13 Channel Houston In News
13 Channel Houston In News
KTRK-TV , channel 13, is an owned-and-operated television station of the Walt Disney Company-owned American Broadcasting Company, located in Houston, Texas. KTRK's studios and offices are located in the Upper Kirby district of Houston, and its transmitter is located in unincorporated northeastern Fort Bend County.
History
The station grew out of the VHF "freeze", when three entities vying for the channel 13 assignment, including the Houston Chronicle , decided to merge as Houston Consolidated Television . They bought the studio facilities of the defunct KNUZ-TV (channel 39), a DuMont affiliate which had gone dark. As the Chronicle was the largest shareholder in the company, the station went on the air on November 20, 1954 as KTRK-TV , derived from the Chronicle's radio station, KTRH. The station was an ABC affiliate; during the late 1950s, the station was also briefly affiliated with the NTA Film Network.
The original studio facilities were located at 4513 Cullen Blvd (at the defunct Texas Television Center district in the University of Houston campus); this studio later housed KHTV (later KHWB and KHCW, now KIAH, the present channel 39) and PBS member station KUHT (channel 8).
In 1955, the Chronicle bought out its partners. Although this theoretically left the paper free to change its calls to KTRH-TV to match its radio sister, it opted not to do so. However, for years it called itself "The Houston Chronicle Station." Soon afterward, the station moved to its current Bissonnet Street location. The studio was the first domed structure in town, preceding the better-known Astrodome by 10 years. Both projects were built by the same architect, Hermon Lloyd. Like many stations located on "unlucky" channel 13, it used a black cat as its mascot.
Early programs involved a heavy emphasis on local flavor and reflected themes of the day. Some of the more popular local shows included:
- Kitirik : a children's oriented program, hosted by an actress in a cat costume.
- Cadet Don : A Space-themed adventure program for children, focusing on the exploits of an interstellar adventurer and the locations he visited.
- Dialing for Dollars : A game show of sorts where a viewer would be phoned by the host and would win a cash prize by answering questions.
- Good Morning Houston : The successor to Dialing for Dollars which debuted in the late 1970s and expanded to include discussions on local events and topics important to viewer's lifestyles.
In 1967, the Chronicle sold KTRK to Capital Cities Broadcasting (later to become Capital Cities Communications). CapCities bought ABC in 1986, making KTRK an ABC-owned and operated station, and one of two Capital Cities-owned stations already affiliated with ABC alongside WPVI-TV. With that distinction, KTRK would become the first network-owned station in Texas. After 1991, the station's only preemption was the first half-hour of The Home Show , an arrangement which continued when the show morphed into Mike and Maty .
Capital Cities/ABC was sold to the Walt Disney Company in early 1996. Not long after, the new Disney-led ownership directed KTRK-TV to clear the entire ABC schedule, though there have been times when local special events are aired in place of network programming.
On April 30, 2000, a dispute between Disney and Time Warner Cable forced KTRK off cable systems within the Houston market for over 24 hours during the May sweeps period. Other ABC stations in markets served by Time Warner Cable, such as New York City, Los Angeles, and Raleigh/Durham, were also affected by the outage as well before the FCC forced TWC to restore service to those areas on May 2. In 2007, Time Warner traded the Houston franchise for Dallas-Fort Worth's Comcast.
Digital television
The station's digital channel is multiplexed:
Analog-to-digital conversion
After the analog television shutdown occurred on June 12, 2009 , KTRK-TV moved back to channel 13.
Programming
Network and syndicated programming
Under CapCities' ownership, KTRK preempted some ABC programming, though not nearly as much as other ABC affiliates, such as sister station WPVI-TV in Philadelphia. The programs which channel 13 preempted were not widely run in many markets, though for many years KTRK pre-empted the first half-hour of Good Morning America in favor of a local newscast. This practice continued into the early 1990s, before the newscast was moved back to a pre-7:00am start time. Despite these preemptions, ABC was more than satisfied with KTRK, one of its strongest affiliates.
