KXAS-TV
This article needs additional citations for verification. (November 2012) |
FCC | |
Facility ID | 49330 |
---|---|
ERP | 925 kW |
HAAT | 496 m (1,627 ft) |
Transmitter coordinates | 32°35′7″N 96°58′6″W / 32.58528°N 96.96833°W |
Links | |
Public license information | |
Website | www |
KXAS-TV (channel 5) is a
History
Early history under Carter Publications
The station began
When the station made its formal debut, its first night of regular broadcasts did not go smoothly. On the date of its sign-on, the station's studio facilities were in the latter stages of construction; at one point, Amon Carter accidentally stepped into an unmarked hole in the studio floor that led to the building's basement, narrowly saved from enduring potential injury by Star-Telegram
Channel 5 originally operated from studio facilities located at 3900 Barnett Street in eastern Fort Worth. The building—located in an area known as Broadcast Hill—was the first studio facility in the United States that was designed specifically for television broadcasting; the 400-foot (120 m) tower that transmitted its signal (supporting microwave and remote antennas) was also based on the studio grounds. The station originally broadcast for four hours each evening on Wednesday through Saturdays, with
Originally serving as an
When Channel 5 signed on, it was apparent that Dallas and Fort Worth were going to be collapsed into a single
On July 1, 1952, WBAP-TV became among the first six television stations in the country (along with fellow NBC stations
Ownership of Star-Telegram and the WBAP stations would transfer to Amon Carter Sr.'s heirs after he succumbed from the last of several
During NBC's coverage of the
LIN Broadcasting ownership
Channel 5 remained under the ownership of trusts held by the Carter family until 1974 when the FCC passed a measure prohibiting the
In 1985, KXAS became the first television station in the Dallas–Fort Worth market to broadcast programming in
KXAS-TV had claimed themselves as "The Pioneer Television Station of the Great Southwest" (or "The Pioneer Station of the Great Southwest") in its sign-on and sign-off announcements during its four decades, but admitted to its true roots with WBAP with its 30th anniversary in 1978.[4][5]
In 1993, LIN Broadcasting assumed operational responsibilities for independent station KXTX-TV through a local marketing agreement with the station's owner at the time, the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN). Through the consolidation of that station's operations with Channel 5, KXTX began airing rebroadcasts of its 6 and 10 p.m. newscasts each weeknight as well as select first-run syndicated programs seen on KXAS.
On May 23, 1994, in an overall deal in which
In June of that year, following the $12.6-billion acquisition of majority owner
In 1997, KXAS became the first television station in the Dallas–Fort Worth market to commit to launching a digital television signal; the station aired its first high-definition telecast on March 31 of that year, when it aired a Major League Baseball game between the Texas Rangers and the Chicago White Sox. Regular digital television transmissions commenced on November 1, 1998, when KXAS began full-time operation of its digital signal on UHF channel 41.
NBC ownership
On October 23, 1997, LIN Television was acquired by Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst (now HM Capital Partners) for $1.9 billion. In conjunction with the Dallas-based investment firm's submitted bid for the company on September 12, LIN contributed KXAS-TV to a joint venture with NBC Inc., in which the former sold a 76% majority equity interest in the station to NBC, which in turn would contribute a 24% share of San Diego owned-and-operated station KNSD (which NBC had purchased from New World Communications on May 22, 1996, in a $425 million deal that also included full ownership of existing affiliate WVTM-TV in Birmingham) to Hicks Muse, predicated on the firm acquiring and closing on its deal with LIN.[13][14][15][16][17] The takeover and joint venture deals were completed on March 2, 1998, when NBC and LIN formally established Station Venture Holdings, LP to serve as the licensee of KXAS and KNSD.[18]
As it held 79.62% controlling equity in the partnership, NBC assumed control of KXAS' operations by way of its NBC Television Stations subsidiary, which continued to control KNSD through its continued majority ownership of that station.[19] Although not a traditional arrangement, NBC's assumption of majority control over KXAS made it a de facto owned-and-operated station; however as a consequence, the purchase of majority interest in Channel 5 resulted in the termination of its LMA with KXTX. In May 1998, the station changed its on-air branding to "NBC 5" and its newscast branding to NBC 5 Texas News (adapted from its 1989-1997 Texas News 5 branding, and later simplified to NBC 5 News in November 1999) in compliance with the branding conventions that the network had adopted for its O&Os, as had been done with sister station WMAQ-TV's rebranding to "NBC 5 Chicago" in September 1995.
