational broadcaster's
flagship station KETA-TV (channel 13) activated its transmitter. (The tower was decommissioned following the transition of KWTV and KETA to digital-only broadcasts in the spring of 2009, as their digital transmitters were located on a separate tower between 122nd Street and the
John Kilpatrick Turnpike
The John Kilpatrick Turnpike is a toll road in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The turnpike forms a partial loop that runs from State Highway 152 (SH-152) in the west to an interchange with Interstate 35 (I-35) and I-44 in the east. At the eastern term ...
; the antenna and the upper half of the tower were physically disassembled by engineers and crane equipment during the summer of 2014, and its remnant sections were imploded that October.) The station relocated its operations into its new Kelley Avenue studio facility on October 17, 1954.
Some of the local programs that channel 9 produced over the years have included the children's program ''Miss Fran from Storyland'', in which host Fran Morris—who hosted the show from 1958 to 1967, during her tenure as KWTV's director of educational programming, before moving to WKY-TV/KTVY to host the similarly formatted ''Sunday Morning with Miss Fran'' for an additional 17 years—told children's stories, conducted arts and crafts demonstrations, displayed viewer-submitted artwork on a "storyboard," and occasionally showcased ''
Davey and Goliath
''Davey and Goliath'' is a Christian clay-animated children's television series, whose central characters were created by Art Clokey, Ruth Clokey, and Dick Sutcliffe, and which was produced first by the United Lutheran Church in America and la ...
'' animated shorts; ''
The Gaylon Stacy Show'', a half-hour morning talk-variety program—whose host had also helmed two other shows during his tenure at KWTV, the Saturday morning children's show ''Junior Auction'' and the variety-game show ''You Name It''—that ran from 1960 to 1970, which featured live guests and on-location celebrity interviews; and ''Foods 'n Focus'', a five-minute-long,
Oklahoma Natural Gas
Oklahoma Natural Gas is the largest natural gas distributor in the state of Oklahoma. Originally founded in 1906, it is one of the oldest corporations in Oklahoma. Oklahoma Natural Gas is a regulated public utility which serves 871,000 customers, ...
-produced cooking show hosted by Jane Frye that ran from 1973 to 1977. The Griffin-Leake interests sold KOMA (which, , is now owned by Oklahoma City-based
Tyler Media Tyler Media Group, also known as Tyler Broadcasting Corporation or simply Tyler Media, is a family-owned Oklahoma business with Radio, TV and outdoor advertising assets in Tulsa and Oklahoma City. Tyler Media owns five television stations (consistin ...
) to Radio Oklahoma, Inc.—an investor-owned group led by radio executive Burton Levine—on November 20, 1956 for $342,500, but chose to retain ownership of KWTV.
Over the years, the Griffin family owned other television stations in Oklahoma and
Arkansas
Arkansas ( ) is a landlocked state in the South Central United States. It is bordered by Missouri to the north, Tennessee and Mississippi to the east, Louisiana to the south, and Texas and Oklahoma to the west. Its name is from the Osage ...
. On December 15, 1953 (five days before KWTV signed on), the Griffin-Leake partnership launched their first television station, ABC affiliate
KATV
KATV (channel 7) is a television station in Little Rock, Arkansas, United States, affiliated with ABC and owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group. The station's studios are located at the former Worthen Bank Building on East 4th and Main Streets in ...
in
Little Rock, Arkansas
(The Little Rock, The "Little Rock")
, government_type = council-manager government, Council-manager
, leader_title = List of mayors of Little Rock, Arkansas, Mayor
, leader_name = Frank Scott Jr.
, leader_ ...
;
the group would later sign on their second ABC-affiliated station, KTVX (now
Tulsa
Tulsa () is the second-largest city in the U.S. state, state of Oklahoma and List of United States cities by population, 47th-most populous city in the United States. The population was 413,066 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. ...
-based
KTUL
KTUL (channel 8) is a television station in Tulsa, Oklahoma, United States, affiliated with ABC and owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group. The station's studios are located at Lookout Mountain (near South 29th West Avenue, west of Interstate 244) ...
) in Muskogee, on September 18, 1954. Post-split from Leake, Griffin Television bought NBC affiliate KPOM-TV (now Fox affiliate
KFTA-TV
KFTA-TV (channel 24) is a television station licensed to Fort Smith, Arkansas, United States, serving as the Fox affiliate for the Arkansas River Valley and Northwest Arkansas. It is owned by Nexstar Media Group alongside Rogers-licensed NBC aff ...
) in
Fort Smith from Ozark Broadcasting Co. in September 1985; then in October 1989, it signed on KFAA (now
KNWA-TV
KNWA-TV (channel 51) is a television station licensed to Rogers, Arkansas, United States, serving as the NBC affiliate for Northwest Arkansas and the Arkansas River Valley. It is owned by Nexstar Media Group alongside Fort Smith–licensed Fox ...
) in
Rogers Rogers may refer to:
Places
Canada
*Rogers Pass (British Columbia)
* Rogers Island (Nunavut)
United States
* Rogers, Arkansas, a city
* Rogers, alternate name of Muroc, California, a former settlement
* Rogers, Indiana, an unincorporated communit ...
as a
satellite station
A broadcast relay station, also known as a satellite station, relay transmitter, broadcast translator (U.S.), re-broadcaster (Canada), repeater (two-way radio) or complementary station (Mexico), is a broadcast transmitter which repeats (or tran ...
serving
Fayetteville and other areas of
northwest Arkansas
Northwest Arkansas (NWA) is a metropolitan area and region in Arkansas within the Ozark Mountains. It includes four of the ten largest cities in the state: Fayetteville, Springdale, Rogers, and Bentonville, the surrounding towns of Benton an ...
that could not receive KPOM's signal. (KPOM and KFAA were owned by the Griffins until 2004, when it sold the two stations to the
Nexstar Broadcasting Group
Nexstar Media Group, Inc. is an American publicly traded media company with headquarter offices in Irving, Texas; Midtown Manhattan; and Chicago, Illinois. The company is the largest television station owner in the United States, owning 197 te ...
.) Griffin Communications re-entered the Tulsa market with its October 2000 purchase of fellow CBS affiliate
KOTV from the
Belo Corporation
Belo Corporation was a Dallas-based media company that owned 20 commercial broadcasting television stations and three regional 24-hour cable news television channels. The company was previously known as A. H. Belo Corporation after one of the ...
; Griffin gained a second station in that market when it purchased Muskogee-based
WB affiliate KWBT (now
CW affiliate
KQCW-DT
KQCW-DT (channel 19) is a television station licensed to Muskogee, Oklahoma, United States, serving the Tulsa area as an affiliate of The CW. It is owned by Griffin Media alongside CBS affiliate KOTV-DT (channel 6) and radio stations KTSB (1170 ...
) from Cascade Broadcasting Group in October 2005.
Sole ownership by Griffin
In April 1961, Triarko Ltd.—a subsidiary of
RKO General
RKO General, Inc. (previously General Teleradio, RKO Teleradio Pictures, and RKO Teleradio) was, from 1952 through 1991, the main holding company for the noncore businesses of the General Tire, General Tire and Rubber Company and, after General Ti ...
—purchased a controlling stake in Video Independent Theatres from the estate of the late Henry Griffing. On paper, the 12.5% interest in KWTV included in the deal effectively gave RKO its fifth VHF television station, putting it at the maximum then allowed under FCC ownership rules (alongside its wholly owned station properties in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
,
Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...
,
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
and
Memphis
Memphis most commonly refers to:
* Memphis, Egypt, a former capital of ancient Egypt
* Memphis, Tennessee, a major American city
Memphis may also refer to:
Places United States
* Memphis, Alabama
* Memphis, Florida
* Memphis, Indiana
* Memp ...
as well as a controlling stake in a
Canadian station in Windsor, Ontario that dually served the
Detroit
Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at th ...
market). This created an issue for a then-ongoing and complex transaction in which RKO was to have acquired
WRC-TV
WRC-TV (channel 4) is a television station in Washington, D.C., airing programming from the NBC network. It is owned-and-operated station, owned and operated by the network's NBC Owned Television Stations division alongside Class A television se ...
and WRC-AM-FM (now
WTEM
WTEM (980 AM) is a commercial sports radio station licensed to serve Washington, D.C. Owned by Audacy, Inc., the station services the Washington metropolitan area as the flagship station of the Washington Wizards. WTEM is also the co-flagship st ...
and
WKYS
WKYS (93.9 FM) is a commercial radio station licensed to Washington, D.C. The station is owned by Urban One through licensee Urban One Licenses, LLC, and broadcasts an Urban Contemporary radio format. It is co-owned with WMMJ, WOL, WPRS-FM, a ...
) in
Washington, D.C.
)
, image_skyline =
, image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...
from NBC, trade WNAC-TV (now defunct; former channel allocation now occupied by
WHDH), WNAC-AM (now
WRKO
WRKO (680 AM) is a commercial news/talk
Talk radio is a radio format containing discussion about topical issues and consisting entirely or almost entirely of original spoken word content rather than outside music. Most shows are regularly ho ...
) and WRKO-FM (now
WBZ-FM
WBZ-FM (98.5 FM) is a commercial sports radio station licensed to Boston, Massachusetts, serving Greater Boston and much of surrounding New England. Owned by the Beasley Broadcast Group, WBZ-FM is the Boston affiliate for Fox Sports Radio; t ...
) in
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
to NBC in exchange for the WRCV television and radio stations (now
KYW-TV
KYW-TV (channel 3) is a television station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, airing programming from the CBS network. It is owned and operated by the network's CBS News and Stations division alongside CW affiliate WPSG (channel 57 ...
and
KYW (AM)
KYW (1060 kHz) is a commercial AM radio station licensed to serve Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is one of the oldest continuously operating radio stations in the United States, originating in Chicago before moving to Philadelphia in 1934. KYW' ...
) in
Philadelphia
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...
, and sell the Washington-based
WGMS radio stations (now
WWRC
WWRC (570 AM) – branded ''AM 570 The Answer'' – is a commercial conservative talk radio station licensed to serve Bethesda, Maryland. Owned by the Salem Media Group, the station services the Washington metro area and is the market affiliat ...
and
WTOP-FM
WTOP-FM (103.5 FM) – branded ''WTOP Radio'' and ''WTOP News'' – is a commercial all-news radio station licensed to serve Washington, D.C. Owned by Hubbard Broadcasting, the station serves the Washington metropolitan area, extending its re ...
) to
Crowell-Collier Broadcasting.
Philco
Philco (an acronym for Philadelphia Battery Company) is an American electronics industry, electronics manufacturer headquartered in Philadelphia. Philco was a pioneer in battery, radio, and television production. In 1961, the company was purchased ...
—which protested the 1957 license renewal of WRCV-TV-AM to NBC amid questions over the legality of its purchase of the stations from
Westinghouse in exchange for
WTAM-AM-
FM and WNBK television (now
WKYC
WKYC (channel 3) is a television station in Cleveland, Ohio, United States, affiliated with NBC and owned by Tegna Inc. Its studios are located on Tom Beres Way (a section of Lakeside Avenue in Downtown Cleveland named after the station's longti ...
) in
Cleveland
Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...
the year before—took issue with whether RKO's interest in KWTV violated FCC ownership rules. Addressing this, in August 1962, RKO agreed to sell its stake in channel 9 to minority stockholders Roy Turner and Luther Dulaney, increasing their individual interests in the station to 18.75%.
