WFAA
UHF) Decatur | |
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WFAA (channel 8) is a
WFAA maintains studio facilities and business offices at the WFAA Communications Center Studios on Young Street in downtown Dallas (next to the offices of its former sister newspaper under the ownership of former parent company Belo, The Dallas Morning News); sister station KMPX maintains separate facilities on Gateway Drive in Irving. WFAA's transmitter is located in Cedar Hill, Texas.
WFAA is the largest ABC affiliate by market size that is not
History
Early history
The initial application for the television station was filed on October 23, 1944, when local businessman Karl Hoblitzelle, owner of movie theater chain Interstate Circuit Theatres, applied with the
The station first signed on the air at 8 p.m. on September 17, 1949, as KBTV, with a fifteen-minute ceremony inaugurating the launch of Channel 8 as its first broadcast; KBTV broadcast for one hour that evening, with the remainder of its initial schedule consisting of its first locally produced program, the
When the station commenced its full schedule on September 18, KBTV had broadcast only four hours of programming per day. It originally operated as a primary affiliate of the DuMont Television Network and a secondary affiliate of the short-lived Paramount Television Network; under the arrangement, through an agreement between Lacy-Potter and Paramount Pictures, the station agreed to air 4.75 hours of Paramount Television's programming each week during 1949.[2] KBTV, NBC affiliate WBAP-TV and CBS affiliate KRLD-TV (channel 4, now Fox owned-and-operated station KDFW)—the latter of which was also licensed to Dallas and signed on three months later on December 3—would be the only television stations in the Dallas–Fort Worth area to sign on for the next six years as the FCC had instituted a freeze on new applications for television station licenses in November 1948, a moratorium that would last for four years.
Belo ownership and ABC affiliation
Lacy-Potter Television Broadcasting lost $128,020 in net revenue during its four-month stewardship of KBTV, leading Tom Potter to make the decision to put the station up for sale. The
In January 1950, Belo purchased KBTV from Lacy-Potter for $575,000;
In 1950, WFAA switched its primary affiliation to NBC, and also affiliated with ABC on a secondary basis. DuMont shut down in 1955, amid various issues that arose from its relations with Paramount that hamstrung it from expansion.
Channel 8 became known for its heavy schedule of local programs during the period from the 1950s through the 1980s. The most popular was a show aimed at younger audiences;
In 1958, WFAA became the first television station in the market to use a
On April 2, 1961, the station's operations were relocated to the WFAA Communications Center Studios, a state-of-the-art broadcasting complex located at Young and Record Streets in downtown Dallas; the former studio facilities on Harry Hines Boulevard were subsequently purchased by North Texas Public Broadcasting for use as the broadcasting facilities for National Educational Television station KERA-TV (channel 13, now a PBS member station). The Communications Center complex housed three production studios, offices and sound recording studios for the WFAA radio stations as well as The Dallas Morning News' headquarters. The first live telecast to originate from the building was Young America Speaks, a 13-week intercollegiate debate tournament series (the first such program ever televised), which aired until June of that year. In 1974, Texas State Sen. Jim Wade filed a motion to the FCC, challenging Belo's renewal application for the Channel 8 license and strip it of rights to operate WFAA; Wade's efforts, in which he also attempted to convince the FCC to award the television station's license to him, would prove unsuccessful as the agency chose to approve renewal of the existing license owned by Belo.
