KFDX-TV (channel 3) is a television station licensed to Wichita Falls, Texas, United States, serving the western Texoma area as an affiliate of NBC and The CW Plus. It is owned by Nexstar Media Group alongside KJBO-LD (channel 35)—an independent station with MyNetworkTV—and co-managed with Fox affiliate KJTL (channel 18). The three stations share studios near Seymour Highway (US 277) and Turtle Creek Road in Wichita Falls, where KFDX-TV's transmitter is also located.
KFDX was the third station to sign on in just over a month in the Wichita Falls, Texas–Lawton, Oklahoma market and the second in Wichita Falls itself. An affiliate of NBC and ABC at launch, it became a sole NBC station when KSWO-TV in Lawton, also an ABC affiliate, added Wichita Falls to its primary coverage area in 1960.
History Early history On May 19, 1951, Wichtex Radio and Television—a locally based company managed under the direction of Darrold A. Cannan, Sr. and Howard Fry and the owner of KFDX (990 AM)—submitted an application to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for a construction permit to build and license to operate a broadcast television station in Wichita Falls that would transmit on VHF channel 3. This application was resubmitted in June 1952, after the FCC lifted a four-year freeze on TV station license grants. A Dallas oilman, Needy Landrum, applied for channel 3 in October; he withdrew the application in early December, and the FCC awarded the license and permit for channel 3 to the Cannan ownership group on December 18, 1952. Construction immediately began on new studios on Seymour Road to house the radio and TV studios as well as the TV transmitter facility.
KFDX-TV first signed on the air at 6 p.m. on April 12, 1953; the first program ever broadcast on Channel 3 that evening was the local program People from Here and There. KFDX was the third television station to sign on in the Wichita Falls–Lawton market, launching one month after the sign-ons of its two principal competitors: CBS affiliate KWFT-TV (channel 6, now KAUZ-TV), which debuted on March 1, and Lawton-based KSWO-TV (channel 7), which had signed on March 8. KFDX-TV was affiliated with NBC and the ABC network at launch; KFDX radio had been an affiliate of the ABC Radio Network since 1947. The station originally employed a staff of 30 people, which, at the time, was the largest staff of any broadcast television and radio station in west Texas; the majority of stock held in Wichtex was owned by members of the station's staff.
In addition to founding channel 3 and serving as the station's original general manager, Howard Fry was best known by children in the Texoma region for his daily program Uncle Howdy's House Party, which originated on KFDX radio and launched a television broadcast that aired concurrently with the radio program. In 1955, Wichtex sold KFDX radio to Grayson Enterprises in order to concentrate on the television portion of the business, splitting it from channel 3. Among the personalities who worked at KFDX-TV during the station's early years was Don Alexander—lead singer of rock-and-roll group Alexander and the Greats, and composer of the 1964 hit single "Hot Dang Mustang", which topped songs from such musicians as Elvis Presley, The Kinks, Frank Sinatra and The Rolling Stones to peak at #6 on the Billboard Top 100—who came to the television station in 1964. For several years until he transitioned away from program hosting duties in 1966, Alexander served as host of Stage Coach Three, a weekday afternoon children's program featuring a mix of cartoon shorts and educational features; as the character of "Pinto Bean", a marshal who appeared alongside his horse sidekick Swayback, he also donned cowboy garb to host afternoon western and horror movies. After filing live reports on the Watts riots, which began as he was starting a planned trip to visit his mother in Los Angeles in August 1965, Alexander was promoted to main news anchor and occasionally headed KFDX's news department as its news director from 1966 until he departed from the station in 1980.
Nat Fleming, a local country and western bandleader, served as host of the self-titled, half-hour afternoon variety program The Nat Fleming Show on channel 3 from the station's inception in 1953 until the early 1960s, which featured a blend of musical performances (performed alongside bandmates Pee Wee Stewart, Elmer Lawrence, Buck White, Pappy Stapp and Tommy Bruce) and comedy skits. Fleming was also the longtime owner of The Cow Lot, a Wichita Falls–based western wear store which shuttered operations in 2006, and typically signed off television commercials for his store with the locally known tagline "You can tell by looking if it came from the Cow Lot" (the store also served as the homebase for the Horn Honkin' Show, a Saturday morning variety program that Fleming hosted for radio station KNIN-FM 92.9). Fleming would be honored with the North Texas Legend Award by The Museum of North Texas History in May 2012.
Clay, Price, and U.S. Broadcast Group ownership
On July 30, 1970, Wichtex Radio and Television, then managed by Fry and Darrold A. Cannan Jr., sold KFDX to Charleston, West Virginia–based Clay Broadcasting Corporation for $5.05 million; the sale was approved on January 28, 1971. Clay owned the Charleston Daily Mail and WWAY, a TV station in Wilmington, North Carolina.
As part of the divestiture of the company's newspaper and television properties, on April 30, 1987, Clay sold its KFDX and its four sister television stations—NBC affiliate KJAC-TV (now Fox affiliate KBTV-TV) in Beaumont–Port Arthur, and ABC affiliates WAPT in Jackson, Mississippi and WWAY in Wilmington, North Carolina—to New York City–based Price Communications Corporation for $60 million; the sale was approved by the FCC on June 23.
