KTVT (channel 11), branded as CBS Texas, is a television station licensed to Fort Worth, Texas, United States, serving the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. It is owned by the CBS television network through its CBS News and Stations division alongside independent outlet KTXA (channel 21). The two stations share primary studio facilities on Bridge Street east of downtown Fort Worth; KTVT operates a secondary studio and newsroom—which also houses advertising sales offices for the stations, as well as the Dallas bureau for CBS News—at the CBS Tower on North Central Expressway in Dallas. KTVT's transmitter is located in Cedar Hill, Texas.
History 1955–1971: As an independent station The allocation originally assigned to VHF channel 10 was contested between three groups that competed for approval by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to be the holder of the construction permit to build and license to operate a new television station on the second commercial VHF allocation to be assigned to Fort Worth, Texas. Lechner Television Co.—owned by oil and gas exploration and production entrepreneur Walter W. Lechner—filed the initial permit application on July 3, 1952. One week later on July 11, the Texas State Network—a broadcasting consortium owned by Sid W. Richardson (philanthropist and owner of, among other petroleum firms in the state, Fort Worth–based Sid W. Richardson Inc. and Richardson and Bass Oil Producers), media executive Gene L. Cagle, mineral rights firm owner R. K. Hanger, company president Charles B. Jordan and D. C. Homburg—filed a separate license application. The Fort Worth Television Co.—a group led by several oilmen including Raymond O. Shaffer (president and chairman of Fort Worth–based Welex Jet and part-owner of the Texas Rail Joint Co. and oil well drilling firm Monarch Manufacturing Co.), Sterling C. Holloway (a Fort Worth attorney and president/director of Continental Life Insurance Co.); M. J. Neeley (president and majority stockholder of Fort Worth–based trailer manufacturing firm Hobbs Manufacturing Co.), Arch Rowan (chairman of Fort Worth oil well drilling firm Rowan Drilling Co., and president and minority owner of local oil production firm Rowan Oil Co.) and F. Kirk Johnson (oil and gas lease purchaser and royalty collector), along with O. P. Newberry (vice president of Fort Worth National Bank)—became the third applicant for the license on December 11, 1952.
On September 3, 1953, in an approval of proposals submitted by John F. Easley (founding owner of KVSO-TV in Ardmore, Oklahoma) and Eastern TV Corp. (founding owner of KTEN in Ada, Oklahoma) to realign the two VHF channel assignments to alleviate interference issues with their proposed stations, the FCC amended its "Sixth Report and Order" assignment table to reassign channel 10 to Waco (later occupied by KWTX-TV) and move the VHF channel 11 allocation to Fort Worth. All three applicants subsequently amended their license applications to seek assignment on channel 11 instead. The FCC granted the permit to the Texas State Network on September 17, 1954, after the agency formally dismissed the applications by Lechner and the Fort Worth Television Co. The Sid Richardson-led group chose to request KFJZ-TV as the callsign for its television station, reflecting its existing ownership of KFJZ (1270 AM).
KFJZ-TV, first signed on the air at 2:30 p.m. on September 11, 1955, after a launch ceremony culminating in Fort Worth oilman Sid Richardson flipping the ceremonial switch to activate the transmitter. It was the first independent station to sign on in Texas, the fourth television station to sign on in the Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex (after WBAP-TV (channel 5, now KXAS-TV), which signed on the air in 1948; KBTV (channel 8, now WFAA), which debuted in September 1949; and KRLD-TV (channel 4, now KDFW), which debuted in December 1949), and the first to debut in the market since the FCC's 1952 lifting of a four-year freeze on new applications for television station licenses. Originally, channel 11 maintained a 9-hour per day programming schedule, starting with its sign-on at 2:30 p.m. and concluding at its midnight sign-off. The station originally operated from facilities at 4801 West Freeway (in the present-day location of Interstate 30) in Fort Worth.
In 1964, KFJZ-TV moved its transmitter facilities to a tower at the antenna farm in Cedar Hill, which provided a signal that covered the Dallas–Fort Worth market. The transmitter relocation played a major factor in throwing channel 11 into a three-station competition for the NBC affiliation. The network had been affiliated with WBAP-TV since it signed on nine years earlier; however, the heirs of Fort Worth Star-Telegram founder Amon G. Carter chose to continue his legacy of civic boosterism of Fort Worth by refusing to move WBAP's transmitter facilities from eastern Fort Worth to an area between both cities. The lack of adequate reception throughout the entire Dallas–Fort Worth metropolitan area led NBC to simultaneously maintain an affiliation with WFAA beginning in 1950 to act as its Dallas affiliate. (Despite their close proximity, Arbitron originally designated Dallas and Fort Worth as separate markets: the Dallas market as Dallas County and surrounding counties in the area's eastern half and the Fort Worth market as neighboring Tarrant County and the counties surrounding it in the west. The two cities would be consolidated into a single television market in 1952.) WBAP-TV received a permit for Cedar Hill on March 24, 1964, and were on the air under Program Test Authority in November 1964. (Guide to reading History Cards)
The split-station arrangement frustrated NBC to the point where in early 1957, it threatened to terminate its affiliation contract with WBAP-TV if it did not agree to move its transmitter eastward to provide a signal that covered Dallas and Fort Worth. WFAA's corporate parent A.H. Belo first approached the network with an offer to become the Metroplex's exclusive NBC affiliate. The Roosevelts also submitted an offer to move the network's programming to KFJZ-TV. Neither station won out, as the Carter heirs would reluctantly agree to NBC's demands to retain the affiliation and move the WBAP-TV transmitter to an existing candelabra tower shared by WFAA and KRLD-TV, operating it at a higher effective radiated power strong enough to adequately cover central and eastern Dallas County and adjacent areas that had only rimshot signal coverage of the station. WBAP-TV became the exclusive NBC affiliate for the entire Dallas–Fort Worth market on September 1, 1957, with WFAA remaining an ABC affiliate; channel 11, meanwhile, continued as an independent station, filling its schedule with syndicated and locally produced programs. During the late 1950s, KFJZ-TV briefly maintained an affiliation with the NTA Film Network.
