KOKI-TV

KOKI-TV
Tulsa, Oklahoma
United States
Branding KOKI Fox 23 Tulsa (general)
Fox 23 News (newscasts)
Slogan Covering News That Matters (news)
Accurate. Dependable. (weather)
Channels Digital: 22 (UHF)
Virtual: 23 (PSIP)
Subchannels See Below
Affiliations Fox
Owner Cox Media Group
(Cox Television Tulsa, LLC)
First air date October 26, 1980 (1980-10-26)
Call letters' meaning 'OKI", OKlahama's Independent
Sister station(s) TV: KMYT-TV
Radio: KJSR, KRAV-FM, KRMG (AM), KRMG-FM, KWEN
Former channel number(s)
  • Analog:
  • 23 (UHF, 1980–2009)
Former affiliations Independent (1980–1986)
Transmitter power 1000 kW
Height 400 m (1,312 ft)
Facility ID 11910
Transmitter coordinates 36°1′35.8″N 95°40′42.3″W / 36.026611°N 95.678417°W / 36.026611; -95.678417
Licensing authority FCC
Public license information: Profile
CDBS
Website www.fox23.com

KOKI-TV, virtual channel 23 (UHF digital channel 22), is a Fox-affiliated television station licensed to Tulsa, Oklahoma, United States. The station is owned by the Cox Media Group subsidiary of Cox Enterprises, as part of a duopoly with MyNetworkTV-affiliate KMYT-TV (channel 41). The two stations share studio facilities located on South Memorial Drive in southeastern Tulsa; KOKI maintains transmitter facilities located on South 273rd East Avenue in southeastern Tulsa County (near Broken Arrow).

On cable, the station is available on Cox Communications channel 5 in standard definition and digital channel 1005 in high definition.[1]

History

Prior history of channel 23 in Tulsa

The UHF channel 23 allocation in Tulsa was first occupied by KCEB, which signed on the air on March 13, 1954 as the second television station in Tulsa (after KOTV, channel 6). It was founded by oilman Elfred Beck as an ABC affiliate, but it also carried programming from NBC and the DuMont Television Network as secondary affiliations. However, as electronics manufacturers were not required to include UHF tuners on television sets at the time, ABC and NBC allowed KOTV (channel 6) to continue "cherry-picking" each network's stronger shows. The station operated from a studio facility located on the Lookout Mountain section of west Tulsa.

KCEB lost the NBC affiliation to KVOO-TV (channel 2, now KJRH-TV) months before it signed on that December, followed by the loss of the remaining ABC programs that KOTV was not already carrying to KTVX (channel 8, now KTUL) when it debuted in September 1954. This left the station exclusively with DuMont, a non-viable fourth network that would soon fold in 1956. The low viewership that KCEB suffered due to the lack of wide availability led the station to cease operations on December 10, 1954. KCEB's former Lookout Mountain studio facility was sold to original KTVX owner John Toole Griffin; channel 8 moved its operations into that building the following year, where it remains to this day. Beck retained the construction permit, and partnered with Ernest Moody and Claude Hill to bring KCEB back on the air.

In the spring of 1966, Beck was advised by the Federal Communications Commission to either re-activate channel 23 by April 11, or surrender the construction permit. Beck sought buyers for the station; however, several deals fell through. Local jeweler Ernest Moody, Claude Hill (owner of radio station KOCW-FM (97.5, frequency now occupied by KMOD-FM)) and Beck partnered for a planned relaunch of KCEB in September 1967, which never materialized.

KOKI station history

As an independent station

KOKI-TV signed on the air on October 23, 1980; the station was founded by a group of prominent corporate executives and community leaders in the Tulsa area, known as "Tulsa 23, Ltd.", which was awarded the new UHF channel 23 license by the Federal Communications Commission. The partnership was 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 of over nine square blocks and one million square feet of new office and retail construction of downtown Tulsa including the establishment of the Williams Center, the Bank of Oklahoma Tower (the state's tallest office tower at the time, at 52 stories and 660 feet (200 m)) and the Tulsa Performing Arts Center.