Over time, Belo gradually expanded its television broadcasting unit. The company acquired its second television station in 1969, when it purchased
In May 1984, WFAA unveiled one of the most successful station image campaigns in the United States with the launch of the "Spirit of Texas", which was created in commemoration of the forthcoming 1986 sesquicentennial of Texas' independence. The promotions that aired as part of the campaign focused on the region's cultural heritage, accompanied by an imaging theme written by
On January 14, 1987, the Hill Tower transmitter facility in Cedar Hill (which was jointly owned by WFAA and KDFW) was struck by a
In April 1998, when
On
On July 20, 2005, Belo announced that it had reached an agreement with real estate developer Hillwood Capital to build a secondary studio facility in the eastern tower of the Plaza Towers complex then under construction in the Victory Park development at the corner of Olive and Houston Streets (adjacent to the American Airlines Center).[11] The 5,000-square-foot (465 m2) facility, which opened in January 2007, incorporates a street-level studio where most of the station's news programming (with the exception of the 10 p.m. newscast) and the local talk show Good Morning Texas is produced, and houses news production staff and engineering operations; initially, the building also housed certain operations run by Belo's other Dallas-based properties, including its publishing division. The WFAA Communications Center continues to house the station's newsroom and most other business operations (including its master control, traffic, advertising and programming departments).[12][13]
On October 1, 2007, Belo announced plans to
Gannett/Tegna ownership
On June 13, 2013, the Gannett Company announced that it would acquire Belo for $1.5 billion (the purchase price would increase to $2.2 billion by the merger's completion).
On August 5, 2014, Gannett announced that it would split its broadcast and print media properties into separate publicly traded companies.[24][25] Once the corporate separation was finalized on June 29, 2015, WFAA became part of Tegna, which was structured as the legal successor of the old Gannett and assumed ownership of the original company's non-publishing assets (including the broadcasting unit and most of its digital media properties); the Gannett Company, meanwhile, was re-established as a new company absolved of all existing debt that retained its predecessor's newspapers (including the company's flagship publication, USA Today) and select digital assets not acquired by Tegna.[26][27][28]
On September 25, 2020, WFAA would gain a sister station when Tegna acquired KMPX (channel 29) from Estrella Media which airs its Estrella TV network over that station. The sale was completed on November 20 with KMPX moving most of its internal operations days later into WFAA's Communications Center Studios on Young Street. While KMPX continues to serve as an Estrella TV affiliate, the signal is used to provide a full-market high definition simulcast of WFAA's main channel (which remains on VHF channel 8) for those who only have a UHF antenna. The deal also includes a five-year affiliation agreement between Estrella and Tegna, as well as an option for Estrella to purchase WFAA's VHF license.
If the five-year agreement to sell the station to Estrella is carried out in full, Estrella would purchase the license and transmitter assets of WFAA, and the two stations would swap physical channels, with WFAA then taking KMPX's FCC facility ID and in technicality, KMPX moving to the channel 8 facility ID established in 1949.
Aborted sale to Cox Media Group
On February 22, 2022, Tegna announced that it would be acquired by Standard General and Apollo Global Management for $5.4 billion. As a part of the deal, WFAA and KMPX, along with their Austin sister station KVUE and Houston sister stations KHOU and KTBU would be resold to Cox Media Group.[29][30] The sale was cancelled on May 22, 2023.[31]
Radio
WFAA (AM)
WFAA, which would eventually serve as the sister radio station to WFAA television, first signed on the air on June 26, 1922.[32] The station had long participated in a time-sharing arrangement with Fort Worth radio station WBAP, which was maintained as the latter operated at various frequencies; it originally began in 1922, when WBAP (which first went on the air on May 2 of that year, nine weeks before WFAA began operations) transmitted at 630 kHz and continued until 1927, before resuming when that station moved to 800 kHz in 1929 and settling when WBAP moved its current frequency at 820 kHz in 1941. In 1947, WFAA and WBAP began time-sharing on a second frequency, 570 kHz, which was formerly occupied by KGKO. Until WFAA (AM) began to transmit full-time on 570 kHz in 1970, WBAP and WFAA were engaged in the somewhat bizarre situation of having to switch back and forth between the 570 and 820 frequencies at various times of the day: WBAP broadcast on 820 AM from midnight to 6 a.m., with WFAA taking over the frequency space until noon; WBAP returned to the 820 signal for a few hours, before WFAA once again took over the frequency. WFAA had control over 820 during prime evening hours, when the 50,000-watt clear channel signal could often be heard as far west as California and as far east as New York (at the time, there were significantly fewer radio stations that were operating at night, reducing the likelihood of interference).[33]
WFAA was the first radio station in Texas to join a national network (becoming an affiliate of the
WFAA (AM) was initially based its operations in a 9×9-ft tent on the roof of the Dallas Morning News' headquarters, before relocating to the newspaper's library. On October 1, 1925, it later moved to the 17th floor of the Baker Hotel at the southeast corner of Commerce and Akard Streets in downtown Dallas (which would be demolished in 1980), and then moved to facilities atop the Santa Fe Railroad Warehouse on Jackson Street on June 20, 1941 (the building still has the "WFAA" calls clearly painted along a panel on the top floor). On April 4, 1961, it moved to the WFAA Communications Center at Young and Record Streets. On July 2, 1983, its call letters were changed to KRQX.
