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| Channels | |
| Branding | Fox 25;Fox 25 News |
| Programming | |
| Affiliations |
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| Ownership | |
| Owner |
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| KOCB | |
| History | |
First air date | February 2, 1959 (66 years ago) (1959-02-02) |
Former channel numbers | Analog: 25 (UHF, 1959–2009) |
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Call sign meaning | Oklahoma |
| Technical information[1] | |
Licensing authority | FCC |
| Facility ID | 35388 |
| ERP | 1,000kW |
| HAAT | 475.8 m (1,561 ft) |
| Transmitter coordinates | 35°32′58″N97°29′19″W / 35.54944°N 97.48861°W /35.54944; -97.48861 |
| Translator(s) | see§ Translators |
| Links | |
Public license information | |
| Website | okcfox |
KOKH-TV (channel 25) is atelevision station inOklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States, affiliated with theFox network. It is owned bySinclair Broadcast Group alongsideKOCB (channel 34), anindependent station. The two stations share studios and transmitter facilities on East Wilshire Boulevard and 78th Street on the city's northeast side.
On July 25, 1958, while it was in the midst of protracted hearings regarding the predecessor station's bankruptcy, the Republic Television and Radio Company (owner of the allocation's original occupant,ABC affiliate KTVQ, which operated from November 1, 1953, until it was forced off the air by court order on December 15, 1955) donated theconstruction permit andlicense to Independent School District No. 89 ofOklahoma County (nowOklahoma City Public Schools). Although theFederal Communications Commission (FCC) reserved the UHF channel 25 allocation in Oklahoma City for commercial broadcasting purposes, the school district proposed upon acquiring the permit to operate it as anon-commercial educationalindependent station.[2][3] The district requested for the television station to use the KOKH call letters (standing for itsstate of license, "Oklahoma") assigned at the time to itspublic radio station on 88.9 FM (nowKYLV).
KOKH-TV first signed on the air onFebruary 2, 1959. The station originally operated from studio facilities based out of the district's Broadcasting Center at the former Classen High School building on North Ellison Avenue and Northwest 17th Street in Oklahoma City's Mesta Park neighborhood (later occupied by theClassen School of Advanced Studies until the district consolidated it with Northeast Academy at that school's campus on Northeast 30th Street and Kelley Avenue in August 2019), which also served as a production facility forNational Educational Television affiliate KETA-TV (channel 13, now aPBSmember station), which theOklahoma Educational Television Authority (OETA) signed on as Oklahoma's first educational television station on April 13, 1956.[4] Channel 25's programming—which originally ran Monday through Fridays for seven hours per day, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.—consisted mainly ofinstructional and lecture-based telecourse programs developed or acquired in cooperation with theOklahoma State Department of Education, which offered the course subjects attributable for college credit. Unlike KETA, which offered educational programming year-round (at least, during prime time through NET and later PBS), KOKH only offered programming during the academic year, temporarily suspending broadcasting operations during the district's designated summer break period.
In the summer of 1970, KOKH became the last television station in the Oklahoma City market to transmit programming incolor, afterRCA color transmission equipment—including three studio cameras, two videotape recorders, two film systems and two switchers—worth around $500,000 was donated to the school district.[5] By that time, Channel 25 expanded its schedule to nine hours per day (from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.). Operational expenses led to cutbacks in its daily programming schedule for the 1975–76 school year, reducing its schedule to six hours per day (from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.) and suspending programming on Fridays entirely. Programming gradually expanded beginning in the 1976–77 school year, adding two extra hours of instructional programs during the mid-afternoon as well as some off-network syndicated series (such asLeave It to Beaver,Timmy and Lassie,Man Without a Gun andThe Munsters) in the late afternoon as part of a re-expanded nine-hour-long schedule. By September 1977, KOKH began offering prime time programs, consisting of science and documentary series and someadult education programs until sign-off. At that time, its broadcast day was expanded to thirteen hours per day (from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m.); the station also began operating on weekends for the first time in its history, resuming a Friday schedule after two years and launching a limited schedule of instructional programs on Saturday and Saturdays during the morning and midday hours (from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.).
