KMYT-TV

KMYT-TV (channel 41) is a television station in Tulsa, Oklahoma, United States, affiliated with MyNetworkTV. It is owned by Imagicomm Communications alongside Fox affiliate KOKI-TV (channel 23). The two stations share studios on East 27th Street and South Memorial Drive (near W. G. Skelly Park) in the Audubon neighborhood of southeast Tulsa; KMYT-TV's transmitter is located on South 273rd East Avenue (between 91st Street South and 101st Street South, next to the Muskogee Turnpike) in the western city limits of Coweta.

History

Early history

The station first signed on the air on March 18, 1981 as KGCT-TV (standing for " Green Country Television"). It was founded as a joint venture between Green Country Television Associates, Ltd. (headed by former CBS executive Ray Beindorf, who served as KGCT's first general manager, and Leonard Anderson—who would subsequently sell his interest in the group, including stakes which he acquired from Beindorf months after the station's sign-on—to Armstrong Investments CEO Robert A. Armstrong in 1981) and satellite resale carrier Satellite Television Systems (STS; renamed Satellite Syndicated Systems SSshortly before sign-on), which beat out the Western Area Bureau of Information and a standalone bid by STS for the license. The UHF channel 41 allocation had been dormant since an application by the Beacon Television Corporation to launch a station over that allocation (which was to be assigned KWID as its call letters) was reversed following the application's approval by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 1968, and its approved construction permit was turned in by Beacon to the FCC in May 1969.

Originally operating as an independent station, it was the second such station to sign on in the Tulsa market, after KOKI-TV (channel 23, now a Fox affiliate), which signed on six months earlier on October 26, 1980; not counting short-lived UHF outlets, it was also the seventh television station and the fifth commercial station to sign on in the Tulsa market. It originally operated from studio facilities located in a former Lerner Shops store at the Main Mall pedestrian park and shopping complex on South Harvard Avenue (near downtown Tulsa's Bartlett Square district). (The complex, which then spanned seven blocks west to east from Main Street to Boston Avenue and north to south from 3rd to 6th Streets, was demolished to make way for an expansion of Main Street to throughway traffic in 2003.) KGCT initially maintained a mixed news/information and entertainment schedule, running low-cost syndicated and barter programs (consisting of cartoons, sitcoms and drama series and westerns) and classic movies from sign-on at 6:00 a.m. until 12:00 p.m., and a mix of news and talk programming during the afternoon and early access time periods. The remainder of the broadcast day was occupied by the SSS-owned In-Home Theatre (IT), a subscription service – transmitted over the channel 41 signal each weekday from 7:00 p.m. until sign-off at 2:00 a.m. and weekends from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. – that carried uncut theatrically released feature films, entertainment specials (including concerts and Vegas revues), sporting events (including college football and basketball games involving the Tulsa Golden Hurricane, and football and basketball games and wrestling matches involving the Oklahoma State Cowboys, and NBA games featuring the Dallas Mavericks, some of which commenced play before 7:00 p.m., resulting in fans often missing the start of many contests) and, for an additional monthly fee, softcore versions of pornographic films. Prospective subscribers were required to rent a special set-top decoder box to unencrypt the channel 41 signal during hours when the station carried IT programming in order to receive the service. (SSS had also applied to operate translators in Norman, Lawton, Seminole, Stillwater, Edmond and Chickasha to relay IT's programming across portions of central and southwestern Oklahoma, including areas where it would have competed with VEU, a similar over-the-air pay service that transmitted weeknights and weekends over Oklahoma City independent KAUT between October 1980 and September 1982.)

After the station shuttered its news department in June 1981, KGCT revamped its program schedule to incorporate simulcasts of CNN's daytime news programs, agricultural programming, and business news from the Financial News Network (FNN) during the daytime, along with some religious programs, cartoons and a selection of first-run and off-network barter syndicated shows to fill the remainder of the station's unencrypted airtime. (Of note, channel 41 served as the original Tulsa broadcaster of ''Entertainment Tonight''—then a barter syndicated program that had yet to ascend to the status it has today as one of syndication's highest-profile programs—which aired on KGCT for the program's first season, from September 1982 to September 1983.) Overall, however, the station had suffered from relatively low viewership, putting KGCT at a competitive disadvantage to dominant independent KOKI; it also frequently suffered from technical problems, usually transmitting a substandard picture and experiencing periodic problems with the audio and video signals. Around that time, KGCT relocated its operations to a new studio facility on South Garnett Road and East 58th Street in southeast Tulsa.

