KWTV-DT

KWTV-DT
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
United States
Branding News 9
Slogan Oklahoma's Own (general statewide corporate)
On the Scene, On the Story (newscasts)
Oklahoma City's Own (local)
Channels Digital: 39 (UHF)
(to move to 25 (UHF))
Virtual: 9 (PSIP)
Translators K21JN-D Erick
K23IY-D Weatherford
K34JJ-D Hollis
K39JH-D Strong City
K46JL-D Altus
K47LR-D Elk City
Affiliations .1: CBS
.2: News 9 Now
Owner Griffin Communications, LLC
(Griffin Licensing, LLC)
First air date December 20, 1953 (1953-12-20)
Call letters' meaning World's Tallest Video
(in reference to its former broadcast tower, which once held the record for the world's tallest transmission tower; the tower was decommissioned after 2009, and dismantled in 2013)
Sister station(s) KSBI
Former channel number(s)
  • Analog:
  • 9 (VHF, 1953–2009)
  • Digital:
  • 39 (UHF, 2003–2009)
  • 9 (VHF, 2009–2010)
Transmitter power 1,000 kW
Height 478 m (1,568 ft)
Facility ID 25382
Transmitter coordinates 35°35′52.16″N 97°29′23.07″W / 35.5978222°N 97.4897417°W / 35.5978222; -97.4897417Coordinates: 35°35′52.16″N 97°29′23.07″W / 35.5978222°N 97.4897417°W / 35.5978222; -97.4897417
Licensing authority FCC
Public license information: Profile
CDBS
Website www.news9.com

KWTV-DT, virtual channel 9 (UHF digital channel 39), is a CBS-affiliated television station licensed to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States. It is the flagship television station of locally based Griffin Communications, and is part of a duopoly with MyNetworkTV affiliate KSBI (channel 52). The two stations share studio facilities located on Kelley Avenue (adjacent to the studios and main offices of the state's PBS member network, the Oklahoma Educational Television Authority [OETA]), and its transmitter facilities are located near the John Kilpatrick Turnpike on the city's northeast side.

On cable, the station is available on Cox Communications channel 10 and digital channel 710 in the Oklahoma City metropolitan area, and on channel 9 on most other cable systems (as well as on AT&T U-verse, and satellite providers DirecTV and Dish Network) in the market.

History

John Toole Griffin, a local grocery magnate and founder of Griffin Foods, decided to apply for a broadcast license with the Federal Communications Commission after noticing while driving around Oklahoma City that many homes in the area had outdoor television antennas installed to receive WKY-TV (channel 4, now KFOR-TV), which debuted in June 1949 as the first television station in Oklahoma.[1] KWTV first signed on the air on December 20, 1953; it was founded by Griffin and his brother-in-law James C. Leake, co-owners of radio station KOMA (1520 AM, now KOKC). Channel 9 initially transmitted its signal from a shorter temporary tower near its Kelley Avenue studios as its permanent transmitter tower, for which the Griffins chose the KWTV callsign (standing for "World's Tallest Video") for the station over using the KOMA calls, was still under construction; when it was activated in 1954, the 1,577 feet (481 m) structure became the tallest free-standing broadcast tower in the world at the time. As of October 2014, the tower is currently being removed and sold for scrap. KWTV's first broadcast was a roll call of station employees introducing themselves and the departments they were employed with.[2]

KWTV logo used from March 1997 to October 24, 2010; the "9" in the logo, which resembles that used by KUSA/Denver and WSOC-TV/Charlotte, was first used (without the box framing) in 1986.

