KOTV-DT - History

History

In 1946, the Griffin family, owners of KTUL-AM, assigned Helen Alvarez to make a study of television's chances of success in Tulsa. After two years of research, Alvarez suggested that the Griffins apply for a TV construction permit as quickly as possible. The radio executives decided TV was too risky a venture, and planned to wait a year before going to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to apply for a TV license. Unfortunately, due to a freeze on television applications, the Griffins would face a much longer wait to get into television, but eventually did so when KTVX (now KTUL) signed on in 1954.

Alvarez immediately resigned and began casting about for investors willing to get a station on the air right away. At a party, she was introduced to Texas oilman George Cameron, who was looking to spend monthly royalty checks totaling $50,000 he was banking. Along with salesman John Hill, who was working for a Tulsa wire maker, Cameron and Alvarez formed Cameron Television Corporation and applied to the FCC for channel 6 in Tulsa. With no other applications to consider, the FCC granted a construction permit to the Cameron Television Corporation in the spring of 1948.

It wasn't granted for KOTV, as Cameron had requested, but for KOVB. A typo on the application meant the request had to be re-filed, and in May 1948, the FCC approved the call sign change to KOTV. Alvarez negotiated the lease of the International Harvester dealership and repair shop at Third Street and Frankfort Avenue, and it was converted into what was then the nation's largest television studio. The station still broadcasts from there today. KOTV's transmitter, built in the backyard of Chief Engineer George Jacobs, was eventually hoisted to the top of the National Bank of Tulsa Building in downtown Tulsa. Alvarez had spent a year convincing bank officers that the tower would be both safe and in time, become a local landmark. While the tower was being installed, a workman's wrench fell and struck a woman passing below on the head. She died instantly.

Detractors jumped on the accident proclaiming KOTV was "jinxed" from the start. They took to calling it "Cameron's Folly," and speaking at a Tulsa Chamber of Commerce luncheon, a Tulsa radio executive said anyone investing in KOTV or buying a television set was "foolish." However, Cameron Television continued on, and on October 22, 1949, KOTV signed on as Tulsa's first television station, the 90th television station in the United States and the second in Oklahoma. Alvarez was the station's first general manager, and along with Hill held a minority ownership stake in the station. The station's first broadcast was a test pattern, seen by a handful of viewers across Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri and Arkansas. More than a month later, on November 23, 1949 KOTV broadcast its first local program, a live Chamber of Commerce meeting attended by many of the station's original critics.

A week later, the station presented a "Special Dedication Program" featuring Oklahoma Governor Roy Turner, Tulsa Mayor Roy Lundy, singer Patti Page, Leon McAuliffe and his western swing band and Miss Oklahoma Louise O'Brien. The next day, December 1, KOTV broadcast a two-hour sampling of the top programs from all five networks. Over 3,000 television sets were placed throughout the city for public viewing, some of them set on sidewalks outside appliance stores. After several days of this sampling, the public began to buy TV sets and KOTV began having a small, but growing, viewing audience in the Four States area.

KOTV originally carried programming from all four networks of the time—CBS, ABC, NBC and DuMont. It also briefly carried some programs produced by the "Paramount Television Network," a link between KTLA in Los Angeles and WBKB (now WBBM-TV) in Chicago. During the late 1950s, the station was also briefly affiliated with the NTA Film Network. Even though relations between KOTV and all the networks were smooth, KOTV showed a preference for CBS over the others. At first, network programming was aired about a week after being broadcast live on the East Coast; it would be 1952 before a microwave link with New York City made live network programming possible.

Three hours of programming were filled in the evening. With a broadcast schedule that began at 12:30pm, Channel 6 filled the rest of its schedule with local programming that was broadcast live. The cooking program Lookin' At Cookin' began a 32-year run that first year, broadcast from the nation's first "Telecast Kitchen." Eventually, the show was cut down to a 5-minute show and was retitled Coffee Break, which aired at 10:55 a.m. and pre-empted Douglas Edwards' "CBS Midday Newsbreak." In 1981, the kitchen was shut down.