Channel 13 is also different from many ABC owned-and-operated stations in that it has never aired The Oprah Winfrey Show , or the syndicated versions of Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! . Those programs have aired on CBS affiliate KHOU (channel 11) since 1986, while they have been mainstays on most of ABC's owned-and-operated stations for years. In fact, at one point during the late 1980s to early '90s, Donahue was the only daytime syndicated program on KTRK's lineup. This was largely due to its hour-long 6:00 p.m. newscast as well as its popular movie showcases and local programming at the time, including Good Morning Houston .
Since 2001, with the debut of the 4:00 p.m. newscast, channel 13 no longer has enough syndicated daytime hours of programming to back up its strong news programming outside of network programming. Thus the remaining two hours are filled by these syndicated programs during weekdays: Live with Regis and Kelly , Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (both of which are distributed by corporate cousin Disney-ABC Domestic Television), and Inside Edition .
Sports coverage
KTRK-TV was the original television home of the Houston Astros, from the team's inaugural season in 1962 until 1971; however the station only televised Sunday afternoon road games.
Channel 13 has been the official television home of the Houston Texans since the expansion year in 2002. The station has televised all of the Texans' preseason games not carried on national networks since the team's inception. On Sundays during the Texans' season, it televises a post-game show, Houston Texans Inside the Game at 10:35 p.m. hosted by Bob Allen and Spencer Tillman, following its Sunday newscast. On Mondays during the regular season, it televises Look Back with Kubiak , in which sports director Bob Allen looks over the previous Sunday's game with Texans head coach Gary Kubiak, during its 6 p.m. newscasts. On Saturdays, its Extra Points sports show is converted to a special edition entitled Extra Points: Houston Texans Edition at 6:30 PM.
News programming
KTRK is widely noted for having the most experienced news team in Greater Houston, the tenth-largest media market in the United States. Many of the station's anchors and reporters have been at the station for at least 20 years, some even dating back to the station's days under Capital Cities ownership. Dave Ward has been the station's main anchor since 1965, longer than anyone in Houston television history. Two other notable long-time personalities are sports director Bob Allen, who has served in that position since 1974, longer than any other major-market sports director, and investigative reporter Wayne Dolcefino, who has worked for KTRK since 1985 and has won many awards for a number of high-profile civic and consumer investigations with his 13 Undercover franchise.
KTRK also became known for its legendary consumer and investigative reporter, Marvin Zindler, whose week-long 1973 reports on a brothel in La Grange, Texas led to the closing of the Chicken Ranch, a bordello that was later immortalized in the musical and film, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas and ZZ Top's hit song "La Grange." Zindler was also widely noted in Houston for his Friday night Rat and Roach Report on Houston restaurants that failed health inspections, which ended with his trademark line "Slime in the Ice Machine". Zindler signed a lifetime contract with KTRK in 1988, making him the first person ever offered such a contract by then-owner Capital Cities, which was known as a financially frugal company. Zindler continued to work for the station until his death in 2007 from pancreatic cancer, even filing reports during his treatment. Since his death, Zindler's former producer, Lori Reingold has picked up where he left off. She was instrumental in helping find "Marvin's Angels", wrote much of his copy and will be continuing under the segment name, "Action's Angels".
In the 1970s and 1980s, Ward, along with Allen, Zindler, and weatherman Ed Brandon, led Houston's top-rated news team at 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. The lineup was later revised to include a female anchor, Shara Fryer in the 1990s, followed by current chief meteorologist Tim Heller in lieu of Brandon at 10 p.m. in 2002, and the replacement of Fryer with Gina Gaston the following year. In 2007, Brandon retired from the station after a 35-year career, but has occasionally filled in.
The station's newscast, 13 Eyewitness News , has been number one in the Houston market for most of the last 30 years. It is also one of the highest-rated newscasts in the country. In re
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