In September 1982, KGCT entered into a time-brokerage agreement with local minister Jack Rehburg, who rebranded it after his operating company, Tulsa Christian Television. (The meaning behind the station's call letters concurrently became "Knit God's Children Together".) Channel 41's format during this period had largely relied on live and taped Christian-oriented religious programs during the morning and for most of the afternoon Monday through Saturdays and throughout the daytime hours on Sundays, along with a few low-budget secular shows during the late afternoon and nightly In-Home Theater programming (creating the incongruity of the same station airing religious shows during its free airtime, and R-rated and some softcore pornographic films at night while the signal was scrambled). Rehburg – who would purchase the construction permit for KDLF-TV (channel 47, now KWHB) that June, before selling the religious independent to Coit Drapery and Cleaners shortly after its June 1985 sign-on as KTCT – terminated the lease in a dispute with KGCT ownership in the spring of 1984. Southern Satellite Systems shut down In-Home Theatre on October 31, 1984, citing a significant downturn in subscribers and revenue associated with the emergence of multichannel television franchises offering cable-originated premium services—such as Home Box Office (HBO) and Showtime—in Tulsa and Detroit (where the service was carried by Ann Arbor-licensed WIHT, now Ion Television affiliate WPXD-TV); at the time that SSS was launching the In-Home Theater service over KGCT, cable service was widely available within northeastern Oklahoma through providers such as Tulsa Cable Television (which commenced operations in April 1980) within Tulsa proper, and in surrounding areas through Green Country Cable (which serviced Jenks, Glenpool, Sapulpa and Wagoner), Bartlesville Cablevision, Claremore Cable TV Co., Owasso Cablevision, Skiatook Cablevision and Cablevision of Muskogee among other systems, making the need to subscribe to an over-the-air pay service no longer necessary. The removal of religious and In-Home Theatre programming resulted in the Armstrong-SSS partnership having to acquire new equipment, programming and transmitter facilities on short notice. KGCT switched to a format consisting of home shopping and low-budget entertainment programming, along with network programs that NBC affiliate KJRH (channel 2), CBS affiliate KOTV (channel 6) and ABC affiliate KTUL (channel 8) had declined to carry on their respective schedules.

By 1985, the station had shifted to a schedule made up entirely of barter content, featuring a mix of cartoons, religious programs and low-rated first-run syndicated shows. Concurrently, the Green Country-SSS venture sold the station to Channel 41 Associates for $5.05 million; although the non-compete covenant deal received FCC approval, the acquisition would not be consummated. Later that year, Green Country Associates acquired Satellite Syndicated Systems's interest in KGCT, only to turn it over to Tempo Enterprises—then the uplinker of the national superstation feed of Atlanta independent station WTBS (now standalone cable channel TBS nationwide and WPCH-TV in the Atlanta market)—after Armstrong ran into difficulties maintaining the venture capital to run the station because of corporate financial issues tied to the 1980s oil business downturn. Although it was the lower-rated of the market's two independents, KGCT was approached by the Fox Broadcasting Company to become the network's Tulsa charter affiliate in the spring of 1986. After initially reaching a contract deal, Fox management nullified the agreement and quickly reached a new one with KOKI, as channel 41 lacked sufficient cable carriage within the market (a partial result of a 1986 decision by Tulsa Cable Television – whose owner, United Artists Cable, transferred the local cable franchise rights to Tele-Communications, Inc., after the company's 1991 acquisition of United Artists Theaters – to pull the station from its lineup).

On December 26, 1987, a transmission tower owned by KTUL, which was also leased to KGCT and several local radio stations to house their transmitters, collapsed due to heavy freezing rain accumulations from a major ice storm that hit northeastern Oklahoma over the Christmas weekend. Both KTUL and KGCT restored over-the-air service later that week from a leased tower, where their transmitters resided until a new tower was constructed near the existing Coweta tower site in the summer of 1988.