![NEWS9](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b3/NEWS9.JPG)
On November 29, 1963, the Griffin-Leake interests purchased Turner and Dulaney's 25% interests in KWTV for $200,000 and title rights to the equipment used by KWTV, KTUL and KATV. Turner and Dulaney would then sell the equipment, valued at $2.3 million, to First National Bank of Oklahoma City executives C.A. Voss and James Kite for $3 million. Griffin-Leake's Oklahoma stations would then be folded into KATV parent licensee KATV Inc. (subsequently rechristened as Griffin-Leake TV), which would enter into a ten-year, $4.5 million (or $37,500 per month) agreement with Voss and Kite to lease the equipment. Griffin and the Leakes would own approximately all of the common voting stock and collectively own 84% of nonvoting common shares in KATV Inc. post-merger, with 10% of the remaining nonvoting interest held by Edgar Bell (who would remain KWTV's executive vice president and general manager).
In early 1964, KWTV's Kelley Avenue facility was expanded to include a new soundstage on the building's west end (which would incorporate transistorized broadcasting and recording equipment), and a separate control room and production facilities. On April 17, 1969, Griffin-Leake TV announced its intent to split its assets into two separate companies. Griffin would retain ownership of KWTV under the rechristened entity that became Griffin Television Inc. (renamed Griffin Communications in 2000 and Griffin Media in 2022), while Leake retained ownership of KATV, KTUL,
Ponca City
Ponca City ( iow, Chína Uhánⁿdhe) is a city in Kay County in the U.S. state of Oklahoma. The city was named after the Ponca tribe. Ponca City had a population of 25,387 at the time of the 2010 census- and a population of 24,424 in the 2020 ...
-based cable television operator Cable TV Co. of Oklahoma, and a controlling 80% interest in the construction permit for
Fajardo, Puerto Rico
Fajardo (, ) is a town and municipality -Fajardo Combined Statistical Area.
Fajardo is the hub of much of the recreational boating in Puerto Rico and a popular launching port to Culebra, Vieques, and the U.S. and British Virgin Islands. It is ...
television station WSTE (now
WORO-DT
WORO-DT (channel 13) is an educational/religious independent television station licensed to San Juan, Puerto Rico. United States. The station is owned by Grupo RTC under Puerto Rico's Roman Catholic Church - San Juan Archdiocese, and is branded ...
) through the spin-off entity Leake TV, Inc. In 1982, with the launch of the overnight news program ''
CBS News Nightwatch
''CBS Overnight News'' is an American overnight news broadcasting that is broadcast on CBS during the early morning hours each Monday through Friday. The program maintains a infotainment format, incorporating national, international and busines ...
'', KWTV became the first television station in the Oklahoma City market to maintain a 24-hour programming schedule on weekdays (KTVY had begun maintaining a 24-hour schedule on Fridays and Saturdays in 1978); the station would not adopt a 24-hour schedule regularly until the launch of ''
CBS News Up to the Minute
''CBS Overnight News'' is an American overnight news broadcasting that is broadcast on CBS during the early morning hours each Monday through Friday. The program maintains a infotainment format, incorporating national, international and busines ...
'' in September 1992.
Ownership of KWTV would transfer to the familial heirs of John Griffin—widow Martha Watson Griffin (who also assumed her husband's post as KWTV board chairman), and sons John W. and David Griffin (both of whom would become KWTV executives in 1990, with David eventually taking over as President of Griffin Communications in 2001)—after he died on July 26, 1985 at the age of 62. That year, KWTV began producing ''Bingomania'' (a co-production with
Dayton, Ohio
Dayton () is the sixth-largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Montgomery County. A small part of the city extends into Greene County. The 2020 U.S. census estimate put the city population at 137,644, while Greater Day ...
-based Prijatel Productions), a half-hour
bingo
Bingo or B-I-N-G-O may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Gaming
* Bingo, a game using a printed card of numbers
** Bingo (British version), a game using a printed card of 15 numbers on three lines; most commonly played in the UK and Ireland
** Bi ...
game show—developed as a relaunch of the local program ''$20,000 Jackpot Bingo'', which premiered on the station in September 1985—that was briefly available in limited national syndication through licensing deals with individual stations; after a two-year run, the program was cancelled in 1987. On February 3, 1997, the station—which had branded itself as "TV-9" since 1981—modified its general branding to "KWTV 9" full-time and retitled its newscasts from ''Newsline 9'' to simply ''News 9'', which would be extended to a full-time generalized brand in May 2001.
On October 25, 2010, KWTV became the first television station in the Oklahoma City market to carry
syndicated programming
Broadcast syndication is the practice of leasing the right to broadcasting television shows and radio programs to multiple television stations and radio stations, without going through a broadcast network. It is common in the United States where ...
and advertisements inserted during local commercial breaks (including station and network promos) in
high definition. On September 29, 2014, Griffin purchased
MyNetworkTV
MyNetworkTV (unofficially abbreviated MyTV, MyNet, MNT or MNTV, and sometimes referred to as My Network) is an American commercial broadcast television syndication service and former television network owned by Fox Corporation, operated by its ...
affiliate
KSBI
KSBI (channel 52) is a television station in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States, affiliated with MyNetworkTV. It is owned by locally based Griffin Media alongside CBS affiliate and company flagship KWTV-DT (channel 9). Both stations share ...
(channel 52) from Oklahoma City-based Family Broadcasting Group (owned by a consortium led by former KWTV weekend evening meteorologist Brady Brus, which—under its former name, Christian Media Group—outbid Griffin to purchase KSBI in 2001) for $33.5 million. The transaction was finalized on December 1, 2014, making KWTV and KSBI became the fourth commercial television
duopoly
A duopoly (from Greek δύο, ''duo'' "two" and πωλεῖν, ''polein'' "to sell") is a type of oligopoly where two firms have dominant or exclusive control over a market. It is the most commonly studied form of oligopoly due to its simplicit ...
in the Oklahoma City market. KSBI subsequently migrated its operations from its studio facility on North Morgan Road in
Yukon
Yukon (; ; formerly called Yukon Territory and also referred to as the Yukon) is the smallest and westernmost of Canada's three territories. It also is the second-least populated province or territory in Canada, with a population of 43,964 as ...
, into KWTV's Kelley Avenue studios on December 6 of that year.
On March 1, 2017, in a move mirroring similar rebrandings made by
Fox Television Stations
Fox Television Stations, LLC (FTS; alternately Fox Television Stations Group, LLC), is a group of television stations located within the United States, which are owned-and-operated by the Fox Broadcasting Company, a subsidiary of the Fox Corp ...
for its MyNetworkTV owned-and-operated and independent stations around this timeframe, Griffin extended KWTV's branding to KSBI under the "News 9 Plus" moniker; Griffin Communications CEO David Griffin said the branding extension was designed to "help create a more inclusive and consistent identity for all of our programming".
On July 12, 2021, Griffin Communications announced that it had reached an agreement with real estate development consortium 100 Main LLC to purchase the Century Center business and retail complex in
downtown Oklahoma City
Downtown Oklahoma City is located at the geographic center of the Oklahoma City metropolitan area and contains the principal, central business district of the region. The CBD has over 51,000 workers and over of leasable office space to-date. Down ...
for $26 million. Griffin will construct a media and operations center that would house KWTV/KSBI's broadcast facilities and the company's corporate headquarters inside a vacant section of the space. Griffin will invest $10 million to renovate the building and plans for the move to be completed by summer 2022. All existing tenants are expected to continue leasing space in the building. After close to 70 years in the West Kelley Street building, the station aired its final newscast the morning of Saturday, November 12, 2022. KWTV will air its newscasts from the Downtown location starting the following evening. The balance of the weekend's newscasts will originate from sister station
KOTV in Tulsa.
Subchannel history
KWTV-DT2
KWTV-DT2 (branded as "News 9 Now") is the second
digital subchannel
In broadcasting, digital subchannels are a method of transmitting more than one independent program stream simultaneously from the same digital radio or television station on the same radio frequency channel. This is done by using data compress ...
of KWTV-DT, which maintains a locally programmed rolling news format.
Over the air
Over the Air was an annual mobile technology-focused overnight hack day event held in London from 2008 to 2016. The two-day event would include practical and educational talks and a hacking competition. Sponsors of the event have included the B ...
, it broadcasts in
widescreen
Widescreen images are displayed within a set of aspect ratios (relationship of image width to height) used in film, television and computer screens. In film, a widescreen film is any film image with a width-to-height aspect ratio greater than t ...
standard definition on UHF digital channel 39.2 (or virtual channel 9.2 via
PSIP
The Program and System Information Protocol (PSIP) is the MPEG (a video and audio industry group) and privately defined program-specific information originally defined by General Instrument for the DigiCipher 2 system and later extended for the AT ...
). On cable, KWTV-DT2 is available on Cox Communications channel 53 in the Oklahoma City area,
Fidelity Communications channel 9 in
Lawton,
Sparklight
Cable One, Inc. is an American broadband communications provider. Under the Sparklight brand, it provides service to 21 states and 900,000 residential and business customers. It is headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona, though it does not serve that ...
channel 33 within its southwestern and south-central Oklahoma systems, and on other cable providers throughout the market.
News 9 Now traces its history to December 3, 1996, when Griffin Television launched
News Now 53, a
local cable news channel originally developed in partnership with
Cox Communications
Cox Communications, Inc. (also known as Cox Cable and formerly Cox Broadcasting Corporation, Dimension Cable Services and Times-Mirror Cable) is an American digital cable television provider, telecommunications and home automation services. It i ...
(which only served Oklahoma City proper and
Forest Park
A forest park is a park whose main theme is its forest of trees. Forest parks are found both in the mountains and in the urban environment.
Examples Chile
* Forest Park, Santiago
China
*Gongqing Forest Park, Shanghai
* Mufushan National Fores ...
at the time) and
Multimedia Cablevision (which then served the remainder of suburban Oklahoma City, including
Midwest City
Midwest City is a city in Oklahoma County, Oklahoma, United States, and a part of the Oklahoma City metropolitan area. As of the 2010 census, the population was 54,371, making it the eighth largest city in the state.
The city was developed in r ...
,
Bethany
Bethany ( grc-gre, Βηθανία,Murphy-O'Connor, 2008, p152/ref> Syriac: ܒܝܬ ܥܢܝܐ ''Bēṯ ʿAnyā'') or what is locally known as Al-Eizariya or al-Azariya ( ar, العيزرية, " laceof Lazarus"), is a Palestinian town in the West B ...
, Yukon and
Edmond) that primarily aired simulcasts of KWTV's daily newscasts as well as rolling repeats of the station's most recently aired newscast. (During its early years, News Now 53—named for its internally designated channel assignment on participating cable systems—also occasionally aired sports and special event programs that were either exclusive to the channel or had originally aired on channel 9.) The service's creation stems from a contractual stipulation incorporated into
retransmission consent
Retransmission consent is a provision of the 1992 United States Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act that requires cable operators and other multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) to obtain permission from commercia ...
agreements that Griffin reached with Cox and Multimedia in August 1993. Initially available exclusively on Cox's Oklahoma City system, Multimedia began carrying News Now 53 on its suburban area systems (which, in January 2000, were sold by the
Gannett Company
Gannett Co., Inc. () is an American mass media holding company headquartered in McLean, Virginia, in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.[Tele-Communications Inc.
Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI) was a cable television provider in the United States, and for most of its history was controlled by Bob Magness and John Malone.
The company was started in 1958 in Bozeman, Montana as Western Microwave, Inc. and Co ...]
eleven months prior.