In the fall of 1978, Oklahoma City Public Schools declared its intent to sell KOKH-TV, intending to redirect the money it funneled into the television station to raise teacher salaries. The school district cited the station's operating expenses (which averaged $300,000 per year) for its decision, claiming that those outran any benefits that KOKH had to the district; it had also struggled to raise $350,000 in matching funds to replace the station's aging transmitter and broadcast tower. Internal studies also indicated that schoolteachers within the district seldom had used KOKH's instructional programs for classroom credit. In Oklahoma City Public Schools' favor was that it had never formally requested that the UHF channel 25 allocation—which had officially been reserved by the FCC for commercial use—be reclassified to non-commercial status upon acquiring the permit from Republic Television and Radio. The Oklahoma City area had also grown to a population large enough that a commercial independent station could now viably operate, making it possible for the school district to sell the KOKH license to a commercial television station operator. On December 14, 1978,New York City-based John Blair & Co. purchased the KOKH-TV license for $3.5 million; Blair outbid two groups that were also competing for the UHF channel 14 allocation at that time, commercial broadcasterThe Outlet Company and the noncommercial religiousTrinity Broadcasting Network (which would sign onKTBO-TV on channel 14 in March 1981).[6][7][8] The sale to Blair was approved by the FCC on June 6, 1979; since Oklahoma City Public Schools had let out regular classes for its designated summer break period, KOKH had suspended programming as normal during the summer months—while extending that period by five weeks during the transfer process—as the sale was being completed.[9]
On October 1, 1979, when Blair formally took over channel 25's operations, KOKH was converted into a commercial independent station, the first such station in the state of Oklahoma. (OETAflagship KETA-TV concurrently became Oklahoma City's sole educational television outlet.) The station's first broadcast as a commercial independent was a special 30-minute program inaugurating KOKH's new format at 6 a.m. that morning; this was followed by the station's first entertainment program, the syndicated children's showNew Zoo Revue. It adopted a general entertainment format typical of a UHF-based independent, initially carrying a mix ofcartoons, classicsitcoms,religious programs, some sports programming, and certain network programs preempted byNBC affiliate KTVY (channel 4, nowKFOR-TV), ABC affiliateKOCO-TV (channel 5), andCBS affiliateKWTV (channel 9) to carry local or syndicated programming. (Among the preempted network shows carried by KOKH as an independent station wereSearch for Tomorrow, which KTVY preempted from April 1982—following thesoap opera's move to NBC from CBS—until September 1985,[10] andNightline, which ABC contracted KOKH-TV to show live-to-air from September 1983 to February 1985, after KOCO attempted to push the newsmagazine to a post-midnight slot to accommodate off-network syndicated sitcoms that it was already airing after its 10 p.m. newscast as well as its acquisition of the short-lived syndicated talk showThicke of the Night.[11][12]) The station also heavily incorporatedfeature films onto its schedule, to such an extent that, from 1979 to 1986, KOKH promoted itself as "Oklahoma's Great[est] Movie Station"; KOKH usually carried four films per day—two each in the afternoon, and one to two films per night inprime time—Monday through Friday, and five to six films per day each weekend.[13]
KOKH gained a competitor four weeks later on October 28, when Seraphim Media signed on the similarly formatted KGMC-TV (channel 34, nowCW-affiliatedsister stationKOCB). This was followed by the launch ofKAUT (channel 43) byGolden West Broadcasters on October 15, 1980, which initially featured programming fromsubscription service Video Entertainment Unlimited (VEU) at night as well as on weekend afternoons. (Three weeks later on November 3, KAUT added a rolling news format as well as a limited schedule of syndicated entertainment programs during the daytime hours on weekdays.) In May 1980, the station relocated its operations into a new 22,000-square-foot (2,000 m2) studio facility on East Wilshire Boulevard and Northeast 78th Street in northeast Oklahoma City; its transmitter facilities were also relocated to a 1,620-foot (490 m) transmission tower that was built adjacent to the studio building. During the early 1980s, KOKH signed on eight low-power UHFtranslators (inElk City,Hollis,Erick,Strong City,Woodward,Ponca City andArdmore) to extend its over-the-air coverage throughout the western two-thirds of Oklahoma and (via a repeater inQuanah) far northwestTexas.[14]
