Fiktiv USA - KPHO-TV

KPHO-TV, virtual channel 5 (UHF digital channel 17), is a CBS-affiliated television station licensed to Phoenix, Arizona, United States. The station is owned by the Meredith Local Media subsidiary of Des Moines, Iowa-based Meredith Corporation, as part of a duopoly with independent station KTVK (channel 3). The two stations share studios on North Seventh Avenue in Uptown Phoenix; KPHO's transmitter is located on South Mountain on the city's south side. KPHO extends its signal throughout northern Arizona by way of more than a dozen translators.

The station first signed on the air on December 4, 1949, as the first television station in Arizona. It was originally owned by a group of entrepreneurs—one of whom, John Mullins, would later launch KBTV (now KUSA) in Denver. Majority interest was held by Phoenix Broadcasting, owners of KPHO radio (910 AM, now KFYI at 550 AM); the television station, which was originally assigned the call letters KTLX, had its callsign changed to KPHO-TV to match its radio sister shortly before its debut. It originally broadcast from studios at the Hotel Westward Ho in downtown Phoenix. The Meredith Corporation purchased the KPHO stations on June 25, 1952. In April 1950, the Lew King Ranger children's show broadcast live on KPHO with a young Wayne Newton as announcer. In 1954, it began airing The Wallace and Ladmo Show, a children's program which aired weekday mornings until 1989—one of the longest-running locally produced children's shows in television history.

As the only television station in Phoenix during the first 3½ years of operation, it carried programming from all four networks of the time: it was a primary CBS affiliate, and had secondary affiliations with NBC, ABC and the now-defunct DuMont Television Network. NBC programming moved to KTYL-TV (channel 12, now KPNX) when it signed on April 1953, followed by CBS when KOOL-TV (channel 10, now KSAZ-TV) signed on in October. KPHO remained a dual ABC/DuMont affiliate (with ABC programming shared between KPHO-TV and KOOL-TV) until February 1955, when KTVK (channel 3) signed on and took the ABC affiliation full-time.

Channel 5 became an independent station when the DuMont network ceased operations in 1956. During the late 1950s, the station was briefly affiliated with the NTA Film Network. As an independent station, channel 5 programmed a schedule of movies and off-network series, along with local newscasts. KPHO-TV was separated from its sister station when Meredith sold KPHO radio in 1972. That same year, channel 5's operations moved to a facility on Black Canyon Highway. During the 1970s, KPHO became a regional superstation that was available on cable television in much of Arizona and New Mexico, as well as parts of California, Utah and Nevada.

KPHO-TV was the sole English-language independent station in Phoenix until 1979, when KNXV-TV (channel 15) signed on with a general entertainment format during the day and subscription-based service ONTV at night (KNXV became a full-time general entertainment station by 1983). Even though channel 5 was the leading independent in the market, the upstart Fox Broadcasting Company opted to affiliate with channel 15 in 1986 after the E. W. Scripps Company purchased the station, promising to upgrade its syndicated programming and to launch a newscast (KPHO's other sister stations, KVVU-TV in Las Vegas and WOFL in Orlando landed affiliations with Fox upon its October 1986 launch, with the latter now owned by the network outright). Although it never did begin a newscast until the final months of its tenure with Fox in 1994, landing the Fox affiliation made KNXV a very strong competitor against KPHO. Early in 1994, Meredith verbally agreed to affiliate KPHO with The WB, which was set to launch the following year in January 1995, though the affiliation was never solidified in a written contract.

