| Oklahoma City, Oklahoma | |
|---|---|
| Branding | Fox 25 (general) Fox 25 News (news) |
| Slogan | Get It First (news) |
| Channels | Digital: 24 (UHF) Virtual: 25 (PSIP) |
| Subchannels | (see article) |
| Affiliations | Fox The Country Network (DT2) |
| Owner | Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc. (KOKH Licensee, LLC) |
| First air date | 1959[1] |
| Call letters' meaning | OKlaHoma |
| Sister station(s) | KOCB |
| Former channel number(s) | Analog: 25 (UHF, 1959-2009) |
| Former affiliations | Educational Independent (1959-1979) Independent (1979-1990) |
| Transmitter power | 1000 kW |
| Height | 475.8 m |
| Facility ID | 35388 |
| Website | OKCFOX.com |
KOKH-TV, virtual channel 25 (digital channel 24), is the Fox-affiliated television station serving the Oklahoma City, Oklahoma television market. It is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group of Maryland, LLC in a duopoly with CW affiliate KOCB (channel 34), and its studios and transmitter are located at 1228 East Wilshire Boulevard in northeast Oklahoma City.
The station broadcasts its digital signal on UHF channel 24, using its former analog channel assignment of 25 as its virtual channel via PSIP. On cable, KOKH-TV can be seen on channel 12 in standard definition and channel 712 in high definition on Cox Oklahoma City and also on channel 12 on most Central Oklahoma cable systems. The station is also available to DirecTV and Dish Network customers within the Oklahoma City market.
KOKH is a typical Fox station with about 30 hours a week of news along with syndicated first run talk/court/reality shows, off-network sitcoms and dramas, Fox primetime network programming and Saturday morning children's programming, and sports.
KOKH-TV discontinued regular analog programming on February 17, 2009. The station remained on its pre-transition channel 24 [2] using PSIP to display KOKH-TV's virtual channel as 25.
On November 4, 2010, KOKH began carrying The Country Network, a 24-hour digital country music network, on digital subchannel 25.2.
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Prior to 1959, channel 25 operated as the ABC affiliate in the Oklahoma City market as the short-lived KTVQ from 1953 until its demise in 1956. Current ABC affiliate KOCO-TV (channel 5) was then operating out of Enid, Oklahoma using the call letters KGEO-TV but moved its operations to Oklahoma City in 1958 in a move similar to Tulsa's ABC affiliate, KTUL-TV (channel 8), which moved its operations from Muskogee, Oklahoma (under the call sign KTVX) to Tulsa in 1957.
The current incarnation of channel 25 dates from 1959, when the Oklahoma City Public Schools signed on KOKH as an educational station. In the summer of 1979, KOKH was bought by Blair Broadcasting. At 6 a.m. on October 1, 1979, KOKH relaunched as Oklahoma's first independent station. It was a typical UHF general entertainment station featuring cartoons, classic sitcoms, and movies. This was shortly before KGMC (channel 34, now KOCB) signed on with a similar format. KGMC actually signed on after November 1, 1979.
By 1983, Oklahoma City had three commercial independent stations and they all struggled for the best programming. In 1986, in order to prevent a hostile take over by some minor stock holders, Blair Broadcasting restructured into Reliance Capital Group LP.[3] Reliance Capital sold all of Blair's domestic television stations to Gillett Communications, effective December 31, 1986.[4] In 1988, Pappas Telecasting made a proposal to purchase KOKH. At the same time it would buy the schedules of KGMC and KAUT (channel 43) and merge them with KOKH's schedule. Fox affiliation would also move from KAUT to KOKH. Channel 34 would switch to Home Shopping programming, while KAUT would become an educational station. In 1989, this sale was canceled.[5] The three stations then continued on with their formats until 1991. In 1989, KOKH was sold to Busse Broadcasting.
In 1991, KAUT's owner, Heritage Broadcasting bought KOKH. Channel 43 was sold to Oklahoma Educational Television Authority (OETA) and became KTLC (branded as "The Literacy Channel"). Heritage merged KAUT's programming onto KOKH, and moved its Fox affiliation over to KOKH.[6] Seven years later, though, KTLC became a commercial station and owned by Paramount Stations Group (now CBS Television Stations Group) and changed its calls to KPSG. It reverted to the KAUT calls in 1998, after the death of founder Gene Autry. Today, that station is owned by Local TV.
After the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City, on April 19, 1995, Fox began to put pressure on the management and corporate owners of KOKH to develop a full fledged news department and broadcast a daily newscast. The creation of the news department and show began in the summer of 1995 and was completed with the first show going to air on May 1, 1996. The primetime newscast has aired in the 9 p.m. time slot, since its inception.
In August 1996, Heritage Media asked for, and received, a listing on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). The following month, it asked for stockholder approval of a two-for-one forward stock split. The forward split was approved. This put Heritage Media in a very marketable position. At that time Heritage Media had two subsidiaries, five network affiliated TV stations and fifteen radio stations. The subsidiaries were ACTMEDIA and DIMAC. ACTMEDIA was an in-store products and marketing company and DIMAC was a marketing client education company. Marketing accounted for 84% of 1996 revenues, while broadcasting accounted for 16%.