WFAA-FM
WFAA-FM signed on October 5, 1946, as KERA-FM (no relation to the current radio and television station using those call letters). It was the first FM radio station to sign on in Texas, although its roots can be traced back to two test stations that signed on years prior: an experimental trial that dated back to 1939, and experimental FM station W5X1C, which signed on October 15, 1945. By 1947, WFAA-FM had moved from its original frequency at 94.3 FM to a preferred location at 97.9. With FM broadcasting in its infancy, the station signed on and off the air for months—and even going silent for two years—at a time, before settling on a permanent broadcast schedule by 1965.
Initially acting as a simulcast of the AM station, WFAA-FM programmed a MOR and
Subchannel history
WFAA-DT2
WFAA-DT2 is the second digital subchannel of WFAA, broadcasting in-house weather and local programming in widescreen standard definition on channel 8.2.
WFAA launched a digital subchannel on virtual channel 8.2 in 2004, as a locally programmed format under the name "Xpress 8.2". The service, which was later renamed "News 8 Now" (which the station also used as the branding for
Programming
Local programming
WFAA produces the talk, entertainment and lifestyle program Good Morning Texas, which airs weekdays at 9 a.m. and is produced independently of WFAA's news department; the hour-long program, which debuted on September 12, 1994, under original hosts Scott Sams and Deborah Duncan (as of June 2016[update], it is currently co-hosted by Erin Hunter and former KXAS-TV anchor Jane McGarry), served as the basis for other similarly formatted local late-morning talk shows that debuted on its sister stations under Belo ownership in subsequent years. Some of the topics that were shown on Good Morning Texas were also used during its morning newscasts known as News 8 Daybreak. In 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, an extension version of Good Morning Texas was added to the 2 p.m. schedule called Good Morning Texas Extra which contains the same content as their morning show, which replaced the Tegna-produced Sister Circle.[38]
Channel 8 held the local syndication rights to the game shows Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune for several years starting in 1987. After spending eighteen years in the 6:30 p.m. slot, WFAA dropped Wheel, as well as Jeopardy! in the 3 p.m. slot, from its schedule in the fall of 2005. Both series moved to KTVT, with the former being replaced by Entertainment Tonight, which prior to the change, Channel 8 had aired following Nightline since it acquired the rights to ET from KDFW in September 1984.