KWTV has been a CBS affiliate since its sign-on (having taken the affiliation from WKY-TV, which relegated the network to secondary clearances), owing to KOMA's longtime affiliation with the CBS Radio Network; it is one of the few American television stations that has had the same callsign, ownership, primary network affiliation and over-the-air channel allocation throughout its history. Todd Storz, creator of the Top 40 radio format, purchased KOMA in 1958. Griffin and Leake bought out the partners that held minority interest in KWTV in 1963; Leake then sold his interest to Griffin in 1968, in return for Griffin's share of two other television stations, KTUL in Tulsa and KATV in Little Rock. By the 1970s, KWTV became the first station in Oklahoma City to record news footage on videotape instead of film. In the late 1970s, it also became the market's first television station to maintain a 24-hour programming schedule. John Griffin retired in 1990, and turned over control of channel 9 to his son David.

On August 18, 1993, KWTV partnered with Cox Cable and Multimedia Cablevision to create a 24-hour local cable news channel through a condition in carriage renewal agreements between Griffin Television and the two cable providers.[3] This channel, News Now 53, debuted locally on December 3, 1996 on Cox channel 53, featuring rebroadcasts and live simulcasts of KWTV's news programs (News Now 53 was initially available only in Oklahoma City proper, expanding to its outlying suburbs after Cox acquired Multimedia Cablevision from the Gannett Company in January 2000); a Tulsa area feed of News Now 53 launched in 2000 after Griffin purchased that market's CBS affiliate, KOTV.

On January 26, 2001, a Beechcraft Super King Air 200 transporting nine members of the Oklahoma State University basketball team (including two players and six members of the coaching staff) and KWTV sports director Bill Teegins (who was also the university's football and basketball radio announcer) crashed in a field near Strasburg, Colorado.[4] The plane departed from Jefferson County Airport following a game against the University of Colorado Buffaloes, when the pilot became disoriented while flying through heavy snow on the way to Stillwater Regional Airport; all ten men on board were killed (two memorials have since been erected in remembrance of the tragedy: one at the crash site, and another outside of Gallagher-Iba Arena at OSU's Stillwater campus featuring a statue of a kneeling cowboy).[5]

Also in 2001, KWTV entered into a content partnership with The Oklahoman, resulting in the merger of both the station and newspaper's websites under the "NewsOK" banner; this collaboration ended in early 2008 (the NewsOK website continues to exist as the standalone website for The Oklahoman). Ironically the Gaylord family, who ran the newspaper from 1907 to 2011 (when the paper's owner, OPUBCO Communications Group, was sold to The Anschutz Corporation), built and signed on competitor KFOR-TV in 1949, and owned that station until 1975. On October 25, 2010, KWTV became the first television station in the Oklahoma City market to carry syndicated programming and advertisements inserted during local commercial breaks (including station and network promos) in high definition.

Digital television

Digital channels

The station's digital channel is multiplexed:

Channel Video Aspect PSIP Short Name Programming[6]
9.1 1080i 16:9 News9 Main KWTV-DT programming / CBS
9.2 480i 9 Now9 Now

KWTV-DT2

News 9 Now is a news simulcast/rebroadcast channel that previously operated as cable-only News Now 53 from December 3, 1996 to March 30, 2011. Owned by Griffin Communications in cooperation with Cox Communications, it also runs a three-hour block of E/I-compliant children's programs on Saturday afternoons.[7]

Analog-to-digital conversion

KWTV discontinued regular programming on its analog signal, over VHF channel 9, on February 17, 2009, as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television (which Congress had moved the previous month to June 12).[8] The station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition UHF channel 39 to VHF channel 9.[9][10] Due to reception issues in parts of central Oklahoma, KWTV was granted permission by the FCC to operate a secondary signal on its former UHF digital channel 39 under special temporary authorization in October 2009, mapped to virtual channel 9.2. On March 9, 2010, the FCC issued a Report & Order, approving the station's request to move its digital signal from channel 9 to channel 39.[11]

On April 20, 2010, KWTV filed a minor change application on its new channel 39 allotment,[12] that was granted on June 10.[13] Short-lived service interruptions began on July 29 to allow viewers to rescan their digital tuners to carry the UHF channel 39 signal. On August 16, 2010, the digital signal on UHF channel 39 added a virtual channel on 9.1, in addition to the 9.2 PSIP channel. KWTV terminated its digital signal on channel 9 and began to operate only on channel 39 on August 30, 2010 at 12:30 p.m.[14]