Because of its status as the strongest of Oklahoma Citymarket's three commercial independents, in the spring of 1986, KOKH was approached byNews Corporation to become a charter affiliate of the fledglingFox Broadcasting Company. Station management turned the offer down because Fox's request that its inaugural program,The Late Show StarringJoan Rivers, be aired at 10 p.m. (when the station's second scheduled film of the evening would normally be in progress at the time) would have caused disruption to its prime time double feature strategy. On July 25, Fox reached an agreement with KAUT (then owned by Rollins Communications) to serve as the network's Oklahoma City affiliate.[13][15]
In July 1986, John Blair & Co. was approached byprivate equity firmReliance Capital Group to initiate a friendly takeover of the group; Reliance offered to acquire 61% of the common shares held by Blair for $31 per share, and exchange the remaining shares for a 15-year debenture at a face value of $20.75 per share; Blair also offered to pay a $1.50dividend on each of the unacquired shares, pending completion of the Reliance acquisition.[16] Blair and Co. considered the offer to prevent ahostile takeover by minority stockholderMacfadden Holdings, amid conflicting ideological concerns expressed by company shareholders over Macfadden's ownership of adult-oriented publications (MacFadden planned to use the proceeds from its 1985 sale ofpornographic magazineCheri to take full control of Blair).[17][18] On November 5, in a corporate restructuring to focus on expanding itsSpanish language network NetSpan (nowTelemundo) and to pay off debt incurred by the Reliance purchase, Blair and Co. sold KOKH, and NBC affiliatesKSBW-TV inSalinas andKSBY inSan Luis Obispo, California, toNashville-basedGillett Communications for $86 million; the sale received FCC approval on December 30, and was finalized onDecember 31.[19][20][21][22] Gillett subsequently transferred KOKH, Fox affiliateWRLH-TV inRichmond, Virginia, NBC affiliateWEAU-TV inEau Claire, Wisconsin, and CBS affiliatesKOLN inLincoln, Nebraska—as well asGrand Islandsatellite KGIN—andWWMT inKalamazoo, Michigan to Busse Broadcast Communications (founded by former Gillett president Lawrence A. Busse, and operated as a trust company held by the children of George N. Gillett) to address ownership issues related to Gillett's purchase of a majority stake inStorer Communications. The transaction received FCC approval on July 31, 1987, and was finalized on August 27.[23][24]
Despite just barely ranking as a top-40Nielsen market at the time, the Oklahoma City market did not have enough television-viewing households to support what were essentially three independent stations, nor was there a supply of programming on the syndication market that could sufficiently fill their respective schedules. In the summer of 1988,Visalia, California–basedPappas Telecasting Companies proposed a deal with Busse to purchase KOKH. The complex $30-million asset transfer proposal would have resulted in Pappas acquiring the programming inventories of both KGMC and KAUT (including channel 43's Fox affiliation rights) and integrating many of their acquired programs onto channel 25's schedule, solidifying the station's status as Oklahoma City's dominant independent. Simultaneously, Seraphim Media would donate the license and certain intellectual assets of KGMC to the OETA—with the intent of converting it into a secondary PBS station—for $1 million, with Pappas acquiring equipment and property assets owned by the station for an additional $1 million.Heritage Media (through its Rollins Communications subsidiary) would sell KAUT to a religious broadcaster in turn, which would convert that station to a non-commercial religious format.GovernorHenry Bellmon voiced concerns with OETA's involvement in the transaction, suggesting that the purchase of a second Oklahoma City station would result in the authority—which had reported to the legislature that it had limited appropriations to adequately operate its existing stations as it stood—constantly requesting additional funding for the state network and a secondary Oklahoma City station.[25]
On August 17, 1988, OETA submitted an FCC application to purchase KGMC, after, in advance of a fundraising deadline set for that date, Pappas offered to provide a $1 million contribution toward purchasing the station, contingent upon the company completing the KOKH purchase. The National Black Media Coalition filed a petition asking for the FCC to deny the transaction, contending that OETA was not qualified to acquire KGMC (which had been the center of an investigation into disgraced stock traderIvan Boesky's improper transference of his majority share of the station's parent company to his wife) under an FCC policy allowing stations facing revocation of their licenses to be sold to a group led by women or minorities at 75% of their market value. After the KGMC proposal was voted down by OETA's board of directors that September, Seraphim Media chose to sell KGMC toCleveland, Ohio–based Maddox Broadcasting Corp.—which would have refocused that station to primarily refocus a mix of religious andHome Shopping Network (HSN) programming—for $3.6 million, including $2.6 million in intellectual assets (such as transmitter facilities, studio equipment and licenses) that would not be acquired by Pappas. Then on November 1, Heritage Media announced it would sell KAUT to the OETA for $9.25 million in assets, with Pappas agreeing to lease KAUT's transmitter facility to OETA for 25 years for an annual $1 operating fee plus an additional $1 million contribution should the acquisition be completed.[26][27][28][29]