KWTV-DT2 first launched in October 2009 as a temporary simulcast of the primary 9.1 feed, while KWTV was in the process of moving the station's digital signal permanently to UHF channel 39, the physical digital allocation it used until the February 2009 termination of analog transmissions; the 9.2 subfeed was deleted after KWTV relocated to UHF 39 full-time on August 30, 2010. KWTV relaunched the subchannel on April 1, 2011, when Griffin Communications—which assumed ownership of Cox's ownership interest in the service—reformatted the Oklahoma City feed of News Now 53 under the standalone brand "News 9 Now". (Concurrently, the service's Tulsa feed was added onto a DT2 subchannel of KOTV under the moniker "News on 6 Now"). News 9 Now maintains the former News Now 53's format of running live and repeat airings of all KWTV newscasts, however it does not rebroadcast ''News 9 This Morning'' in its entirety—repeating only the weekday 6:00 a.m. hour and the weekend editions, despite simulcasting the two weekday and one weekend hours that it does not rebroadcast. (All news rebroadcasts on the subchannel are accompanied by a
ticker that displays current conditions and weather forecasts for major cities across Oklahoma and right-third-quadrant banner advertisements for KWTV and local businesses.) To fulfill
Children's Television Act
The broadcast of educational children's programming by terrestrial television stations in the United States is mandated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), under regulations colloquially referred to as the Children's Television Act (C ...
guidelines, News 9 Now also airs a three-hour block of
educational programming aimed at older children and teenagers on Saturday afternoons.
Programming
KWTV-DT currently broadcasts the majority of the CBS network schedule, although it carries the first hour of the ''
CBS Dream Team
CBS Dream Team (suffixed with ...It's Epic! before October 3, 2020) is an American programming block that is programmed by Hearst Media Production Group (formerly Litton Entertainment), and airs weekend mornings on CBS under a time-lease agree ...
'' block on a two-hour delay from the "live" network feed to accommodate ''
CBS Saturday Morning
''CBS Saturday Morning'' is a Saturday morning television program that broadcasts on the American television network, CBS. It is currently anchored by Michelle Miller, Dana Jacobson and Jeff Glor.
Although the program's name has changed seve ...
'' (which it originally preempted from its September 1997 debut under its ''CBS News Saturday Morning'' iteration until September 2021) and a two-hour-long edition of ''News 9 This Morning'', and defers the second hour of the block to Sunday mornings leading into an hour-long edition of the station's morning newscast. (The Saturday edition of ''
CBS Mornings
''CBS Mornings'' is an American morning television program which is broadcast on CBS. The program debuted on September 7, 2021, and airs live every weekday from 7:00a.m. to 9:00a.m. It is hosted by Gayle King, Tony Dokoupil, and Nate Burleson, ...
''—in its previous ''
Saturday Early Show
''The Early Show'' is an American morning television show that aired on CBS from November 1, 1999 to January 7, 2012, and the ninth attempt at a morning news-talk program by the network since 1954. The program aired Monday through Friday from ...
'' and ''
CBS This Morning Saturday
''CBS Saturday Morning'' is a Saturday morning television program that broadcasts on the American television network, CBS. It is currently anchored by Michelle Miller, Dana Jacobson and Jeff Glor.
Although the program's name has changed sever ...
'' versions—aired on the News 9 Now subchannel, following a simulcast of the local morning newscast's then three-hour-long Saturday edition, from January 2011 until it began to be cleared on the main channel with the 2021 format change.)
Channel 9 may preempt some CBS programs to provide long-form
breaking news
Breaking news, interchangeably termed late-breaking news and also known as a special report or special coverage or news flash, is a current issue that broadcasters feel warrants the interruption of scheduled programming or current news in orde ...
or
severe weather
Severe weather is any dangerous meteorological phenomenon with the potential to cause damage, serious social disruption, or loss of human life. Types of severe weather phenomena vary, depending on the latitude, altitude, topography, and atm ...
coverage when necessary, or air prime time specials produced by the station's news department. The preempted programs may either be diverted on a live-to-air basis to KSBI (which also holds the right to air any preempted syndicated programs if KWTV airs extended news coverage in their time periods) or—less commonly since Griffin acquired KSBI—
rebroadcast over KWTV in place of regularly scheduled overnight programs, although station personnel also gives viewers the option of watching them on CBS' website and
mobile app
A mobile application or app is a computer program or software application designed to run on a mobile device such as a phone, tablet, or watch. Mobile applications often stand in contrast to desktop applications which are designed to run on d ...
,
Paramount+
Paramount (from the word ''paramount'' meaning "above all others") may refer to:
Entertainment and music companies
* Paramount Global, also known simply as Paramount, an American mass media company formerly known as ViacomCBS. The following busin ...
, or its cable/satellite
video-on-demand
Video on demand (VOD) is a media distribution system that allows users to access videos without a traditional video playback device and the constraints of a typical static broadcasting schedule. In the 20th century, broadcasting in the form of o ...
service the day after their initial airing. (News 9 Now previously handled substitute CBS programming responsibilities from its conversion into an over-the-air-originated service in April 2011 until December 2014, when Griffin transferred those duties to KSBI upon assuming operational responsibilities for that station.)
Partly as a result of the January 2021 launch of its 9:00 a.m. newscast, KWTV's weekday schedule relies very heavily on local newscasts and CBS network programs; with only two hours (one hour in daytime and 90 minutes in the evening and late night) not reserved to local and network shows, it has the least weekday programming time allocated to syndicated content among Oklahoma City's major commercial television stations. Syndicated programs broadcast by KWTV-DT include ''
Dr. Phil'', ''
Castle
A castle is a type of fortified structure built during the Middle Ages predominantly by the nobility or royalty and by military orders. Scholars debate the scope of the word ''castle'', but usually consider it to be the private fortified r ...
'', ''
Wipeout'', ''
Extra
Extra or Xtra may refer to:
Arts, entertainment and media Film
* ''The Extra'' (1962 film), a Mexican film
* ''The Extra'' (2005 film), an Australian film
Literature
* ''Extra'' (newspaper), a Brazilian newspaper
* ''Extra!'', an American me ...
'' and ''
Entertainment Tonight
''Entertainment Tonight'' (or simply ''ET'') is an American Broadcast syndication, first-run syndicated news broadcasting news magazine, newsmagazine program that is distributed by CBS Media Ventures throughout the United States and owned by Para ...
''.
Channel 9 formerly served as the
Muscular Dystrophy Association
The Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) is an American 501(c)(3) umbrella organization that works to support people with neuromuscular diseases. Founded in 1950 by Paul Cohen, who lived with muscular dystrophy, it works to combat neuromuscular di ...
(MDA)'s "
Love Network" station for the Oklahoma City market, carrying the charity's
annual telethon on
Labor Day
Labor Day is a federal holiday in the United States celebrated on the first Monday in September to honor and recognize the American labor movement and the works and contributions of laborers to the development and achievements of the United St ...
and the preceding Sunday night each September from September 1973 until September 2010. For most of its run on the station, KWTV aired the telethon on a three-hour tape delay following its 10:00 p.m. newscast on the Sunday preceding Labor Day because of CBS entertainment and sports programming commitments. For this reason, KWTV elected not to continue airing the telethon for the September 2011 broadcast, when it was reduced from its original 21½-hour format to a six-hour prime time telecast on the night before Labor Day. (CW affiliate
KOCB
KOCB (channel 34) is a television station in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States, affiliated with The CW. It is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group alongside Fox affiliate KOKH-TV (channel 25). The stations' studios and transmitter facilitie ...
hannel 34aired the telethon for its final two years as a syndicated telecast; the event—by then reduced to a two-hour special—moved to ABC, airing locally on
KOCO-TV
KOCO-TV (channel 5) is a television station in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States, affiliated with ABC and owned by Hearst Television. Its studios and transmitter are located on East Britton Road (Historic Route 66)—between North Kelley ...
hannel 5 in September 2013 for the final two years of the retitled ''MDA Show of Strength''s overall run.))
KWTV previously served as Oklahoma City's original home of the nighttime syndicated game shows ''
Wheel of Fortune The Wheel of Fortune or ''Rota Fortunae'' has been a concept and metaphor since ancient times referring to the capricious nature of Fate. Wheel of Fortune may also refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Art
* ''The Wheel of Fortune'' (Burne-Jo ...
'' and ''
Jeopardy!
''Jeopardy!'' is an American game show created by Merv Griffin. The show is a quiz competition that reverses the traditional question-and-answer format of many quiz shows. Rather than being given questions, contestants are instead given genera ...
'' from their respective 1983 and 1984 premeires. ''Wheel'' moved to KOCO in September 1992, and ''Jeopardy!'' was picked up by KFOR beginning January 2000.
Past program preemptions and deferrals
Since its 1953 sign-on, KWTV has periodically preempted or given tape-delayed clearances to some CBS programs to air local, syndicated or special event programs. However, CBS usually did not raise objections to preemptions made by channel 9, since it has typically been one of the network's strongest affiliates. Until 1959, KWTV preempted the ''
CBS Evening News
The ''CBS Evening News'' is the flagship evening television news program of CBS News, the news division of the CBS television network in the United States. The ''CBS Evening News'' is a daily evening broadcast featuring news reports, feature s ...
with
Douglas Edwards
Douglas Edwards (July 14, 1917 – October 13, 1990) was an American radio and television newscaster and correspondent who worked for the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) for more than four decades. After six years on CBS Radio in the 1940s ...
'' to air syndicated drama series. The station also preempted ''
CBS News Sunday Morning
''CBS News Sunday Morning'' (normally shortened to ''Sunday Morning'' on the program itself since 2009) is an American news magazine
A news magazine is a typed, printed, and published magazine, radio or television program, usually published ...
'' and ''
Face the Nation
''Face the Nation'' is a weekly news and morning public affairs program airing Sundays on the CBS radio and television network. Created by Frank Stanton in 1954, ''Face the Nation'' is one of the longest-running news programs in the history o ...
'' from September 1984 until August 1995, in favor of carrying an extended block of local and syndicated religious programs on Sunday mornings; from the time they regained clearance until 2005, both programs were shown on a half-hour delay to accommodate an additional half-hour of the station's Sunday morning newscast. After ''Face the Nation'' expanded to a one-hour broadcast in April 2014, as certain other CBS affiliates have done since that time, KWTV aired the first half-hour of the
Sunday morning talk show
A Sunday morning talk show is a television program with a news/ talk/ public affairs–hybrid format that is broadcast on Sunday mornings. This type of program originated in the United States, and has since been used in other countries.
Overview
T ...
live-to-air on Sunday mornings and the second half-hour early Monday mornings on tape delay—the latter scheduling being used previously for the show (in its former half-hour format) from June 1983 until KWTV's September 1984 removal of the program—until February 2016 (during this time, the program aired in its entirety on KWTV-DT2 off its "live" feed through a partial simulcast with the station's main feed during ''FTN''s first half-hour).
In September 1993, the station began carrying ''
The Price Is Right
''The Price Is Right'' is a television game show franchise created by Bob Stewart, originally produced by Mark Goodson and Bill Todman; currently it is produced and owned by Fremantle. The franchise centers on television game shows, but also inc ...
'' on a one-hour delay to air syndicated programs during the 10:00 a.m. hour, forcing ''
The Young and the Restless
''The Young and the Restless'' (often abbreviated as ''Y&R'') is an American television soap opera created by William J. Bell and Lee Phillip Bell for CBS. The show is set in fictional Genoa City (not the real-life similarly-named Genoa City, Wi ...