As a part of the repacking process following the 2016-2017 FCC incentive auction, KWTV-DT will relocate to UHF channel 25 by 2020, using PSIP to display its virtual channel number as 9.[15]

Programming

KWTV-DT currently carries the majority of the CBS network schedule; the only notable preemption is CBS This Morning Saturday, which KWTV does not carry on its main channel in order to carry the three-hour-long Saturday edition of News 9 This Morning as well as the CBS Dream Team block (the program airs instead on News 9 Now, immediately following the News 9 This Morning simulcast). Syndicated programs broadcast by KWTV (as of April 2017) include Live with Kelly and Ryan, Dr. Phil, Entertainment Tonight, Extra and The Insider.[16]

For a brief period in the early 1990s, KWTV preempted CBS News Sunday Morning; it also ran The Price Is Right (at 11:00 a.m.) and The Young and the Restless (at 3:00 p.m.) out of pattern from 1993 to 1999. CBS' Saturday morning children's program block (now branded as the CBS Dream Team) also aired in a split pattern until September 2010, with one half-hour airing at 5:30 a.m., while the block's other programs usually ran from 8:00 to 10:30 a.m. Until March 28, 2011, KWTV ran The Late Late Show (in its Tom Snyder, Craig Kilborn and Craig Ferguson iterations) on a half-hour delay at 12:07 a.m. due to its weeknight airing of Seinfeld (which is now seen on Fox affiliate KOKH-TV [channel 25]). From April 2015 (when the program expanded into an hour-long broadcast) until February 2016, KWTV also aired Face the Nation in separate half-hour blocks (the entire broadcast aired on News 9 Now, which dropped its partial simulcast of the Sunday morning talk show following the station's decision to clear the program in its entirety on channel 9.1, in simulcast with the main feed for the first half-hour; the second half-hour aired "live" exclusively on 9.2 and was replayed on the main channel early Monday mornings).

Sports programming

From 2000 to 2011, KWTV served as the broadcast home for Oklahoma State Cowboys basketball games produced through the Cowboys Sports Network, broadcasting three games each season (usually airing on a Wednesday or Saturday during primetime hours). In 2013, the station obtained the local television rights to St. Louis Rams preseason NFL games from the team's Rams Television Network syndication service (ironically, most Rams regular season games air on KOKH-TV through Fox's contract with the National Football Conference, while KWTV only carries the team's matchups against an opponent in the American Football Conference, CBS' NFL broadcast partner).

News operation

KWTV-DT presently broadcasts 39 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with six hours on weekdays and 4½ hours each on Saturdays and Sundays). Since 2006, the station has operated a Bell 407 helicopter for newsgathering called "SkyNews9 HD" (now branded "Bob Mills SkyNews9 HD," through a sponsorship and brand licensing agreement with Oklahoma City-based regional furniture retail chain Bob Mills Furniture), which was the first in the market to be equipped with a high-definition camera (though helicopter images were not broadcast in HD until October 2010 when the station finally started broadcasting in 16:9 aspect-ratio); this helicopter replaced "Ranger 9", which had a camera installed below the nose (dubbed "EagleVision") in 2000, and was the first helicopter in the state used for daily newsgathering (having debuted one day before KOCO-TV (channel 5)'s "Sky 5" came into use in 1980). KWTV also provides local weather updates for the Clear Channel-owned Oklahoma News Network and Tyler Media Group-owned radio stations KOKC, KOMA (92.5 FM), KMGL (104.1 FM) KJKE (93.3 FM) and KRXO-FM (107.7 FM). KWTV also features select stories filed by Tulsa sister station KOTV-DT during its newscasts, and partners with that station to cover news events within the Tulsa market; both stations co-produce the Sunday sports analysis program, Oklahoma Sports Blitz (formerly OKBlitz.com).