On September 12, Pappas Telecasting announced that it would purchase KOKH from Busse for $9 million, plus the assumption of liabilities totaling up to $7 million. The company also planned to change the station's call letters to KOKC-TV. (The KOKC calls are now used by a news/talk radio station on1520 AM.)[30][31][28][32][33][34][35] Although OETA planned to fund the conversion of channel 43 partly through start-up grants (including a $75,000 award by KOCO-TV management), in a move that hamstrung its attempt to acquire KAUT, theOklahoma Legislature incorporated stipulations into the bill appropriating OETA's funding forFY1990 that prohibited the use of state funds "for any operational or capital expense of the proposed second educational television channel in Oklahoma City" and from proposing any additional funding to finance the acquisition if it did not obtain sufficient funding from private sources.[35][36][37] In late January 1989, Busse management denied Pappas' request to extend the completion deadline for the purchase past its scheduled January 31 deadline. The entire transaction fell through on February 3, when Busse formally terminated the purchase agreement with Pappas. Just three days earlier, the FCC had also dismissed the respective transfer applications for KGMC and KAUT.[38][39][40]
On April 23, 1991, Heritage Media announced its intent to purchase KOKH-TV from Busse Broadcast Communications for $7 million. In a transaction that borrowed certain elements of the earlier Pappas proposal, the deal—which was contingent on approval of Heritage's acquisition of channel 25—would result in KAUT's license, transmitter andmaster control equipment being donated to OETA, which would be given a two-year option to purchase the rest of KAUT's assets for $1.5 million.[35][41][42][36][43] The transaction received FCC approval on June 27, and was finalized on August 12.[44][45] As a consequence of Heritage electing to transfer the local Fox affiliation rights and some of the acquired programming inventory belonging to KAUT in the deal, channel 25 became a Fox affiliate—concurrently branding as "KOKH Fox 25"—on August 15, 1991. The transfer also resulted in the station hiring 30 former KAUT employees (including departing channel 43general manager, Harlan Reams, who was appointed to that same post at KOKH), and acquired other equipment and intellectual property belonging to KAUT. Meanwhile, OETA—under a broadcasting pilot initiative between Heritage, the OETA Board of Directors, the OETA Foundation Board of Trustees, PBS, andChildren's Television Workshop management, and funded in part with private contributions—switched channel 43 to an educational format that featured a mix of PBS programming and programs acquired from the public television syndication market repurposed from the OETA state network as well as additional children's, lifestyle and telecourse programs acquired by OETA exclusively for channel 43's schedule. (Channel 43, which adopted the KTLC call letters in January 1992, later reverted to an entertainment format asUPN affiliate KPSG in June 1998, following OETA's sale of the station to theParamount Stations Group.)[41][46][47][48][49]
For its first two years as a Fox affiliate, KOKH was programmed as ade facto independent station, albeit not to the same extent as many Fox stations were in the years following the network's October 1986 launch. (In September 1990, eleven months before the network disaffiliated from KAUT, Fox—which had been offering programming on Saturday and Sunday evenings since it expanded into prime time in the spring of 1987—had expanded its schedule to Thursday and Friday nights, leaving affiliates with three nights of programming time to fill until the network began offering prime time programming on additional nights.) Still, until Fox began offering programming on a nightly basis—with the addition of programming on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings—in January 1993, KOKH continued to air a movie at 7 p.m. on nights when the network did not offer prime time programs. However, it gradually became less reliant on movies during this period, as the growing cable television industry began to impact the ability of broadcast stations to acquire film content. Channel 25 would also rely on the network'sFox Kids block for its children's programming inventory, resulting in many syndicated children's programs that KOKH had aired to occupy portions of the weekday daytime and Saturday morning time periods being relegated to early morning time slots as well as around the morning and afternoon network blocks.