'' to be moved concurrently to 3:00 p.m. After it had considered preempting the
talk show
A talk show (or chat show in British English) is a television programming or radio programming genre structured around the act of spontaneous conversation.Bernard M. Timberg, Robert J. Erler'' (2010Television Talk: A History of the TV Talk Show ...
because of contractual issues with its late-night syndication lineup shortly before it debuted that month, KWTV became one of a handful of CBS-affiliated stations to receive permission to air the ''
Late Show with David Letterman
The ''Late Show with David Letterman'' is an American late-night talk show hosted by David Letterman on CBS, the first iteration of the The Late Show (franchise), ''Late Show'' franchise. The show debuted on August 30, 1993, and was produced by ...
'' on a half-hour delay, so as not to displace a secondary run of ''Jeopardy!'' it had aired after its 10:00 p.m. newscast since 1989 (it also aired ''
The Pat Sajak Show
''The Pat Sajak Show'' was an American late-night television talk show that aired on CBS from January 9, 1989, to April 13, 1990.
Cast
The show was hosted by Pat Sajak, best known as host of the game show '' Wheel of Fortune''. To do the talk sh ...
'' on such a delay for the same reason during the 1989–90 season, when KWTV resumed clearance of CBS' late night block, which had aired instead on Fox affiliate
KAUT Kaut is a surname of German origin. Notable people with this surname include:
* Ellis Kaut (1920–2015), German author
* Helena Kaut-Howson, British theatre director
* Martin Kaut (born 1999), Czech ice hockey player
See also
* KAUT-TV
KAU ...
hannel 43, now an independent stationthe season prior). Channel 9 would eventually give in to airing the ''Late Show'' in its network-designated 10:35 timeslot in September 1994; ''The Price Is Right'' and ''The Young and the Restless'', however, would continue to air on a delayed basis until both shows returned to their recommended 10:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. respective timeslots in September 2000. The station also delayed ''
The Late Late Show''—spanning the entirety of the
Tom Snyder
Thomas James Snyder (May 12, 1936 – July 29, 2007) was an American television personality, news anchor, and radio personality best known for his late night talk shows '' Tomorrow'', on the NBC television network in the 1970s and 1980s, and '' ...
and
Craig Kilborn
Craig Lawrence Kilborn (born August 24, 1962) is an American comedian, sports and political commentator, actor, and television host. Kilborn began a career in sports broadcasting in the late 1980s, leading to an anchoring position at ESPN's '' Sp ...
versions, and the first six years of the
Craig Ferguson
Craig Ferguson (born 17 May 1962) is a Scottish-born American comedian, actor, writer, and television host. He is best known for hosting the CBS late-night talk show ''The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson'' (2005–2014), for which he won a ...
version—until 12:07 a.m. from the program's September 1995 debut until March 28, 2011 due to its weeknight airing of ''
Seinfeld
''Seinfeld'' ( ) is an American television sitcom created by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld. It aired on NBC from July 5, 1989, to May 14, 1998, over nine seasons and List of Seinfeld episodes, 180 episodes. It stars Seinfeld as Jerry Seinfeld ( ...
'' (which moved to KOKH on the latter date). Channel 9 also aired the CBS Saturday morning children's block (now branded as the ''CBS Dream Team'') in two separate blocks until September 2010, with the majority of the block airing in pattern from 8:00 to 10:30 a.m. and an additional half-hour airing on a one-week delay at 5:30 a.m.
Sports programming
Seven years before Griffin Communications acquired the latter station, KWTV and KOTV in Tulsa partnered to simulcast three games involving the state's two
Central Hockey League
The Central Hockey League (CHL) was a North American mid-level minor professional ice hockey league which operated from 1992 until 2014. It was founded by Ray Miron and Bill Levins and later sold to Global Entertainment Corporation, which opera ...
franchises, the
Oklahoma City Blazers and the
Tulsa Oilers
The Tulsa Oilers are a professional ice hockey team based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and play in the ECHL. The Oilers played their home games at the Tulsa Convention Center until 2008 when they moved into the new BOK Center. For many years, the Tuls ...
, during the league's 1993–94 regular season; the respective
sports director
The title of sports director can refer to the director of a live sports broadcast. It can also refer to an individual at a television or radio station who is in charge of the sports department.
Director
{{Job-stub ...
s of both stations at that time, Bill Teegins and John Walls, conducted play-by-play for the broadcasts, with KWTV sports anchor Ed Murray (who would later become a news anchor in 1999, and remain in that role until his retirement from television news in 2013) doing color commentary. From 2000 to 2011, KWTV served as the broadcast home for
Oklahoma State Cowboys
The Oklahoma State Cowboys and Cowgirls are the college athletics in the United States, intercollegiate athletic teams that represent Oklahoma State University–Stillwater, Oklahoma State University, located in Stillwater, Oklahoma, Stillwater. ...
and
Cowgirls basketball games under an agreement with
Oklahoma State University
Oklahoma (; Choctaw: ; chr, ᎣᎧᎳᎰᎹ, ''Okalahoma'' ) is a state in the South Central region of the United States, bordered by Texas on the south and west, Kansas on the north, Missouri on the northeast, Arkansas on the east, New ...
's Cowboys Sports Network syndication service; the station typically broadcast around three regular season games each year during the run of the contract, which usually aired on a Wednesday or Saturday during
prime time
Prime time or the peak time is the block of broadcast programming taking place during the middle of the evening for a television show. It is mostly targeted towards adults (and sometimes families). It is used by the major television networks to ...
.
In August 2013, channel 9 obtained the local television rights to broadcast
NFL preseason games involving the
St. Louis Rams
The St. Louis Rams were a professional American football team of the National Football League (NFL). They played in St. Louis from 1995 to the 2015 season, before moving back to Los Angeles, where the team had played from 1946 to 1994.
The arr ...
produced by the team's in-house syndication service, the Rams Television Network; for the
2015 season, KWTV diverted broadcasts of the team's Thursday night preseason games to sister station KSBI. (Prior to its acquisition of channel 52, the Thursday games forced KWTV to air first-run episodes of the CBS reality series ''
Big Brother'' in late night to allow viewers to watch or record the affected episode on a delayed basis.) KWTV/KSBI's contract with the Rams concluded after the 2015 season as a result of the team's move to Los Angeles effective the following year. (Ironically, most Rams regular season games air on Fox affiliate KOKH-TV by way of
Fox
Foxes are small to medium-sized, omnivorous mammals belonging to several genera of the family Canidae. They have a flattened skull, upright, triangular ears, a pointed, slightly upturned snout, and a long bushy tail (or ''brush'').
Twelve sp ...
's contractual rights to the NFL's
National Football Conference
The National Football Conference (NFC) is one of the two conferences of the National Football League (NFL), the highest professional level of American football in the United States. The NFC and its counterpart, the American Football Conference ...
, while KWTV only carried regular season games featuring the team if
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...
was scheduled to carry an interconference games against an opponent in the
American Football Conference
The American Football Conference (AFC) is one of the two conferences of the National Football League (NFL), the highest professional level of American football in the United States. The AFC and its counterpart, the National Football Conference ...
, or after 2014, an NFC-only matchup to which Fox passed the rights to CBS under NFL cross-flex broadcasting provisions.)
On July 24, 2015, Griffin announced an agreement with the Oklahoma Secondary School Activities Association (OSSAA) that would return high school football coverage to KSBI after a five-year sabbatical; as a byproduct of the deal, KWTV also maintained partial over-the-air rights to the OSSAA Class 5A and 6A football championships, which were split between the station's main channel, its News 9 Now subchannel and KSBI.
News operation
, KWTV-DT broadcasts 41½ hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with seven hours on weekdays, four hours on Saturdays and 2½ hours on Sundays). The ''News 9 Weather'' team also provides local weather updates and, in the event of significant severe weather situations (such as a
tornado warning
A tornado warning ( SAME code: TOR) is a severe weather warning product issued by regional offices of weather forecasting agencies throughout the world to alert the public when a tornado has been reported or indicated by weather radar within the ...
) affecting portions of the market, audio simulcasts of long-form severe weather coverage for the Griffin-owned Radio Oklahoma Network and, through a content agreement with locally based
Tyler Media Group Tyler Media Group, also known as Tyler Broadcasting Corporation or simply Tyler Media, is a family-owned Oklahoma business with Radio, TV and outdoor advertising assets in Tulsa and Oklahoma City. Tyler Media owns five television stations (consistin ...
, the Oklahoma City radio cluster of KOKC,
KOMA (92.5 FM),
KMGL
KMGL (104.1 FM broadcasting, FM, "Magic 104.1") is an adult contemporary music formatted radio station serving the Oklahoma City area and is owned by Tyler Media Group, Tyler Media, a locally-based, family-owned company controlled by brothers T ...
(104.1 FM),
KJKE
KJKE (93.3 FM, "93.3 Jake FM") is a radio station broadcasting a new country music format. Licensed to Newcastle, Oklahoma, the station serves the Oklahoma City metropolitan area. The station is owned by Tyler Media. The station's studios are lo ...
(93.3 FM) and
KRXO-FM
KRXO-FM (107.7 Hertz, MHz) is a commercial radio, commercial radio station in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. It is owned by Ty and Tony Tyler's Tyler Media, L.L.C., and it carries a sports radio radio format, format. The radio studio, ...
(107.7 FM). KWTV also features select stories filed by Tulsa sister station KOTV-DT during its newscasts, and partners with that station to cover news events within the Tulsa market; both stations co-produce the sports analysis program, ''Oklahoma Sports Blitz'', which airs Sundays at 10:25 p.m. on both stations and has been hosted since its August 2001 debut by KWTV sports director Dean Blevins and KOTV sports director John Holcomb.
KWTV has long had a rivalry with KFOR-TV, vying with that station for first place as the most-watched television newscast in the Oklahoma City market in most news timeslots. KWTV had the highest-rated late evening newscast in the United States during the May 2006
sweeps
Nielsen Media Research (NMR) is an American firm that measures media audiences, including television, radio, theatre, films (via the AMC Theatres MAP program), and newspapers. Headquartered in New York City, it is best known for the Nielsen rat ...
period, and its 10:00 p.m. newscast was the top-rated newscast in the nation in May 2007, and locally during the February 2012 sweeps.
News department history
Channel 9's news department began operations when the station signed on the air on December 20, 1953, when it debuted a half-hour newscast at 10:00 p.m. (broken up, respectively, into 15-minute-long weather and news segments), anchored by Mark Weaver. Bruce Palmer, former
news director
A news director is an individual at a broadcast station or network or a newspaper who is in charge of the news department. In local news, the news director is typically in charge of the entire news staff, including journalists, news presenters, ...
at
WKY
WKY (930 AM) is a commercial radio station in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, owned by Cumulus Media. It is the oldest radio station in Oklahoma and among the oldest in the nation. WKY airs a sports format which is simulcast with its sister station ...
(930 AM) and eventual national president of the Radio-Television News Editors Association, headed channel 9's news department as its director of news operations until his retirement from broadcasting in 1966. Palmer also conducted weekly editorial segments that dealt with pertinent local issues; the station's editorials, which continued for several years after Palmer's departure, would help earn KWTV several journalistic honors in subsequent years, including the
Sigma Delta Chi Award
The Sigma Delta Chi Awards are presented annually by the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) (formerly Sigma Delta Chi) for excellence in journalism. The SPJ states the purpose of the award is to promote "the free flow of information vital ...
and the National Headliners Club Award. To enable mobility in shooting spot news content, in 1955, KWTV staff photographer Bill Horton devised a saddle-based shoulder camera rig with a port to insert wet cell batteries on the saddle's rear and an
Auricon Auricon cameras were 16 mm film Single System sound-on-film motion picture cameras manufactured in the 1940s through the early 1980s. Auricon cameras are notable because they record sound directly onto an optical or magnetic track on the same film ...