On May 23, 1994, New World Communications signed an agreement with Fox to convert twelve of its stations to the network, resulting in a massive wave of affiliation switches throughout the country; locally, KSAZ-TV—which New World was in the process of acquiring from Citicasters – was included in the deal. CBS then sought to find a new Phoenix area affiliate. It briefly wooed KTVK, but its locally based owners, the McFarland-Lewis family, turned the offer down in hopes of renewing its contract with ABC. KPNX was eliminated after the Gannett Company signed an affiliation deal with NBC that renewed the network's affiliation with that station and its sister stations in Atlanta, Jacksonville, and Minneapolis–St. Paul (which would ultimately result in a major affiliation switch in Denver the following year). CBS then approached KPHO, since it was the only area station not affiliated with a Big Three network that had a functioning news department. On June 30, 1994, CBS agreed to a long-term contract with Meredith, allowing KPHO to rejoin the network after losing the CBS affiliation 42 years earlier to channel 10. The centerpiece of the deal was a renewal of CBS' affiliation with Meredith's Kansas City station, KCTV; it also called for another of KPHO's sister stations, NBC affiliate WNEM-TV in Bay City, Michigan, to join CBS. The ABC affiliation eventually went to KNXV when Scripps cut an affiliation deal which called for three of that company's stations to switch to ABC from other networks; CBS had persuaded ABC affiliates WEWS-TV and WXYZ-TV to switch to the network, which was about to lose its longtime affiliates in Cleveland and Detroit to Fox. KTVK replaced KPHO as the Valley's leading independent affiliation in September 1995 after an eight-month affiliation with The WB. Phoenix was one of just four television markets where the CBS affiliation moved from one VHF station to another during the affiliation switches spurred by Fox's deal with New World Communications.

CBS officially returned to KPHO on September 12, 1994, three days after New World's purchase of KSAZ-TV—which became an independent before affiliating with Fox three months later—was finalized. Initially, channel 5 continued to run a couple of cartoons and a moderate amount of sitcoms during non-network hours. By January 1995, the station began taking on the look of a major-network affiliate as the syndicated cartoons disappeared from the schedule; the station then gradually added more newscasts, talk and reality shows. The sitcoms were phased out and moved to KTVK, KUTP (channel 45), and upstart KASW (channel 61). KPHO has generally been one of CBS' weaker affiliates since the 1994 switch, due in large part to the station's lack of a strong syndicated programming inventory. However, its 10 p.m. newscast led among Phoenix's English-language stations in total households during the November 2009 sweeps period. In stark contrast, channel 10 had been one of CBS' strongest affiliates and was at a strong second place in total day viewership at the time of the switch.

In 2014, Meredith Corporation acquired KTVK, making it a sister station. On August 7, 2014, Meredith announced plans to merge the two stations' operations at KTVK's studio in the Central Avenue Corridor, citing its significantly larger size in comparison to KPHO's current facilities.

On September 8, 2015, it was announced that Media General would acquire Meredith Corporation in a cash and stock deal valued at $2.4 billion. The deal was expected to be consummated in June 2016. The combined company was to operate under the name Meredith Media General. This would have been the first change in ownership for KPHO in 63 years. However, on January 27, 2016, Nexstar Broadcasting Group announced that it had reached an agreement to acquire Media General and that Meredith agreed to termination of its merger agreement with Media General.

As a CBS affiliate, KPHO-TV currently airs two of the network's programs out of pattern: due to its hour-long local newscast at 5 p.m., the station runs the CBS Evening News at 6 p.m., a half-hour later than the network's recommended 5:30 p.m. timeslot for the program in the Mountain Time Zone. The station also airs The Price Is Right at 9 a.m., one hour earlier than CBS' recommended timeslot for the game show; this also aligns with the show's Eastern/Central feed during the non-daylight saving time (which most of Arizona does not observe) portion of the year and with the rest of the Mountain Time Zone during DST.

In addition to the CBS network schedule, syndicated programming featured on KPHO includes Hot Bench, Inside Edition, Dr. Phil (all of which also air on KTVK), and The People's Court among others.

Sports programming on KPHO includes select Arizona Cardinals games through the NFL on CBS, primarily home contests where an American Football Conference team is the opponent. Channel 5 also carries CBS' broadcast of the PGA Tour's Phoenix Open held at TPC Scottsdale every February (because the golf tournament is played on Super Bowl weekend, coverage will shift to KPNX in years when CBS has the Super Bowl). Also, any Arizona State Sun Devils and Arizona Wildcats appearances in the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament picked up by CBS will air on the station.