WFAA carries the majority of the ABC network schedule; however, as an affiliate that is not owned by the network itself, WFAA may occasionally preempt some of the network's prime time shows to run locally produced specials. ABC programs that were preempted or otherwise interrupted by
Sports programming
In 2024, WFAA parent company Tegna Inc. announced an agreement to air 10 Dallas Mavericks games during the 2023–24 NBA season.[41]
Past program preemptions and deferrals
Historically, the station has either preempted or aired out of pattern certain ABC network programs to make room for other local or syndicated programs or because of internal concerns over a program's content. Beginning in 1970, it was one of a handful of ABC stations that did not carry
The station traditionally aired syndicated programs following its 10 p.m. newscast for many years, resulting in certain ABC late night programs that the network recommended its stations air immediately after their
WFAA has traditionally run ABC's Saturday morning children's program lineup in its entirety; however, from September 1998 to September 2011, WFAA aired several programs within the
Following its September 2002 rebranding as
In the past, WFAA has also chosen to preempt certain ABC programs because of content deemed inappropriate by station management, in some cases due to concerns over possible FCC-imposed fines. Under the stewardship of general manager Mike Shapiro during the 1960s and 1970s, WFAA preempted certain theatrical and
News operation
As of September 2020, WFAA broadcasts 36+1⁄2 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with six hours each weekday, 3+1⁄2 hours on Saturdays and 2+1⁄2 hours on Sundays). In addition, the station produces two Sunday evening sports programs: the highlight program Dale Hansen's Sports Special (hosted by longtime
News department history
Channel 8 had been the ratings leader among the television newscasts in the Dallas–Fort Worth market for much of its history, having overtaken WBAP-TV/KXAS-TV in the position during the mid-1970s. WFAA's 10 p.m. newscast, known as The News 8 Update from 1980 to 2012, has typically placed as the market's most-watched late evening newscast, and its 5 and 6 p.m. newscasts are typically the area's most-watched early evening local newscasts.[citation needed] However, the station's ratings have suffered in recent years, particularly among adults between the ages of 25 and 54 due to competition from Fox owned-and-operated station KDFW as well as improving viewership since the late 2000s for CBS owned-and-operated station KTVT's newscasts; WFAA's 10 p.m. newscast slid from first place for the November 2010 sweeps to a relatively distant second during the February 2011 sweeps period with total viewers and with adults 25-54 (its first fall from first place in that slot as well as at 6 p.m. in total viewers for the first time in at least three decades). WFAA's only No. 1 finish during the latter period was at 5 p.m. in total viewers (it lost to KDFW in the adult 25-54 demographic), aided by its Oprah lead-in. The station was in last place overall in among adults 25 to 54 for the first time in at least 30 years.[45] During the May 2011 sweeps period, the 10 p.m. news regained its position as the market's No. 1 late newscast in total viewers and adults 25–54; its morning newscast placed third in both demographics, while the 5 and 6 p.m. newscasts placed first in the early evening slot (aided by the outgoing Oprah) in total viewers and second (behind KDFW) in the 25- to 54-year-old demographic.[46]
WFAA was the first station to break the news of
As local television news evolved into a more polished presentation, WFAA became known for groundbreaking achievements and reporting in broadcast journalism as well as for many technological advancements including being the first to convert to a computerized newsroom; and the first station in the market to deploy a
WFAA-TV began its rise to news dominance in Dallas–Fort Worth during the late 1960s and early 1970s under the leadership of news manager Travis Linn, who had previously served as
Building its existing success, WFAA dominated the market's local news ratings from the mid-1970s—having overtaken WBAP-TV/KXAS' once-dominant The Texas News—through the late 1990s. The station strengthened its on-air news staff with top-tier talent, led by anchors including
Channel 8's approach to news during this period was characterized by an aggressive, all-out commitment to get the story and to present it in graphic, visual detail. The station was rewarded with some of the highest ratings of any local station in a major media market. A standard practice was to have each reporter cover only one beat, such as Dallas City Hall or the Dallas County Commission, making the reporter an expert on the subject that he or she was covering. Former news director
Since 1986, WFAA's news department has won six