In the fall of 1996, News Corporation, the owner of Twentieth Century Fox, Fox Television and many other companies, expressed an interest in purchasing the outstanding stock of Heritage Media. After several months of negotiating, a sale price of $20.50/share was settled upon. The sale took place in late spring 1997, with the approval of Heritage Media stockholders, and with FCC approval pending. FCC approval was dependent upon News Corp immediately divesting itself of all or most of the TV stations, as new ownership would place them over the limit on percentage of market coverage. News Corp's main interest, in purchasing Heritage Media, was the subsidiary ACTMEDIA, as News Corp had already entered the in-store marketing arena. The ownership of ACTMEDIA would make them the largest in-store marketing company in the world.[7]
The Sinclair Broadcasting group was interested in the purchase of the TV stations, but already owned stations in several of the markets, including KOCB, in Oklahoma City. By the end of the summer of 1997, Sinclair had purchased all the broadcasting property of Heritage Media and had immediately sold KOKH to Sullivan Broadcasting for $60 million dollars cash.[8] In the Spring of 1998, Sinclair bought Sullivan Broadcasting and operated KOCB as owned and KOKH under a Local Management Agreement.[9] The Local Management Agreement ended in late 2003, after approval for KOKH and KOCB to be operated as a duopoly.
In the late 1990s, KOKH evolved and moved away from cartoons and classic sitcoms while still running some more recent sitcoms. The station moved toward more talk and reality shows as well as court shows. In the fall of 2002, after 12 years of being known on the air only as "Fox 25", station promos began identifying the station as "Fox Oklahoma City" (or "Oklahoma City's Fox") alternating back-and-forth between the two brandings. It then reverted back to the "Fox 25" branding in 2006.
Sinclair and Fox cut a six-year affiliation contract extension for Sinclair's 19 Fox affiliates; thus, Fox will remain on KOKH at least through the end of 2012.
| Channel | Video | Aspect | Programming |
|---|---|---|---|
| 25.1 | 720p | 16:9 | Main KOKH-TV programming / Fox |
| 25.2 | 480i | 4:3 | The Country Network |
KOKH clears the entire Fox network schedule (nightly primetime, Saturday late night, and Fox Sports programming, and the political talk show Fox News Sunday). It ran the 4KidsTV Saturday morning block until 2009, when Fox discontinued it (it is unknown if Fox will resume children's programming in the future; the block has since been replaced with syndicated children's shows and infomercials). It is one of numerous Fox stations that carries Judge Judy (which airs in the late afternoon) and TMZ on TV (which airs after the 10 p.m. news). Other syndicated programming broadcast on KOKH includes Two and a Half Men, The Big Bang Theory, Whacked Out Sports, American Dad!, Bones and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
Like most Fox stations, KOKH airs a large amount of daytime court shows with syndicated series from that genre dominating the lineup from 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; including Divorce Court, Judge Mathis, The People's Court and Judge Joe Brown (Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory, added in 2011, are the only non-court shows on the daytime lineup). During the 2006-2007 season, it was one of the only stations in the country to air all of the daytime court shows (this ended in 2007, when independent station KSBI acquired the Oklahoma City broadcast rights to the now-cancelled Judge David Young).
The station is also the 'official station' of the NFL's Dallas Cowboys and the Big XII collegiate Oklahoma State Cowboys for the Oklahoma City market, airing shows involving both teams, including the weekly shows of the head coaches of the NFL team and the university's basketball, baseball and football teams. CBS owned-and-operated station KTVT (channel 11) in Dallas-Fort Worth is the overall 'official station' for the Dallas Cowboys, while fellow Fox station KOKI (channel 23) in Tulsa is the overall 'official station' for the Oklahoma State Cowboys.
KOKH aired live nightly lottery drawings from the Oklahoma Lottery[10], with sister station KOCB simulcasting the drawings, after its 9 p.m. newscast from November 2005 until July 2009, when the lottery chose to do computerized drawings instead (a run-through of the Pick 3, Cash 5 and Hot Lotto winning numbers now air around 9:45 p.m., in between the newscast and the Fox 25 Sports Wrap). Powerball drawings continue to air on both stations on Wednesday and Saturday nights at 9:59 p.m. CT; however although Oklahoma is a participant in the Mega Millions multi-state lottery, the Mega Millions drawings are not carried by KOKH or KOCB (Oklahoma City viewers can, however, see the televised Mega Millions drawings via Chicago-based cable superstation WGN America).
KOKH currently broadcasts a total of 34½ hours of local news per week (6½ hours on weekdays, one hour on Saturdays and an hour-and-a-half on Sundays). There is no word yet on whether KOKH will in the future offer midday or early evening newscasts. It is one of a few Fox stations (with an independent news operation) to not regularly run investigative reports and its newscasts have somewhat less of a tabloid feel compared to certain other Fox stations. The station has a relatively significant rate of turnover with its on-air news staff with many staying with the station between one and four years before moving on to another station (weeknight anchor Andrew Speno is currently the longest-serving member of the station's news team, having been with KOKH since 2002).