Cine-Voice audio control panel (which was hooked to a
dictaphone
Dictaphone was an American company founded by Alexander Graham Bell
that produced dictation machines. It is now a division of Nuance Communications, based in Burlington, Massachusetts.
Although the name "Dictaphone" is a trademark, it has bec ...
-style earpiece to monitor the audio recording) at front. By 1959, the station had launched a half-hour noon newscast and a 15-minute-long early evening newscast that led into the ''CBS Evening News with Douglas Edwards''. KWTV is purported to be the first television station in the Oklahoma City market to conduct consumer and investigative reporting, the first to utilize beat reporters, and was the first television station in the United States to air a consumer-investigative news program, ''Call for Action'', which was based on a KOMA radio show of the same title.
In 1962, assignment reporter
Ed Turner (who later become the inaugural executive vice president of
CNN
CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by ...
upon the channel's launch in June 1980) received accolades for a series of reports on
James Meredith
James Howard Meredith (born June 25, 1933) is an American civil rights activist, writer, political adviser, and Air Force veteran who became, in 1962, the first African-American student admitted to the racially segregated University of Mississ ...
, who in October of that year, became the first African American to enroll into and attend the
University of Mississippi
The University of Mississippi (byname Ole Miss) is a public research university that is located adjacent to Oxford, Mississippi, and has a medical center in Jackson. It is Mississippi's oldest public university and its largest by enrollment.
...
and whose entry led to
civil unrest and rioting at the campus.
From 1966 to 1971, KWTV utilized the ''
Eyewitness News
''Eyewitness News'' is a style of television news presentation that emphasizes visual elements and action video, replacing the older "man-on-camera" newscast.
History Pioneered by Westinghouse
The earliest known use of the ''Eyewitness New ...
'' format, as it was becoming popular among broadcast stations around the U.S. (the ''Eyewitness News'' format would resurface in Oklahoma City at KOCO-TV, which originally used it from 1974 to 1977 and again from July 1998 until April 2013). In 1968, the station hired Paul R. Lehman as a weekend anchor and assignment reporter, becoming the first African American to work as a television reporter in the Oklahoma City market; given the lingering racial climate in the
southern United States
The Southern United States (sometimes Dixie, also referred to as the Southern States, the American South, the Southland, or simply the South) is a geographic and cultural region of the United States of America. It is between the Atlantic Ocean ...
after the passage of the
Civil Rights Act
Civil Rights Act may refer to several acts of the United States Congress, including:
* Civil Rights Act of 1866, extending the rights of emancipated slaves by stating that any person born in the United States regardless of race is an American ci ...
, Lehman's appointment was not without controversy, as some viewers who were displeased with his appointment called into the station's phone switchboard to complain, some of whom went so far as to lodge
death threat
A death threat is a threat, often made anonymously, by one person or a group of people to kill another person or group of people. These threats are often designed to intimidate victims in order to manipulate their behaviour, in which case a deat ...
s against him. Lehman co-created and hosted a community affairs show aimed at black audiences, ''Soul Talk'', for the station in 1969.
Upon KWTV's rebranding of its newscasts as ''Newsroom 9'' on September 13, 1971, as the
Prime Time Access Rule
The Prime Time Access Rule (PTAR) was a broadcasting regulation that was instituted in the United States by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 1970 to restrict the amount of network programming that a local television station either ...
(an FCC regulatory act that reduced the prime time schedules of the three major networks, which previously ran for 3½ hours, by 30 minutes) was being instituted, KWTV launched Oklahoma City's first hour-long 6:00 p.m. newscast, adding an additional half-hour to its existing early evening newscast, predating the expansion of KFOR-TV's 6:00 p.m. to an hour-long broadcast by 24 years. In November 1972, urban affairs reporter Andrew Fisher—while covering a staff briefing that followed the commission's monthly meeting—interviewed Oklahoma Securities Commission chairman Charles E. McCune about a security registration requirement for Los Angeles-based commodities broker
Goldstein, Samuelson, Inc. McCune made an
anti-Semitic
Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism.
Antis ...
comment regarding the company's fitness for operation based on its name and, later, with full knowledge he was being recorded by Fisher, said "I think they are Jewish and I think that they are skunks—the name and what they've done," when asked what prompted the earlier remark. The interview led to his resignation (called upon by then-Governor
David Hall) following the broadcast of the remark on the station's newscasts.
H. Martin "Marty" Haag, who oversaw the news department at that time, left KWTV in 1973; that year, he brought over three of the station's top-tier reporters,
Tracy Rowlett
Charles Tracy Rowlett (; born June 16, 1942), known professionally as Tracy Rowlett, is an American journalist, formerly anchor and managing editor of the CBS owned and operated station in Dallas-Fort Worth, KTVT.
Rowlett's last broadcast with K ...
, Doug Fox and Byron Harris, to his new job as news director at
WFAA
WFAA (channel 8) is a television station licensed to Dallas, Texas, United States, serving the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex as an affiliate of ABC. It is owned by Tegna Inc. alongside Decatur-licensed Estrella TV affiliate KMPX (channel 29), ...
in Dallas-Fort Worth as part of his successful effort to strengthen that station's news operation.
In 1976, Pam Olson became the first woman to anchor a local evening news program in the Oklahoma City market, when she was paired alongside Jerry Adams (who would later anchor at KTVY and KOCO-TV during the 1980s) on the 6:00 p.m. newscast. Olson's tenure at the station (ending with her departure in 1980 to become
Atlanta
Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,715 ...
bureau correspondent for
CBS News
CBS News is the news division of the American television and radio service CBS. CBS News television programs include the ''CBS Evening News'', ''CBS Mornings'', news magazine programs '' CBS News Sunday Morning'', '' 60 Minutes'', and '' 48 H ...
, with Olson being replaced on the 6:00 broadcast by Debi Faubion) saw the airing of a documentary she wrote and produced in cooperation with the
National Kidney Foundation
The National Kidney Foundation, Inc. (NKF) is a voluntary health organization in the United States, headquartered in New York City, with over 30 local offices across the country. Its mission is to prevent kidney and urinary tract diseases, impr ...
, ''Gift of Life'', which chronicled four kidney dialysis patients awaiting transplants; the special led to the passage of a state law that created an organ donor registry and donor ID information on Oklahoma identification cards and drivers' licenses. That year, KWTV became the first television station in the Oklahoma City market to transition from film to videotape to record news footage, with the purchase of camcorder equipment it branded as "Live MiniCam 9". On September 18, 1978, the station split its early evening newscasts into two half-hour programs at 5:00 and 6:00 p.m., bookending the 5:30 p.m. airing of the ''CBS Evening News'', the former of which was the first 5:00 p.m. newscast to debut in the Oklahoma City market; also on that date, KWTV launched ''Midday'', an hour-long 11:30 a.m. newscast that was originally anchored by former KOCO anchor Dean Swanson (who was also lead anchor of the station's new 5:00 p.m. newscast), Laurie Heritage, Tom Mahoney and longtime morning weather anchor Lola Hall; the newscast was the first hour-long midday newscast in the Oklahoma City market, predating the expansion of KFOR's noon newscast by 14 years. (The midday newscast was shifted to 11:00 a.m. on February 4, 1980 to accommodate the hour-long expansion of its CBS soap lead-in ''The Young and the Restless'', and was subsequently reduced to a 30-minute noon newscast on September 15 of that year.)
In 1979, the station began utilizing a
helicopter
A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by horizontally spinning rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forward, backward and laterally. These attributes ...
to provide coverage of breaking news events and severe weather, with the introduction of "Hot Shot 9" (renamed "Ranger 9" in 1981). A rotational camera was installed below the nose of the chopper (branded as "EagleVision") in 2000, superseding the need for an in-helicopter cameraman to film breaking news. The helicopter used for "Ranger 9" was sold to KOTV to replace its previous helicopter model in 2006, when KWTV purchased a $1.5-million
Bell 407
The Bell 407 is a four-blade, single-engine, civil utility helicopter. A derivative of the Bell 206L-4 LongRanger, the 407 uses the four-blade, soft-in-plane design rotor with composite hub developed for the United States Army's OH-58D Kiowa W ...
helicopter, branded as "SkyNews9 HD" (now branded "Bob Mills SkyNews9 HD", through a sponsorship and brand licensing agreement with Oklahoma City-based regional furniture retail chain Bob Mills Furniture), which was the first in the market to be equipped with a high-definition camera that also has optical zoom capability (though helicopter images were not broadcast in HD until the station converted its news broadcasts to the 16:9 aspect ratio in October 2010).
Ratings for KWTV's newscasts—then branded as ''Big 9 News'', before adopting the ''Newsline 9'' moniker in August 1981—dropped to third place in 1980, partly due to a resurgent KOCO news operation, which overtook it for second place among the market's evening newscasts with the team of Jack Bowen, Mary Ruth Carleton, chief meteorologist Fred Norman and sports director Jerry Park. The station enacted a series of staffing changes to shore up its news viewership, resulting in the firings of longtime anchors Bert Rudman and Phil Schuman, and reporter Debra Lane during the early 1980s. Replacing Adams and Faubion on the 6:00 and 10:00 p.m. newscasts were Roger Cooper and Patti Suarez, who, alongside chief meteorologist
Gary England
Gary England (born October 3, 1939) is the former chief meteorologist for KWTV (channel 9), the CBS-affiliated television station in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. England was the first ''on-air'' meteorologist to alert his viewers of a possible torna ...
and sports director Jim Miller (later replaced by the fall of 1981 by John Snyder, who had previously served as KWTV's sports director in the mid-to-late 1970s), led channel 9 to an intense battle with and, by the mid-1980s, eventually overtake KTVY for the top ratings spot in evening news. Channel 9 also poached several former KOCO personalities (including reporters Gan Matthews and Jennifer Eve, farm reporter Gene Wheatley, and sports anchor Tony Sellars) in 1984, amid a massive staff restructuring at channel 5 under newly appointed vice president of news operations Gary Long. They were later followed by the arrival of another KOCO anchor, Jack Bowen, who replaced Cooper as evening co-anchor in 1987. In 1986, KWTV rolled out a
satellite news-gathering unit, "Newstar 9" a transportable video uplink system that the station used to cover news and weather events around and outside of Oklahoma.
Bill Teegins was a fixture for many years as KWTV's sports director (a position that the station briefly considered eliminating around the time of his arrival). Teegins—who joined channel 9 as Snyder's replacement in 1987 after working as sports director at KOTV in Tulsa, and would add duties as radio play-by-play announcer for Oklahoma State Cowboys basketball and
football
Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...
games in 1991—became known for his exuberant analysis style, his sports knowledge, and his catchphrases used during sportscasts and play-by-play calls ("He got it!" and "Oh, brother"). Teegins remained with KWTV until January 26, 2001, when he, two players and six coaching staff members with the Oklahoma State University basketball team, and the airplane's pilot were killed in a
charter plane accident, in which a
Beechcraft Super King Air 200
The Beechcraft Super King Air family is part of a line of twin-turboprop aircraft produced by Beechcraft. The Model 200 and Model 300 series were originally marketed as the "Super King Air" family; the "Super" designation was dropped in 1996. ...
en route to
Stillwater following a game against the
Colorado Buffaloes
The Colorado Buffaloes are the athletic teams that represent the University of Colorado. The university sponsors 17 varsity sports teams. Both the men's and women's teams are called the Buffaloes (Buffs for short) or, rarely, the Golden Buffalo ...
crashed in a field during heavy snowfall near
Strasburg, Colorado. Replacing Teegins as sports director was former KOCO sports director and former
University of Oklahoma
The University of Oklahoma (OU) is a Public university, public research university in Norman, Oklahoma. Founded in 1890, it had existed in Oklahoma Territory near Indian Territory for 17 years before the two Territories became the state of Oklahom ...
quarterback
Dean Blevins, who had joined KWTV in 1997 as a sports analyst and co-host of the fledgling Sunday night sports analysis program ''Inside the Game'' (which evolved into the ''Oklahoma Sports Blitz'' in 2001) alongside Teegins.