Coinciding with the commencement of local programming production at the Plaza Towers studios in Victory Park, WFAA began broadcasting its newscasts and other local programs in
In 2009, WFAA became the first local station to receive the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award's Gold Baton, for its commitment to
Notable current on-air staff
- Pete Delkus (AMS and NWA Seals of Approval) – chief meteorologist
- Tiffany Liou – reporter
- Alex Rozier – reporter[60]
Notable former on-air staff
- Sanger-Harrisand the Kim Dawson Agency)
- Julie Bologna – weekend morning meteorologist (2011–2016)
- KLUV, deceased)
- Aaron Chimbel – mobile journalist (2006–2009; now a journalism professor at Texas Christian University)
- )
- Ron Corning – Daybreak anchor (2011–2019; currently host of The Morning After on KDAF)
- Troy Dungan – chief weathercaster (1976–2007; later at KTXD-TV as co-host of The Texas Daily)
- Bill Evans – meteorologist (1987–1989; now at WLNG in Sag Harbor, New York)
- Shon Gables – Daybreak weekend co-anchor (2010–2014; now at WANF in Atlanta)
- Chris Gailus – Daybreak co-anchor (2000–2003; now at CHAN-DT in Vancouver)
- KPSP-TV in Palm Springs, California; deceased)
- Leeza Gibbons – reporter/co-host of PM Magazine (early 1980s)
- Dale Hansen – sports director (1983–2021)
- Don Harris – reporter/anchor (1967–?; became a reporter for NBC News, was killed in Guyana in 1978)
- Brad Hawkins – Daybreak anchor (now with Southwest Airlines)
- Peppermint Place, (the WFAA-produced local morning show) The Early Show, Dallas Bandstand and The Julie Bennell Show (1949–1970 and 1975–1996)
- Jackie Hyland – Daybreak anchor/reporter (2005–2007; now an anchor at WRAL-TV in Raleigh, North Carolina)
- Iola Johnson – anchor/reporter (1973–1985; last with KTXA as host of Positively Texas)
- ABC Sports at the time; later with NBC Sports, died on June 15, 2008)[61]
- Andrea Joyce – sports reporter (1987–1988; later with ESPN, CBS Sports and NBC Sports)
- Verne Lundquist – sports anchor/host of Bowling for Dollars (1967–1983; later at CBS Sports; retired in April 2024)
- Bill Macatee – sports anchor (now at CBS Sports)
- John McCaa – anchor (1984–2019)
- Lisa McRee – anchor/reporter (1989–1991; now Spectrum News 1 in Los Angeles)
- ABC Sports; died on December 5, 2010)
- Russ Mitchell – anchor (1983–1985; now at WKYC in Cleveland)
- Fox News Channel as host of The O'Reilly Factorwas fired from Fox News April 19, 2017, amid sexual harassment claims)
- Scott Pelley – reporter (1982–1989; now at CBS News as correspondent for 60 Minutes)
- Fox News Channel)
- Robyne Robinson – reporter (1985–1987; last at KMSP-TV in Minneapolis)
- Tracy Rowlett – anchor (1974–1999; left for KTVT, later at KTXD-TV as co-host of The Texas Daily)
- Rene Syler – anchor/reporter (1992–1997; left for KTVT, last with CBS News as co-anchor of The Early Show)
- Doug Terry – reporter/anchor (1966–1970; a founding reporter/producer at NPR in Washington, D.C., writer, technologist, photographer, poet)
- Wes Wise – sports anchor (1950s; later mayor of Dallas from 1971 to 1976)
- Paula Zahn – reporter (1978–1979; later went to CNN)
- David Schechter – reporter (2006-2022; later became a national environmental correspondent and host at CBS)
Controversy
Jimmy Kimmel monologue cut-off
WFAA came under scrutiny in May 2022 when the station extended its newscast past 10:35 p.m. to cover the Uvalde school shooting. A monologue by Jimmy Kimmel which addressed the shooting and gun control was partially blocked out by commercials. A statement from the station claimed that computer automation which preset the commercial breaks and triggered them as if the coverage did not take place caused that night's episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live! to be partially preempted. The monologue was made available on WFAA's website and on Kimmel's social media channel.[62] The episode was already available on Hulu and other services by the next day.
Technical information
Subchannels
The station's signal is
Channel | Res. | Aspect | Short name | Programming |
---|---|---|---|---|
8.1 | 720p | 16:9 |
WFAA | Main WFAA programming / ABC |
8.2 | 480i | AccuWX | WFAA Two[64] | |
8.3 | Crime | True Crime Network | ||
8.4 | Quest | Quest | ||
8.5 | ShopLC | Shop LC |
Analog-to-digital conversion
WFAA became the first television station in the United States to broadcast their
WFAA shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 8, at 12:03 pm.
On December 23, 2009, WFAA filed an application to the FCC to obtain permission to increase its transmitter's effective radiated power (ERP) from 45 kW through an omni-directional antenna to 55 kW, through the installation of a directional antenna. The reasoning behind its proposal for the power increase was due to difficulties experienced by some viewers in portions of the Dallas–Fort Worth market who tried to maintain adequate over-the-air reception of the channel 8 digital signal.[71]
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{{cite web}}
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