On March 17, 1997, News Corporation announced that it would purchase Heritage Media for $1.35 billion. Unlike most of the company's acquisition deals throughout the 1990s, News Corporation was not interested in Heritage's broadcast operations, but in its ActMedia division, which specialized in in-supermarket marketing that would complementNews America Marketing's SmartSource Sunday newspapercoupon circular. Taking on Heritage's broadcast operations would have put News Corporation over the defined 35% national market reach for an individual television station owner of that time. (The company'sFox Television Stations subsidiary had operated 22 Foxowned-and-operated stations and one independent station at the time, including twelve that it had just recently acquired through its purchase ofNew World Communications.)[50][51][52][53]
On July 16, 1997,Hunt Valley, Maryland–basedSinclair Broadcast Group announced that it would buy Heritage's television and radio stations from News Corporation for $630 million. However, the deal would create ownership conflicts between the television stations that Sinclair and Heritage each ran in several cities—among them, then-UPN affiliate KOCB, which Sinclair had acquired from Superior Communications in 1996.[54][55][56][57] At the time, the FCC restricted broadcasters from owning more than one commercial television station in any market; however, since the agency did not count such agreements asde facto ownership, Sinclair formedlocal marketing agreements—a concept originated in the radio industry that it brought to television through the formation of a virtual duopoly between Fox affiliateWPGH-TV and independent station WPTT (now MyNetworkTV affiliateWPNT) inPittsburgh in 1991—to operate stations that it could not own legally in other markets. Through a series of sales made to addressantitrust concerns raised by theU.S. Department of Justice'sSan Francisco field office over the deal, on August 7, 1997, Sinclair sold channel 25 to Sullivan Broadcast Holdings for $60 million.[58][59][60]
On February 4, 1998, three days after Sullivan finalized the KOKH purchase, Sinclair exercised an option to purchase channel 25 from Sullivan for $60 million. (Sinclair later purchased Sullivan's 13 other television stations for $100 million in cash and debt on February 24; this separate transaction was finalized on July 1.)[61][62][63][64] Under the terms of the deal, Sinclair entered into a time brokerage agreement (TBA) with Sullivan—which the company retained as a separate entity to operate KOKH and three other Sullivan-owned Fox affiliates,WTAT-TV inCharleston, South Carolina,WVAH-TV inCharleston, West Virginia, andWRGT-TV inDayton, Ohio—to assume operational responsibilities for KOKH. This arrangement placed KOKH in the unusual position of being the junior partner in a virtual duopoly with an affiliate of the lower-ratedWB network, of which KOCB had become an affiliate in January 1998. (ABig Four network affiliate normally serves as the senior partner in most virtual or legal duopolies involving an affiliate of a mid-major or smaller network.)
