KDFW

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Coordinates: 32°35′7.2″N 96°58′42.1″W / 32.585333°N 96.978361°W / 32.585333; -96.978361
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KDFW-TV
)
For the airport serving Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas assigned the ICAO code KDFW, see
Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport
.
Not to be confused with KFWD or KFDW-TV.

KDFW
kW
HAAT510 m (1,673 ft)
Transmitter coordinates32°35′7.2″N 96°58′42.1″W / 32.585333°N 96.978361°W / 32.585333; -96.978361
Translator(s)KDFI-DT 27.4 (UHF) Dallas
Links
Public license information
Websitewww.fox4news.com

KDFW (channel 4) is a

owned and operated by the network's Fox Television Stations division alongside MyNetworkTV station KDFI (channel 27, also licensed to Dallas). The two stations share studios on North Griffin Street in downtown Dallas; KDFW's transmitter is located in Cedar Hill, Texas
.

History

As a CBS affiliate

Times-Herald ownership

On August 20, 1945, the KRLD Radio Corp.—a subsidiary of the now-defunct

Daystar owned-and-operated station—over that allocation on September 1, 1988.)[3][4] The FCC Broadcast Bureau granted the license to the Times Herald on September 13, 1946.[5]

The newspaper chose to assign KRLD-TV for use as the television station's

call letters; the base KRLD callsign had been used by the Times Herald-owned radio station on 1080 AM – a combined reference to both Edwin J. Kiest, an original investor and one-time owner of the Times Herald, and KRLD (AM), and the radio station's founding owner, Radio Laboratories of Dallas (which changed its name from Dallas Radio Laboratories as it sought the radio permit upon discovering that the KDRL calls had already been assigned for maritime use) – since it signed on its original 1040 AM frequency in October 1926, and applied to its FM sister on 92.5 (now KZPS) upon its March 1948 sign-on.[6]

The station began

Fort Worth-licensed WBAP-TV (channel 5, now KXAS-TV), all signing on within a 15-month timeframe. It was also the fourth Texas-based television station to be granted a license by the FCC (along with WBAP-TV, KBTV and NBC affiliate KLEE-TV [now KPRC-TV
]).

Channel 4 originally carried programming from

CBS Radio Network's longtime relationship with KRLD (AM), which became the first radio station in Texas to affiliate with the television network's radio predecessor in 1927 (when the station was transmitting at 1040 AM); it was the first Metroplex-area television station to have maintained a singular network affiliation from its sign-on. The station originally broadcast for 4½ hours each weekday (from 7:30 a.m. to noon) and for four hours per day (from noon to 5 p.m.) on Saturdays and Saturdays. Among the local programs on channel 4 in its early years included O.Kay! Mr. Munn (hosted by an artist drawing visual interpretations of various song lyrics, predating the advent of the music video
) and Confessions (a series featuring interviews with incarcerated criminals from the Dallas County Jail revealing why they committed the crimes they were convicted of).

The station initially operated from studio facilities located inside the Adolphus Hotel (between Commerce and Main Streets, north of the Times Herald Building) in downtown Dallas. The building—which also housed KRLD radio's facilities at the time—was used on a temporary basis until a permanent broadcast facility then under construction within the Times Herald's Herald Square building (at 1101 Patterson Street, which has since been demolished and converted into a parking lot) was completed. The tower that transmitted its signal (supporting microwave and remote antennas) was also based on the studio grounds. The station's 586-foot (179 m) transmission tower was located on Griffin Street and San Jacinto Avenue; at the time it was incorrectly designated as the tallest free-standing television transmission tower in the world. While it was amongst the tallest, taller TV towers had already been erected in Columbus, Ohio; Buffalo, New York and St. Paul, Minnesota. Nonetheless, the tower provided a signal that spanned approximately 90 miles (145 km) from the site. By 1954, KRLD-TV expanded its broadcast day to an 18-hour daily schedule (running from 6 a.m. to midnight). In May 1955, the station began construction of a new 1,521-foot (464 m)-tall tower in Cedar Hill. At the time of its completion in October 1955, the structure was considered to be the tallest television broadcast tower in the world (once KRLD-TV moved its transmitter to the Cedar Hill tower in early 1956, the original Griffin Street transmitter remained in use as an auxiliary facility until it was disassembled in 1984; the antenna on which it was installed was torn down in 1995, in order to reduce the load on the tower).