In April 1988, Tele-Communications Inc. (through subsidiary Tempo Acquisition Co.) purchased a 51% interest in Tempo Enterprises, in a deal in which Tempo also agreed to develop a direct-broadcast satellite service that would expand pay television service to areas without cable access. TCI subsequently sought buyers for KGCT, WIHT and Conyers, Georgia radio station WTPO (now WPBS), which were contingent on receiving approval of the Tempo purchase. That December, TCI sold its 50% stake in KGCT to Green Country Associates; Beindorf subsequently sold his interest in the company to Armstrong. Armstrong Investments fielded offers from three unnamed companies—one of which was owned by KGCT's then-general manager Bob Davis—to buy the station; the company planned to discontinue programming on KGCT, unless a cash offer was accepted by February 1, 1989. With no deal being reached before the deadline and plans for a time-brokerage agreement to keep the station operational until a sale was completed falling through, channel 41 went dark as planned at 2:00 a.m. on February 1, for what was intended to be a 30-day "re-evaluation" window to weigh the offers to buy the KGCT license and assets. (The FCC gave Green Country Associates until April 30 to complete the sale negotiations.) All 17 station employees were given a leave of absence benefits package.

Stability, then transition

On July 19, 1989, Green Country Associates sold KGCT to Tulsa TV 41 Corp. (headed by Dennis Lisack, director of Louisville, Kentucky-based Christian ministry organization The Messiah Project) for $500,000. Although the sale received FCC approval on August 23, the agreement was terminated shortly before the station's mandatory return date of August 30 after the group was unable to obtain sufficient financing to buy the assets. A suitable buyer for KGCT was found in June 1990, when RDS Broadcasting (named after its managing partners, Bob Rosenheim and Associates, Douglas Communications CEO Douglas Bornstein and infomercial production company Synchronal Corporation, headed by group co-partner Richard Kaylor) agreed to purchase the station for $157,500; the sale, which marked RDS's first station acquisition, received FCC approval on August 27, 1990 and was finalized early that September. Channel 41 returned to the air as KTFO (for "Tulsa Forty-One") on May 22, 1991, with a schedule—airing initially from 6:00 a.m. to 2:00 a.m.—consisting mainly of religious programs and infomercials, as well as some comedies, sports, classic films, and network series declined by KJRH and KOTV. The station – which, during its dark period, had lost the local rights to some syndicated programs and sports packages, some of which were picked up by KOKI – gradually added entertainment-based barter programs, movies and sporting events to the schedule during the spring and summer of 1991.

After having been unavailable on cable within Tulsa proper for the past seven years and virtually market-wide through its nine combined years of operation, in February 1992, KTFO management reached a deal with Tulsa Public Schools (TPS) to lease programming time on a tertiary educational access channel that was set to launch the following month on United Artists Cable (via a 1988 agreement with Tulsa Cable that required it to allocate an existing channel for a TPS secondary service if the provider's headend infrastructure was not rebuilt within four years to allow expansion of its channel lineup), and donate $40,000 for area schools to upgrade their television equipment. The leasing agreement was revoked by the district board on March 17, after provider parent TCI – which was not informed of the agreement until five days before it was set to take effect on that date – disagreed with the contractual terms. The contract was subsequently renegotiated, granting KTFO approval to lease airtime on the Tulsa Public Schools II service. Beginning on March 30, KTFO transmitted on TCI channel 41 (or channel 42 for subscribers with addressable set-top boxes) from 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 a.m. weekdays and all day on weekends, when the school district was not carrying Tulsa Junior College telecourses over the channel space; the station's programming filled airtime on TCI channel 41 formerly occupied by a TPS bulletin board and programming from NASA Select (now NASA TV) that were shown on the TPS II service. (TCI would move KTFO/TPS II to channel 10 in January 1993, and subsequently ceded the channel space to KTFO full-time that July, while giving TPS II a full-time feed on channel 20.)