KPHO-TV presently broadcasts 29 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with five hours each weekday; 2 hours, 30 minutes on Saturdays; and 90 minutes on Sundays); combined with sister KTVK, the duopoly broadcasts a combined 103 hours of local news. Unlike most CBS affiliates within the top 50 television markets, KPHO-TV does not carry local newscasts on weekend mornings (but duopoly sister KTVK broadcasts weekend morning newscasts). Atypical for CBS stations located outside of the Pacific and Eastern Time Zones, KPHO runs its weeknight 5 p.m. newscast for one hour; it is also the largest (as well as one of the few) CBS affiliates in the country that does not air a 6 p.m. newscast on Monday through Friday evenings, in addition to having a 5 p.m. newscast; KPHO broadcasts the CBS Evening News in that timeslot instead (in contrast, KPNX and KNXV air their respective networks' evening news programs at 5:30 p.m.).

KPHO-TV has operated a news department since it signed on. When it became independent in 1956, it was one of the few independents of the time with a functioning news department. By the 1960s, the station ran its late evening newscast at 9 p.m., becoming the first prime time newscast in Arizona (years before KSAZ launched its own 9 p.m. newscast as a Fox station). By the late 1980s, the station ran two newscasts a day: a midday newscast at 11:30 a.m. on weekdays and a nightly prime time newscast at 9:30 p.m., this program expanded a half-hour earlier to 9 p.m. by the fall of 1994.

When KPHO reassumed the CBS affiliation in December 1994, the station gradually expanded its news programming with newscasts being added at 5 and 6 p.m. each weeknight; its midday and late evening newscasts were respectively moved a half-hour later to noon and 10 p.m. The 10 p.m. newscast by 1995 only aired for five minutes (which expanded to eight minutes by 1997) on weeknights, followed by a Seinfeld rerun; on January 1, 2001, KPHO expanded the newscast to the standard 35-minute timeslot, which had already been the length of the station's weekend 10 p.m. newscasts. By 1996, KPHO had added a weekday morning newscast; this program later expanded to 4:30 a.m. (almost a decade before it became commonplace for stations to expand their weekday morning newscasts into that timeslot), the program's start time was reduced to 5 a.m. on January 1, 2001.

On March 1, 2009, KPHO-TV began sharing a news helicopter as part of an agreement with KTVK and KPNX. The helicopter is operated by Helicopters Inc. and is branded as "News Chopper 20", a combination of the over-the-air virtual channel numbers of the three stations—3, 5 and 12. On March 14, 2009, KPHO became the fourth television station in the Phoenix market to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition.

On May 8, 2009, KPHO-TV entered into a second agreement to share newsgathering resources, when it partnered with KSAZ-TV and KNXV-TV to join a Local News Service agreement that was originally formed between the two stations' respective owners Fox Television Stations and the E. W. Scripps Company on April 1, 2009 involving stations owned by those companies in Phoenix, Detroit and Tampa. The service allows the pooling of newsgathering efforts for local news events and each station provides employees to the pool service in exchange for the sharing of video.

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KTVK, virtual channel 3 (UHF digital channel 24), is an independent television station licensed to Phoenix, Arizona, United States. The station is owned by the Meredith Local Media subsidiary of Des Moines, Iowa-based Meredith Corporation, as part of a duopoly with CBS affiliate KPHO-TV (channel 5). The two stations—often branded together as "Arizona's Family"—share studios on North Seventh Avenue in Uptown Phoenix; KTVK's transmitter is located on South Mountain on the city's south side. The station's signal is relayed across northern Arizona on a network of translator stations.

Prior to being an independent station, KTVK was Phoenix's ABC affiliate for nearly 40 years, losing its affiliation as part of a shuffle of networks in 1994 and 1995. It was one of the last family-owned major-market TV stations, being owned in part or whole by the McFarland and Lewis family from its inception until 1999.

Channel 3 was the last commercial VHF allocation in Phoenix to be awarded. Prior to the 1948 freeze on new TV applications, there had been one application made, from radio station KTAR, one of the state's largest. In February 1953, however, after the freeze was lifted, a second applicant filed for the channel: the Arizona Television Company. That put the plans of KTAR—which already had television equipment on order—on hold. Originally owned by Buckeye rancher and car dealer Ralph Watkins as well as two other principals, a new stockholder was added to the company in May: former senator Ernest McFarland, who bought a 40 percent interest. Also seeking channel 3 was Herb Askins, a local businessman, but his Desert Advertising Co. dropped out late in the year, setting up a high-stakes showdown between Phoenix's NBC radio affiliate and the McFarland group in hearings in February 1954.