KRLD-TV served as the home base for CBS'

Parkland Hospital that Kennedy had succumbed from the gunshot wound as doctors conducted emergency surgery. Because of a local press pool arrangement that was put in place that morning to cover Kennedy's speech at the Trade Mart downtown, Barker's scoop appeared live simultaneously on CBS, which had sent correspondent Dan Rather to report from Dealey Plaza, and ABC. Two days later, a KRLD-TV field crew captured footage of Oswald's assassination by nightclub owner Jack Ruby as officers were transferring the former in handcuffs out of the Dallas Police Department's downtown precinct.[11]

Studio/office facilities of KDFW (and sister station KDFI) on North Griffin Street in downtown Dallas.

CBS also maintained an arrangement with Channel 4 to use the station's remote unit to transmit live programming broadcast by the network during the 1960s and 1970s; in particular, the remote transmission truck was used to relay color broadcasts of CBS'

college football
game telecasts held in Texas. In 1964, KRLD-TV moved its operations from the Times Herald's Patterson Street offices into the station's current, purpose-built studio facility at 400 North Griffin Street (across the street from the former building, at the intersection of Griffin and San Jacinto). In 1968, the station's Cedar Hill transmitter site was struck by a helicopter, causing substantial damage to the tower.

Times Mirror and Argyle ownership

On September 22, 1969, the Los Angeles-based Times Mirror Company announced it would purchase the Times Herald and the KRLD radio and television from the Times Herald Printing Co. for $91 million in cash and stock. Although recently implemented FCC cross-ownership rules prohibited media companies from owning newspapers and full-power broadcast television and radio outlets in the same market, Times Mirror received approval to maintain the existing combination of the Times Herald and KRLD-TV under a cross-ownership waiver. However, to comply with FCC rules of the time that prohibited a single company from owning full-power broadcast television and radio outlets in the same market, Times Mirror sold KRLD-AM-FM to KRLD Corp. (owned principally by Philip R. Jonsson, Kenneth A. Jonsson and George V. Charlton, the sons and daughter of Dallas mayor and former Texas Instruments chairman J. Erik Jonsson) for $6.75 million. The transaction was approved by the FCC on May 15, 1970, and was finalized 1½ months later on July 1. The purchase marked Times Mirror's re-entry into broadcasting (it owned KTTV in Los Angeles, a present-day sister station of KDFW, from its sign-on in 1949 until 1963, when it sold that station to Metromedia for $10.5 million in cash and promissory notes), resulting in the creation of Times Mirror Broadcasting.[12][13][14][15]

In order to comply with an FCC rule in effect at the time that prohibited separately owned radio and television stations in the same market from sharing the same base call letters, as KRLD Corp. was allowed to keep the KRLD call letters for its new radio properties, the station's call letters were changed to KDFW-TV – in partial reference to its service area of Dallas and Fort Worth – on July 2. (The "-TV" suffix was dropped from the KDFW callsign in July 1998; the KRLD-TV calls were later used by present-day

A.H. Belo Corporation, owners of rival newspaper The Dallas Morning News, for $55 million.)[17][18][19]

A helicopter-tower collision similar to the one that occurred 19 years earlier happened on January 14, 1987, when KDFW's Cedar Hill broadcast tower (which was jointly owned by KDFW and WFAA, via the Hill Tower, Inc. consortium involving their respective corporate parents) was hit by a