By the fall of 1993, the station ran a wide variety of programs on its schedule – consisting of some children's programs during the morning hours, some first-run syndicated shows (including comedies) in the early evenings, off-network sitcoms and drama series, and older movies on weekends, as well as a limited amount of local programming (such as public affairs talk show ''Oklahoma Forum'', and viewer call-in shows ''Out of Left Field'' and ''Open Line'', all of which were hosted by former KJRH sports director Sam Jones). On November 3, 1993, San Antonio-based Clear Channel Television – which had purchased KOKI-TV three years earlier – entered into a local marketing agreement with RDS Broadcasting, under which Clear Channel/KOKI would provide programming, advertising and other administrative services for KTFO. Channel 41 subsequently migrated its operations from the Garnett Avenue facility into KOKI's offices at the low-rise Fox Plaza building on East 54th Street and South Yale Avenue (near LaFortune Park) in southeast Tulsa; Clear Channel submitted job offers to eleven of KTFO's 14 employees to oversee both stations. Both KOKI and KTFO pooled programming inventories, with channel 41 acquiring additional talk and reality shows as well as more recent and higher-profile classic sitcoms and drama series (such as '' Perfect Strangers'', '' Perry Mason'', ''M*A*S*H'', '' ALF'' and ''Star Trek'') as well as more recent film titles to complement channel 23's offerings. Many higher-rated syndicated shows (including sitcoms and cartoons) continued to air on or were sold directly to KOKI, but some programs were shared by both stations, with some of the stronger programs in KOKI's inventory being added to channel 41's schedule.

UPN affiliation

On January 25, 1994, Clear Channel reached an agreement with Paramount Television and Chris-Craft/United Television to affiliate four independent stations owned and/or operated by the group with the United Paramount Network ( UPN), which was founded by Chris-Craft and its BHC Communications/United Television broadcasting subsidiary, in a programming partnership with Viacom (which was in the process of acquiring Paramount Pictures and its related assets from Gulf+Western around the time of the agreement, and would directly purchase a 50% interest in UPN in 1996). In a joint press release, Chris-Craft and Paramount confirmed that KTFO would serve as UPN's charter affiliate for the Tulsa market. However, it was likely to have joined UPN in any event as the fledgling network's only other option among the area's commercial television stations was LeSEA Broadcasting-owned independent KWHB (channel 47), which would likely have declined to carry any network programs that did not meet the Christian-based religious organization's strict secular program content guidelines. (Despite that issue, KWHB would become a part-time affiliate of The WB when that network launched on January 11, 1995.) Channel 41 formally affiliated with the network when it launched on January 16, 1995.

Alongside UPN prime time programming, KTFO – which concurrently changed its branding to "UPN 41" – carried some recent and classic off-network sitcoms and drama series, movies in prime time and on weekends, some first-run syndicated shows, and a blend of cartoons and a few live-action children's shows from both individual distributors and '' The Disney Afternoon'' syndication block. (The station's children's programming inventory expanded when UPN launched the '' UPN Kids'' program block in September 1995, and was eventually relegated to syndicated content after the successor ''Disney's One Too'' block was discontinued by the network in August 2003.) As it had done for most of its tenure as an independent, KTFO continued to fill the 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. time slot with feature films and some first-run syndicated programs as, at the time of its launch, UPN had only maintained a lineup of prime time programs on Monday and Tuesday nights. This would become less of an issue as UPN launched a supplemental weekend film package in September 1995—the ''UPN Movie Trailer'', which was eventually discontinued in September 2000, leaving a one-hour-long, same-week evening repeat block of UPN drama and reality series as its only non-children-focused weekend offering for the remainder of the network's existence—and additional nights of programming over the next four years, adopting a five-night weekly schedule on Monday through Fridays in September 1998. As time went on, KTFO began to divest many of the classic sitcom reruns that populated its schedule, in favor of airing more talk, reality and court shows on its daytime schedule and more recent sitcoms and first-run and off-network drama series in the evening. From 1998 to 2006, some station promotions also included the "UPN Girls," a group of four women between the ages of 18 and 25, who also served as hosts for a Saturday night movie showcase on KTFO and made publicity appearances at local events. (Other UPN affiliates that Clear Channel owned or managed, such as KASN CW_affiliate.html"_;"title="The_CW.html"_;"title="ow_a_The_CW">CW_affiliate">The_CW.html"_;"title="ow_a_The_CW">CW_affiliatein_Little_Rock,_Arkansas.html" "title="The_CW">CW_affiliate.html" ;"title="The_CW.html" ;"title="ow a The CW">CW affiliate">The_CW.html" ;"title="ow a The CW">CW affiliatein Little Rock, Arkansas">Little Rock