The staring contest, however, ended two months later. In late April, KTAR announced that it would purchase the television station at Mesa, KTYL-TV channel 12, for $250,000, a move that left the Arizona Television Company's channel 3 bid unopposed. Within weeks, a Federal Communications Commission hearing examiner recommended the company be granted a construction permit, which took place on June 11.

The transmitter was built at South Mountain, and a $500,000 studio building was constructed at 16th Street and Osborn Road. The station affiliated with ABC, filling a void that would have been created when existing ABC outlet KOOL-TV announced plans to change to CBS. By the time the station signed on February 28, 1955, McFarland had been elected Governor of Arizona. Channel 3 boasted the first color-equipped studios in Phoenix and the largest in the state.

Channel 3 lost money in its early years, competing against three local stations that each had respected radio affiliates. According to a 1990 interview, in the early 1960s, Walter Cronkite sought to be an investor in the station, be the main anchor, and earn a salary of $25,000 a year, a deal that the company could not afford to make.

Delbert W. Lewis, McFarland's son-in-law, was named president of KTVK in 1975 and general manager in 1980. McFarland bought out the other partners in the Arizona Television Company in 1977.

In March 1984, Delbert Lewis and his wife Jewell McFarland Lewis were named the conservators of McFarland's estate, just three months before the former governor died; as a result, the Lewis family controlled the station completely. Two years later, Lewis would make the two most consequential hirings in station history, poaching a dozen employees from KTSP-TV, including station manager Bill Miller and news director Phil Alvidrez. At the time, KTVK's news product was in its traditional third-place position. In January 1985, Arizona Republic television columnist Bud Wilkinson referred to the station as a "blot on [ABC]'s affiliate ledger" and claimed, citing a conversation with a top network executive, that the network had occasionally tried to move to another station and still was interested in the idea. As late as 1989, ABC executives were in negotiations to move from KTVK to KTSP-TV.

Under Miller and Alvidrez, the station retooled its news department—considered by the mid-1980s as "a joke" in the industry—as "NewsChannel 3" and began a climb to the top of the ratings. The station dismissed its existing weeknight news anchor team and rolled out a new lineup, led by new hire Cameron Harper and former weekend anchor Heidi Foglesong. Lewis bankrolled major investments in people, syndicated programming and equipment and dramatically boosted KTVK's promotional budget. Improvement started slowly but was noticeable by 1988. By late 1990, the station had taken the lead at 10 pm, and its early evening newscasts were posting the strongest numbers in their history; a year later, it had tied perennial leader KTSP-TV in those time slots.

The growth of the company fueled additional media acquisitions. In the span of a year, the Arizona Television Company bought Phoenix Magazine and radio station KESZ (99.9 FM), as well as a production studio. Operating as Media America Corp. (and later MAC America Communications), the group also handled programming responsibilities for the new KTWC (103.5 FM) when it signed on in 1994.

On May 23, 1994, New World Communications and Fox announced a pact that would see KSAZ-TV leave its longtime affiliation with CBS to join Fox. The landmark deal also left CBS looking for new television stations in several other markets, including Detroit, Cleveland and Tampa, and set off a mad dash to secure network affiliations. The dealmaking environment favored station groups with presences in multiple cities, not KTVK—one of the last family-owned major-market stations in the country.

In this environment, Scripps-Howard Broadcasting, owner of displaced Fox affiliate KNXV-TV, found itself in a prime position. Scripps owned two successful ABC affiliates in Detroit and in Cleveland, and CBS was heavily wooing both stations to join its network. KTVK was already in talks for a new affiliation agreement with ABC, more than doubling its hourly compensation rate—but still less than the network was offering to stations much smaller than channel 3. However, the offer was then taken off the table by the network at the advice of its lawyers; a call with Bob Iger revealed that Scripps-Howard—a longtime partner of the network—had told ABC that they were threatening to flip the Detroit and Cleveland ABC affiliates to CBS unless they secured the ABC affiliation for KNXV-TV in Phoenix. Iger wanted to keep KTVK, but Tom Murphy, the CEO of Capital Cities/ABC, felt that he had to be able to offer the ABC affiliation in Phoenix to Scripps if necessary to avoid potential long-term damage to the ABC television network.

