KOKI-TV - History

History

The channel 23 slot in Tulsa was first occupied by KCEB, an affiliate of the DuMont Television Network. That station signed off shortly after the failure of the DuMont network on December 10, 1954.

The current incarnation of channel 23 first hit the airwaves on October 23, 1980. KOKI, then branded as "Tulsa 23 - Oklahoma's Independent", was an independent station, the first such station in the Tulsa market. It was also the first commercial television station to sign on in Tulsa in 26 years. The new FCC license had been won and KOKI-TV was created by a group of Tulsa's most prominent corporate executives and community leaders, known as "Tulsa 23, Ltd." The partnership was led by managing partner Benjamin F. Boddie and investors also included John H. Williams and Charles P. Williams, two former CEOs of the Williams Companies who were also responsible for the redevelopment of over nine square blocks and one million square feet of new office and retail construction of downtown Tulsa including establishment of the Williams Center and Bank of Oklahoma Tower, the state's tallest office tower at 52 stories and 660 feet (200 m), and the Tulsa Performing Arts Center.

As reported in the Tulsa World, the ownership team was a "who's who" of Tulsa leadership of the era that also included Robert E. Thomas, Walter H. Helmerich II, C.W. Flint, Robert V. Sellers and Jim Lavenstein, general manager. The station's studios were first located on 46th Place in southeast Tulsa and the initial programming featured a blend of cartoons, older movies, westerns, drama shows, and s few classic sitcoms; the station had fairly good ratings. Still, in terms of programming, the station was mediocre. It generally bought second and third hand programs other stations passed on. The station did not bid for the stronger shows. In fact some sitcoms and other shows were not even airing in the market locally. Its main competitor, channel 41 KCGT (now KMYT-TV), was even weaker and ran mostly network rejected shows, religious shows and barter.

In 1983, Time-Life Inc. (now Time Warner), the parent company of pay cable channel Cinemax, filed a federal trademark infringement lawsuit against KOKI over the use of the slogan "We Are Your Movie Star" (which Cinemax had used at that time). That October, KOKI won its case in Tulsa Federal District Court.

The station affiliated with the fledgling Fox network in 1986, but it remained essentially an independent station since Fox only provided a couple of hours of network programming a day (not programming seven nights a week of programming until 1993), eventually becoming branded as Fox 23. On March 6, 1989 the announcement was made by managing partner Ben Boddie that Clear Channel Television, Inc., a Houston-based company had agreed to buy KOKI. In the late winter/early spring of 1990, KOKI was sold to Clear Channel; Clear Channel significantly upgraded channel 23's programming, adding more recent sitcoms, better movies, and some first-run talk shows.

In the 1990s, KOKI moved toward more talk, reality and court shows and away from the classic sitcoms during daytime. More recent sitcoms were added to the schedule during the evening hours. The station began a local marketing agreement with then-independent station KTFO (channel 41, now MyNetworkTV affiliate KMYT) in 1994, shortly before that station affiliated with UPN in 1995. As the children's shows disappeared from syndication, KOKI moved toward even more talk and reality syndicated shows.

In 2001, Clear Channel merged all of its holdings in Tulsa, including KOKI and KTFO, and its radio stations from South Yale to a newly converted state-of-the-art building located at 2725 South Memorial Drive, formerly constructed and owned by the Oertle's Family Discount Store and later rented by a Burlington Coat Factory store. On April 20, 2007, Clear Channel entered into an agreement to sell its entire television stations group to Providence Equity Partners.

KOKI was seen in a fictional sense in the 2000 film Where the Heart Is, starring Natalie Portman. This was rather unusual since KOKI at the time only broadcast news from a small studio on an hourly basis, as opposed to the more developed news operation that the station has now.

On August 11, 2011, a 25-year-old man with a history of mental issues and a criminal history including burglary and drug arrests, was found wandering around outside the South Memorial Drive studios shared by KOKI, KMYT and several radio stations owned by former station owner Clear Channel Communications. He was chased off onto the roof of the station, where he climbed the 300-foot (91 m) transmission tower; the man, later identified as William Boyd Sturdivant II (who had also reportedly once walked 250 miles (400 km) from Tulsa to Dallas), climbed up to 150 feet (46 m) on the tower and moved between 75 and 100 feet (30 m) at various points during the standoff. The standoff lasted for more than 150 hours (breaking the record for the longest standoff in the history of the Tulsa Police Department, originally set during a 32-hour standoff involving a murder suspect in 1993), ending at around 6:40 p.m. on August 16, after a retired police negotiator was sent up the tower on a crane to talk Sturdivant down.

On July 19, 2012, Newport Television announced the sale of KOKI and KMYT (along with Jacksonville sister duopoly of WAWS and WTEV-TV) to Cox Media Group. Due to Cox Media Group's ownership by Cox Enterprises, the purchase places the station under common ownership with cable operator Cox Communications, which includes Tulsa as a service area. This appears to be the first instance of a company owning both a television station and a cable system in the same community since the FCC repealed its ban on local television station/cable system cross-ownership in 2003. The sale to Cox Media would also place KOKI and KMYT under common ownership with Cox's radio station cluster in Tulsa (KRMG-AM/FM, KRAV-FM, KWEN and KJSR). The FCC approved the transaction to Cox on October 23, and the transaction was finalized on December 3.