KTUL - History

History

Channel 8 signed on September 18, 1954 as KTVX, licensed to Muskogee. It was owned by Oklahoma grocery magnate and broadcast pioneer John Toole Griffin, who also owned KTUL radio (1430 AM, now KTBZ). The station had been licensed in Muskogee because the third VHF frequency originally allocated to Tulsa itself, channel 11, had been reserved for educational use (and is now KOED). The Griffins thus decided to seek the channel 8 allocation in Muskogee, the nearest city in the Tulsa market with a VHF license. UHF was not considered viable at the time.

It broadcast from a converted grocery store in Muskogee. It took the ABC affiliation from Tulsa's second television station, KCEB-TV (channel 23). The station's first broadcast was a college football game between Oklahoma and California, which Oklahoma won. The first two personalities at the station were news anchor Jack Morris and meteorologist Don Woods, with sports director Hal O'Halloran joining later.

The current studios on Lookout Mountain had been built for KCEB in 1954. The second TV station in Tulsa (after KOTV), KCEB briefly carried NBC programming, moving to ABC after KVOO (now KJRH) signed on as an NBC affiliate. KTVX had become the new ABC affiliate, leaving KCEB with DuMont Television Network, a non-viable fourth-network that itself would soon fold.

In 1955, KCEB sold its studios on Lookout Mountain to Griffin; former owner James C. Leake moved the KTVX operation to Tulsa from Muskogee soon after KCEB had folded. KTVX moved there in November; KTUL-AM had been there since April. The Lookout Mountain facility was used as an auxiliary studio until 1957, when the station won Federal Communications Commission (FCC) permission to move all operations, as well as the station's license, to Tulsa (though FCC regulations had been changed a few years earlier so that the station could have kept its license in Muskogee while operating solely in Tulsa). The call sign KTVX is currently used in Salt Lake City, Utah. On September 12, 1957, the day the move took effect, the station changed its calls to KTUL-TV to match its radio sister.

In 1965, KTUL built a new 1,909-foot (582-meter) tower, the second-tallest transmitting tower in the country at the time. ABC had long been a third-place network (it wasn't until the late 1970s that it would rise in the ratings). KTUL's local programming in Tulsa made it one of the network's strongest stations and the Tulsa market leader for the next 35 years.

Griffin sold KTUL-AM in 1961. Seven years later, he sold KTUL-TV and sister station KATV in Little Rock, Arkansas to his brother-in-law, James C. "Jimmy" Leake; Griffin retained control of KWTV in Oklahoma City. The two had shared ownership of the stations for many years. Leake kept KTUL and KATV until selling them to current owner Allbritton in 1982.

Betty Boyd, lured away from KOTV to KTUL in 1965, made KTUL #1 among female viewers with her community affairs program, "The Betty Boyd Show", which was a mix of community affairs, women's topics, and interviews with newsmakers around Tulsa. John Chick, who was at KTUL from 1955 until 1979, made KTUL #1 with children in the 1960s with two afternoon children's shows, Cartoon Zoo and Mr. Zing and Tuffy, at a time when children were just coming home from school. In the 1970s, Chick made KTUL #1 in the 7AM hour with The John Chick Show, a live, local country music show that featured local country music talent and squaredancing. Airing during a time when ABC had no morning news program, Chick's show did better than the Today Show on KVOO (channel 2) and the CBS Morning News on KOTV (channel 6); when ABC premiered Good Morning America in 1975, KTUL pre-empted it in favor of Chick's show. When Elton Rule of ABC demanded to know why KTUL did not air GMA, Leake showed Rule the ratings book, and the ABC executives backed off. KTUL would begin airing GMA in 1979, after Chick left KTUL.

KTUL remained #1 with kids in the 1970s with Uncle Zeb's Cartoon Camp, which replaced Mr. Zing and Tuffy in 1970 and was hosted by Carl Bartholemew as the gruff Uncle Zeb. Following Uncle Zeb were sitcoms that appealed to children, such as The Flintstones, The Lucy Show, Gilligan's Island, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Gomer Pyle USMC. And in news, Jack Morris brought great ratings to KTUL, making the station #1 in the local news hours. When Morris left KTUL for KVOO in 1970, Bob Hower from KOTV took over as anchor and brought even greater ratings to the ABC affiliate, and James C. Leake's heavy promotions of KTUL made the station command the Tulsa airwaves with his "8's the Place" logos and promotion of "The News Guys", KTUL's news team. After the Leake era ended in 1982, KTUL remained #1 in the Tulsa market through the 1980s and 1990s with its selection of syndicated programming, as well as with its popular newscasts. It would not be until 1999-2000 when KOTV overtook KTUL as #1 in the Tulsa market.

In 1987, KTUL's broadcast tower was knocked over by an ice storm, and a new tower (a guy-wired aerial mast, measuring 582 m (1,909 ft)) located near Coweta, was completed in 1988. In 1999, KTUL built new broadcast facilities on Lookout Mountain to accommodate station growth. In 1996, meteorologist Frank Mitchell made a surprise wedding proposal to his co-host, Teri Bowers, during a live broadcast of Good Morning Oklahoma. The proposal made national news and was featured on programs such as American Journal, Geraldo, and Maury.

In 2004, Channel 8 premiered Good Day Tulsa, a live, locally produced hour long program mainly focusing on local businesses, events and entertainment. Good Day Tulsa is the only locally produced program at 9 a.m. in the Tulsa market.

The station made Tulsa TV history in September 2012, by hiring Jennifer Zeppelin- Tulsa's first female Chief Meteorologist.