Dallas Naval Air Station, clipping several guy-wires. The jet's two occupants survived as they had ejected themselves from the aircraft and parachuted to the ground before it crashed. (KDFW, KXAS and WFAA did not have their transmissions affected by the accident, although radio stations KZEW [97.9 FM, now KBFB] and KSCS [96.3 FM] were knocked off the air and temporarily broadcast at reduced power from another tower as a result.)[20][21] In 1989, KDFW relocated its transmitter onto a new 1,400-foot (427 m)-tall tower constructed at the junction of Belt Line and Mansfield Roads in Cedar Hill, 1⁄4 mile (0.40 km) to the southwest. (The former tower – which had its height reduced to 1,240 feet [378 m] due to the removal of the candelabra mast that encompassed the upper 281 feet [86 m] of the structure – was converted into an auxiliary transmitter facility for KDFW, WFAA and radio stations KJMZ [100.3 FM, now KJKK], KMEZ [107.5 FM, now KMVK], KQZY [105.3 FM, now KRLD-FM], KKDA-FM [104.5] and KMGC [102.9 FM, now KDMX
].)

In a move by the company to concentrate on its newspapers and

Argyle Television Holdings for $335 million in cash and securities. Under the transaction's two-part purchase option structure, Argyle acquired WVTM and KTVI from Times Mirror in an initial transactional (for $45 million and $35 million, respectively), and subsequently acquired KDFW and KTBC in a secondary transaction following FCC approval of their license renewals. The purchase of KDFW and KTBC was finalized on January 3, 1994.[22][23][24][25][26][27]

In February 1994, Argyle Television took over management responsibilities for struggling

O. J. Simpson murder case
for KDFI—which aired in place of the 10 p.m. news rebroadcast—during the summer and fall of 1994.

As a Fox station

Main article: 1994–1996 United States broadcast television realignment

New World Communications ownership

On May 23, 1994, in an overall deal in which network parent

UHF
outlets that had limited to no prior history as major network affiliates; among them was its existing Dallas outlet KDAF, which News Corporation purchased through its May 1985 merger with Metromedia and was among Fox's original group of six owned-and-operated stations when the network launched in October 1986.

On May 26, New World bought the four Argyle Television stations for $717 million (including approximately $280 million in debt), in a purchase option-structured deal. Under the terms, New World included KDFW, KTBC and KTVI in the group's affiliation agreement with Fox (WVTM, now owned by Hearst Television, remained an NBC affiliate as New World chose to transfer Birmingham ABC affiliate WBRC into a trust company for later sale to Fox Television Stations—an arrangement that was part of a deal also involving ABC affiliate WGHP in High Point, North Carolina, to comply with FCC restrictions at the time that prohibited broadcasting companies from owning more than twelve television stations nationwide and, in the case of Birmingham, barred television station duopolies—and was subsequently sold to NBC before being purchased by Media General in 2006). Although the network already owned KDAF, Fox sought the opportunity to align with KDFW because of its stronger market position (the station placed second, behind WFAA, in total day and news viewership at the time) and its operation of a news department; as a result, Fox Television Stations decided to sell KDAF, which would ultimately trade it to Renaissance Broadcasting in exchange for existing Fox affiliate KDVR in Denver.[28][33][34][35][36]

CBS had a thirteen-month leeway to find a new Dallas–Fort Worth affiliate, as its contract with KDFW did not expire until July 1, 1995; the affiliation contracts for KTBC and KTVI expired around the same time, giving the networks that were already affiliated with the three former Argyle stations slated to switch to Fox a longer grace period to find new affiliates than CBS, NBC and/or ABC were given in most of the other markets affected by the Fox-New World deal (ABC's affiliation contracts with WGHP and WBRC ended even later, respectively expiring in September 1995 and September 1996). CBS first approached longtime NBC affiliate KXAS-TV about negotiating an affiliation deal, ultimately to be turned down by its then-owner

LIN Broadcasting, which subsequently signed a long-term affiliation deal renewing its contract with KXAS and its NBC-affiliated sister stations in Austin, Norfolk and Grand Rapids; WFAA was eliminated as an option as ABC reached a new long-term agreement with then-owner of the station, Belo, to extend affiliation contracts for WFAA and other Belo-owned stations that were affiliated with the network; that deal resulted in the company's station in Sacramento switching its affiliation from CBS to ABC in March 1995.[37]