In March 1998, Sinclair announced its intent to sell KOKH and the rights to the TBA involving KOCB toGlencairn, Ltd., under a sale option exercised by the latter group. The family of Sinclair founder Julian Sinclair Smith—led by his widow, Carolyn Smith, who would assume full control of Glencairn from founder and original president Edwin Edwards, a former Sinclair executive, two years later—owned 97% of Glencairn's stock, which would have effectively made the KOKH/KOCB operation aduopoly in violation of FCC rules of the time. Glencairn—which was to be paid with Sinclair stock for the purchases—owned eleven television stations throughout the United States that Sinclair operated under local marketing agreements. This promptedRainbow/PUSH, acivil rights organization headed byJesse Jackson, to file petitions asking the FCC to deny approval of the transaction, citing concerns over a single company holding two broadcast licenses in one market and arguing that Glencairn passed itself off as a minority-owned company—Edwards, who was also principal owner of Glencairn, isAfrican American—while acting as an arm of Sinclair, and used the LMA to gain control of the station. Kelley International Licensing, a subsidiary of KWTV ownerGriffin Television, also filed a complaint on similar grounds.[65][66][67][68][69][70]
On November 17, 1999, Sinclair restructured the deal to acquire KOKH from Sullivan Broadcasting directly as part of a $53.2 million cash and debt forgiveness acquisition involving four other stations—Mission Broadcasting-owned UPN affiliatesWUXP-TV (now aMyNetworkTV affiliate) in Nashville and WUPN-TV (now MyNetworkTV affiliateWMYV) inGreensboro, North Carolina, andMontecito Broadcast Group-owned independent station KFBT (now CW affiliateKVCW) inLas Vegas—along with acquiring five Glencairn stations—WB affiliates KRRT (now CW affiliateKMYS) inSan Antonio andWVTV (now a CW affiliate) inMilwaukee, and UPN affiliates WBSC-TV (now MyNetworkTV affiliateWMYA-TV) inAnderson, South Carolina,WRDC (now a MyNetworkTV affiliate) inRaleigh–Durham andWABM (now a MyNetworkTV affiliate) inBirmingham—in an all-stock purchase worth $8 million.[71][72][73] The Glencairn transaction was dismissed by the FCC per Sinclair's request on July 23, 2001; the sale of the Sullivan stations to Sinclair was approved by FCC on December 10 and was finalized on December 14, resulting in KOKH and KOCB becoming the Oklahoma City market's first legal television duopoly. Although it voted to approve the Sullivan purchase, the FCC issued a $40,000 fine against Sinclair on grounds it controlled Glencairn in violation of the agency's local ownership rules.[74][75] However, as noted in a 2003 ruling on the matter by theUnited States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the issue involving KOKH was rendered somewhat moot, as on August 5, 1999, the FCC began allowing broadcasters the ability to form duopolies between television stations, provided that eight independent owners remain in a market once a duopoly is formed and one of the properties does not rank among the market's four highest-rated stations.[76] KOCB subsequently relocated its operations from its original studios on Northeast 85th Street (near East Britton Road and North Eastern Avenue) into KOKH's Wilshire Boulevard facility (one mile (1.6 km) south-southwest of the former KOCB building).
In April 1998, after NBC affiliateKTEN dropped its secondary affiliations with ABC and Fox, KOKH—which was widely available on cable providers throughout south-central Oklahoma—became the default Fox affiliate for the Oklahoma side of theSherman–Ada media market, including the cities of Ardmore andDurant. (Cable subscribers on the Texas side of the market received Fox programming viaDallas–Fort Worth O&OKDFW, a former CBS affiliate that switched to Fox in July 1995 through the affiliation agreement between the network and then-KDFW-owner New World.) Because the Sherman–Ada market did not have enough commercial television stations to allow it to maintain an exclusive affiliation, Fox would not regain an over-the-air affiliate in that area until September 2006, when CBS affiliateKXII launched a digital subchannel affiliated with the network.
During the late 1990s, KOKH lessened its reliance on running cartoons and classic sitcoms, and began acquiring moretalk shows,reality series andcourt shows; more recent sitcoms remained as part of its schedule, although these were gradually relegated to the early access and nighttime hours. After Fox discontinued the Fox Kids weekday lineup in December 2001, KOKH continued to air the children's block's remaining Saturday morning lineup (which was relaunched asFoxBox in September 2002, and later rebranded it as4Kids TV in September 2005; Fox ceased providing children's programming within its schedule in December 2008, when the network declined to renew its agreement with time-lease partner4Kids Entertainment). The station's weekday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. schedule subsequently began to largely focus around syndicated court shows (such asDivorce Court,Judge Mathis andThe People's Court); this reliance on the genre reached to the extent that KOKH aired every court show available in syndication during the 2006–07 season. In September 2002, KOKH de-emphasized the "Fox 25" branding, opting to alternatively identify the station verbally as either "Fox Oklahoma City" or "Oklahoma City's Fox" in on-air promotions (though it retained its existing logo referencing the station's over-the-air position on channel 25); KOKH reverted to using the "Fox 25" branding full-time in 2006. On March 5, 2012, KOKH and KOCB became the sixth and seventh (and last) television stations in the Oklahoma City market to begin transmitting syndicated programs and local commercials (including stationpromos) inhigh definition.