Scripps-Howard refused to budge. It demanded the ABC affiliation for Phoenix and even refused $25 million from the network to "take Phoenix off the table". Ultimately, ABC gave in and awarded the ABC affiliations in Phoenix, Tampa and Baltimore to Scripps; in informing KTVK, Iger explained that they "had to" do so. While Tom Murphy fought for the station as it pursued the potential of an affiliation with CBS, that network ultimately chose a deal with group owner Meredith Corporation and its KPHO-TV.

Despite losing its network on January 9, 1995, the Lewises and station management committed to build KTVK into one of the nation's top independents. The station spent some $100 million on new syndicated programming, including Mad About You and Frasier, and broke ground on a new studio center to house its growing operations. The news department was expanded with 20 new staffers. Media America struck a local marketing agreement to operate the new KASW (channel 61) with The WB—which would air on KTVK until KASW launched in September 1995—and children's programming, and it launched the AZ News Channel, a cable offering on Cox Communications systems featuring breaking news and replays of KTVK newscasts that had been in the planning stages since 1993. Another large acquisition came in the form of sports rights to the expansion Arizona Diamondbacks baseball team, with channel 3 airing half of the team's games beginning in the 1998 season. The station remained Phoenix's news leader in most time slots, with the exception of 10 pm, when strong NBC programming gave KPNX the lead.

In the fall of 1998, KTVK briefly aired The Howard Stern Radio Show; both KTVK (which aired the program after its 10 p.m. news) and Lubbock, Texas Fox affiliate KJTV-TV pulled the program from their schedules after two episodes.

In what Del Lewis described as "the most difficult decision our family has ever made", MAC America sold KTVK and its other remaining assets to the Belo Corporation of Dallas, Texas, for $315 million in July 1999. The Lewises cited the costs of conversion to digital television, economies of scale that station groups had in purchasing syndicated programming, and competition from cable and satellite TV in their decision to sell; the transaction capped two years of selling the rest of the company, including Phoenix Magazine, the production facility, and the radio stations, which had suffered from the needed investments in programming and news expansion at KTVK. Later that year, Belo announced that it would purchase KASW from Gregory Brooks, forming the first television duopoly in the Phoenix market just as they were being legalized. Bill Miller retired a year later.

In 2000, Belo and Cox expanded their existing partnership with a new Spanish-language channel, ¡Más! Arizona, that launched on October 16 of that year. KTVK lost the Diamondbacks after the 2007 season, when the team opted to move all of its regional telecasts to cable on regional sports network Fox Sports Arizona.

On July 27, 2007, KTVK's news helicopter "News Chopper 3" was involved in a mid-air collision when another news helicopter, belonging to KNXV-TV, struck it from behind. The collision occurred above Steele Indian School Park (near Third Street and Indian School Road), while both aircraft were covering a police pursuit in downtown Phoenix. All four people aboard both helicopters were killed, including KTVK pilot Scott Bowerbank and photographer Jim Cox. An investigation conducted by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) determined that the accident was caused by both pilots' inability to see one another and avoid a collision with the other helicopter.

The helicopter collision resulted in the establishment of shared news helicopters in the Phoenix market; while KTVK initially shared a helicopter with KPHO-TV and KPNX, all four Phoenix news operations now share a single helicopter.

On June 13, 2013, the Gannett Company, the owner of KPNX and the Arizona Republic, acquired Belo. As FCC rules restrict one company from owning more than two television stations in the same market, Gannett announced that it would spin off KTVK and KASW to Sander Media, LLC (operated by former Belo executive Jack Sander). While Gannett intended to provide services to the stations through a shared services agreement, KTVK and KASW's operations would have remained largely separate from KPNX and the Republic. Despite objections to the Gannett-Belo merger by anti-consolidation groups (such as the Free Press) and pay television providers (due to ownership conflicts involving television stations and newspapers both companies owned in other markets, the use of Sander as a third-party licensee to buy stations that would be operated by the owner of a same-market competitor, concerns over any future operational consolidation of the stations involved in the deal, and the Gannett and Sander stations colluding in retransmission consent negotiations), the FCC granted approval of the deal on December 20.

