KHOU

KHOU

Houston, Texas United States
Branding	KHOU 11 (general) KHOU 11 News (newscasts)
Slogan	KHOU Stands for Houston
Channels	Digital: 11 (VHF) Virtual: 11 (PSIP)
Subchannels	11.1 CBS 11.2 Bounce TV
Affiliations	CBS
Owner	Gannett Company (KHOU-TV, Inc.)
First air date	March 23, 1953
Call letters' meaning	Dual meaning: HOUston HOU = airport code for William P. Hobby Airport
Former callsigns	KGUL-TV (1953–1959) KHOU-TV (1959–2009)
Former channel number(s)	Analog: 11 (VHF, 1953–2009) Digital: 31 (UHF, 1998–2009)
Transmitter power	25 kW
Height	593 m
Facility ID	34529
Transmitter coordinates	29°33′40″N 95°30′4″W / 29.56111°N 95.50111°W / 29.56111; -95.50111
Licensing authority	FCC
Public license information:	Profile CDBS
Website	www.khou.com

KHOU, virtual channel and VHF digital channel 11, is a CBS-affiliated television station located in Houston, Texas, United States. The station is owned by the Gannett Company. KHOU maintains studio facilities located along Allen Parkway in the Neartown neighborhood (near Downtown Houston),^[1][2] and its transmitter is located in unincorporated northeastern Fort Bend County (near Missouri City).

History

The station first signed on the air on March 23, 1953 as KGUL-TV (as in gulf or as in "seagull" ); it was founded by Paul Taft of the Taft Broadcasting Co.^[3] (no relation to the Cincinnati, Ohio-based Taft Broadcasting Company). Originally licensed to Galveston, it was the second television station to debut in the Houston market (after KPRC-TV, channel 2). One of the original investors in the station was actor James Stewart, along with a small group of other Galveston investors.

In 1956, the original owners sold the station to the Indianapolis-based Whitney Corporation (later Corinthian Broadcasting), which became a subsidiary of Dun & Bradstreet in 1971. In June 1959, the station changed its callsign to KHOU-TV (the "-TV" suffix was dropped from the call letters the week following the June 12, 2009 digital transition, as most Belo stations did at the time) and had its city of license relocated to Houston. The FCC license listed both the Houston and Galveston service areas for a time. On April 24, 1960, the station moved to its present studio facilities just outside downtown Houston on Allen Parkway. To this day, KHOU is the only local television station in Houston to have its primary studios located close to the downtown area.

KHOU Studios and Offices in Neartown Houston.

In 1984, Dun & Bradstreet sold the Corinthian stations to the Belo Corporation. In 1998, channel 11 became the first television station in the market to begin broadcasting a high-definition digital signal. The KHOU studios were flooded during Tropical Storm Allison in 2001, resulting in damage to much of the station's offices, including its newsroom. The flooding was so severe, the station had to cease regular programming and instead broadcast a feed from the station's doppler radar for roughly 90 minutes.

In 2002, the Houston Texans NFL franchise began play, as part of the American Football Conference's South Division. As part of the AFC, all afternoon road games (and home games against AFC opponents) are aired on CBS, and are therefore aired locally on KHOU. The Texans are one of two teams never to have been blacked out at home, the other being the Baltimore Ravens.

During Hurricane Ike, which hit the Texas Gulf Coast in mid-September 2008, KHOU's storm coverage was distributed nationwide via DirecTV and XM Satellite Radio, as well as through a live feed on the station's website. On June 13, 2013, the Gannett Company announced that it would acquire Belo for $1.5 billion.^[4] The sale was completed on December 23.^[5]

Digital television

Digital channels

The station's digital channel is multiplexed:

On September 26, 2011, KHOU began broadcasting Bounce TV on its second digital subchannel upon the network's launch.^[7] The station had previously signed on to carry the .2 Network on one of its digital subchannels, although .2 Network never debuted.

Analog-to-digital conversion

KHOU discontinued regular programming on its analog signal, over VHF channel 11, on June 12, 2009, the official date in which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition UHF channel 31 to its analog-era VHF channel 11.^[8][9]

Programming

KHOU has been one of the top-rated CBS affiliates in Texas for over two decades, aided by a strong programming lineup featuring popular syndicated shows like The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Jeopardy!, Wheel of Fortune and omg! Insider. While KHOU does air the Late Show with David Letterman immediately following its 10 p.m. newscast, it has aired The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson on a 30-minute delay (to 12:07 am) ever since the show first premiered in 1995. Because the latter program's original host, Tom Snyder, took calls from viewers during his stint as host, KHOU aired a disclaimer pleading viewers not to call CBS due to the broadcast being tape-delayed (similarly, rival KPRC-TV had notoriously pre-empted and then delayed Late Night with Conan O'Brien for much of its run).

KHOU has been the local television broadcaster of Houston's annual Thanksgiving Day parade, the H-E-B Holiday Parade (formerly the Bank United/Washington Mutual Thanksgiving Day Parade) for well over a decade (channel 11's telecast of the parade is also syndicated to television stations across the South Central United States); as a result, KHOU pre-empts the CBS Thanksgiving Day Parade.

News operation

KHOU newscast title card.

KHOU presently broadcasts 28 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with five hours on weekdays, two hours on Saturdays and one hour on Sundays). Channel 11 has been widely regarded as a stepping stone for many well-known television news personalities, as many of its reporters have gone on to work for national networks. KHOU's best known former on-air staffers include former CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather, NBC News correspondent Dennis Murphy, newswomen Linda Ellerbee and Jessica Savitch, and sports anchors Jim Nantz (now with CBS Sports) and Ron Franklin (now with ESPN). The station's newscasts currently rank second among those in the Houston area (behind ABC-owned KTRK), however they receive decent viewership among 35- to 55-year-olds and suburban audiences. This is noted since as of 2011, KHOU is the only Houston area station whose traffic reports cover suburban areas, in addition to the Houston freeways.

KHOU also has gained a reputation for its investigative reporting staff (currently known as the "KHOU 11 News I-Team"), whose notable stories include its 2000 investigation into defective tire designs by Firestone – which led to the mandatory recall of Wilderness AT, Firestone ATX and ATX II tires, as well as numerous lawsuits (the defective tires resulted in a number of deaths, including that of KTRK reporter Stephen Gauvain) and a story in the early 2000s by former reporter Anna Werner that led to the shutdown of the Houston Police Department's crime lab. The investigative unit has also exposed allegations of dropout rate fraud in the Houston Independent School District, which resulted in the dismissal of several HISD officials.

Beginning in the late 1980s, KHOU hired several high-profile people to its news team. The most notable was former National Hurricane Center director Dr. Neil Frank, who was hired as the station's chief meteorologist in July 1987. In another key move, KHOU also hired former KTRK anchor Sylvan Rodriguez (then with ABC News' West Coast bureau) to anchor the station's early evening newscasts. KHOU also began to use the "Spirit of Texas" slogan and TM Productions' "Spirit" music package, which originated at Dallas sister station WFAA. In January 1989, KHOU revamped the appearance of its newscasts, with an image campaign that included full-page ads in the Houston Chronicle and Post, as well as an on-air promotional campaign that focused more on ordinary citizens throughout Greater Houston than on its news team. With anchors Steve Smith and Marlene McClinton, chief meteorologist Neil Frank and sports director Giff Nielsen as its main news team, along with a new set, graphics and theme music, KHOU began to mount a serious challenge to the other Houston newscasts, leading to a competitive ratings race during the 1990s.

1999 proved to be a breakout year for KHOU, with its newscasts reaching #1 in viewership in several timeslots during the May sweeps period, unseating KTRK during the midday hours, and at 5:00 and 6:00 pm. The station's ratings boost also included an exclusive interview with Serbian and Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic during the Kosovo War, just a month before his indictment. This news came despite the retirement of longtime anchor Steve Smith, anchor Sylvan Rodriguez's eventually fatal bout with pancreatic cancer and the abrupt resignation of fellow anchor Marlene McClinton during one of the station's newscasts.

On February 4, 2007, following CBS' coverage of Super Bowl XLI, KHOU began broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition. On September 7, 2009, KHOU-TV expanded its weekday morning newscast with the addition of the 4:30 am program First Look; despite being the last station in the Houston market to launch a 4:30 a.m. newscast, KHOU was the first station in the market to announce its intentions to do so (three of Houston's major network affiliates – KHOU, KTRK-TV and KPRC-TV – launched 4:30 am newscasts within three weeks of each other in the late summer of 2009). On August 1, 2011, KHOU debuted a new half-hour newscast at 4:00 pm on weekdays.^[10]

News/station presentation

Newscast titles

• The News with Ron Stone (1953–1968)
• Newswatch 11 (1968–1974)
• Newswatch 11 Houston (1974–1975)
• News 11 (1975–1979)
• NewsCenter 11 (1979–1984)^[11]
• 11 News (1984–1987 and 1991–2011)^[12]
• Channel 11 News (1987–1989)^[13]
• KHOU 11 News (1989–1991 and 2011–present)^[14][15]

Station slogans

• "Houston's Way of Looking at the World" (1980–1983)
• "The Spirit of Texas" (1987–2011; used as primary slogan starting in 1999)^[16]
• "It's Time To Choose. 11 News." (1999–2002; news slogan)
• "We Go There" (2002–2005; news slogan)
• "Make Sense of Your World" (2006–2008)
• "Standing By You" (2008–2011; used after Hurricane Ike)
• "KHOU Stands For Houston" (2011–present)

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On-air staff

Current on-air staff^[17]

Anchors

• Vicente Arenas - Saturdays at 6:00, Sundays at 5:30 and weekends at 10:00 pm; also weekday reporter
• Len Cannon - weekdays at 4:00 and weeknights at 6:00 pm.
• Shern-Min Chow - weekdays at 4:00 pm; also weeknight reporter
• Greg Hurst - weeknights at 5:00, 6:00 and 10:00 pm.
• Lisa Hernandez - weeknights at 5:00 and 10:00 pm.^[18][19]
• Lily Jang - weekday mornings on KHOU 11 News This Morning (4:30-7:00 am)^[20]
• Rekha Muddaraj - Saturdays at 6:00, Sundays at 5:30 and weekends at 10:00 pm; also weekday reporter^[21]
• Ron Trevino - weekday mornings on KHOU 11 News This Morning (4:30-7:00 am) and weekdays at noon
• Sherry Williams - Saturday mornings (7:00-9:00 am); also reporter
• Katherine Whaley - weekdays at noon; also weekday morning traffic reporter

Weather team

• David Paul (AMS Certified Broadcast Meteorologist Seal of Approval) - chief meteorologist; weeknights at 5:00, 6:00 and 10:00 pm^[22]
• Brooks Garner (AMS and NWA Seals of Approval) - meteorologist; weekdays at noon and 4:00 pm.
• Mario Gomez (AMS Seal of Approval) - meteorologist; Saturday mornings (7:00-9:00 am) and Saturdays at 6:00, Sundays at 5:30 and weekends at 10:00 pm; also fill-in meteorologist
• Chita Johnson (AMS Seal of Approval; member, NWA) - meteorologist; weekday mornings on KHOU 11 News This Morning (4:30-7:00 a.m.)

Sports team

• Bob Allen - sports director; weeknights at 6:00 and 10:00 pm.
• Matt Musil - sports anchor/reporter; Saturdays at 6:00, Sundays at 5:30 and weekends at 10:00 pm.
• Daniel Gotera - sports reporter; also fill-in sports anchor

Reporters

Great Day Houston (weekday mornings at 9:00 am; female-oriented light talk with sponsored segments)

• Deborah Duncan - host

Notable former on-air staff

References

External links

• KHOU.com - Official website
• Query the FCC's TV station database for KHOU
• BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on KHOU-TV
• McGraw, Dan X. "Gannett buys 20 stations from Belo." KHOU-TV. June 13, 2013.