On May 8, 2017, Sinclair entered intoan agreement to acquireTribune Media, which had owned KFOR-TV and KAUT-TV since December 2013.[77] It intended to keep KFOR and KOCB, selling KOKH and eight other stations toStandard Media Group, withHoward Stirk Holdings purchasing KAUT.[78] The transaction was designated in July 2018 for hearing by an FCCadministrative law judge, and Tribune moved to terminate the deal the next month.[79] (Tribune—which retained ownership of KFOR and KAUT in the interim—would later sell most of its assets to theNexstar Media Group.)
KOKH-TV producesLiving Oklahoma, an hour-long talk and lifestyle program—currently airing weekday mornings at 9 a.m.—which premiered on October 5, 2015.[80]
KOKH and KOCB served as the flagship stations for theOklahoma Lottery beginning with the inaugural evening drawings of its Pick 3 and Cash 5 games on November 10, 2005. For the entirety of the duopoly's contract with the Oklahoma Lottery Commission, live drawings—which aired live at 9:20 p.m. nightly (following the "B" block of the 9 p.m. newscast) andsimulcast on KOCB—originated from KOKH/KOCB's Wilshire Boulevard studios. (KOKH aired the drawings on tape delay on nights whenFox Sports event overruns delayed its prime time newscast.)[81][82][83][84] Amid reductions to the Lottery Commission's budget, televised drawings for the Pick 3 and Cash 5 games were discontinued on June 30, 2009—upon switching the former two original online games to arandom number generator structure—and results were moved exclusively to the Lottery's website. (A rundown of the winning numbers for all Oklahoma Lottery games, including the multi-stateHot Lotto, continued to be shown during the 9 p.m. newscast until the end of 2013, and have aired since then via thenews ticker shown during KOKH's morning and midday newscasts.) In January 2006, when Oklahoma became a participant in the multi-state lottery, the station began airingPowerball drawings each Wednesday and Saturday;Mega Millions drawings—previously seen in the Oklahoma City market only through WGN America (nowNewsNation), which discontinued national carriage of the live Powerball and Mega Millions drawings in 2013—were eventually added once Oklahoma became a participant in that multi-state lottery in January 2011.
As an independent station, during the early and mid-1980s, KOKH carried some locally produced and syndicated sporting events. During the early and mid-1980s, the station also produced select rodeo competitions held in Oklahoma City (including theNational Finals Rodeo) through its "Studio 25" production unit.[85][86] In August 1983, KOKH became the first television station in the U.S. to air syndicatedNational Football League (NFL) preseason games outside of the home markets of the individual teams (carrying games involving theDallas Cowboys,Washington Redskins,Kansas City Chiefs andSan Diego Chargers that year), which the station aired on a day-behind basis.[12]
In October 1983, KOKH reached an agreement with MetroSports, a sports syndication service created as a joint venture betweenAnheuser-Busch and Katz Communications, to acquire the local television rights to broadcastcollege basketball games from theBig Eight Conference (which evolved into theBig XII in 1996). The package—which gave the station local rights to televise games involving theOklahoma Sooners and theOklahoma State Cowboys, whose games had respectively been carried by NBC affiliate KTVY and independent station KAUT through the 1982–83 season—consisted of Saturday afternoon games and select prime time games (held either on Tuesday or Wednesday nights, depending on the game scheduled to air) during theNCAA Division I Basketball season.[87]
Sports programming on KOKH-TV is currently[update] sourced mainly through Fox Sports. FromSeptember 1994, whenFox formally assumed primary broadcast rights to theNational Football Conference (NFC) fromCBS, untilJanuary 2020, KOKH served as the Dallas Cowboys' television partner for the Oklahoma City market, providing it the local rights to various team-related programs during the regular season (including theCowboys Postgame Show,Special Edition withJerry Jones and the head coach's weekly analysis program, along with specials such as theMaking of theDallas Cowboys Cheerleaders Calendar and postseason team reviews). In addition to carrying Fox-televised games involving in-conference opponents, since2014, Cowboys games carried on KOKH include certain cross-flexed games againstAmerican Football Conference (AFC) opponents that CBS was originally scheduled to televise. (Through the duopoly's agreement with the team's syndication service, sister station KOCB also held local broadcast rights to Cowboys preseason games not televised by Fox or the NFL's other broadcast and cable partners.) KFOR-TV replaced KOKH/KOCB as the Cowboys' official Oklahoma City broadcaster inAugust 2020.