This left independent station KTVT as CBS' only viable option among the Metroplex's VHF television stations, particularly as it was the only other English language station in the market that had a news department. (At the time, KTVT had been producing a prime time newscast—originally airing at 7 p.m., before being shifted to 9 p.m. in January 1991 to reduce preemptions caused by the station's sports telecasts—since August 1990; however, the station had been producing short- and/or long-form newscasts in various formats since 1960.) On September 14, 1994, Gaylord Broadcasting reached an agreement to affiliate KTVT with CBS, in exchange for also switching its sister independent station in Tacoma, Washington, KSTW, to the network. (WB network majority owner Time Warner would later file an injunction attempting to dissolve a previous agreement with Gaylord to turn KTVT, KSTW and KHTV in Houston [now CW affiliate KIAH, which became a sister station to KDAF when Tribune Broadcasting acquired the latter from Renaissance in 1996] into charter affiliates of The WB at that network's launch in January 1995.)[38] New World took over the operations of the Argyle stations through time brokerage agreements on January 19, 1995; the group's purchase of the four Argyle stations received approval on April 14, 1995, and was finalized four days later on April 18.[39] The last CBS network program to air on KDFW was a repeat of Walker, Texas Ranger at 9 p.m. Central Time on July 1; this led into a message by then-station president and general manager David Whitaker shortly before the start of its late-evening newscast (which was renamed from News 4 Texas Nightbeat to News 4 Texas at 10:00 that evening, with the implementation of a new graphics package centered partly on imagery of the Texas state flag), informing viewers about the pending network changes.

KDFW switched to Fox on July 2, 1995, ending its relationship with CBS after 45½ years; with Fox switching from UHF to VHF, Dallas–Fort Worth became one of a handful of markets where all of the "Big Four" networks maintained affiliations with VHF stations (along with

Reno joined this distinction in 1996, followed by Portland and Minneapolis–St. Paul in 2002; in both Boise and Honolulu, the Fox affiliation switched from one VHF station to another). The remainder of CBS' programming moved on that date to KTVT, which consequently ceased distribution as a regional superstation on cable and satellite providers outside of its viewing area, as many of the markets where a pay television provider carried KTVT already had access to local or out-of-market CBS affiliates (KTBC joined Fox the same day, while KTVI followed suit on August 7). On that date, KDAF – whose sale to Renaissance Broadcasting was finalized the following day on July 3—became an affiliate of The WB; Christian Broadcasting Network-owned KXTX-TV (channel 39, now a Telemundo owned-and-operated station), which reverted into an independent station, served as the market's original WB outlet during the network's first six months of operation under a temporary arrangement until it could affiliate with KDAF when Fox moved to channel 4.[40]

KDFW rebranded as "Fox 4 Texas" upon the affiliation switch, but with references to the Fox logo and name limited in most on-air imaging; although as with most of the other New World-owned stations affected by the agreement with Fox, channel 4 retained the news branding it had been using before it joined the network—in its case, News 4 Texas, which the station adopted in November 1990 as a CBS affiliate. (Even before the switch to Fox, the "4 Texas" motif was adopted as a universal brand, extending to weather and sports content produced by KDFW's news department, titled respectively as Weather 4 Texas and Sports 4 Texas.) In addition to expanding its local news programming at the time it joined Fox, the station replaced CBS daytime and late night programs that migrated to KTVT with an expanded slate of syndicated talk shows as well as some documentary-based reality series, and also acquired some movies and off-network drama series for broadcast on weekends; however, unusual for a Fox affiliate, the revamped programming schedule did not include sitcoms and, like New World's other Fox stations, ran children's programs only on weekend mornings.

Fox Television Stations ownership

On July 17, 1996, News Corporation—which separated most of its entertainment holdings into

WAGA had earlier replaced WATL as that market's Fox station in December 1994), making Dallas one of a handful of markets more than one station has served as an O&O of the same network.[41][42][43]
In November 1996, two months before the completion of the Fox–New World merger and at a time when other network-owned stations around the United States began adopting similar network-driven branding, KDFW-TV shortened its branding from "Fox 4 Texas" to simply "Fox 4" under the network's branding conventions (with its newscasts concurrently rebranding as Fox 4 News, and its weather and sports segments rebranded as Fox 4 Weather and Fox 4 Sports, respectively).

