KCEB (Tulsa)

KCEB, UHF channel 23, was a television station located in Tulsa, Oklahoma, United States, that maintained affiliations with NBC, ABC and the DuMont Television Network. The station was owned by Elfred Beck. KCEB operated for almost ten months from March 13 to December 4, 1954.

History

The station was founded by Tulsa oilman Elfred Beck. KCEB (which Beck named after himself as a reversal of his last name) began construction of its studio facilities atop Lookout Mountain in west Tulsa on August 21, 1953. At the time, electronics manufacturers did not include UHF tuners on television sets ( Congress would later pass the All-Channel Receiver Act into law in 1961, requiring UHF tuners to be included in all newer sets by 1964) and converters or adapters had to be used on sets built prior to that time in order to receive television stations on that band; this factor would play into the station's downfall, as many UHF stations ceased operations during the 1950s and early 1960s due to a lack of wide reception; in June 1954, 82 UHF television stations were on the air in the United States, which was reduced substantially to 24 by the following year. At one point, an estimated 100,000 UHF converters had been sold to Tulsa residents by local electronics retailers (which accounted for about 40% of all households with a set in the area). The station was outfitted with the latest equipment.^[1]

The station first signed on the air on March 13, 1954 as the second television station to sign on in the Tulsa market. It originally operated as an affiliate of NBC and the DuMont Television Network; it also shared ABC programming with primary CBS affiliate KOTV (channel 6), which signed on 4½ years earlier in October 1949. As electronics manufacturers were not required to include UHF tuners on television sets at the time, NBC reached an agreement with KOTV that allowed that station to continue "cherry-picking" stronger shows from both networks. Not long afterward, NBC began allowing KOTV to cherry-pick much its programming, leaving less programming available for KCEB to broadcast.

Soon after KCEB signed on, the Federal Communications Commission issued a construction permit to Central Plains Enterprises (run by a group of businessmen led by Robert S. Kerr, William G. Skelly and Dean A. McGee), owners of local radio station KVOO (1170 AM, now KFAQ), for the market's second commercial television station; Central Plains signed KVOO-TV (channel 2, now KJRH-TV) on December 5, 1954. Months beforehand, NBC, which sought VHF affiliations wherever possible, cancelled its affiliation agreements with KCEB and later KOTV, and moved its entire programming schedule to channel 2 through an exclusive contract with that station. Beck then struck a contract with ABC to make it a primary affiliation. However, under the terms of the contract, ABC reserved the rlght to give KOTV right of first refusal on carriage of all programs.

The situation would grow worse for the station. The Tulsa Broadcasting Company, which was majority owned by grocery magnate John Toole Griffin, signed on Muskogee-licensed KTVX (channel 8, now KTUL) as the new ABC affiliate on September 18, 1954, taking all of the remaining ABC programs, leaving KCEB with NBC and DuMont, the nation's fourth-rated television network. DuMont's days as a network operation were numbered due to a lack of advertising revenue, with most of the network's programming being dropped by April 1, 1955; the network would cease operations in August 1956.

As a last-ditch move, Beck decided to cut back KCEB's operations to a limited four-hour-a-day program schedule in October 1954, relying on filmed programming and NBC programs; the move failed to increase viewership and revenue, resulting in Beck deciding to sign off the station for the last time on December 10, 1954. Four months later on April 5, 1955, Beck sold the KCEB studios and the 40-acre property surrounding it atop Lookout Mountain to the Tulsa Broadcasting Company, to house the facilities of KTVX. Channel 8 initially used the site as an auxiliary studio,^[2] before obtaining FCC approval to move channel 8 from Muskogee to Tulsa in November 1955 under the new call letters KTUL-TV to match its sister radio station KTUL (1430 AM, now KTBZ).^[3]

Brief revival

Beck retained the construction permit for the channel 23 allocation; upon notice from the Federal Communications Commission in 1965, Beck was ordered to return the station to the air by April 11, 1966 or surrender the construction permit to the Commission.^[4] Beck sought outside investment in order to bring the station back on, with Beck selling 65% control of the station to local jeweler Ernest Moody holding and a 25% interest to Claude Hill (owner of radio station KOCW-FM (97.5, frequency now occupied by KMOD-FM)), while Beck retained the remaining 10%. The station briefly returned to the air in September 1967 as an independent station. The station also leased space at the then-recently completed Fourth National Bank Building, to house its transmitter facilities atop the building and to operate studio facilities on the 29th floor of the building. Broadcasting between six and seven hours a day, programming on the station at that time consisted primarily of movies and syndicated programming; plans also called for a nightly primetime newscast at 9:00 p.m. as well as editorials and forum-formatted public affairs programs.

Post-shutdown

A group of prominent corporate executives and community leaders in the Tulsa area, known as "Tulsa 23, Ltd" (led by managing partner Benjamin F. Boddie and investors that included former Williams Companies CEOs John H. Williams and Charles P. Williams, who were also responsible for the redevelopment in downtown Tulsa including the establishment of the Williams Center, the Bank of Oklahoma Tower and the Tulsa Performing Arts Center), was awarded a new station license on UHF channel 23 in early 1980. The group signed on the new station, KOKI-TV, as an independent station on October 23, 1980. KOKI would ultimately affiliate with the Fox Broadcasting Company when that network launched in October 1986; the station (which has been owned by the Cox Media Group subsidiary of Cox Enterprises since 2012) eventually launched a news department in February 2002 under the ownership of Clear Channel Communications, and gradually converted to a news-intensive schedule (carrying 48 hours of newscasts each week as of 2014), in addition to airing sitcoms, drama series, talk and court shows.

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