KOTV had a live wrestling program, and when the station's staff announcer Bob Hower ended his shift as host of the game show Wishing Well, he became Tulsa's first news anchorman, reading Associated Press and United Press wire copy headlines for 15 minutes, four times a week. In 1952, Cameron sold KOTV to another Texas oil magnate, Jack Wrather, for $2.5 million (by comparison, it had cost only $400,000 to build the station). Wrather knew little about television, and persuaded Alvarez to stay on as general manager. He also made her a full partner in what was named the Wrather-Alvarez Television Corporation, later renamed the General Television Corporation.

In 1953, KOTV began airing another live show which aired on Sunday mornings for 42 years: Lewis Meyer's Bookshelf. This program, hosted by author and literary critic Lewis Meyer, was a book review show where Meyer showed off books from his bookstore, located for many years on Brookside Drive in Tulsa. Each Sunday, he would show off books and read some of their content. And each week, Meyer selected the "book of the week." He would review the book of the week, and before closing the program, he always reminded viewers that "the more books you read, the TALLER you grow." Before his death in 1995, Meyer showed off his bookshelf on CBS' Early Show, being interviewed by CBS' Paula Zahn. After Lewis Meyer's death, the show was not replaced, and CBS News' "Face the Nation" now airs in the time slot.

KOTV got a competitor in 1954, when KCEB-TV signed-on on channel 23 as an NBC primary/DuMont secondary affiliate. However, as television manufacturers were not required to include UHF tuning capability at the time, NBC made a secret agreement with KOTV that allowed channel 6 to continue "cherry-picking" NBC's stronger shows. A few months later, KVOO-TV (channel 2, now KJRH) signed on and took the remaining NBC programming. KCEB then moved to ABC, which agreed on condition that KOTV be allowed to cherry-pick its shows as well. When KTVX signed on in 1954, it took all remaining ABC programming, leaving KOTV as a sole CBS affiliate and KCEB 23 with fourth-ranked DuMont. Like many early UHF TV stations, KCEB would be dead before 1954 had ended; DuMont itself would fail less than two years later.

Soon after KOTV became only a CBS affiliate, General Television sold the station to the Whitney Corporation of Indianapolis, which was renamed Corinthian Broadcasting Corporation in 1957. Corinthian merged with Dun & Bradstreet in 1971. In December 1983, Belo bought Dun and Bradstreet's entire television division, including KOTV. In late 2000, Oklahoma City-based Griffin Communications purchased KOTV. The sale made KOTV sister station to Oklahoma's other CBS affiliate, Oklahoma City's KOTV. As mentioned above, the Griffins had passed on bidding for the channel 6 license before eventually launching KTUL.

Griffin upgraded KOTV's facilities to accommodate high-definition and digital broadcasting, including a new transmitter, control rooms, and master-control room. KOTV outfitted its photojournalists with the first digital cameras in the market. In recent years, KOTV also added Tulsa's most-advanced news helicopter, SkyNews 6, which teamed up with Oklahoma City's News 9's SkyNews 9HD to form the state's only newsgathering chopper team.

On June 20, 2007, the station's helicopter, SkyNews 6, was shooting a station promotion when the chopper's rotors struck the dish of a KOTV satellite truck, sending the helicopter spinning out of control and crashing to the ground. Two people, including the chopper's pilot, survived with minor injuries. The Bell 206B helicopter was a total loss. A photo of SkyNews 6 is available at http://www.airliners.net/open.file/1154584/M KOTV debuted a new helicopter on May 5, 2008. The new chopper is also called SkyNews 6. Improvements to the new helicopter include an additional camera on the craft's tail, that shows the side of the chopper in profile on the left side of the screen, while showing the scene on the right side. The new cameras have been rebranded as "SteadiZoom 360".

Since the Griffin purchase, KOTV and KWTV have become very close sister stations to each other, often touting their status as the only locally-owned major network affiliates in Oklahoma. They often share news stories, and also collaborate on Sunday night extended sports coverage branded as the "Oklahoma Sports Blitz."

On October 25, 2007; Griffin announced that it had acquired a plot of land in the historic Brady district of downtown Tulsa on which to build a 50,000 sq ft (4,600 m2). media center that would house KOTV, KQCW and Griffin New Media, which maintains all of Griffin Communications' websites. Ground was broken for the $20 million building on April 8, 2008, but construction was delayed upon the midst of the global recession, construction resumed in early 2011 and the new facility is expected to be opened on January 19, 2013.