From October 1, 1979 through July 1991, KOKH aired brief 90-second news capsules under the title Newstouch 25, every hour on the hour, from 6 a.m. through sign-off (sign-off was usually just after 1:30 a.m.). Some early and late updates were pre-recorded. Over the years there were several news directors. The most notable was Ronnie Kaye. The news department also produced several public service shows, including: Meet The Mayor, Woman to Woman and Sunday PM. The list of anchors included Mike Monday, Karie Ross, Felicia Ferguson (1985 Miss Oklahoma), Kelly Ogle (currently evening anchor at KWTV) and Janis Walkingstick.
There was, also, from October 1, 1979 through the late 1980s, a 90-second weather brief called Weathertouch 25 that aired every hour on the half hour. The weather department was developed by Ross Dixon, DBA Weatherscan, and included the first satellite picture colorizer, in the State of Oklahoma and the first colorized radar scan converter, connected to the National Weather Service radar at Will Rogers World Airport. This was a predecessor to Nexrad. Other weather persons were Danny Satterfield and Kevin Foreman.
The station launched its news department with the debut of The Nine O'Clock News, a weeknight half-hour local newscast that premiered on May 1996, originally anchored by Jack Bowen and Kirsten McIntyre. It became the first independently produced newscast in the Oklahoma City market outside of the major-network affiliates (NBC affiliate KFOR (channel 4); ABC affiliate KOCO (channel 5), and CBS affiliate KWTV (channel 9)), since KAUT briefly ran an all-local news format in the early 1980s. It was expanded to an hour in August 1998, and in September 1999, it began airing seven nights a week. It was re-branded the Fox Primetime News at Nine in 2001, and ran national news updates and weather forecasts from Sinclair's News Central in March 2003; resulting in layoffs of meteorologists, sports reporters and other select staffers at Sinclair's local news operations including KOKH, and decreased the amount of time in the newscast devoted to local news stories, as was such the case on other Sinclair-owned stations.
KOKH is currently the only known television station who uses different names for each of its newscasts. KOKH's naming conventions for its newscasts are similar to that of CBS-owned KYW-TV in Philadelphia, which used the titles "Newsday", "Newsbeat" and "The News Tonight" for its morning and noon newscast, 6 p.m. newscast and 11 p.m. newscast, respectively from 1991 to 1994.
In early 2004, KOKH launched a half-hour weeknight 10 p.m. newscast, the Fox 25 Late Edition (ironically KWTV now has a Saturday 10:30 p.m. newscast called the News 9 Late Edition). It is one of a growing number of Fox stations to have a newscast in the traditional late news timeslot (10 p.m. in the Central and Mountain time zones), and one of the only Fox stations with such a newscast without early evening or midday newscasts. In 2006, News Central was acknowledged as a failure and the station resumed an entirely local newscast. In December of that year, KOKH launched a 15-minute sportscast called Fox 25 Sports Sunday. it was then expanded to a half-hour and moved to 10 p.m. three months later. On April 9, 2007, KOKH launched the Fox 25 Morning News[11], initially running for three hours from 6-9 a.m. (other area stations start their morning newscasts at 5 a.m.). On January 4, 2010, the morning newscast was expanded to four hours, now running from 5-9 a.m.
The station does not often air breaking news cut-ins between newscasts unlike most stations, including several Fox stations, though severe weather cut-ins will run when conditions warrant (though during Tornado Warnings, these cut-ins may be of shorter length, unless they are issued for Oklahoma City or the surrounding area). KOKH is one of the only television stations in the country in which the chief meteorologist does not work the evening shift, as Jeff George was transferred to weekday mornings in May 2009.
On October 11, 2010, KOKH became the first station in the Oklahoma City market to live stream its morning, 9 and 10 p.m. newscasts, breaking news and severe weather coverage on mobile phone devices, specifically formatted for the I-Phone, Android, and select BlackBerry and Palm platforms. On January 31, 2011, KOKH added an additional hour to the morning newscast, branded as "Good Day Oklahoma", from 9-10 a.m. weekdays; the extra hour features more interviews and community event information, with news and weather updates at the top and bottom of the hour.
In 2005, KOKH began running a local equivalent of America's Most Wanted (one of several local versions of AMW), "Oklahoma's Most Wanted", airing during the Saturday 9 p.m. newscast, profiling wanted fugitives in Oklahoma. According to the station, more than 80% of the criminals profiled on "Oklahoma's Most Wanted" have been captured as of December 2010.
NOTE: Although the newscasts are each currently known under individual names ("Morning News", "Primetime News at Nine" and "Late Edition"), reporters identify the newscast at the end of reports as "Fox 25 News".
Current anchors
Fox 25 StormWatch Weather
In addition to providing forecasts on KOKH, the StormWatch Weather Team also provides forecasts for KJKE, KKNG, KTUZ, KEBC, and KTLR radio.
Sports team
Reporters
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