In August 1992, KFDX became the first television station in the Wichita Falls–Lawton market to adopt a 24-hour-a-day programming schedule, initially filling overnight time periods following the NBC late night lineup with a mix of syndicated programs, a nightly encore of the station's 10 p.m. newscast, and a feed loop of NBC's now-defunct overnight newscast, NBC Nightside. (Eventual sister station KJTL would follow in adopting a 24-hour schedule in September 1994.) On August 23, 1995, Price sold KFDX and fellow NBC affiliates KJAC-TV and KSNF-TV in Joplin, Missouri to Wakefield, Rhode Island–based upstart USA Broadcast Group for $42 million, retaining ABC affiliate WHTM-TV in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania as its sole television property before its divestiture to Allbritton Communications in 1996 (USA soon renamed itself to U.S. Broadcast Group after USA Network filed a copyright infringement complaint against the broadcasting company).
Nexstar ownership On January 12, 1998, Irving-based Nexstar Broadcasting Group acquired KFDX-TV, KBTV-TV and KSNF from U.S. Broadcast Group for $64.3 million. Channel 3 subsequently gained two sister stations on June 1, 1999, when Nexstar took over the operations of Fox affiliate KJTL (channel 18) and UPN affiliate KJBO-LP (channel 35, now a MyNetworkTV affiliate)—which were acquired by Nexstar partner company Mission Broadcasting, which originated as an arm of its creditor Bastet Broadcasting, earlier that year for $15.5 million—under joint sales and shared services agreements, under which KFDX would handle news production, engineering, security and certain other services as well as handling advertising sales for the two stations. KJTL and KJBO subsequently vacated their shared facility on Call Field Road and relocated its operations southeast to KFDX's studio facility on Seymour Highway and Turtle Creek Road.
In January 2006, KFDX launched Texoma's Weather Channel, a 24-hour weather forecast service—with content selected by the on-duty meteorologist—that features loops of weather radar and satellite imagery, current conditions (including maps detailing actual and apparent temperatures, sustained wind speeds and gusts within the KFDX viewing area), and local and regional forecasts, along with an audio feed of Wichita Falls–based NOAA Weather Radio station WXK31; Texoma's Weather Channel is carried on Charter Spectrum channel 17 and digital channel 1234 in Wichita Falls (the service is not carried on cable providers on the Oklahoma side of the market, including Fidelity Communications in Lawton).
In December 2020, the studio building was evacuated after vandals cut a couple of guy wires to the nearby tower. The tower did not collapse and was repaired.
News operation , KFDX-TV presently broadcasts 27 hours, 25 minutes of locally produced newscasts each week (with 5 hours, 5 minutes each weekday and one hour each on Saturdays and Sundays). Channel 3 also produces the half-hour sports highlight/analysis program KFDX 3 Sports Sunday, which airs after the Sunday edition of the 10 p.m. newscast.
In addition, KFDX produces five hours of locally produced newscasts each week for Fox-affiliated sister station KJTL (with one hour on weekdays). Through the shared services agreement with KJTL, the station may also simulcast long-form severe weather coverage on channel 18 in the event that a tornado warning is issued for any county in its viewing area of southwestern Oklahoma and western north Texas. KFDX primarily competes for the Texas audience with KAUZ, while KSWO has a stronghold on the Oklahoma side of the market; overall, this puts KFDX at second place among the market's local newscasts.
News department history A staple of channel 3's schedule was RFD-3, a long-running early morning agriculture and public affairs program which premiered in 1964. Originally airing weekdays at 6:30 a.m., before the launch of a conventional morning newscast in the early 1990s eventually led to the program moving to a 5 a.m. slot as the latter program expanded, it was hosted for the majority of its existence by Joe Brown, who served as the station's farm director beginning in the early 1960s and also worked as farm editor for the Wichita Falls Times Record News. RFD-3 ended its 47-year run in August 2011, following Brown's retirement from broadcasting. The station launched a similar program, Texoma Country, which originated as a 15-minute segment that aired during KFDX 3 News Today before expanding to a separate half-hour program serving as a lead-in to the morning newscast—as Texoma Country Morning—in 2014 (the program is co-hosted by Mike Campbell and Joe Tom White, who had previously co-hosted a morning news/talk show on KWFS [1290 AM]; White joined the program in 2014, after announcing his departure from KWFS).
For many years, Warren Silver—who originally joined KFDX as a member of its production staff when it signed on in March 1953—served as the station's chief weathercaster and continuity announcer as well as acting as the original host of RFD-3. After the station's sale to Clay Communications, Silver was promoted to a management position as the station's general manager, and headed channel 3's operations from 1971 to 1988. After his retirement, Silver continued to serve as a contributor for the station's newscasts, hosting "The Silver Report", a weekly feature segment reporting on issues affecting senior citizens that aired during the 6 p.m. edition of Newscenter 3 until his death in 2001. Another longtime weathercaster who appeared on channel 3's newscasts from 1954 to 1971 was Tom Crane, who was known by his nickname, "Tom Crane, the Weathervane". After he left KFDX, Crane worked as vice president of City National Bank in Wichita Falls, and later operated local advertising agency Crane & Company from 1980 until his death on July 6, 2009.