KWTV, which has long been one of CBS' strongest affiliates, has long had a rivalry with KFOR-TV for the most-watched newscast in the market. It had the highest-rated late evening newscast in the United States during the May 2006 sweeps period, and its 10:00 p.m. newscast was the top-rated newscast in the nation in May 2007, and in the market during the February 2012 sweeps. KWTV's newscasts vie for first place with KFOR in most news timeslots. Although the Ogle family has long been associated with KFOR-TV dating back to Jack Ogle's arrival as anchor in the 1950s, with Kent and Kevin Ogle now with that station today (although Kevin's daughter, Abigail Ogle, serves as a weekday morning news anchor at KOCO), Kelly Ogle serves as KWTV's weeknight co-anchor and provides an op-ed segment weeknights on the 10:00 p.m. newscast titled My Two Cents. After the FCC imposed the Prime Time Access Rule that cut 30 minutes from the major networks' primetime schedules – reducing them from 3½ hours to three – in 1971, KWTV launched Oklahoma City's first hour-long 6:00 p.m. newscast (predating KFOR-TV's 6:00 p.m. news hour by 25 years). It was split into two half-hour newscasts at 5:00 and 6:00 p.m. in 1976, bookending the 5:30 p.m. airing of the CBS Evening News. From 1966 to 1971, KWTV used the Eyewitness News format later used by ABC affiliate KOCO.

KWTV places a significant emphasis on weather, and is known for its severe weather coverage and for having the top weather technology in the U.S. Oklahoma native Gary England is the state's longest-serving television meteorologist, having served as chief meteorologist at KWTV from October 16, 1972 to August 28, 2013 (surpassing Jim Williams, who worked at KFOR-TV for 32 years from 1958 to 1990, for the title in 2005); England then moved to an executive position at parent company Griffin Communications as its vice president of corporate relations and weather development. Former KFOR meteorologist David Payne, who joined KWTV in February 2013, took over as chief meteorologist on August 29, 2013.[17][18] In 1973, KWTV installed first television weather radar in the U.S., first utilized on May 24 of that year to cover an F4 tornado that caused extensive damage in Union City[19] (the original film of that televised warning from 1973 was used in later years in promos for the station's weather coverage). The first commercial Doppler weather radar in the nation was installed at KWTV in 1981,[19] and shortly after had detected a tornado near Binger, which was broadcast live by a photographer inside the station's news helicopter.

In 1991, Gary England developed the country's first television weather alert system, First Warning (which updated watches and warnings manually, while the similarly developed First Alert created by KOCO-TV one year later, was the first automatically updated system). KWTV debuted "MOAR" (for "Massive Output Arrayed Radar"; though colloquially referred by England as the "Mother of All Radars") on May 8, 2003 to track an F4 tornado that hit Moore; the radar used enhanced street-level mapping to detect the path of tornadoes and GPS to track the location of KWTV's storm spotters. In 2000, the station introduced "I-News", internet-enabled software for personal computers that provides severe weather and breaking news alerts to users. In February 2007, KWTV debuted "Storm Monitor" (later known by its brand name of ESP for "Early Storm Protection"), which utilized VIPIR technology to measure a mesocyclone's strength and its tornado-producing potential.

From the 1980s to 2006, England and the KWTV weather staff presented Those Terrible Twisters, a program that toured Oklahoma communities during the spring and summer providing tornado safety information and promoting the station's severe weather coverage efforts; these extended to half-hour specials that aired each spring on KWTV, which showcased severe weather footage shot by KWTV storm spotters and behind-the-scenes video of its storm coverage. In 1998, KWTV became one of the first stations in the United States to introduce a computer forecasting system that predicted hourly future weather conditions. During a tornado outbreak that affected Oklahoma City on June 13, 1998, a camera on the station's transmitter tower caught the live collapse of an auxiliary tower operated by KFOR-TV and its former radio sister WKY (930 AM).