On October 11, 2001, NBC Inc. purchased the Telemundo Communications Group from a consortium of
KXAS-TV launched a
On January 1, 2009, KXAS launched a tertiary subchannel on virtual channel 5.3, which served as a charter over-the-air affiliate of
KXAS-TV shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 5, on June 12, 2009, as part of the
On November 19, 2009, a fire in the electrical room of the station's Broadcast Hill studios knocked both stations off the air.
On May 4, 2011, KXAS-DT2 became an affiliate of NBC Nonstop (under the branding "NBC DFW Nonstop"), a programming format exclusive to the subchannels of NBC's O&Os that featured a mix of originally-produced news and lifestyle programming and rebroadcasts of KXAS's newscasts;[36] NBC Nonstop was relaunched as the classic television network Cozi TV on December 20, 2012.[37]
In June 2012, NBCUniversal announced plans to construct a new 75,000-square-foot (6,968 m2) facility in Fort Worth (located at the CentrePort Business Park on the former site of
On March 14, 2018, it was announced that the station's parent NBC Owned Television Stations and telecommunications giant
The station completed its move to UHF channel 24 in the morning of May 30, 2018.Programming
Sports programming
From 1970 to 1997 (with the AFL–NFL merger), KXAS aired Dallas Cowboys games in which they played host to an AFC opponent at Texas Stadium (two games each year for the station [including their Thanksgiving games in some years]; prior to 1970, all Cowboys games were exclusively broadcast on KDFW [then KRLD-TV]); during this time, they aired five of the Cowboys' Super Bowl appearances (Super Bowls V, XIII, XXVII, XXVIII, and XXX [the latter three were won by the Cowboys]). Since 2006, the station airs Cowboys games when they play on NBC's Sunday Night Football. The station also aired any Dallas Stars games as part of NBC's NHL broadcast contract from 2006 to 2021; this included the team's appearance in the 2020 Stanley Cup Finals. Channel 5 also aired Texas Rangers games as part of NBC's broadcast contract with Major League Baseball from their arrival in 1972 until 1989, and again for the postseason only from 1994 to 2000. The station also carried any Dallas Mavericks games as part of NBC's broadcast contract with the NBA from 1990 to 2002.
News operation
As of September 2020, KXAS presently broadcasts 37+1⁄2 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with six hours each weekday, four hours on Saturdays, and 3+1⁄2 hours on Sundays). In addition, the station also produces the half-hour political discussion program Lone Star Politics, which debuted in 2014 and airs at 8:30 a.m. after its Sunday morning newscast. Before the move to its current studio and offices on Amon Carter Boulevard, KXAS maintained a Dallas news bureau located on McKinnon Street in central Dallas.
News department history
Channel 5's news department launched with the station on September 29, 1948. Originally titled The Texas News (a title that was used in varied forms for four decades, later as Area Five Texas News from 1974 to 1978 and as Texas News 5 from 1991 to 1998), the program maintained a newsreel format for the news department's first 21 years of operation, continuing long after most television stations had switched to a primarily studio-based production structure for their newscasts. The Texas News was the highest-rated local television program in the United States during the station's early years and earned the first of what would be six RTNDA national awards for "Best Local Newscast" during its first year on the air; however, ratings for the program began to decline in the late 1960s amid competition from Dallas-based KRLD-TV and WFAA, which utilized a live-on-tape format that mixed filed reports with anchored segments presented in-studio.