As the sale was completed on December 23, 2013, Sander/Gannett then sold KTVK to the Meredith Corporation, owner of CBS affiliate KPHO-TV. The license assets of KASW were sold to SagamoreHill Broadcasting, with Meredith to operate that station through a shared services agreement. However, as a voluntary condition of the transaction's approval, that station was instead sold off to the Nexstar Broadcasting Group. The sale was approved on June 16, 2014, and completed on June 19. On August 7, 2014, Meredith bought the station's studio, with an intent to re-locate KPHO into the larger facilities of KTVK.

Syndicated programs currently on KTVK include PeopleTV, Inside Edition, Entertainment Tonight, Hot Bench, Dr. Phil, The Drew Barrymore Show, The Kelly Clarkson Show, Mom, Last Man Standing, and Pawn Stars. Even with the station's loss of the ABC affiliation in 1995, KTVK overall has been one of the nation's strongest and most successful independent stations.

Since Meredith/KPHO's acquisition of KTVK, they also act as a secondary affiliate of CBS in certain situations, including during KPHO's simulcasts of NFL Network's Thursday Night Football games featuring the Arizona Cardinals.

KTVK also airs a limited amount of non-news local programming. One of the station's offerings, the local pet program Pets on Parade, is the longest-running local TV show in Arizona, having first been broadcast in December 1958. In 2010, the station launched the weekly political program Politics Unplugged.

KTVK presently broadcasts 74 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with 12 hours each weekday and seven hours each on Saturdays and Sundays); in regards to the number of hours devoted to news programming, it is the highest local newscast output among all broadcast television stations in the state of Arizona, surpassing Fox owned-and-operated station KSAZ (which runs 62½ hours each week). The station's sports department also produces a half-hour sports wrap-up program called the 3TV Sports Show, airing on Sunday evenings after the 10 p.m. newscast.

KTVK had traditionally been the third-rated local station for news and had "long been viewed as a loser", with stints as "Total News" and later "Eyewitness News"; while the station briefly had momentum under Cecil Tuck in the early 1980s, it was unable to escape the ratings basement. The station frequently attempted to lure personalities from competing stations, with mixed results: Mary Jo West, the first female anchor in Phoenix at KOOL/KTSP, returned from a job at CBS News in 1983, but channel 3 was unsuccessful in hiring anchors from KPNX. West left in the summer of 1986.

The station managed to shed its third-place positioning and become the market leader after the hiring of Miller and Alvidrez in 1986. However, the loss of ABC affiliation led to major changes for KTVK's news department. Chief among them was the launch of a three-hour morning newscast, Good Morning Arizona, initially hosted by Jodi Applegate, who would leave KTVK to host the weekend editions of The Today Show in 1996. By that time, Good Morning Arizona had beaten out all of its local and national competitors in the ratings. The station also transformed its 5 and 6 p.m. newscasts into the 90-minute Good Evening Arizona, and when KASW launched in 1995, KTVK produced a 9 p.m. newscast for the new station.

KTVK itself, however, was later to prime time news than many independent stations. In 1996, it instead relaunched its 10 p.m. newscast as "Tonight Arizona", which later became "NewShow" and "The News Show". This changed in 2008, when the station replaced 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. broadcasts with a 9 p.m. newscast and expanded Good Morning Arizona, bringing it to 52 hours a week of newscasts; a 10 p.m. broadcast was later reinstated in 2011.

KTVK was also involved with news production and simulcasts for the Tucson market when Belo owned and operated KMSB, Tucson's Fox affiliate. In 2003, KMSB began a 9 p.m. newscast, which originally was produced in Phoenix and used news reporting from KMSB-employed reporters and from Tucson NBC affiliate KVOA. Additionally, from 2003 to 2012, KMSB simulcast Good Morning Arizona.