KCPQ
KCPQ (channel 13) is a television station licensed to Tacoma, Washington, United States, serving as the Fox network outlet for the Seattle area. It is owned and operated by the network's Fox Television Stations division alongside MyNetworkTV station KZJO (channel 22). The two stations share studios on Westlake Avenue in Seattle's Westlake neighborhood; KCPQ's main transmitter is located on Gold Mountain in Bremerton.
- Tacoma–Seattle, Washington
- United States
- Tacoma–Seattle, Washington
- United States
Tacoma, Washington
- Fox 13 Seattle
- Fox 13 News
- 13.1: Fox
- for others, see § Subchannels
August 2, 1953
- KMO-TV (1953–1954)
- KTVW (1954–1976)
- KCPQ-TV (1976–1980)
- Analog: 13 (VHF, 1953–2009)
- Digital: 18 (UHF, 1998–2009)
- NBC (1953)
- Independent (1953–1974; 1980–1986)
- Dark (1974–1976; 1980)
- PBS (1976–1980)
Station was owned by the Clover Park School District
33894
30 kW
610 m (2,001 ft)
- 22 (UHF) Seattle
- KZJO 22.2
- for others, see § Translators
The station signed on in August 1953 as KMO-TV, the television outgrowth of Tacoma radio station KMO. It was briefly an NBC network affiliate until another Seattle station signed on; the next year, KMO radio and television were sold to separate owners. The Seattle broadcaster J. Elroy McCaw bought channel 13, changed the call letters to KTVW, and ran it as an independent station. While KTVW produced a number of local programs, McCaw, a famously parsimonious owner, never converted the station to broadcast in color, and its syndicated programming inventory was considered meager. McCaw died in August 1969; three years later, his estate sold the station to the Blaidon Mutual Investors Corporation. While Blaidon tried several new programs and began color telecasting, the station continued to underperform financially. Two attempts to sell KTVW to out-of-state buyers failed because of its high liabilities. After a walkout by employees in January and the appointment of a receiver in July, KTVW was ordered closed on December 12, 1974.
The Clover Park School District in Lakewood purchased KTVW at bankruptcy auction in 1975. The station returned to the air on a non-commercial basis as KCPQ in January 1976, serving as an effective replacement for Clover Park's UHF station, KPEC-TV (channel 56). Changes to the structure of school financing in Washington and the refusal of voters to approve bonds to rebuild Clover Park High School forced the school district to sell KCPQ back into commercial use. After being off the air for most of 1980 to relocate its transmitter, KCPQ returned under new owner Kelly Broadcasting, who rebuilt it as a more competitive independent station. During Kelly's 19-year ownership of KCPQ, the station became a Fox affiliate, relocated its studios from Lakewood to Seattle, and established its present local news department.
KCPQ was sold to Tribune Broadcasting in 1999 as part of Kelly's exit from the broadcasting industry. As Tribune expanded the station's news output, it also had to fend off overtures by Fox, which had sought to own KCPQ on several occasions since the 1990s and at one point threatened to buy another station to broadcast Fox programming. Tribune was purchased by Nexstar Media Group in 2019; Nexstar then traded KCPQ to Fox as part of an exchange of Fox affiliates in three cities.
History[edit]
As KMO-TV/KTVW[edit]
In December 1952, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) simultaneously granted applications to broadcast on very high frequency (VHF) channels 11 and 13 in Tacoma; channel 13 was awarded to radio station KMO (1360 AM).[2] The station began broadcasting as KMO-TV on August 2, 1953, from studios in Tacoma and a transmitter near Ruston.[3]
KMO-TV briefly carried NBC programs until Seattle's KOMO-TV began broadcasting on December 11.[4] After that, KMO-TV's output primarily consisted of local and syndicated programs.[5] Within a year of starting the TV station, owner Carl E. Haymond—who had built KMO radio in 1926—sought to exit the broadcasting business, having already sold stakes in radio stations in California and Arizona. He first attempted to sell KMO radio and television together to the owners of Seattle radio station KAYO (1150 AM) for $350,000 (equivalent to $3.15 million in 2023[6]); the unusually low purchase price was attributed to the station's lack of network affiliation and its financial losses.[7] The FCC indicated the necessity of a hearing to approve the sale due to the then-impermissible overlap of the Seattle and Tacoma radio stations' coverage areas;[8] the deal was then scrapped several weeks later.[9][10] In July, Haymond sold KMO-TV for $300,000 (equivalent to $2.7 million in 2023[6]) to J. Elroy McCaw, a Seattle-based radio station owner.[11]
With KMO-TV separated from KMO radio, the television station changed its call sign to KTVW in October 1954[9] and announced plans to open auxiliary offices in Seattle.[12] The station also began airing Seattle Americans minor-league hockey, which was connected to KTVW in several ways. For two months, KTVW's general manager served as the team's president; when he resigned for a television job in Los Angeles, McCaw became the team's sole owner.[13] At this time, the Americans were the only professional hockey club to televise all their home games.[14]