As a Fox affiliate

KOKI became a charter affiliate of the fledgling Fox network when the network on October 9, 1986; however, it essentially remained an independent station as Fox only provided an hour of network programming a day at launch: the late-night talk show The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers. It did not expand into primetime until April 1987 (its primetime lineup, meanwhile, did not expand to seven nights a week until September 1993). The station eventually branded itself as "Fox 23". On March 6, 1989, Houston-based Clear Channel Television, Inc. entered into an agreement to buy KOKI from Tulsa 23, Ltd.; the sale was finalized in early 1990. Clear Channel significantly upgraded channel 23's programming, adding more recent sitcoms, higher-quality movies and some first-run talk shows.

KOKI logo, used from 2002 to 2011.

During the 1990s, KOKI gradually eliminated classic sitcoms from its daytime schedule in favor of adding more talk, reality and court shows.[2] More recent sitcoms were added to the station's schedule during the evening hours.[3] In 1994, Clear Channel began managing channel 41, whose call letters had changed to KTFO in 1991, under a local marketing agreement. As children's programs began to disappear from syndication, KOKI increased its syndicated programming inventory with even more talk and reality shows.

In 2001, Clear Channel moved the operations of KOKI and KTFO from its facility on South Yale Avenue into a newly converted state-of-the-art building located at 2625 South Memorial Drive (formerly constructed and owned by the Oertle's Family Discount Store and later rented by a Burlington Coat Factory store), merging both stations with Clear Channel's local radio station properties.[4] On April 20, 2007, Clear Channel entered into an agreement to sell its television stations to private equity firm Providence Equity Partners, which placed the stations into a broadcast holding company called Newport Television.[5]

On August 11, 2011, 25-year-old William Boyd Sturdivant II (who had a history of mental issues and criminal activity including arrests for burglary and drug possession, and also reportedly once walked 250 miles (400 km) from Tulsa to Dallas) was found wandering around outside the facility housing KOKI, KMYT and the Clear Channel radio stations. Sturdivant was chased onto the roof of the station, after which he climbed up to 150 feet (46 m) on the 300-foot (91 m) transmission tower located outside the facility;[6] Sturdivant (who was nicknamed "Tower Man" by local news outlets in Tulsa and around Oklahoma) moved between 75 and 100 feet (30 m) at various points during the more than 150 hour standoff (which became the longest standoff in the history of the Tulsa Police Department, breaking a record that had been set during a 1993 standoff involving a murder suspect that lasted 32 hours[7]). The standoff ended at around 6:40 p.m. on August 16, after a retired police negotiator was sent up the tower on a crane to talk Sturdivant down.[8]

Horizontal version of KOKI logo, used from 2011 to 2014.

On July 19, 2012, Newport Television announced the sale of KOKI and KMYT (along with the Jacksonville, Florida virtual duopoly of WAWS and WTEV-TV) to the Cox Media Group. As Cox Media Group is a subsidiary of Atlanta-based Cox Enterprises, the purchase placed the station under common ownership with the area's major cable operator Cox Communications,[9] creating the first instance in which a company owned a television station and a cable provider in the same market since the FCC repealed its ban on cross-ownership between cable providers and broadcast television stations within the same market in 2003.[10] The sale to Cox also placed KOKI and KMYT under common ownership with Cox's Tulsa radio station cluster (KRMG (740 AM and 102.3 FM), KRAV-FM (96.5), KWEN (95.5 FM) and KJSR (103.3 FM)). The FCC approved the transaction to Cox on October 23, 2012, and the deal was finalized on December 3.[11][12] Despite being no longer associated with its former Clear Channel/iHeart radio partners, KOKI-TV continues to be based from the same studio locations. In the summer of 2017, Cox Radio will move KOKI's Tulsa sister radio stations into the building, while iHeart will move their stations from the KOKI facility and to a new facility on Tulsa's south side.