In November 2006, KWTV debuted a high definition-ready news set designed and built by FX Group. On August 2, 2010, the 4:00 p.m. newscast (which debuted in 1995 as a half-hour newscast, before expanding to an hour in 1999) was reformatted from a traditional newscast into a more feature and lifestyle-driven program.[20] On October 24, 2010, KWTV became the second television station in the Oklahoma City market to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition (the graphics, logo, "Oklahoma's Own" slogan and CBS Enforcer Music Collection theme that debuted with the change, were also adopted by KOTV that same day upon that station's upgrade to widescreen standard definition newscasts).[21] On January 24, 2011, KWTV expanded its weekday morning newscasts with the addition of a third hour of the program at 4:00 a.m. In September 2013, KWTV expanded its weekend morning newscasts to three hours starting at 5:00 a.m. On August 16, 2014, KWTV expanded its existing 6:00 p.m. newscast on Saturday evenings to one hour, with the addition of a half-hour block at 6:30 p.m.

In April 2015, KWTV restructured the extended forecast graphic seen at the end of its weather segments from a seven-day to a nine-day forecast, both in reference to the station's virtual channel number and to take advantage of the 16:9 frame (likewise, rival KOCO-TV subsequently altered its extended forecast to a ten-day outlook, known as the "5+5 Day Forecast," in reference to its virtual channel). Later that year, a video wall, consisting of several Samsung LCD TVs, was added to the newsroom's back wall, with each set showing video feeds in a 3:2 array on each screen. In August 2015, KWTV adjusted its lower-third graphics – which were originally designed to fit the 4:3 safe zone for TV sets in that aspect-ratio – to fit 16:9, which would allow for the AFD #10 broadcast flag to be used to present its newscasts in letterboxed widescreen for viewers watching on cable through 4:3 television sets.

In February 2016, KWTV launched "Drone 9," a quadcopter – the first to be used for newsgathering purposes in the Oklahoma City market – that would be used to provide aerial footage as a supplement to "Bob Mills SkyNews9 HD".[22][23] Likewise, sister station KOTV in Tulsa, Oklahoma subsequently deployed a quadcopter branded as "Drone 6" (it is unclear as to whether it is just a single quadcopter used by both stations). On July 14, 2016, KWTV announced the implementation of "StreetScope," an Augmented Reality System developed by Churchill Navigation that overlays street and building names over live footage from the station's helicopter camera during breaking news and severe weather events; it is the first television station in the United States to use this technology.[24][25][26][27][28][29]

On December 2, 2016, KWTV unveiled "NextGen Live," a dual-polarization Doppler weather radar designed by Huntsville, Alabama based Baron Services, which conducts atmospheric scans at 6 RPM – a faster rate than the radars operated by its three main competitors, KFOR, KOCO (which both have their own on-site radars) and KOKH (which has a radar system that relays NEXRAD imagery from the National Weather Service) – to detect precipitation in real-time; the system operates at one million watts of power, and scans at both X & Y axis (the system is similar to KFOR-TV's dual-pol radar that operates at the same power and predates "NextGen Live" by ten years.[30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39]