Three years after his unexpected firing, in July 1990, Roger Cooper returned as anchor of the 6:00 and 10:00 p.m. editions of ''Newsline 9'', after the station failed to renew Bowen's contract. (Bowen would subsequently return to KOCO as an early evening anchor; Cooper would depart KWTV for the second time in June 1993.) Former co-anchor Patti Suarez concurrently left to become 10:00 p.m. co-anchor at Fox owned-and-operated station
KTTV
KTTV (channel 11) is a television station in Los Angeles, California, United States, serving as the West Coast flagship of the Fox network. It is owned and operated by the network's Fox Television Stations division alongside MyNetworkTV outle ...
in Los Angeles, and was replaced that August by Jenifer Reynolds (who joined KWTV as a
State Capitol reporter in 1987). A
duPont–Columbia University Award winner for her work at Stillwater public radio station
KOSU
KOSU (91.7 FM) is a public radio station operated by Oklahoma State University, with studios on OSU's campus in Stillwater, Oklahoma and in the Film Row district in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The station broadcasts a mix of National Public Radio ...
(91.7 FM) while a student at Oklahoma State University, her 14-year tenure at KWTV (ending with her departure from television journalism in 2001, later to host the
Oklahoma Department of Tourism and Recreation
The Oklahoma Department of Tourism and Recreation is a department of the government of Oklahoma within the Tourism and Branding Cabinet. The Department is responsible for regulating Oklahoma's tourism industry and for promoting Oklahoma as a tour ...
-produced ''Discover Oklahoma'' from 2003 until 2017, largely overlapping with the travel program's run on KWTV) also saw her conduct investigative reports that had led to reforms of state charity bingo laws, the closure of a chemical supply store that the
Drug Enforcement Administration
The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA; ) is a Federal law enforcement in the United States, United States federal law enforcement agency under the U.S. Department of Justice tasked with combating drug trafficking and distribution within th ...
(DEA) failed to shut down despite it selling chemicals commonly used to make illegal drugs and the dissolution of a DEA fund trust by the Oklahoma City Council, issues of corruption that spurred management changes at the
Oklahoma Highway Patrol
The Oklahoma Highway Patrol (OHP) is a major state law enforcement agency of the government of Oklahoma. A division of the Oklahoma Department of Public Safety, the OHP has traffic enforcement jurisdiction throughout the state. OHP was legislat ...
, and the implementation of the
Emergency Medical Services Authority
The Emergency Medical Services Authority (EMSA) is Oklahoma's largest provider of pre-hospital emergency medical care. EMSA provides ambulance service to more than 1.6 million residents in central and northeast Oklahoma.
EMSA was established in T ...
to provide
EMS services in Oklahoma City. In May 1991, KWTV began providing
closed captioning
Closed captioning (CC) and subtitling are both processes of displaying text on a television, video screen, or other visual display to provide additional or interpretive information. Both are typically used as a transcription of the audio por ...
of its newscasts for deaf and hard of hearing viewers. The station became the third and last television station in Oklahoma City to launch a weekend morning newscast in July 1993, with the debut of a two-hour Saturday broadcast from 6:00 to 8:00 a.m.; the program was joined by a Sunday edition in September 1995.
Kelly Ogle joined KWTV as a business/investigative reporter and midday news anchor in 1990; his family has primarily been associated with KFOR-TV since his father, Jack Ogle, served as an anchor (and later, news director) at channel 4 from 1962 to 1977, although had a prior association with channel 9 through occasional commentary pieces that Jack conducted for the station into the 1980s. (Kelly's older brothers,
Kevin
Kevin () is the anglicized form of the Irish masculine given name (; mga, Caoimhghín ; sga, Cóemgein ; Latinized as ). It is composed of "dear; noble"; Old Irish and ("birth"; Old Irish ).
The variant '' Kevan'' is anglicized from , a ...
and Kent, now both serve as anchors at KFOR, while elder niece Abigail Ogle works as an evening anchor/reporter at KOCO; younger niece Katelyn Ogle joined KWTV in February 2019 as ''News 9 This Morning'' "Alert Desk" reporter and assignment reporter for the noon and early evening newscasts.) Kelly moved to evenings in June 1993, when he replaced Mitch Jelniker (son-in-law of former KWTV president Duane Harm, and whom concurrently moved to the 6:00 and 10:00 p.m. newscasts) as lead anchor of its 5:00 p.m. newscast; he added duties as primary co-anchor of the 6:00 and 10:00 p.m. newscasts—first paired alongside Reynolds on those broadcasts—in 1995, after Jelniker accepted an anchor/reporter position at
KMGH-TV
KMGH-TV (channel 7) is a television station in Denver, Colorado, United States, affiliated with ABC. It is owned by the E. W. Scripps Company alongside Sterling-licensed independent station KCDO-TV, channel 3 (and its Denver-licensed translato ...
in
Denver
Denver () is a consolidated city and county, the capital, and most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Its population was 715,522 at the 2020 census, a 19.22% increase since 2010. It is the 19th-most populous city in the Unit ...
. In 2005, Kelly began hosting "My Two Cents," a Monday-through-Thursday
op-ed
An op-ed, short for "opposite the editorial page", is a written prose piece, typically published by a North-American newspaper or magazine, which expresses the opinion of an author usually not affiliated with the publication's editorial board. O ...
segment during the 10:00 p.m. newscast similar in format to Jack Ogle's commentaries, which also features an "open topic" forum featuring comments responding to the editorials. Several of Kelly's special reports, feature and investigative pieces have earned him several journalism awards over his career with the station (including Sigma Delta Chi,
Associated Press
The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. newspa ...
and
Heartland Emmy Awards, as well as a 2009
Edward R. Murrow Award for his coverage of the aftermath of an
EF4 tornado
The Enhanced Fujita scale (abbreviated as EF-Scale) rates tornado intensity based on the severity of the damage they cause. It is used in some countries, including the United States, Canada, China, and Mongolia.
The Enhanced Fujita scale repla ...
that destroyed most of
Lone Grove); the Oklahoma chapter of the National Academy of Television Journalists also named him "Best Anchor" in 1999. Ogle's co-anchors have included Deborah Lauren (1993–1995), Robin Marsh (1995–2001), Reynolds (1995–2001), Ann Halloran (2001–2002), Amy McRee (2003–2010), and Amanda Taylor (2006–present: Taylor had joined KWTV in September 2006 as 5:00 p.m. co-anchor and consumer reporter; she added additional duties as the co-anchor of the 6:00 and 10:00 p.m. newscasts when McRee left in September 2010.).
In January 2001, KWTV entered into a content partnership with ''
The Oklahoman
''The Oklahoman'' is the largest daily newspaper in Oklahoma, United States, and is the only regional daily that covers the Greater Oklahoma City area. The Alliance for Audited Media (formerly Audit Bureau Circulation) lists it as the 59th larges ...
'', which involved pool coverage between the two properties on major news stories and investigative series, KWTV-compiled local forecasts and a regular Q&A feature from then-chief meteorologist Gary England on the newspaper's weather page, and promotion of news stories and investigative reports in the newspaper and on channel 9's newscasts. That August, this relationship extended to the consolidation of KWTV and ''The Oklahoman''s online presence under the
NewsOK banner, which incorporated in-depth reporting combined with video supplied by the station, and utilized existing web staff from the respective properties. (Ironically the
Gaylord family, who ran the newspaper from 1907 until parent company OPUBCO Communications Group sold it to
The Anschutz Corporation
The Anschutz Corporation is an American private holding company headquartered in Denver, Colorado, United States. in 2011, built and signed on competitor KFOR-TV in June 1949, and owned that station until 1976.) The collaboration ended in March 2007, when OPUBCO bought out Griffin's interest in NewsOK.com, which now exclusively operates as the website for ''The Oklahoman''.
On August 26, 2001, KWTV premiered the ''Oklahoma Sports Blitz'' (briefly titled OKBlitz.com from 2014 to 2015), a 45-minute-long—later reduced to 35 minutes—statewide sports news program created in partnership with Tulsa sister station KOTV and airs after the respective late evening newscasts on both stations; the program features sports highlights, analysis and commentary and utilizes the resources of the KWTV and KOTV sports departments.
In October 2001, KWTV formed the "Local News Network", a news content pooling arrangement between KWTV and several radio stations owned by QuinStar Communications in small and mid-sized Oklahoma communities, which served as charter affiliates of the Griffin-owned statewide news service Radio Local News Network (RLNN; now the Radio Oklahoma Network). Under the arrangement, channel 9 anchors conducted one-minute-long news capsules that would air each half-hour in select morning and afternoon timeslots on the RLNN affiliates, with stories occurring within the affiliates' listening areas included on KWTV's newscasts.
In November 2006, KWTV debuted a high definition-ready news set designed and built by FX Group. On August 2, 2010, the 4:00 p.m. newscast (which debuted on May 8, 1995 as a half-hour newscast, moved to 4:30 p.m. on October 12, 1998, then moved back to 4:00 and expanded to an hour on September 7, 1999) was reformatted from a traditional newscast into a more feature and lifestyle-driven program. On October 24, 2010, KWTV became the second television station in the Oklahoma City market to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition (the graphics, logo, "Oklahoma's Own" slogan and "CBS Enforcer Music Collection" theme that debuted with the change, were also adopted by KOTV that same day upon that station's upgrade to widescreen
standard definition
Standard-definition television (SDTV, SD, often shortened to standard definition) is a television system which uses a resolution that is not considered to be either high or enhanced definition. "Standard" refers to it being the prevailing sp ...
newscasts). On January 24, 2011, KWTV expanded its weekday morning newscasts with the addition of a third hour of the program at 4:00 a.m. In September 2013, KWTV expanded its weekend morning newscasts to three hours starting at 5:00 a.m. On August 16, 2014, KWTV expanded its existing 6:00 p.m. newscast on Saturday evenings to one hour, with the addition of a half-hour block at 6:30 p.m. In August 2015, KWTV adjusted its lower-third graphics—which were originally designed to fit the 4:3 safe zone for TV sets in that aspect-ratio—to fit 16:9, which would allow for the
AFD #10 broadcast flag to be used to present its newscasts in
letterboxed
Letterboxing is the practice of transferring film shot in a widescreen aspect ratio to standard-width video formats while preserving the film's original aspect ratio. The resulting videographic image has mattes (black bars) above and below ...
widescreen for viewers watching on cable through 4:3 television sets.
In February 2016, KWTV launched "Drone 9", a
quadcopter
A quadcopter or quadrotor is a type of helicopter with four Helicopter rotor, rotors.
Although quadrotor helicopters and convertiplanes have long been flown experimentally, the configuration remained a curiosity until the arrival of the moder ...