Digital television

Digital channels

The station's digital channel is multiplexed:

Channel Video Aspect PSIP Short Name Programming[13]
23.1 720p 16:9 KOKI-DT Main KOKI-TV programming / Fox
23.2 480i 4:3 MeTV MeTV
23.3 16:9 Escape Escape

Analog-to-digital conversion

KOKI-TV shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 23, 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 remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 22.[14][15][16] Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 23.

Programming

KOKI-TV carries the entire Fox network schedule (prime time, Saturday late night and sports programming, the Saturday morning infomercial block Weekend Marketplace and the political talk show Fox News Sunday), with program preemptions only occurring due to extended breaking news and severe weather coverage; the station also carries Xploration Station, a live-action educational program block distributed by Steve Rotfeld Productions that is syndicated primarily to Fox stations, on Saturday mornings (although Fox Sports telecasts may subject the block to air in open weekend afternoon and Sunday morning time slots in order to fulfill FCC educational content quotas defined by the Children's Television Act). Syndicated programs broadcast by KOKI as of September 2016 include The Doctors, Crime Watch Daily, The Wendy Williams Show, Family Feud, Modern Family, and Judge Judy.[17]

News operation

KOKI-TV broadcasts 55½ hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with 9 hours on weekdays, 5½ hours on Saturdays and 5 hours on Sundays); in regards to the number of hours devoted to news programming, it is the highest local newscast output among the broadcast television stations in the Tulsa market and the highest among overall in the state of Oklahoma. In addition, the station produces the 10-minute sports highlight program Fox 23 Sports This Weekend, which airs Saturdays and Sundays at 9:50 p.m.

Although KOKI is a relative newcomer to the field of local newscasts, the station has managed to make significant viewership gains in the Tulsa market since the inception of its news department. The station has also gained a reputation in the Tulsa area for its "Solving Problems" investigative reports, helping area residents that have been scammed by local businesses; the investigative unit had been known as the "Fox 23 Problem Solvers" until 2007, when it was changed to its current name in order to avoid confusion with NBC affiliate KJRH's similarly named "2NEWS Problem Solvers" investigative unit.

From the station's sign-on in 1980 until January 2002, KOKI's news programming consisted solely of 60-second news and weather updates that aired during commercial breaks within the station's daytime and evening programming from a small studio. At the time of the network's launch, it was one of only a few Fox stations that were not owned by the network offering some local news programming, albeit KOKI's news presence was relatively minor. On January 26, 1997 (immediately following Fox's telecast of Super Bowl XXXI), KOKI premiered First Weather on Fox 23, a nightly weather forecast segment that aired interspersed within its syndicated programming; it was led by a five-minute segment at 10:00 p.m., with two additional minute-long updates at 10:35 and 11:05 p.m.; First Weather ran on the station until shortly before the debut of KOKI's newscasts.

Clear Channel Communications eventually decided to start a full-fledged news department for KOKI. On February 3, 2002, following Fox's telecast of Super Bowl XXXVI, the station debuted an hour-long nightly prime time newscast at 9:00 p.m.;[18] as a result, it became the first independently produced newscast to debut in the Tulsa market since KGCT's news department folded 20 years earlier in 1982. News programming on KOKI expanded quickly over the next few years. Five months later in June 2002, KOKI added an early evening newscast at 5:30 p.m. each weeknight; its early evening newscast expanded to a full hour the following year with the debut of an additional half-hour newscast at 5:00 p.m. KOKI expanded news programming to weekday mornings in April 2006, when it premiered the four-hour Fox 23 News This Morning (branded as Fox 23 News Daybreak for the first two hours), originally airing from 5:00 to 9:00 a.m. (at the time, it competed with KOTV's morning newscast of the same length, that station moved the 8:00 a.m. hour of the program to CW-affiliated sister station KQCW (channel 19) in January 2008); the newscast replaced paid programming and children's programs that had previously aired in that time period, its syndicated children's programs were moved to Sunday mornings as a result. Two months later in June 2006, the station debuted an hour-long noon newscast, which competes solely against KOTV's own hour-long newscast in that timeslot (KJRH's midday newscast airs one hour earlier at 11:00 a.m., while KTUL does not produce its own midday newscast). On January 18, 2010, KOKI began producing a half-hour weeknight 10:00 p.m. newscast.