In April 1998, when NBC affiliate KTEN (which added an additional primary affiliation with Fox in September 1994, partly in order to carry its NFL telecasts) began terminating its affiliations with Fox and ABC, KDFW began serving as a default Fox station for portions of the adjacent Sherman-Ada market located south of the Oklahoma-Texas state line (including Gainesville, Durant and Hugo) through its availability on area cable providers (cable subscribers residing on the Oklahoma side of the market primarily received Fox network programs via KOKH-TV in Oklahoma City). Because the market lacked enough commercial television stations to allow the network to maintain an exclusive affiliation, Fox would not regain an affiliate within the market until CBS affiliate KXII launched a Fox-affiliated digital subchannel in September 2006.

In an effort to expand beyond the talk and

3rd Rock From the Sun and Malcolm in the Middle—mainly as part of its late-night schedule. After sister station KDFI assumed rights to most of the sitcoms KDFW had previously aired in the 2008–09 season, no off-network comedies aired on KDFW's schedule (a rarity for a Fox station) until September 2013, when the station began airing reruns of Modern Family. In December 1999, Fox Television Stations purchased KDFI from Dallas Media Investors for $6.2 million, creating a legal duopoly with KDFW; as a result, the combination became the first television duopoly in the Metroplex and the first duopoly that Fox operated (predating the group's acquisition of Chris-Craft/United Television's UPN-affiliated stations later that year).[44]

On December 14, 2017, The Walt Disney Company, owner of WFAA's affiliated network ABC, announced its intent to buy KDFW's parent company, 21st Century Fox, for $66.1 billion; the sale, which closed on March 20, 2019, excluded KDFW and sister station KDFI as well as the Fox network, the MyNetworkTV programming service, Fox News, Fox Sports 1 and the Fox Television Stations unit, which were all transferred to the newly formed Fox Corporation.[45][46]

On September 5, 2018, a 34-year-old Michael Chadwick Fry crashed a silver

criminal mischief charge.[47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54]

Programming

As with most of its sister stations under its former New World ownership (with the subverted exception of former sister station KTVI in St. Louis, which assumed rights to the network's children's programs in 1996 and carried the blocks until Fox stopped providing them within its schedule), Channel 4 declined carriage of the children's programming blocks that Fox carried prior to 2008, only having aired fall preview specials and network promotions for those blocks that aired within Fox's prime time lineup during that twelve-year period.

KDFW opted not to run the

paid programming block that replaced 4Kids TV, Weekend Marketplace,[55] has aired on KDFI since then. Xploration Station, a live-action educational program block distributed by Steve Rotfeld Productions that is syndicated primarily to Fox stations (including those owned by Fox Television Stations), was similarly passed over to KDFI when that block debuted on September 13, 2014.[56][57]

In September 1994, KDFW began preempting The Price Is Right and The Bold and the Beautiful, respectively replacing them with Donahue and the (short-lived) syndicated reality/court show Juvenile Justice in the respective network-designated time slots of the former two programs; KTVT began carrying the two CBS Daytime programs on a regular basis and also cleared select CBS prime time programs that channel 4 preempted in order to run locally produced specials.

In September 1972, the station premiered 4 Country Reporter, a weekly program hosted by

Red Duke
's syndicated medical reports to viewers in North Texas throughout much of the 1980s and 1990s.