—the first to be used for newsgathering purposes in the Oklahoma City market—that would be used to provide aerial footage as a supplement to "Bob Mills SkyNews9 HD". Likewise, sister station KOTV subsequently deployed a quadcopter branded as "Drone 6" (it is unclear as to whether it is just a single quadcopter used by both stations). On July 14, 2016, KWTV announced the implementation of "StreetScope", an
Augmented Reality System developed by Churchill Navigation that overlays street and building names over live footage from the station's helicopter camera during breaking news and severe weather events; it is the first television station in the United States to use this technology.
Weather coverage
KWTV places a significant emphasis on weather, and has long been considered to be a pioneer in severe weather coverage and television forecasting technology. Most of these advances were attributed to
Seiling native Gary England, who was often referred to as "Oklahoma's #1 meteorologist" in station
promotions and newscast introductions for most of his tenure with channel 9. England holds the record as the state's longest-serving television meteorologist, working as chief meteorologist at KWTV from October 16, 1972 until his retirement from regular broadcasting on August 28, 2013, shortly before he assumed a newly created post as Griffin Communications' vice president of corporate relations and weather development (England surpassed Jim Williams, who had a 32-year tenure as lead meteorologist at KFOR-TV from 1958 to 1990, for the title in 2005). England—who, in 1986, would become the first Oklahoma City television personality to sign a million-dollar contract package—replaced David Grant, who succeeded original chief meteorologist
Harry Volkman
Harry Volkman (April 18, 1926 – August 20, 2015) was an American meteorologist(PDF) and the first weatherman to issue a televised tornado warning.
Early life
Volkman was born in Medford, Massachusetts. Having an interest in radio since childh ...
(whose tenure also saw channel 9 become the first station in Oklahoma City to acquire a
weather radar
Weather radar, also called weather surveillance radar (WSR) and Doppler weather radar, is a type of radar used to locate precipitation, calculate its motion, and estimate its type (rain, snow, hail etc.). Modern weather radars are mostly puls ...
) in 1960. England's weather coverage earned him numerous awards over his 41-year career with the station (including three Heartland Emmys, National and Regional Edward R. Murrow Awards and a Silver Circle Award, most notably for KWTV's coverage of a
tornado outbreak
__NOTOC__
A tornado outbreak is the occurrence of multiple tornadoes spawned by the same synoptic scale weather system. The number of tornadoes required to qualify as an outbreak typically are at least six to ten, with at least two rotational l ...
that produced an
intense F5 tornado that devastated portions of
Moore and
Bridge Creek on May 3, 1999).
At the time of England's hiring, KWTV relied on
National Weather Service
The National Weather Service (NWS) is an Government agency, agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that is tasked with providing weather forecasts, warnings of hazardous weather, and other weathe ...
(NWS) data relayed by
fax
Fax (short for facsimile), sometimes called telecopying or telefax (the latter short for telefacsimile), is the telephonic transmission of scanned printed material (both text and images), normally to a telephone number connected to a printer o ...
and teletype; the station began using
weather satellite
A weather satellite or meteorological satellite is a type of Earth observation satellite that is primarily used to monitor the weather and climate of the Earth. Satellites can be polar orbiting (covering the entire Earth asynchronously), or ge ...
imagery provided by CBS for its affiliates in 1973. In 1973, England enlisted
ham radio
Amateur radio, also known as ham radio, is the use of the radio frequency spectrum for purposes of non-commercial exchange of messages, wireless experimentation, self-training, private recreation, radiosport, contesting, and emergency communic ...
operators to serve as on-scene observationalists during severe weather situations, using a self-diagramed chart of central Oklahoma (divided into square diagrams) and an alphanumeric coding system he developed for the operators to relay their location. That February, Griffin purchased a World War II-era radar (similar in model to the
WSR-57
WSR-57 radars were the USA's main weather surveillance radar for over 35 years. The National Weather Service operated a network of this model radar across the country, watching for severe weather.
History
The WSR-57 (Weather Surveillance Radar ...
) from
Huntsville, Alabama
Huntsville is a city in Madison County, Limestone County, and Morgan County, Alabama, United States. It is the county seat of Madison County. Located in the Appalachian region of northern Alabama, Huntsville is the most populous city in t ...
-based
Enterprise Electronics Corporation
Enterprise Electronics Corporation or EEC is an Alabama-based commercial weather radar system company, founded in 1971. EEC has designed and manufactured over 1,000 weather radar systems to over 90 countries. EEC offers S Band, C Band, and X B ...
, the first proprietary broadcast weather radar in the U.S (four years later, KWTV became the first television station in Oklahoma to have its own color weather radar).
It was first utilized to detect a violent F4 tornado that caused extensive damage in
Union City on May 24, 1973
(the original film footage from the accompanying televised warning was featured in station-produced weather promos in later years). England lamented the lack of warning lead time, specifically for tornado warnings (which, in 1974, when NWS protocol required storm spotters to visually confirm a tornado before a warning could be issued, averaged 10 to 15 minutes). In 1978, KWTV became the first television station in the U.S. to broadcast high-resolution weather satellite imagery (with the system being known as "StarCom 9").
With England's consult, John Griffin commissioned Enterprise Electronics to create a commercial Doppler radar for $250,000, spurred by successful testing of a prototype by the
National Severe Storms Laboratory
The National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL) is a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) weather research laboratory under the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research. It is one of seven NOAA Research Laboratories (RLs).
NSSL s ...
during the Union City tornado; the improved radar allowed KWTV to issue tornado warnings before the National Weather Service.
The first commercial Doppler radar in the nation for forecasting use was installed at KWTV in 1981 (in late 1984, that radar was replaced by a
Fast Fourier Transform
A fast Fourier transform (FFT) is an algorithm that computes the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) of a sequence, or its inverse (IDFT). Fourier analysis converts a signal from its original domain (often time or space) to a representation in th ...
system developed by the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...
, which featured an expanded scanning area with an accuracy of up to ).
Two weeks after the radar was installed, on May 22 (shortly before it was shut down briefly due to the expiration of the radar's temporary operational license), it detected a tornado near
Arapaho
The Arapaho (; french: Arapahos, ) are a Native American people historically living on the plains of Colorado and Wyoming. They were close allies of the Cheyenne tribe and loosely aligned with the Lakota and Dakota.
By the 1850s, Arapaho band ...
; that tornado—which was recorded by a photographer inside "Ranger 9," which briefly was caught in the parent thunderstorm's inflow winds—became the first ever to have been filmed by a news helicopter. The first broadcaster-issued tornado warning indicated by Doppler occurred using this radar for a tornado that hit
Ada
Ada may refer to:
Places
Africa
* Ada Foah, a town in Ghana
* Ada (Ghana parliament constituency)
* Ada, Osun, a town in Nigeria
Asia
* Ada, Urmia, a village in West Azerbaijan Province, Iran
* Ada, Karaman, a village in Karaman Province, ...
on March 15, 1982; the ability to issue warnings ahead of the National Weather Service led to frequent disputes over jurisdiction in the issuance of severe weather alerts between the agency's
Norman office and channel 9 into the early 1990s.
From 1982 to 2006, England and the KWTV weather staff presented "Those Terrible Twisters" (titled "Gary's Traveling Weather Show" until 1986), a weather education tour around Oklahoma communities during the spring and summer that taught tornado safety information and promoted the station's severe weather forecasting efforts; the station also produced half-hour specials under that banner each spring, showcasing footage shot by KWTV storm spotters and behind-the-scenes video of its storm coverage. In 1990, England, with the help of a station technician, co-developed
First Warning
First Warning is the name of a severe weather warning system designed for broadcast television stations, typically those in the United States. A weather advisory product based on First Warning, called ''First Alert'', is an automated version of ...
, a software product that displays a weather alert map (which was originally updated via manual input by weather staff) during regular programming, along with a crawl showing detailed alerts issued by the NWS and the
National Severe Storms Forecast Center
The Storm Prediction Center (SPC) is a US government agency that is part of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP), operating under the control of the National Weather Service (NWS), which in turn is part of the National Ocean ...
. ("First Alert", an automated iteration of the software, was developed by KOCO that same year.)
In 1991, England convinced station management to hire a software development firm to create an application, which would be dubbed "Storm Tracker", an automated computer tracking system that projected the
arrival time Time of arrival (TOA or ToA) is the absolute time instant when a radio signal emanating from a transmitter reaches a remote receiver.
The time span elapsed since the time of transmission (TOT or ToT) is the ''time of flight'' (TOF or ToF).
Time diff ...
of precipitation at a particular locale.
That year also saw the hiring of Val Castor, a studio camera operator who would eventually become the station's first in-house storm spotter; KWTV gradually expanded its spotter units, employing twelve teams by 1999.
In 1992, the station introduced "Storm Action Video", a system (developed by then-evening anchor Roger Cooper) that sent near real-time video over cell phone transmissions using a
MacIntosh
The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and ...
computer combined with
video compression
In information theory, data compression, source coding, or bit-rate reduction is the process of encoding information using fewer bits than the original representation. Any particular compression is either lossy or lossless. Lossless compression ...
codecs; a similar system that transmitted real-time cell phone video, using Colby Electronics equipment, was developed in 1993.
In 1998, KWTV became one of the first stations in the United States to introduce a model-based computer forecasting system with the introduction of "MAX", which compiled model data to display hour-by-hour forecasts up to 48 hours in advance. On June 13 of that year, during coverage of a
supercell thunderstorm that spawned seven tornadoes across
Canadian
Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...
and northern
Oklahoma
Oklahoma (; Choctaw language, Choctaw: ; chr, ᎣᎧᎳᎰᎹ, ''Okalahoma'' ) is a U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States, bordered by Texas on the south and west, Kansas on the nor ...
counties, a camera atop the station's transmission tower caught the collapse of a nearby auxiliary tower operated by KFOR-TV and radio station WKY (930 AM) from intense downdraft winds. In 2000, the station introduced "I-News", internet-enabled software for
personal computer
A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or tec ...
s that provides severe weather and breaking news alerts to users. KWTV debuted "MOAR" (for "Massive Output Arrayed Radar"; though colloquially referred by England as the "Mother of All Radars") on May 8, 2003 to track an
F4 tornado
The Fujita scale (F-Scale; ), or Fujita–Pearson scale (FPP scale), is a scale for rating tornado intensity, based primarily on the damage tornadoes inflict on human-built structures and vegetation. The official Fujita scale category is determ ...
that hit Moore; the radar used enhanced street-level mapping to detect the path of tornadoes and
GPS
The Global Positioning System (GPS), originally Navstar GPS, is a Radionavigation-satellite service, satellite-based radionavigation system owned by the United States government and operated by the United States Space Force. It is one of t ...
to track the location of KWTV's
storm spotters. In February 2007, KWTV debuted "Storm Monitor" (later known by its brand name of ESP for "Early Storm Protection"), which utilized
VIPIR technology to measure a
mesocyclone
A mesocyclone is a meso-gamma mesoscale (or storm scale) region of rotation (vortex), typically around in diameter, most often noticed on radar within thunderstorms. In the northern hemisphere it is usually located in the right rear flank (back ...
's strength and its tornado-producing potential.
David Payne, who joined KWTV in February 2013 after a 20-year tenure as a morning meteorologist and storm chaser at KFOR, subsequently took over as chief meteorologist on August 29 of that year. In April 2015, KWTV restructured the extended forecast graphic seen at the end of its weather segments from a seven-day to a nine-day forecast, both in reference to the station's virtual channel number and to take advantage of the 16:9 frame (likewise, rival KOCO-TV subsequently altered its extended forecast to a ten-day outlook, known as the "5+5 Day Forecast", in reference to its virtual channel). On December 2, 2016, KWTV unveiled "NextGen Live", a
dual-polarization Doppler weather radar designed by
Baron Services
Baron Services is a weather technology company based in Huntsville, Alabama, United States. The company develops weather systems that aid in the detection and dissemination of weather information to customers in the broadcast, government, aviation, ...