On January 16, 2011, starting with the 9:00 p.m. newscast, KOKI became the second television station in the Tulsa market (behind KJRH-TV) to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition. The station also began using a logo and graphics package (a modified version of the package originally created for fellow Fox affiliate KSWB-TV in San Diego) by Hothaus Creative Design that was based on the visual appearance of Fox's owned-and-operated stations. On September 23, 2013, KOKI debuted a half-hour weeknight 6:00 p.m. newscast.[19] KOKI subsequently debuted three-hour newscasts on weekend mornings on January 4, 2014, running from 7:00 to 10:00 a.m. on Saturdays and 6:00 to 9:00 a.m. on Sundays, becoming the second station in the Tulsa market (after KJRH-TV) to carry a morning newscast on Saturdays and Sundays.[20] In January 2014, the station adopted a modified version of the graphics package used by former San Francisco sister station and fellow Fox affiliate KTVU (now owned by Fox), and dropped its O&O-styled logo coloring in favor of a silver and red logo.

The 2000 comedy-drama film Where the Heart Is, which was set in northeastern Oklahoma, featured a fictional depiction of KOKI incorporating live trucks and microphones with flags bearing the station's logo in a scene in which lead character (Natalie Portman) is interviewed by a reporter from the station after giving birth in a Wal-Mart. However at the time of the film's release, the station's only news programming consisted of hourly updates, as its news department would not be formed for another two years.

References

  1. ↑ Cox Channel Lineup Tulsa Area
  2. ↑ KOKI's program schedule for the second quarter of 1997
  3. ↑ KOKI's program schedule for the second quarter of 1998
  4. ↑ Clear Channel Communications Moves into New Tulsa, Okla., Building, Tulsa World (via HighBeam Research), August 25, 2002.
  5. ↑ "Clear Channel". Clear Channel. Archived from the original on 2007-04-25. Retrieved 2012-11-15.
  6. ↑ Man still on station tower, KOKI-TV, August 12, 2011.
  7. ↑ Record-shattering standoff continues into a third day, KRMG, August 13, 2011.
  8. ↑ OU defensive back's father used compassion to coax man down from Tulsa tower, NewsOK.com, August 17, 2011.
  9. ↑ Newport Sells 22 Stations For $1 Billion, TVNewsCheck, July 19, 2012.
  10. ↑ FCC Repeals TV/Cable Cross Ownership Rule, Davis Wright Tremaine, LLP, February 27, 2003.
  11. ↑ "Federal Communications Commission" (PDF). Retrieved 2012-11-15.
  12. ↑ "Federal Communications Commission" (PDF). Retrieved 2012-11-15.
  13. ↑ RabbitEars TV Query for KOKI
  14. ↑ "DTV Tentative Channel Designations for the First and the Second Rounds" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-08-29. Retrieved 2012-03-24.
  15. ↑ "Federal Communications Commission FCC 07-138" (PDF). Retrieved 2012-11-24.
  16. ↑ CDBS Print.
  17. ↑ "KOKI-TV schedule". Zap2It. Gracenote. Retrieved May 12, 2017.
  18. ↑ Fox 23 KOKI-TV; Newsroom Spotlight, Broadcasting & Cable (via HighBeam Research), October 21, 2002.
  19. ↑ KOKI to Add 6:00 p.m. News in September TVSpy, August 7, 2013.
  20. ↑ Tulsa's KOKI-TV Expanding Green Country's Weekend News Coverage Cox Media Group, December 3, 2013 (the press release states the program had been set to run from 7:00 to 9:00 a.m. on Saturdays and Sundays, see schedule for correct times).
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