Sports programming

KDFW began serving as the primary television station for the Dallas Cowboys as a CBS affiliate in 1960 upon the team's enfranchisement, through CBS' television rights to the pre-AFL merger National Football League. The station carried most regional or national Cowboys game telecasts aired by CBS, including the team's victories in Super Bowl VI and Super Bowl XII, (after 1970, the only games channel 4 did not air were home interconference contests) until its contractual rights to the National Football Conference concluded in 1993. To date, the one-year interruption in game coverage after that season, due to the transfer of NFC telecast rights from CBS to Fox, is the only break in network coverage of the team by the station since 1962; for the 1994 season, most of the team's over-the-air game telecasts aired instead on lame-duck Fox O&O KDAF. Channel 4 resumed its status as the Cowboys' primary local broadcaster two months after it joined Fox, in September 1995; incidentally, that year's NFL season saw the Cowboys compete in Super Bowl XXX (which aired locally on NBC affiliate KXAS-TV), in which they defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers, 27–17, to win the championship title. KDFW also provided local coverage of Super Bowl XLV which took place at AT&T Stadium. KDFW also airs the Cowboys' Thanksgiving Day home contests (as part of Fox's national coverage) in even-numbered seasons.

Unlike in most other NFC markets with a Fox owned-and-operated station in which the station maintains such an arrangement with a local NFL franchise, KDFW does not carry any team-produced analysis or magazine programming; channel 4 held the local rights to air various team-related programs and specials during the regular season until 1998, when the local rights to these programs migrated to KTVT under a programming agreement reached between that station and the Cowboys earlier that year, in advance of CBS's assumption of the broadcast rights to the rival American Football Conference (AFC). The KTVT arrangement exists even though, as a CBS station, its telecasts of Cowboys regular season games are limited to those involving an AFC opponent or, since 2014, cross-flexed games declined by Fox that involve opponents in the NFC.

Since Fox obtained the partial (now exclusive) over-the-air

Fox Sports Southwest for broadcast on sister station KDFI, which served as the team's official flagship station during that period; KTXA (channel 21) assumed the local over-the-air television rights to the Rangers in 2010
.

From 1995 until Fox lost the broadcast television rights to the National Hockey League (NHL) to ABC in 1999, KDFW carried certain regular season and playoff games featuring the Dallas Stars that Fox televised on a regional basis. Notably, in 1999 (Fox's last year with the NHL over-the-air broadcast contract), the station aired the Stars' first Stanley Cup Finals appearance as a Dallas-based franchise (the third overall, counting their 1981 and 1991 appearances that preceded the former Minnesota North Stars' relocation from Minneapolis in 1993), which saw the franchise defeat the Buffalo Sabres to win its first Stanley Cup (as Fox's NHL contract required it to split the Finals coverage rights with the league's cable partner, the decisive Game 6 of that series aired instead on cable through ESPN).

News operation

As of September 2021, KDFW presently broadcasts 57½ hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with 10 hours on weekdays, four hours on Saturdays and 3½ hours on Sundays); in regards to the number of hours devoted to news programming, it is the largest local newscast output among broadcast television stations in the Dallas–Fort Worth market. In addition, KDFW produces the half-hour sports highlight, opinion and interview program Free 4 All, hosted by sports director Mike Doocy and co-host Sam Gannon, which airs Sundays after the 9 p.m. newscast and weeknights after the 10 p.m. newscast. The station's Sunday 5 p.m. newscast is subject to preemption and the Saturday 6 p.m. newscast is subject to delay due to overruns by Fox Sports telecasts.

News department history

Appropriate for a station that was founded by a newspaper, local news has always had a strong presence on Channel 4. For the better part of four decades, it was part of a spirited battle for first place among the market's news-producing stations with KXAS and WFAA. In November 1978, the station hired

Peabody Awards and a duPont-Columbia Citation for Excellence); as of 2016, she is currently the third longest-tenured overall and the second longest-tenured currently active television news personality in North Texas, and has had the longest tenure of any on-air staff member in KDFW's history (in the former category, Tinsley ranks behind Harold Taft, who served as chief meteorologist at KXAS-TV from its sign-on as WBAP-TV in 1948 until his retirement in 1991, and Bobbie Wygant, who has served as an entertainment reporter for WBAP/KXAS since 1948). Although KDFW has experienced a relative degree of talent turnover over the years (particularly during the 1980s and early 1990s), several anchors and reporters that have been part of Channel 4's news department staff have worked for the station for at least ten years (in addition to Tinsley, these have included Richard Ray, who joined KDFW as a reporter in 1983 and has also served as weekend evening anchor from 1995 until his retirement in 2019; Ron Jackson, who served as weekend meteorologist from 1982 until his retirement in 2014;[58] and Becky Oliver, who served as its chief investigative reporter from 1991 until her retirement from broadcasting in 2015[59]
).