, which conducts atmospheric scans at 6
RPM
Revolutions per minute (abbreviated rpm, RPM, rev/min, r/min, or with the notation min−1) is a unit of rotational speed or rotational frequency for rotating machines.
Standards
ISO 80000-3:2019 defines a unit of rotation as the dimensionl ...
—a faster rate than the radars operated by its three main competitors, KFOR, KOCO (which both have their own on-site radars) and KOKH (which has a radar system that relays
NEXRAD
NEXRAD or Nexrad (Next-Generation Radar) is a network of 160 high-resolution S-band Doppler weather radars operated by the National Weather Service (NWS), an agency of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) within the United ...
imagery from the National Weather Service)—to detect precipitation in real-time; the system operates at one million watts of power, and scans at both X & Y axis (the system is similar to KFOR-TV's dual-pol radar that operates at the same power and predates "NextGen Live" by ten years).
Notable current on-air staff
*
Dean Blevins –
sports director
The title of sports director can refer to the director of a live sports broadcast. It can also refer to an individual at a television or radio station who is in charge of the sports department.
Director
{{Job-stub ...
; weeknights at 5:00 and 6:00 and Sunday-Fridays at 10:00 p.m.; also co-host of ''Oklahoma Sports Blitz''
*
Dusty Dvoracek
Dusty Dvoracek (born March 3, 1983) is a former American football nose guard. Drafted by the Chicago Bears of the National Football League in the third round of the 2006 NFL Draft, he played college football at Oklahoma and professionally wit ...
– football analyst
*
David Payne (
AMS AMS or Ams may refer to:
Organizations Companies
* Alenia Marconi Systems
* American Management Systems
* AMS (Advanced Music Systems)
* ams AG, semiconductor manufacturer
* AMS Pictures
* Auxiliary Medical Services
Educational institutions
* A ...
and
NWA
NWA or Nwa most commonly refers to:
* N.W.A ("Niggaz Wit Attitudes"), a hip hop group from Compton, California, US
* National Wrestling Alliance, a professional wrestling organization
NWA or Nwa may refer to:
Music
* New Weird America, a subgenr ...
Seals of Approval) – chief meteorologist; weekdays at 4:00 and weeknights at 5:00, 6:00 and 10:00 p.m.
Notable former on-air staff
*
Mike Boettcher
Mike Boettcher (born 1954) is an American journalist and war correspondent. He is often embedded in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is also a visiting professor at the University of Oklahoma. Reporting from Key West, Florida on June 1, 1980 about the M ...
– reporter (1978–1980; later correspondent for
ABC News
ABC News is the news division of the American broadcast network ABC. Its flagship program is the daily evening newscast ''ABC World News Tonight, ABC World News Tonight with David Muir''; other programs include Breakfast television, morning ...
)
*
Gary England
Gary England (born October 3, 1939) is the former chief meteorologist for KWTV (channel 9), the CBS-affiliated television station in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. England was the first ''on-air'' meteorologist to alert his viewers of a possible torna ...
– chief meteorologist (1972–2013; now vice president of corporate relations and weather development at parent company, Griffin Media; makes occasional appearances in TV ads for local
HVAC
Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) is the use of various technologies to control the temperature, humidity, and purity of the air in an enclosed space. Its goal is to provide thermal comfort and acceptable indoor air quality. HV ...
repair company Air Comfort Solutions)
*
Shon Gables
Shon Gables is currently an evening news anchor with WANF in Atlanta
Broadcasting career
Gables worked as a news anchor at WCBS-TV in New York City. As co-anchor of ''CBS 2 News This Morning'' from 2003 to 2006, Gables covered many New York City ...
– weekend morning anchor/reporter (1998–2001; later at
WFAA
WFAA (channel 8) is a television station licensed to Dallas, Texas, United States, serving the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex as an affiliate of ABC. It is owned by Tegna Inc. alongside Decatur-licensed Estrella TV affiliate KMPX (channel 29), ...
in
Dallas
Dallas () is the List of municipalities in Texas, third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of metropolitan statistical areas, fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 ...
–
Fort Worth
Fort Worth is the fifth-largest city in the U.S. state of Texas and the 13th-largest city in the United States. It is the county seat of Tarrant County, covering nearly into four other counties: Denton, Johnson, Parker, and Wise. According ...
)
*
Chris Harrison
Christopher Bryan Harrison (born July 26, 1971) is an American television and game show host, best known for his role as the host of the ABC reality television dating show '' The Bachelor'' from 2002 to 2021. He also hosted its spin-offs ''The ...
– weekend sports anchor/reporter (1993–1999; former host of ''
The Bachelor'', ''
The Bachelorette A bachelorette is an unmarried woman. Bachelorette may also refer to:
Film and television
* ''The Bachelorette'', a reality television dating show part of ''The Bachelor'' franchise with numerous versions:
** ''The Bachelorette'' (American TV ser ...
'' and ''
Bachelor in Paradise'')
*
Tiffany Liou – reporter (2016–2018)
*
Lauren Nelson
Lauren Paige Nelson (born November 26, 1986) is a beauty queen from Lawton, Oklahoma who holds the Miss America 2007 title. Nelson is the second consecutive Miss America and sixth in the history of Miss America to hail from this state.
Early l ...
– 4:00 p.m. anchor (2010–2013; now co-host of ''Discover Oklahoma'')
*
Frances Rivera – reporter (1999–2001; now at
NBC News
NBC News is the news division of the American broadcast television network NBC. The division operates under NBCUniversal Television and Streaming, a division of NBCUniversal, which is, in turn, a subsidiary of Comcast. The news division's var ...
)
*
Tracy Rowlett
Charles Tracy Rowlett (; born June 16, 1942), known professionally as Tracy Rowlett, is an American journalist, formerly anchor and managing editor of the CBS owned and operated station in Dallas-Fort Worth, KTVT.
Rowlett's last broadcast with K ...
– anchor/reporter (1970–1974; later at WFAA and
KTVT
KTVT (channel 11) is a television station licensed to Fort Worth, Texas, United States, broadcasting CBS programming to the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. It is owned by the network's CBS News and Stations division alongside Independent statio ...
in Dallas–Fort Worth)
*
Ed Turner – reporter/news director (1960–1966; later executive vice president at
CNN
CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by ...
, now deceased)
*
Harry Volkman
Harry Volkman (April 18, 1926 – August 20, 2015) was an American meteorologist(PDF) and the first weatherman to issue a televised tornado warning.
Early life
Volkman was born in Medford, Massachusetts. Having an interest in radio since childh ...
– chief meteorologist (1954–1960; later at
WBBM-TV
WBBM-TV (channel 2) is a television station in Chicago, Illinois, United States, airing programming from the CBS network. Owned and operated by the network's CBS News and Stations division, the station maintains studios on West Washington Stre ...
,
WGN-TV
WGN-TV (channel 9) is an Independent station (North America), independent television station in Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States. Owned by Nexstar Media Group, it is sister station, sister to the company's sole radio property, talk ra ...
and
WFLD
WFLD (channel 32) is a television station in Chicago, Illinois, United States, airing programming from the Fox network. It is owned and operated by the network's Fox Television Stations division alongside Gary, Indiana–licensed MyNetworkTV ...
in Chicago; now deceased)
*
Bob "Hoolihan" Wells
Robert D. "Bob" Wells (born September 27, 1933), known as Bob "Hoolihan" Wells, is an American former television and radio personality and actor, who is best known to Cleveland, Ohio television viewers for his appearances on the then-CBS affiliate ...
– announcer (1957–1959; later at
WJW in
Cleveland
Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...
)
Technical information
The station's digital signal is
multiplexed
In telecommunications and computer networking, multiplexing (sometimes contracted to muxing) is a method by which multiple analog or digital signals are combined into one signal over a shared medium. The aim is to share a scarce resource - a ...
:
Analog-to-digital conversion and spectrum repack
KWTV-DT began transmitting a
digital television
Digital television (DTV) is the transmission of television signals using digital encoding, in contrast to the earlier analog television technology which used analog signals. At the time of its development it was considered an innovative advanc ...
signal on UHF channel 39 on December 23, 2003. The station discontinued regular programming on its analog signal, over VHF channel 9, on February 17, 2009, as part of the
federally mandated transition from analog to digital television (which Congress had moved the previous month to June 12).
The station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition UHF channel 39 to VHF channel 9. Due to reception issues in parts of
central Oklahoma
Central Oklahoma is the geographical name for the central region of the U.S. state of Oklahoma. It is also known by the Oklahoma Department of Tourism designation, Frontier Country, defined as the twelve-county region including Canadian, Grady, ...
, KWTV was granted permission by the FCC to operate a secondary signal on its former UHF digital channel 39 under
special temporary authorization
Special Temporary Authority (STA) in U.S. broadcast law is a type of broadcast license which temporarily allows a broadcast station to operate outside of its normal technical or legal parameters. In the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) stat ...
in October 2009, mapped to virtual channel 9.2. On March 9, 2010, the FCC issued a ''Report & Order'', approving the station's request to move its digital signal from channel 9 to channel 39.
On April 20, 2010, KWTV filed a minor change application on its new channel 39 allotment, that was granted on June 10. Short-lived service interruptions began on July 29 to allow viewers to rescan their digital tuners to carry the UHF channel 39 signal. On August 16, 2010, the digital signal on UHF channel 39 added a virtual channel on 9.1, in addition to the 9.2 PSIP channel. KWTV terminated its digital signal on channel 9 and began to operate only on channel 39 on August 30, 2010 at 12:30 p.m.
As a part of the
repacking process following the
2016–17 FCC incentive auction, KWTV-DT relocated its physical digital allocation to UHF channel 25 at 12:00 p.m. on November 27, 2018, although it continued to display its virtual channel number as 9 via PSIP.
In preparation for the repack, KWTV began operating test signals of their main and subchannel on channel 25 (PSIP-mapped temporarily to virtual channels 9.3 and 9.4) on October 1, 2018; the UHF 25 test feed was converted into a simulcast of KWTV-DT1 and -DT2 (remapped to 9.1 and 9.2, respectively) on October 30, only for the simulcast to be embargoed from November 2 to 19 to comply with FCC regulations limiting the duration of simulcasts on transitional digital television signals.
Translators
To reach viewers throughout the 34 counties comprising the Oklahoma City
Designated Market Area
A media market, broadcast market, media region, designated market area (DMA), television market area, or simply market is a region where the population can receive the same (or similar) television and radio station offerings, and may also incl ...
, KWTV-DT extends its over-the-air coverage area through a network of nine
low-power digital translator stations – all of which transmit using PSIP virtual channel 9 – encompassing much of
Western Oklahoma On a simple east/west basis, Western Oklahoma is popularly considered that part of the state west of I-35. I-35 creates a north/south line through the approximate center of the main body of the state (i.e., without regard for the Oklahoma Panhandle ...
that distribute its programming beyond the range of its broadcast signal.
;Notes:
References
External links
News9.com– KWTV-DT official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kwtv-Dt
CBS network affiliates
Griffin Media
Peabody Award winners
1953 establishments in Oklahoma
Television channels and stations established in 1953
WTV-DT