KTRK-TV - History

History

The station grew out of the VHF "freeze", when three entities vying for the channel 13 assignment, including the Houston Chronicle, decided to merge as Houston Consolidated Television. They also bought the studio facilities of the defunct KNUZ-TV (channel 39), a DuMont affiliate which had gone dark. As the Chronicle was the largest shareholder in the company, the station went on the air on November 20, 1954 as KTRK-TV, derived from the Chronicle's radio station, KTRH. The station was an ABC affiliate; during the late 1950s, the station was also briefly affiliated with the NTA Film Network.

The original studio facilities were located at 4513 Cullen Blvd (at the defunct Texas Television Center district in the University of Houston campus); this studio later housed KHTV (later KHWB and KHCW, now KIAH, the present channel 39) and PBS member station KUHT (channel 8).

In 1955, the Chronicle bought out its partners. Although this theoretically left the paper free to change its calls to "KTRH-TV" to match its radio sister, it opted not to do so. However, for years it called itself "The Houston Chronicle Station." Soon afterward, the station moved to its current Bissonnet Street location. The studio was the first domed structure in town, preceding the better-known Astrodome by 10 years. Both projects were built by the same architect, Hermon Lloyd. Like many stations located on "unlucky" channel 13, it used a black cat as its mascot.

Early programs involved a heavy emphasis on local flavor and reflected themes of the day. Some of the more popular local shows included:

• Kitirik: a children's oriented program, hosted by an actress in a cat costume.
• Cadet Don: A Space-themed adventure program for children, focusing on the exploits of an interstellar adventurer and the locations he visited. His alien puppet friend Seymour was from the planet Katark
• Dialing for Dollars: A game show of sorts where a viewer would be phoned by the host and would win a cash prize by answering questions.
• Good Morning Houston: The successor to Dialing for Dollars which debuted in the late 1970s and expanded to include discussions on local events and topics important to viewer's lifestyles.

In 1967, the Chronicle sold KTRK to Capital Cities Broadcasting (later to become Capital Cities Communications). CapCities bought ABC in 1986, making KTRK an ABC-owned and operated station. With that distinction, KTRK would become the first network-owned station in Texas. After 1991, the station's only preemption was the first half-hour of The Home Show, an arrangement which continued when the show morphed into Mike and Maty.

Capital Cities/ABC was sold to the Walt Disney Company in early 1996. Not long after, the new Disney-led ownership directed KTRK-TV to clear the entire ABC schedule, though there have been times when local special events are aired in place of network programming (the annual running of the Chevron Houston Marathon is one notable example of this, when the Sunday edition of Good Morning America is pre-empted for live race coverage, anchored by the Eyewitness News team).

On April 30, 2000, a dispute between Disney and Time Warner Cable forced KTRK off cable systems within the Houston market for over 24 hours during the May sweeps period. Other ABC stations in markets served by Time Warner Cable, such as New York City, Los Angeles, and Raleigh/Durham, were also affected by the outage as well before the FCC forced TWC to restore service to those areas on May 2. In 2007, Time Warner traded the Houston franchise for Dallas-Fort Worth's Comcast.