On January 6, 1980, the station debuted

African Americans. The program was originally hosted by Rochelle Brown until 2002, when she relegated herself to an executive producer role and was succeeded by longtime general assignment reporter Shaun Rabb (who also served as weekend evening anchor from 1993 to 1994) for the remainder of its run; the Emmy Award-winning Sunday morning program ended its 29-year run on June 21, 2009.[60]

On May 12, 1986, to inaugurate the rollout of its new

Bell JetRanger used by the station as its newsgathering helicopter crashed after takeoff at Guadalupe Mountains National Park while pilot Irving Patrick attempted to navigate the chopper in strong wind speeds. Patrick and news operations manager Scott "Buster" McGregor were killed on board; however in the midst of the tragedy, KDFW's news staff chose to continue the cross-state tour as scheduled.[61] In May 1993, KDFW became the first television station in Dallas–Fort Worth to launch a weekend morning newscast, with the debut of a two-hour Saturday broadcast from 8 to 10 a.m. (the program – which, uniformly with the weekday morning newscasts and formerly titled News 4 Texas Morning Edition, was re-titled Good Day Dallas [now Fox 4 Good Day] in January 1997 – would later move to 7 to 9 a.m. on April 4, 2010, and was joined by a Sunday edition in that same time period on July 10, 2011).[62][63]

When KDFW became a Fox affiliate on July 2, 1995, the station sharply expanded its emphasis on local news programming. It retained a news schedule similar to the one it had as a CBS affiliate, while increasing its news output from about 25 hours a week to nearly 40 hours (with its weekday news schedule expanding from 3+1⁄2 hours to seven hours per day). In its early years with Fox, local news programming on the station ran on weekdays from 5:30 to 9 a.m., noon to 12:30 p.m. and 6 to 6:30 p.m., Saturday mornings, and nightly from 5 to 6 p.m. and 9 to 10:30 p.m. The weekday morning newscast's expansion from 1+1⁄2 to three hours – with the addition of a two-hour extension from 7 to 9 a.m.—and the consolidation of its half-hour weeknight 5 and 6 p.m. newscasts into a single 90-minute block—although both programs were respectively structured as separate one-hour and half-hour broadcasts—filled timeslots vacated by the removals of CBS This Morning and the CBS Evening News from its schedule as Fox, unlike CBS, does not have daily national newscasts. Since Fox does not provide a third hour of network programming within its evening schedule, Channel 4 also added an hour-long prime time newscast at 9 p.m. to lead into its existing 10 p.m. newscast (KDFW is one of several Fox stations that offer newscasts in both the final hour of prime time and the traditional late news time slot—Fox Television Stations started to push news expansion into the latter in 2006—and one of ten that continued its Big Three-era late-evening newscast after switching to Fox; in contrast, Austin sister station KTBC aired syndicated programming as a lead-in for its existing 10 p.m. newscast after it switched to Fox before it moved its late newscast to the 9 p.m. hour in August 2000, that station would restore a late newscast in the former slot in September 2014[64]).

On the date of the network switch, KDFW also debuted a daily local sports news program within its 9 p.m. newscast, Sports 4 Texas, which also served as a generalized branding for its sports segments until January 1997; the program—which ran for 20 minutes on Monday through Friday nights (as well as Saturdays, with the exception of the NFL season, when the prime time newscast was abbreviated by a half-hour to air the Cowboys magazine show The

CNN Newsource
for coverage of national and international news stories; the station also increased its news staff from 80 to 120 employees, through the hiring of 40 additional employees in both on-air and behind-the-scenes roles.

The expansion of the news department as well as other programming changes that occurred when Channel 4 switched to Fox were the subject of a scathing article by writer Brad Bailey in the October 1995 issue of

The Maury Povich Show, Geraldo and Jerry Springer, following suit with other New World-owned Fox stations that acquired such programs to bulk up their syndication lineups after joining the network), referring to the station's decision to maintain its status as a "big, legitimate news operation" while operating as a Fox affiliate as conflicting and incompatible courses (before New World started switching most of its stations to Fox in September 1994, Fox stations tended to focus predominately on first-run and off-network syndicated programs and movies, with limited to no local news programming; Miami affiliate WSVN's decision to adopt a news-intensive programming format after switching from NBC to Fox in January 1989 served as the template for the New World and SF Broadcasting stations that switched to Fox between 1994 and 1996, a format that was gradually adopted by many heritage Fox stations that had existing or launched upstart news departments in subsequent years).[67] The article was criticized by KDFW president/general manager David Whitaker, and main evening anchors Clarice Tinsley and John Criswell, the latter of whom (who left KDFW in 1997, after a seven-year tenure at the station) stated that Bailey could not have "accomplished a more reprehensible mass assassination of character with a machine gun or bomb".[68]
Although ratings for its newscasts declined in the first couple of months after it joined Fox due to viewer confusion over the switch (which Whitaker acknowledged had also resulted in ratings losses at its competitors at that time), KDFW began regaining some of its news audience starting in the fall of 1995; it has since often beat its English-language competitors in the demographic of adults between 25 and 54 years old in certain time slots, particularly in the morning and at 9 p.m.

Starting in 2006, the Fox-owned stations began revamping their sets and graphics to be more closely aligned visually with Fox News Channel, along with the adoption of standardized "kitebox" logos. KDFW debuted the new logo, set, graphics and theme music on September 20, 2006, beginning with its 9 p.m. newscast. The station also relaunched its website under the "myfox" branding and interface developed by

Grand Prairie, while it was making an emergency landing after the aircraft's engine lost power (which the National Transportation Safety Board determined was caused by the failure of one or more of the compressor blades for the fifth stage compressor) en route to a breaking news story in Fort Worth that morning. The out-of-control chopper skidded and rolled before stopping near the spillway, shearing off the tail rotor from the main body of the helicopter. Chopper pilot Curtis Crump, KDFW traffic reporter Chip Waggoner and KRLD and KVIL (103.7 FM) radio traffic reporter Julie DeHarty survived the accident, with the latter two transported by ambulance to Methodist Dallas Medical Center for treatment.[69][70][71][72]

On February 18, 2009, beginning with its noon newscast, KDFW became the fifth television station in the Dallas–Fort Worth market to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in

Bakersfield in June to serve as weekend anchor of Good Day) was added as co-anchor of the first two hours of the program with a co-anchor to be named later, while Tim Ryan (who has anchored KDFW's morning newscast since joining the station shortly after the 1995 affiliation switch) and Lauren Pryzbyl (who joined KDFW in September 2009) being shifted to the 6–10 a.m. portion of the broadcast.[73][74][75][76][77]

Notable current on-air staff

Notable former on-air staff

Technical information

Subchannels

The station's signal is

multiplexed
:

Subchannels of KDFW[78]
Channel Res. Aspect Short name Programming
4.1 720p
16:9
 KDFW-DT Fox
4.2 480i KDFW D2 MyNetworkTV (KDFI) in SD
4.3 Heroes Heroes & Icons
4.4 GetTV Get
  Simulcast of subchannels of another station

Analog-to-digital conversion

KDFW began transmitting a digital signal on UHF channel 35 on September 10, 1998. The station shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 4, on June 12, 2009, as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television.[79] The station's digital signal remained on its transition period UHF channel 35,[80] using virtual channel 4.

Through its participation as a

SAFER Act "nightlight" broadcaster,[81] KDFW kept its analog signal on the air until July 12 to inform viewers of the digital television transition through a loop of public service announcements from the National Association of Broadcasters
.

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External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=KDFW&oldid=1218405285"