WFAA - History

History

The station began telecasting on September 17, 1949 as KBTV, an affiliate of the DuMont Television Network and owned by Lacy-Potter TV Broadcasting Company, partially controlled by Texas oil magnate Tom Potter. The channel 8 frequency in Dallas was the third TV station in Texas behind Fort Worth's WBAP-TV (now KXAS-TV, channel 5) and Houston's KLEE-TV (now KPRC-TV). It was the second in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex, and the first licensed to Dallas.

The station became WFAA-TV on March 21, 1950, not long after it was purchased from Lacy-Potter for $575,000 by A.H. Belo Corporation (FCC approval on March 13, 1950) in the midst of a FCC television license freeze from 1948 to 1952. It took its call letters from new sister station WFAA radio (570 AM, now KLIF). The WFAA call letters reportedly stood for "Working For All Alike," and later the radio station billed itself the "World's Finest Air Attraction" (the KBTV call letters were later used by two unrelated stations; from 1953 to 1983 on what is now KUSA-TV in Denver, and currently on channel 4 in Beaumont). WFAA is one of the few television stations west of the Mississippi River with call letters beginning with a W, the Federal Communications Commission normally assigns stations west of the Mississippi call letters that begin with K; W is only used east of the Mississippi. The reason WFAA is different is that its call letters came from its sibling WFAA (AM), whose callsign predates this FCC policy.

In addition to the DuMont affiliation, KBTV affiliated with the short-lived Paramount Television Network; the station agreed to air 4.75 hours of Paramount programming per week in 1949. In 1950, the station switched its primary affiliation to NBC, and also took on a secondary ABC affiliation. DuMont shut down in 1955 after various issues arising from its relations with Paramount, and NBC disappeared from the schedule in 1957 when WBAP-TV boosted its signal to cover Dallas, making WFAA the market's ABC affiliate. In the 1958-1959 television season, WFAA videotaped for a national audience Jack Wyatt's ABC crime/police reality show, Confession, in which assorted criminals explain why they rejected the mores of society and turned to lawlessness.

WFAA was the first station to break the news that President Kennedy had been assassinated on November 22, 1963 about two blocks north of the television station near Dealey Plaza outside the Texas School Book Depository. The station conducted the first live television interview with Abraham Zapruder, who shot the famous Zapruder film, which was processed at WFAA's photo lab, about an hour and a half after the President's death. WFAA and its live remote unit fed much coverage of the assassination and its aftermath to the ABC network over the next four days. The shocking and unexpected shooting of accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby in the basement of Dallas police headquarters, however, was not broadcast live (as other) NBC) or on tape (as on CBS a minute later) by WFAA and ABC as their live truck was positioned elsewhere at the time. ABC was thus only able to show delayed newsreel footage of the historic event. WFAA had purchased a fully equipped, live broadcast studio truck prior to the assassination of JFK, but the truck was not rolled out for the parade through downtown Dallas. In the aftermath of the murder, the staff was told the cost would have been too great for the news department to compensate the production facility for its use.

As local television news grew into a more polished presentation, WFAA became known as a ground breaking station in broadcast journalism as well as for many technological advancements including: the first computerized newsroom, the market's first station to use a helicopter in coverage, live trucks, microwave for live broadcast, use of satellite uplink trucks for broadcasts from around the state and nation and more. WFAA was the first domestic television station to make use of international satellite capacity, broadcasting a live program from Paris, France, in 1969 consisting of interviews with the wives of American POWs in Vietnam. The program was anchored by the late Murphy Martin. It was perhaps the first in the nation to put video taped reports from the field on the air (film was used almost exclusively in local news until the late 1970s and early 1980s), broadcasting the arrival of President Richard Nixon at Dallas Love Field within 30 minutes of his arrival in 1969. (A Sony reel-to-reel video recorder made for home use was pressed into service for this broadcast presented on a regular, midnight newscast.) WFAA uncovered significant stories in the 1980s including information that would lead to SMU's football team being given the "death penalty" in the mid-1980s, as well as the first major media investigation into America's Savings & Loan scandal rooted in Texas.

WFAA-TV began its rise to news dominance in Dallas during the late 1960s and early 1970s under the leadership of News Manager Travis Linn, who had been News Director of WFAA radio previously. Linn later became CBS News Bureau Chief in Dallas before becoming professor and dean of the journalism program at the University of Nevada, Reno. Under Linn, the station expanded news to four and a half hours per day, including a large morning block (before the creation of Good Morning America by ABC) and an unprecedented one hour program at 10 PM each weeknight as well as a fifteen minute newscast at midnight four nights per week.

Building on this success, WFAA dominated the market ratings for local news from the mid 1970s through the late 1990s, with anchors including Tracy Rowlett, Iola Johnson, Bob Gooding, Murphy Martin, Judi Hanna, John Criswell, Chip Moody, John McCaa, Gloria Campos, Lisa McRee, Verne Lundquist, Dale Hansen, and Troy Dungan. Channel 8's approach to news during this period was characterized by an aggressive, all out commitment to get the story and to present it in graphic, visual detail. The station was rewarded with some of the highest ratings of any local station in a major media market. Other notable people who once worked at Channel 8 include Scott Pelley, current anchor of the CBS Evening News, the late David Garcia, who went on to become a network reporter for ABC News, Mike Lee, who covered news in Europe for many years at the ABC News London bureau, Doug Terry, who became a founding reporter/producer at NPR's All Things Considered evening broadcast and created several Washington based television news services, and the late Don Harris, who was killed at the start of the Jonestown massacre and mass suicides in Guyana, South America, in 1978. Harris was working for NBC News at the time. Former News Director turned Belo vice president/news Marty Haag is credited with leading the station's news department to ratings dominance and national prominence, as well as convincing the Dallas Morning News ownership to allow much greater spending on news at WFAA than ever seen before, far surpassing the budgets of other local rival stations. Haag was honored with a special Lifetime Achievement George Foster Peabody Award shortly before his death (date needed). WFAA pioneered community outreach with town hall meetings all over north Texas through its Family First (F1) program. Family First began in 1993 and remains a significant part of the station's commitment to community service.

WFAA became the first television station in America to broadcast a digital signal on a VHF channel (VHF channel 9) on February 27, 1998 at 2:17 p.m. and holds the distinction of broadcasting the nation's first local news program in HDTV. When the station's digital signal went online, its frequency was already in use by Dallas hospitals and there was interference with the medical equipment. The station is one of a few ABC affiliates to broadcast HDTV in a 1080i format; other ABC affiliates broadcast in 720p. Some programming is broadcast from the station's sleek Victory Park studios (News 8 Daybreak, Good Morning Texas, News 8 Midday, News 8 at 5 and 6 p.m., and also when a major event is being held at Victory Park).

WFAA didn't have its current affiliate's logo in its branding until 2007. In 2008, Belo decided to split its broadcasting and newspaper interests into separate companies. WFAA remained with the broadcasting side, which retained the Belo Corp. name, while the newspapers (including The Dallas Morning News) became the similarly named A.H. Belo Corporation. However, the former corporate cousins still have a news partnership.