KOLD-TV (channel 13) is a television station in Tucson, Arizona, United States, affiliated with CBS. It is owned by

Gray Television Gray Television, Inc. is an American publicly traded television broadcasting company based in Atlanta, Georgia. Founded in 1946 by James Harrison Gray as Gray Communications Systems, the company owns or operates 180 stations across the United St ...

, which provides certain services to

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affiliate KMSB (channel 11) and MyNetworkTV affiliate KTTU (channel 18) under a

shared services Shared services is the provision of a service by one part of an organization or group, where that service had previously been found, in more than one part of the organization or group. Thus the funding and resourcing of the service is shared and th ...

agreement (SSA) with

Tegna Inc. Tegna Inc. (stylized in all caps as TEGNA) is an American publicly traded broadcast, digital media and marketing services company headquartered in Tysons Corner, Virginia. It was created on June 29, 2015, when the Gannett Company split into tw ...

The three stations share studios on North Business Park Drive on the northwest side of Tucson (near the Casas Adobes neighborhood). KOLD-TV's primary transmitter is atop Mount Bigelow, with a secondary transmitter atop the Tucson Mountains west of the city to fill in gaps in coverage. Established in February 1953, KOLD-TV is the second-oldest television station in the state and was the first on air in Tucson. It has been affiliated with CBS for its entire history. The station produces local newscasts that, since the 2000s, have been competitive in the local ratings.

History

Construction and Autry-Chauncey ownership

In the wake of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) lifting its freeze on the award of new television stations, three Tucson radio stations applied for three channels. The Old Pueblo Broadcasting Company, owner of KOPO (1450 AM) and owned by

Gene Autry Orvon Grover "Gene" Autry (September 29, 1907 – October 2, 1998), nicknamed the Singing Cowboy, was an American singer, songwriter, actor, musician, rodeo performer, and baseball owner who gained fame largely by singing in a crooning s ...

and Tom Chauncey, filed for channel 13 without opposition on June 21 and was granted a

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 ...

to build on November 12. KOPO-TV was built relatively quickly: construction got underway in early December on an interim transmitter facility mounted on the AM radio tower, as towers were not yet available, and on a television addition to the KOPO radio facility on West Drachman Street. On January 13, 1953, at 1:13:13 p.m., the KOPO-TV transmitter was turned on. No programming was aired, as construction on the remainder of the television addition to the building was still in progress, until February 1, when the station began to carry CBS and

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 ...

programming. The day before, a dedicatory program was broadcast from the studios. Network presentations had to be aired from kinescopes until a coaxial cable hookup was completed in September to be shared by KOPO-TV and new station KVOA-TV. KOPO radio and television became KOLD radio and television on April 30, 1957. The KOLD call letters had been used by the Autry station in Yuma until it was sold; that outlet became KOFA and closed in 1963. (The designation also paired well with KOOL radio and television in Phoenix, which was commonly owned, and as was done in Phoenix, the phones were answered "It's KOLD in Tucson".) The main transmitter was moved to Mount Bigelow in 1961, simultaneously with KVOA-TV; KGUN-TV had been built on the mountain five years prior.

Evening News, Knight Ridder, and News-Press and Gazette ownership

In December 1968, Autry and Chauncey announced the sale of KOLD-TV, separate from the radio station, for $3.8 million to the Universal Communications Corporation, the broadcasting arm of the Detroit-based

Evening News Association ''The Detroit News'' is one of the two major newspapers in the U.S. city of Detroit, Michigan. The paper began in 1873, when it rented space in the rival ''Detroit Free Press'' building. ''The News'' absorbed the '' Detroit Tribune'' on Februa ...

. The FCC approved of the deal in 1969, though it required the E. W. Scripps Trust to divest itself of its holding in the Evening News Association, as

Scripps-Howard Broadcasting The E. W. Scripps Company is an American broadcasting company founded in 1878 as a chain of daily newspapers by Edward Willis "E. W." Scripps and his sister, Ellen Browning Scripps. It was also formerly a media conglomerate. The company is he ...

owned four VHF stations and Evening News now would own two (KOLD-TV and WWJ-TV in Detroit). The commission tweaked the ruling to allow Scripps to retain an interest of one percent. The radio station reverted to its former KOPO designation. The

Gannett Company Gannett Co., Inc. () is an American mass media holding company headquartered in McLean, Virginia, in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.hostile takeover bid by L.P. Media Inc., owned by television producer

Norman Lear Norman Milton Lear (born July 27, 1922) is an American producer and screenwriter, who has produced, written, created, or developed over 100 shows. Lear is known for many popular 1970s sitcoms, including the multi-award winning ''All in the Famil ...

and media executive A. Jerrold Perenchio. The merged company could not retain channel 13. Gannett already owned the '' Tucson Citizen'' newspaper, and channel 13's signal slightly overlapped with Gannett-owned

KPNX KPNX (channel 12) is a television station licensed to Mesa, Arizona, United States, serving the Phoenix area as an affiliate of NBC. The station is owned by Tegna Inc., and maintains studios at the Republic Media building on Van Buren Street i ...

in Phoenix. Gannett subsequently spun off KOLD-TV, along with KTVY in Oklahoma City and WALA-TV in

Mobile, Alabama Mobile ( , ) is a city and the county seat of Mobile County, Alabama, United States. The population within the city limits was 187,041 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, down from 195,111 at the 2010 United States census, 2010 cens ...

, to Knight Ridder Broadcasting for $160 million. Knight Ridder subsequently announced in October 1988 their intent to sell their station group to help reduce a $929 million debt load and finance a $353 million acquisition of online information provider

Dialog Information Services Roger K. Summit (born 1930 - Detroit, Michigan) is the founder of Dialog Information Services, and has been called the father of modern online search. He worked for Lockheed in the 1960s, was put in charge of its information retrieval lab, and fr ...

. The News-Press & Gazette Company (NPG) acquired KOLD on June 26, 1989, spending $18 million. It implemented budget cuts in the newsroom, which was wracked by employee turnover as a result. NPG also moved KOLD from Mount Bigelow to the Tucson Mountains west of the city; this improved reception in some parts of the city that had terrain blockages but affected as many as 15 percent of the station's viewers, notably in outlying areas such as Benson, Arizona, and created signal ingress issues for cable subscribers.

Turnaround

In 1993,

New Vision Television New Vision Television was a broadcast company based in Santa Monica, California. Throughout its two decade plus history, the company owned or managed over 60 television stations in large and medium-sized markets. History New Vision I Formed by ...

, a new broadcast station group based in

Lansing, Michigan Lansing () is the capital of the U.S. state of Michigan. It is mostly in Ingham County, although portions of the city extend west into Eaton County and north into Clinton County. The 2020 census placed the city's population at 112,644, making ...

, bought NPG's entire television station group of the time, which included KOLD and stations in five other markets. New Vision took over before the end of the year and immediately made moves to shore up flagging employee morale at KOLD. In addition to a new general manager, New Vision began planning for a new facility on Tucson's northwest side with nearly twice as much space as the Drachman facility, which the station had outgrown. The new facility, outfitted with a news studio called the "Newsplex", debuted in late 1994, before New Vision sold its stations to Ellis Communications in 1995; Ellis was in turn folded into Raycom Media in 1997. Raycom would house its centralized design operation, Raycom Design Group, in Tucson.

Shared services agreement with KMSB and KTTU

On November 15, 2011, the Belo Corporation, then-owner of local Fox affiliate KMSB and MyNetworkTV affiliate KTTU, announced that it would enter into a

agreement (SSA) with Raycom Media beginning in February 2012, resulting in KOLD taking over the two stations' operations and moving their advertising sales department to the KOLD studios. All remaining positions at KMSB and KTTU, including news, engineering and production, were eliminated, and master control operations moved from Belo's KTVK in Phoenix to KOLD. Though FCC rules disallow common ownership of more than two stations in the same market, combined SSA/duopoly operations are permissible.

Sale to Gray Television

In 2018, Raycom Media was acquired by

. The $3.6 billion transaction gave Gray its first station in Arizona. The arrangements with KMSB and KTTU remained unchanged. The sale was approved on December 20 of that year and was completed on January 2, 2019.

News operation

Originally, local news programming for KOPO-TV/KOLD-TV was provided by KOOL-TV in Phoenix. However, by the 1960s, the station was leading the news ratings in the Tucson market, a status it would hold until the late 1970s, when KVOA took the lead. The station continued in second or third place for the next quarter-century, with the station (and CBS) reaching a nadir by the time that it was acquired by News Press & Gazette. Budget cuts meant outdated equipment that broke down, while a series of anchors were fired and replaced with cheaper, entry-level talent. Vic Caputo, who had spent seven years at channel 13, was released by his contract in a decision he attributed to the owners' "money crunch". NPG fired sports anchor Kevin McCabe days before Christmas in a dispute that led to a lawsuit over severance pay. Weatherman Pat Evans was told that there was a "big plan" for him, but when he asked, they would not reveal it; he declined to sign a new contract and took a new job in Sacramento, California. In the late 1990s, KOLD-TV became Tucson's first station to operate a news helicopter. Despite these improvements, newscast ratings continued to languish far behind the other two major stations, with channel 13 drawing half as many news viewers. However, the 2000s would change that picture. Ratings improved, and the station won its first and (to date) only

Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award The Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award honors excellence in broadcast and digital journalism in the public service and is considered one of the most prestigious awards in journalism. The awards were established in 1942 and administered ...

, given in 2001 to Chip Yost for a story about exploding fuel tanks in police cars. By 2004, KOLD had pulled ahead of KVOA in all evening timeslots in the 25–54 demo, a feat which had not occurred in Tucson in 25 years. During this time, KOLD-TV also produced a 9 p.m. local newscast for

KWBA-TV KWBA-TV (channel 58) is a television station licensed to Sierra Vista, Arizona, United States, serving as the CW affiliate for the Tucson area. It is owned by the E. W. Scripps Company alongside ABC affiliate KGUN-TV (channel 9). Both stations ...

from 2003 to 2005. Not all were happy: anchor Randy Garsee was fired in 2006 after sending an email to all employees criticizing the news director for "micromanaging". As part of taking over KMSB's operations, KOLD-TV took over its local 9 p.m. newscast and added a weekday morning newscast, with the existing KMSB news team laid off. KMSB and KOLD also introduced a shared website, originally branded ''Tucson News Now''. In 2022, Gray introduced new 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. newscasts for KOLD.

Technical information

Subchannels

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:

Analog-to-digital transition

KOLD-TV discontinued regular programming on its analog signal, over VHF channel 13, on June 12, 2009, as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition

UHF Ultra high frequency (UHF) is the ITU designation for radio frequencies in the range between 300 megahertz (MHz) and 3 gigahertz (GHz), also known as the decimetre band as the wavelengths range from one meter to one tenth of a meter (on ...

channel 32. While KOLD's analog signal originated from a transmitter site in the Tucson Mountains west of downtown, KOLD's primary digital transmitter is at the Mount Bigelow transmitter site to the northeast of the city, where the major Tucson stations built a common digital transmission facility in 2003. The Tucson Mountains site was then converted to a digital replacement translator on channel 13 to provide service to the Catalina Foothills.

References

Notes

External links

Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kold-Tv OLD-TV Television channels and stations established in 1953 1953 establishments in Arizona CBS network affiliates MeTV affiliates Circle (TV network) affiliates Former Gannett subsidiaries Gray Television Low-power television stations in the United States