KGW

Ownership by The Oregonian[edit]

KGW-TV was originally co-owned with KGW radio (620 AM, now KPOJ). (KPOJ was originally on 1330 AM, and was owned by the now defunct Portland Oregon Journal.) The Oregonian newspaper put KGW radio on the air by purchasing an existing transmitter from the Shipowners Radio Service. The U.S. Department of Commerce licensed the radio station, and it began broadcasting on March 25, 1922^[4] (after a test transmission two days earlier).^[5] Among the station's early personalities was "The Man of 1000 Voices," Mel Blanc, who debuted on the radio program The Hoot Owls. The station's studios and transmitter were located in The Oregonian Building^[6][7] (of 1892) until 1943, when a fire destroyed them^[8] and the station moved to other quarters.^[7] In 1946, KGW added a sister station, KGW-FM on 95.3 MHz (now 100.3 KKRZ). The following year, The Oregonian applied for and received a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) construction permit for a television station, but later returned it in order to focus on its core newspaper business.


The Oregonian sold KGW-AM-FM to North Pacific Television, a consortium of Seattle businesswoman Dorothy Bullitt and five Portland businessmen, on November 1, 1953. Bullitt's King Broadcasting Company, who also owned KING-AM-FM-TV in Seattle, was the largest shareholder in the venture, with a 40 percent stake. Bullitt eventually bought out her partners (and in doing so, became the sole owner of the station). King Broadcasting wanted to add a television station to KGW-AM-FM. KGW-TV signed on the air on December 15, 1956, on channel 8. Because KING-TV was an ABC television network affiliate at that time, KGW-TV began as an ABC affiliate. KGW radio also switched its affiliation from NBC to ABC at that time. On April 26, 1959, it swapped affiliations with KPTV (channel 12), becoming an NBC affiliate. (KGW's sister station, KING-TV in Seattle, also switched from ABC to NBC with KOMO-TV at the same time.)


The KGW-TV tower was a prominent victim of the Northwest's historic, and violent Columbus Day Storm on October 12, 1962. The station returned to the air on October 16 using a temporary tower, as well as an antenna on loan from KTNT-TV (now KSTW) of Tacoma, Washington. A new antenna and tower were placed into service on January 28, 1963.