The station's news broadcasts – which originally aired only in the evening until the launch of a midday newscast in 1972 – began implementing a hosted format in 1967, when Bob Schieffer and Russ Bloxom joined the station as anchors for The Texas News, appearing on camera ahead of and after the newsreel segments. The program officially converted to a live-on-tape broadcast on August 1, 1969. Concurrent with the station's move to The Studios at DFW, KXAS donated its collection of news footage shot for The Texas News from the 1950s through the 1970s to the University of North Texas Libraries in Denton in November 2013; the film reels and accompanying script images were digitized by the university for availability to the public via the library's digital preservation network.[45]
The station has long been well known in the Dallas–Fort Worth market for the longevity of its anchors and reporters, with many having worked at Channel 5 for at least ten years. Among them Roberta "Bobbie" Wygant (the longest-tenured television personality in Texas and the first broadcaster in the Southwestern United States to present theater and movie reviews on television, who joined the station in 1948 as an entertainment reporter and later hosted various local programs, including Entertainment and the Arts and the newsmagazine Inside Area 5), Phil Wygant (who worked as an anchor/reporter from 1948 until he was
KXAS is known within the Dallas–Fort Worth market for its weather coverage; it claims to be the first television station to have hired only full-time meteorologists, when it hired American Airlines staff meteorologists Harold Taft, Bob Denney and Walter Porter as hosts of Weather Telefacts, a 15-minute nightly series that debuted on October 31, 1949, as the first televised weather forecast program in the United States, which in addition to providing forecasts, explained to viewers complicated aspects of meteorological concepts.
Taft—the first television meteorologist west of the
On June 16, 1966, Channel 5 became the first television station in Texas to present all of its news film footage in color. In 1967, Fort Worth native Bob Schieffer began his broadcast career at WBAP-TV as a reporter and anchor of the station's 10 p.m. newscast. After leaving the station in 1971, Schieffer went on to
On January 25, 1986, a KXAS news crew was assigned to cover a standoff started by 40-year-old Thomas E. Stephens, when he barricaded himself inside an Arlington 7-Eleven store where his estranged wife, Patricia (who filed divorce papers that Thomas was served with the day before), had managed. Believing she had initiated the idea of the divorce to Patricia, Thomas fatally shot her roommate and store clerk, Terry Palmer, and wounded fellow employee Craig Talley; Patricia later snuck out of the store's front door as Thomas talked to a hostage negotiator over the phone. Around 6:40 p.m., during an update on the standoff within the extended 6 p.m. newscast as a live shot outside the store was being shown, the videographer on-scene captured Thomas coming out and killing himself with a .357-caliber pistol, ending the seven-hour standoff. Weekend anchor Mike Snyder, who joined KXAS in 1980 and served as the main anchor of the weeknight newscasts from 1992 until he retired from broadcasting in 2013, issued an on-air apology to viewers for the live broadcast of the suicide.[48][49][50]
In 1989, KXAS became the first television station in Texas to implement
On September 7, 2007, KXAS-TV became the second television station in the Dallas–Fort Worth market (after WFAA) to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition. Segments conducted in-studio were initially the only content that was broadcast in the format, with field video footage being transmitted in
Historically since the 1970s, KXAS has placed second or third overall in local news viewership, behind longtime leader WFAA and KDFW. According to the local
For the May 2011 sweeps period, the 10 p.m. newscast placed last among adults 25–54 and in third with total viewers (overall, all four stations showed year-to-year gains in total viewers while only KXAS was down slightly among 25-to-54-year-olds); the station's morning newscast had placed third in both demographics. In total viewers, the 5 and 6 p.m. newscasts also finished in last place among the Metroplex's late newscasts, though the 5 p.m. newscast was in third (behind KTVT) in the 25- to 54-year-old demographic (the 6 p.m. newscast placed last behind KTVT among adults 25–54). The morning newscast was the only local news program on KXAS to rank above third place in total viewership (though it, along with KTVT and WFAA's morning newscasts all lost viewers in both key demos to KDFW, which ranked first).[53]
On June 20, 2016, KXAS began to implement the "Look N" graphics package designed for NBC's owned-and-operated stations by NBC ArtWorks, placing the station under the graphical standardizations applied to its fellow O&Os for the first time since 2012 (the "Look G" package used by KXAS from 2012 to 2014 has since been used by
On May 13, 2017, KXAS-TV added an extra half-hour to its weekend morning newscast at 5:30 a.m.
On June 29, 2021, beginning with the 4 p.m. newscast, KXAS officially switched to the new graphics package entitled "Look S", just two days after sister station KNBC in Los Angeles switched to the new graphics package and a week after WMAQ-TV in Chicago debuting it. Meanwhile, the "Texas Connects Us" slogan appears in the opening sequence instead of the usual "NBC" text unlike to the former two.
The station has received criticism in recent years for its handling of weather coverage, particularly during sporting events. Channel 5 waited six minutes before cutting into a 2019 Cowboys Sunday Night Football game with a warning about a tornado that had touched down within the market. Station management admitted that they had erred in not immediately breaking away from the game for a potentially life-threatening situation.[54] Conversely, in 2024, KXAS interrupted the end of a playoff game between the Los Angeles Rams and Detroit Lions for a report about light snowfall. According to weather anchor Rick Mitchell, that segment was supposed to air on a subchannel and not the main NBC channel. "It was not our intention to ruin the end of the game," he said in apologizing for the mix-up.[55]
Notable former on-air staff
- Matt Barrie – sports anchor (now at ESPN)
- Fox News Channel)
- Marc Fein – anchor (2011–2019)
- Lillard Hill – anchor (1948–1954; later Burma Desk Director and World Wide English Editor for Voice of America)
- Calvin Hughes – anchor/reporter (1995–1999; now at WPLG in Miami)
- Burson-Marsteller)
- , and director of the Oklahoma Travel and Tourism Board)
- Boyd Matson – reporter (1970–late 1970s; later host of National Geographic Explorer; now host of PBS' Wild Chronicles)
- David Ono – reporter (1990s, now at KABC-TV in Los Angeles)
- Scott Pelley – reporter (now at CBS News as correspondent for 60 Minutes)
- Charlie Rose – host of The Charlie Rose Show and The Baxters (1979–1980; was recently host of CBS This Morning and Charlie Rose)
- Bob Schieffer – anchor/reporter (later with CBS News as host of Face the Nation, and now as a political contributor)
- Harold Taft – meteorologist (1949–1991; deceased)
- Joe Tessitore – sports anchor (now at ESPN)
Technical information
Subchannels
The station's signal is
Channel | Res. | Aspect | Short name | Programming |
---|---|---|---|---|
5.1 | 1080i | 16:9 |
KXAS-DT | Main KXAS-TV programming / NBC |
5.2 | 480i | COZI-TV | Cozi TV | |
5.3 | NBCLX | NBC LX Home | ||
5.4 | Oxygen | Oxygen |
References
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External links
- FCC Public Inspection File: KXAS-TV
- Technical and ownership information for KXAS-TV at RabbitEars
- DFW Radio/TV History
- KXAS virtual tour on Vimeo
- Texas Storm Ranger video tour on Facebook
- WBAP historical marker from Texas Historical Sites Atlas (Texas Historical Commission)
- Tour of Broadcast Hill site and facilities at Fybush.com
- Channel 5 history: Amon and the early years
- NBC 5 is turning 75. Here's a look at the history of Channel 5
- WBAP promotional video for potential advertisers (early-mid 1960s)
- WBAP/KXAS archive and collections at University of North Texas