In 1959, Mr. Richardson, through Texas State Network gave KFJZ-TV and KFJZ (AM) an FM radio sister, when it signed on KFJZ-FM 97.1. In May 1960, the Texas State Network sold channel 11 to the NAFI Telecasting Corporation (which was also the parent company of Chris-Craft Industries at the time) for $4 million; the KFJZ radio stations were not included in the transaction, which was completed on August 1 of that year. Subsequently, the station's call letters were changed to KTVT (the last three letters meaning "Television for Texans") on September 1; the change was made due to an FCC rule in effect at the time that prohibited separately owned broadcast stations in the same market from sharing the same base call letters.
On February 23, 1962, NAFI Telecasting sold KTVT for $4 million to the WKY Television System subsidiary of the Oklahoma Publishing Company (OPUBCO), then owned by the family of Daily Oklahoman founder Edward K. Gaylord, who originally named the unit after its flagship stations—WKY and WKY-TV—in the company's headquarters of Oklahoma City. The transaction made KTVT the largest television station by market size to be owned by the media company, which OPUBCO would later rename Gaylord Broadcasting. Under the stewardship of Gaylord and James R. Terrell, whom the company appointed as the station's vice president and general manager, channel 11 became the leading independent station in the Southwestern United States; at the time, it carried a broad range of cartoons, off-network sitcoms, Westerns and drama series, movies and public affairs programming.
In July 1966, KTVT began broadcasting its programming in color, after the station acquired camera, projection and slide equipment to broadcast local and acquired programming in the format; KTVT inaugurated its color telecasts with the station's broadcast of the Miss Texas Pageant, its first local program to be produced in the format.
Like Gaylord's other independent stations, KTVT's programming was mainly aimed at rural and suburban residents in the Metroplex's outer portions. Channel 11 was further aided in its status as it was a VHF station, whereas its future competitors would transmit on the UHF band. KTVT gained its first major competitor in February 1968, when Doubleday Broadcasting signed on KMEC-TV (channel 39), which featured a broad mix of general entertainment and sports programs. The Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) entered into the mix in January 1973, when it launched KXTX-TV (channel 33), with a schedule that featured a mix of family-oriented secular programs and religious programs. However, the former of the two would struggle, leading Doubleday to donate the UHF channel 39 license (by then, assigned the KDTV call letters) to CBN in exchange for acquiring KXTX's license for UHF channel 33; while KXTX continued to grow after the call sign and intellectual unit were transferred to channel 39 in November 1973, KDTV could not compete with either KXTX nor KTVT and shut down nine weeks later.
1971–1993: Expansion into a regional superstation
KTVT's popularity also spread outside of the Metroplex beginning in the late 1970s, when the station began making its signal available to cable television providers throughout Texas and in surrounding states. This attained it a new status as a superstation along the lines of WTBS in Atlanta, WGN-TV in Chicago and WOR-TV in New York City; its signal was transmitted to about 400 cable systems and to C-band satellite subscribers across the country, mainly in the Southwestern U.S. At its height, KTVT was available on nearly every cable provider in Texas and Oklahoma, as well as large swaths of Louisiana, Arkansas and New Mexico.
KTVT remained the Dallas–Fort Worth market's leading independent station into the 1980s, even as it gained three additional UHF independent competitors launched over the course of six months in the early 1980s. National Business Network Inc. returned channel 33 to the air as KNBN-TV on September 29, 1980; however, that station did not begin to make any real headway against KTVT in the ratings during its tenure under local ownership. KTVT gained a fourth independent competitor six days later on October 6, when Grant Broadcasting signed on KTXA (channel 21). A fifth competitor arrived on January 26, 1981, when Liberty Television signed on KTWS-TV (channel 27, now KDFI). KTVT and KXTX—the latter of which had also expanded into a regional superstation around this time—went head to head to achieve status as the strongest independent station in North Texas, with its three younger competitors lagging behind, and were the only independents in the market that were able to turn a profit.