On-air staff

Notable current on-air staff

Notable former on-air staff

References

  1. ↑ Interview with Griffin Communications president David Griffin from the "KWTV 50th Anniversary Special", 2003.
  2. ↑ Interview with longtime KWTV employee Spec Hart from "KWTV 50th Anniversary Special", 2003.
  3. ↑ TV Station, Cable Operators to Provide Local Broadcast Cable Channel, Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News / The Daily Oklahoman (via HighBeam Research), August 18, 1993.
  4. ↑ Witness of Oklahoma State University plane crash describes 'ball of fire', CNN, January 28, 2001.
  5. ↑ N81PF accident description
  6. ↑ RabbitEars TV Query for KWTV
  7. ↑ KWTV to repurpose News Now 53
  8. ↑ List of Digital Full-Power Stations Archived 2013-08-29 at the Wayback Machine.
  9. ↑ CDBS Print
  10. ↑ Tulsa: Oklahoma broadcasters go forward on transition to digital, The Oklahoman (via Tulsa World), February 6, 2009.
  11. ↑ Report and Order for KWTV-DT
  12. ↑ APPLICATION FOR CONSTRUCTION PERMIT FOR COMMERCIAL BROADCAST STATION
  13. ↑
  14. ↑ KWTV to shut down VHF channel 9 permanently
  15. ↑ http://www.nab.org/repacking/clearinghouse.asp
  16. ↑ "TitanTV Programming Guide -- What's on TV, Movies, Reality Shows and Local News: KWTV-DT schedule". TitanTV. Broadcast Interactive Media, LLC. Retrieved June 6, 2017.
  17. ↑ Gary England Celebrates 40 Years on KWTV, TVSpy, October 16, 2012.
  18. ↑ Weather won’t be the same, Oklahoma Gazette, August 28, 2013.
  19. 1 2 "Weathering the Storm: Tornadoes, Television, and Turmoil" by Gary England. University of Oklahoma Press, 1996.
  20. ↑ http://okcnews.xanga.com/731073370/slow-start---good-finish/
  21. ↑ News 9 Launches 'Oklahoma's Own' Campaign in High Definition with New Logo
  22. ↑ Karl Torp (February 17, 2016). "News 9's Drone 9 Takes To The Skies". KWTV-DT. Griffin Communications.
  23. ↑ "WEB EXTRA: News 9 Gets A Drone". KWTV-DT. Griffin Communications. February 17, 2016.
  24. ↑ Kelly Ogle (July 14, 2016). "News 9 The First TV Station To Offer StreetScope Technology". KWTV-DT. Griffin Communications.
  25. ↑ Amanda Taylor (July 14, 2016). "News 9 Takes Breaking News, Storm Tracking To New Level With StreetScope". KWTV-DT. Griffin Communications.
  26. ↑ Kelly Ogle (July 19, 2016). "News 9 Adds StreetScope Technology To Cover Breaking News". KWTV-DT. Griffin Communications.
  27. ↑ Kelly Ogle (July 14, 2016). "News 9 Unveils StreetScope Technology". KWTV-DT. Griffin Communications.
  28. ↑ Amanda Taylor (July 19, 2016). "News 9's StreetScope Technology To Track Exact Location Of Severe Weather". KWTV-DT. Griffin Communications.
  29. ↑ "ARS brings Advanced Mapping to TV News". Churchill Navigation. July 26, 2016. Retrieved June 6, 2017.
  30. ↑ David Payne (November 10, 2016). "NextGen Live: Behind The Radar". KWTV-DT. Griffin Communications.
  31. ↑ David Payne (November 10, 2016). "NextGen Live: News 9 History Of "Firsts"". KWTV-DT. Griffin Communications.
  32. ↑ David Payne (November 10, 2016). "NextGen Live: Radar Speed". KWTV-DT. Griffin Communications.
  33. ↑ David Payne (November 10, 2016). "NextGen Live: Dual Pol Technology". KWTV-DT. Griffin Communications.
  34. ↑ David Payne (November 10, 2016). "NextGen Live: Resolution". KWTV-DT. Griffin Communications.
  35. ↑ David Payne (November 10, 2016). "NextGen Live: Behind The Scenes". KWTV-DT. Griffin Communications.
  36. ↑ David Payne (November 10, 2016). "NextGen Live: Radar Power". KWTV-DT. Griffin Communications.
  37. ↑ David Payne (November 10, 2016). "NextGen: Precision Forecasting". KWTV-DT. Griffin Communications.
  38. ↑ David Payne (November 10, 2016). "NextGen Live: Building The Radar". KWTV-DT. Griffin Communications.
  39. ↑ David Payne (November 10, 2016). "NextGen Live: Radar Unveiled". KWTV-DT. Griffin Communications.
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