McCaw tried to make several moves to improve channel 13's positioning in the late 1950s. In an unusual arrangement, the station briefly aired the CBS network news in late 1957 when Tacoma's then-CBS affiliate, KTNT-TV (channel 11), dropped the CBS Evening News with Douglas Edwards to make way for an expanded local news program. CBS, which wanted the newscast to continue to air in the Seattle market until KIRO-TV could sign on as the market's CBS station (which it would do on February 8, 1958), arranged for the network hookup to bring the program to KTVW on an interim basis.[15] In 1957, McCaw filed to move the transmitter from Tacoma to Queen Anne Hill in Seattle, which would have come with an upgrade to the maximum 316,000 watts;[9] local residents objected to the erection of another TV tower in the area[16] and to McCaw's proposal to create a "tower park" that would have required the demolition of 75 to 80 homes.[17] This proposal had stalled by 1958,[9] when it was reported that the owners of Los Angeles station KCOP-TV, including Bing Crosby, were negotiating to buy KTVW and another independent station McCaw owned, Denver's KTVR.[18] Ultimately, the station increased its effective radiated power from the Ruston transmitter from 100,000 to 214,000 watts in 1960.[9]
McCaw was regarded as frugal. Of his Denver station, it was remarked by Edwin James of Broadcasting that "McCaw's saving ways had been reflected in the station's programming";[19] in the 1950s, he owned WINS in New York and was an aggressive cost-cutter there.[20] Local programs from KTVW during its 20-year run included a movie block hosted by Stu Martin; the afternoon children's show Penny and Her Pals, hosted by LeMoyne Hreha;[21] and, for one year, coverage of the Seafair hydroplane races. In 1967, when an engineer's strike kept most of the other Seattle stations from broadcasting the event, KTVW stepped in to fill the void on short notice.[22] In 1967, channel 13 began airing a six-hour stock market show, the first such program to broadcast on a VHF station.[23] These shows, along with most of channel 13's local programming, were temporarily suspended at the end of March 1970 as part of cutbacks it attributed to "the economic slowdown". The cutbacks left Bob Corcoran, a talk show host, as KTVW's sole on-air personality.[24] KTVW was left airing, in the words of the television editor of The Seattle Times, "scratchy old movies and ... Neanderthal reruns from the violence-action era of television".[25] The business news programming briefly left the air that April.[26]
In early 1969, plans were floated to convert KTVW to color, move the transmitter to Port Orchard, and relocate the studios to Seattle. The television editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer hailed the proposed changes as heralding the end of "the funny station way over at the end of your television dial ... with the fuzzy picture and the funny, fuzzy programs and the fuzzy, old, awful movies".[27] However, any hopes of an upgrade were dashed when McCaw died of a stroke that August.[28] His indebted businesses struggled after his death; creditors made more than $12 million (equivalent to $72.7 million in 2023[6]) in claims, after which the bank declared his estate insolvent, requiring the family to sell off his various holdings, including the family mansion and yachts.[29]
Blaidon ownership, financial woes, and the end of KTVW[edit]
After nearly three years, on March 27, 1972, McCaw's estate sold KTVW to the Seattle-based Blaidon Mutual Investors Corporation, named for co-owners Blaine Sampson and Don Wolfstone,[30] for $1.1 million (equivalent to $6.08 million in 2023[6]).[31] During the sale process, the stock market program—which had returned in 1971 after it reorganized under a new production company[32]—stopped airing after channel 13 asked for more money for its air time in contract negotiations.[33]
Wolfstone recognized that the station needed help if it were to become viable, telling a writer for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that "there's not much of a worse [station] in the country".[34] Blaidon tried to turn KTVW around by boosting the station's signal strength, acquiring first-run syndicated programming, and installing color-capable broadcast equipment (the station had broadcast exclusively in black-and-white until Blaidon bought it).[35] Channel 13 premiered its new programming lineup with The Tony Visco Show, its flagship effort. This talk/entertainment show was hosted by Tony Visco, a Las Vegas lounge entertainer and singer, attempted to recreate a Tonight Show-style program. Don Wolfstone—the "Don" in "Blaidon"—brought in a Los Angeles producer/director to develop the show, which featured a live band on-set, and had hopes of flying in show-business guests from Los Angeles and later syndicating the program nationwide.[36] After two months on-air, rising production costs forced Blaidon to relocate the program from a Tacoma restaurant to the station's studios; channel 13 canceled The Tony Visco Show before the year ended.[37] Another new program launched under Blaidon was an afternoon cartoon show hosted by local actor Mike Lynch, playing a "superhero" character for whom viewers were asked to suggest a name; the winning entry was "Flash Blaidon".[38] Despite KTVW's improved programming and ratings that at times were competitive with KTNT-TV, national advertisers failed to materialize.[39] The News Tribune described the station, in retrospect, as "a down-at-the-heels purveyor of old movies and used-car commercials".[40]
Technical information[edit]
Subchannels[edit]
The station's signal is multiplexed: