KVVU-TV

KVVU-TV

Henderson – Las Vegas, Nevada United States
City	Henderson
Branding	Fox 5 (general) Fox 5 News (newscasts)
Channels	Digital: 9 (VHF) Virtual: 5 (PSIP)
Subchannels	5.1 Fox 5.2 Fox 5 Weather 24/7
Affiliations	Fox (1986–present)
Owner	Meredith Corporation (KVVU Broadcasting Corporation)
First air date	September 10, 1967 (1967-09-10)
Former callsigns	KHBV-TV (1967–1971)
Former channel number(s)	Analog: 5 (VHF, 1967–2009)
Former affiliations	Independent (1967–1986)
Transmitter power	86 kW
Height	384.5 m
Facility ID	35870
Transmitter coordinates	36°0′26″N 115°0′22″W / 36.00722°N 115.00611°W / 36.00722; -115.00611
Licensing authority	FCC
Public license information:	Profile CDBS
Website	www.fox5vegas.com

KVVU-TV, virtual channel 5 and UHF digital channel 9, is a Fox–affiliated television station serving the Las Vegas, Nevada, United States. The station is owned by the Meredith Corporation. KVVU's studios and transmitter are both separately located in Henderson, Nevada, KVVU's city of license: the station's studios are located at the Broadcast Center on West Sunset Road (using the 25 TV 5 Drive street address), while its transmitter is located on Black Mountain, just southwest of the city.

History

KVVU signed on the air on September 10, 1967^[1] as Nevada's first independent station, under the callsign KHBV-TV. The station originally operated from a converted Flying A gas station along Boulder Highway near Sunset Road, while its offices were housed in a modern office building on Flamingo Road. The station was on the air originally from 11 a.m. to Midnight and ran a schedule of movies from the 30's through the 50's, some cartoons, westerns, and a few sitcoms. In 1971, the station was sold to Carson Broadcasting, a company owned by talk show host and entertainer Johnny Carson, who visited the station fairly often. ^[2] It was at that the that the station adopted its current KVVU-TV call letters. By 1975, the station was on the air by 7 a.m. and ran a large amount of movies, cartoons, more off network sitcoms, drama shows, and some westerns. At the time Las Vegas was not in the top 100 TV markets and was at one point number 150 out of a little over 200 markets. Las Vegas was the smallest market to have four commercial television stations including a commercial independent station, 5 KVVU. There were higher ranked markets that only had two stations and lacked programming from either ABC, NBC, or CBS as a result.

Under Carson's ownership, the station often ran R-rated theatrical films uncut during the late night and early morning hours. While the afternoon (1:00 p.m.) and evening (9:00 p.m.) movies would always be different, the same film would be run uncut in the evening and aired in its censored form in the afternoon, but not on the same day. The evening movie generally reran at 1 a.m. almost every day. Films with questionable content were sometimes prefaced by a pre-recorded warning from Carson.

The station's announcer from 1973 to 2001, Ralph Menard, would identify channel 5 in station IDs with the catch-phrase "Henderson and Laaassss Vegas"; Menard died in 2003. Meredith Corporation bought the station from Carson Broadcasting in 1985.^[3] The station's "5" logo for the next four years was also used on other Meredith-owned stations that broadcast on channel 5, including KPHO-TV, WNEM-TV, KCTV and WTVH. Channel 5 remained an independent station until October 9, 1986, when it became one of the charter affiliates of the newly launched Fox network. However, by the time Fox expanded its programming from late nights into evenings in April 1987, network primetime programming initially ran only two days a week, so KVVU continued to be essentially programmed as an independent station. In the 1980s more talk shows were added to the schedule and movies were cut back slightly.

In 1990, the station introduced an on-air mascot named "Rusty the Fox", apparently named after both the station's then-general manager Rusty Durante.^[4] The mascot, an anthropomorphic fox (in actuality, a person in a fox costume), is used for community events and at one time was used for announcements for family-oriented information, the block of children's programming called "Fox 5 Kids Club."^[5][6]

The station moved into its present studio facilities on Sunset Way in the Green Valley subdivision of Henderson in 1991. The station remained a Fox affiliate during an affiliation deal that was struck between Meredith and CBS in 1994, because that network had a long-term affiliation contract with its existing affiliate KLAS-TV (however, KPHO and WNEM would both change their network affiliations to CBS through the deal; KCTV was already affiliated with that network). It was one of only five stations (not counting satellites or semi-satellites) under Meredith ownership (the company having recently sold off WTVH) at the time of the deal. In June 2006, the station's website was redesigned (along with those of four of Meredith's other stations). The old website was operated by the Local Media Network division of WorldNow. Internet Broadcasting operated the site until 2011, when WorldNow began a group deal with all of Meredith's stations.

Digital television

Digital channels

Analog-to-digital conversion

KVVU-TV shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 5, 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 mandated.^[7] The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition VHF channel 9.^[8] Through the use of PSIP, digital television display the station's virtual channel as its former VHF analog channel 5.

Local programming

News operation

KVVU presently broadcasts a total of 40 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with seven hours on weekdays and one hour each on Saturdays and Sundays); in addition, the station's sports department produces Fox 5 Sports Plus+, a 15-minute sports highlight program that airs on Sunday evenings after the 10:00 p.m. newscast.

Prior to affiliating with Fox, KVVU's news programming consisted solely of daily news updates featured during the station's syndicated programming between the late 1970s and 1986. Meredith Corporation eventually started a news department for KVVU-TV; it began producing a 10:00 p.m. newscast in June 1998, the Las Vegas market's first local newscast in primetime, the program originated as a weeknight-only half-hour newscast; the broadcast expanded to Saturday and Sunday evenings in June 2002, followed by the expansion of the newscast to an hour-long program in 2003. For the first couple of years, the newscast was solo-anchored by Angelica Urquijo; the station originally did not have a weather anchor or full-time sports anchor; the sports segments were pre-recorded with voice-over work done by boxing analyst Al Bernstein.

In July 1999, the station added a morning newscast that originally aired from 7:00 to 9:00 a.m. The following year, the program was expanded by 90 minutes with the addition of a news block from 5:30 to 7:00 a.m. News programming on channel 5 would not expand again until September 10, 2007, with the debut of an hour-long block of newscasts during the 5 p.m. hour; with the expansion, KVVU-TV became the only local station in Las Vegas carrying a newscast in the 5:30 p.m. timeslot. One year later on August 4, 2008, KVVU debuted a half–hour weeknight–only newscast at 11:00 p.m. On March 7, 2011, the weekday morning newscast (which consisted of the pre–7:00 a.m. Fox 5 News This Morning and the 7:00–9:00 a.m. Fox 5 News: Live in Las Vegas until 2013, when the program uniformally rebranded under the former title) expanded to 4½ hours, with its start time moved to 4:30 a.m. On July 9, 2012, KVVU debuted a half-hour 6:00 p.m. newscast.

Notable former on-air staff

• Al Bernstein – sports anchor (1998–2002; now a boxing analyst for Showtime)
• Cher Calvin – weekday morning anchor (now weekday anchor and reporter at KTLA in Los Angeles)

Other locally produced programming

In addition to KVVU's local newscasts, the station also produces a locally produced entertainment and lifestyle magazine program called MORE, which takes its name from the magazine aimed at women in their 40s of the same name that is published by Meredith Corporation (the MORE program format originated at KVVU's Portland, Oregon sister station KPTV). The program debuted on September 12, 2006, and features stories about Las Vegas fashion, local cuisine and events aimed at women between the ages of 25 and 49, MORE is broadcast as an hour-long extension of the station's weekday morning newscast at 9:00 a.m. and uses the same staff as the newscast's 7:00–9:00 a.m. block.

In September 2008, KVVU launched an additional hour of MORE at 4:00 p.m. weekday afternoons; one year later, the afternoon edition of the lifestyle program was rebranded as MORE Access and was moved two hours to 6:00 p.m., airing after the 5:30 p.m. newscast; MORE Access later moved to 6:30 p.m. and was reduced to a half-hour show on July 9, 2012 with the addition of a new 6:00 p.m. newscast. A recap program debuted in January 2013 called Best of MORE, a Sunday afternoon show that runs feature stories seen on both weekday programs during the previous week (a weekend edition of MORE Access debuted around the same time).

Repeater stations

KVVU is rebroadcast on the following low power stations:

KVVU is available over-air channel 6 in Baker, California, their only translator in California.

References

External links

• FOX5Vegas.com – Official website
• Query the FCC's TV station database for KVVU
• BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on KVVU-TV