Since August 2011, whenFox assumed partial over-the-air rights to the Big 12 Conference, KOKH has carried selectCowboyscollege football games and from August 2011 to November 2023Sooners college football games not carried locally by KOCO-TV (via the Big 12's primary over-the-air rightsholder,ABC) or byregional sports cable networkFox Sports Oklahoma (which, along with the otherFox Sports Networks outlets acquired from interim parentThe Walt Disney Company, became a sister property to KOKH through a joint venture between Sinclair andDiamond Sports Group in July 2019). On weeks when Sooners and/or Cowboys games are carried by channel 25, the station's sports department produces localpre-game orpost-game shows—varying depending on Fox's college football schedule for the week of the scheduled game—wrapping around the scheduled Fox telecast.
As of September 2017[update], KOKH presently broadcasts39+1⁄2 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with7+1⁄2 hours each weekday, and one hour each on weekends). In addition, the station produces the sports highlight and discussion programFox 25 Sports Sunday (hosted by sports director Myron Patton, sports anchor Curtis Fitzpatrick, andWWLS-FM [98.1] radio hostJim Traber), which airs Sundays at 10 p.m., as well as a 15-minute sports wrap-up segment—which is treated as a standalone program—that airs nightly during the final two segments ofFox 25 News at 9:00.
Through a content agreement withCumulus Media, KOKH'sStormWatch Weather staff provides local weather updates and, in the event of significant severe weather situations (such as atornado warning) affecting the area, audio simulcasts of long-form severe weather coverage for Cumulus's Oklahoma City radio cluster: WWLS-FM,KYIS (98.9 FM),KATT-FM (100.5),KKWD (104.9 FM),KQOB (96.9 FM) andKWPN (640 AM). KOKH's newscasts regularly place fourth among the market's news-producing stations, behind local news and network programs on KFOR, KOCO and KWTV, although its morning and 9 p.m. newscasts tend to beat the KFOR-produced newscasts on KAUT.
Starting from its October 1, 1979, relaunch as a commercial independent station, news programming on KOKH initially consisted mainly of 30-second-long newsbriefs—consisting ofAssociated Press wire reports and a short weather forecast read by the anchor on-call—that aired on an hourly basis during select commercial breaks within daytime and evening programs. On September 22, 1980, KOKH restructured the newsbriefs under a more flexible format that allowed routine updates to air at any time; rechristenedNewstouch 25, the updates—which lasted anywhere between 30 seconds and two minutes in length—initially aired daily from 7:30 a.m. until sign-off around 12:30 a.m. (later expanding to 6 a.m. to 1:30 a.m. by September 1982). Most of the newsbriefs were broadcast live, though some morning and late night updates were pre-recorded. Among those anchoring the updates were Ronnie Kaye (a former radio DJ atWKY [930 AM], who was hired by KOKH in August 1980 to serve as the station's Director of Information Services), Mike Monday (later known for being the pitchman for now-defunct local furniture/electronics store Sight and Sound), Karie Ross, Felicia Ferguson (winner of the 1985Miss Oklahoma pageant), Janis Walkingstick and Kelly Ogle (now an evening anchor at KWTV).
From the time of theNewstouch relaunch until 1988, the station also producedWeathertouch 25, two-minute-long weather updates that aired on the half-hour during the broadcast day; the segments—featuring weathercasters such as Ross Dixon (former KOCO and eventual OETA meteorologist), Dan Satterfield, and Kevin Foreman (later a meteorologist at KFOR-TV)—utilized the first colorizedradar scan converter andsatellite picture colorizer in Oklahoma, as well as live radar data from theNational Weather ServiceTerminal Doppler atWill Rogers World Airport. In addition, KOKH produced severalpublic affairs and interview programs includingMeet The Mayor (an interview program featuring discussions and viewer questions with theMayor of Oklahoma City),Woman to Woman (which featured discussions about women's issues) andSunday PM (a weekly talk show focusing on prominent people, issues and events in Oklahoma City). As a consequence of Heritage Media's transfer of KAUT's Fox affiliation, other programming assets and personnel to the station, KOKH discontinued its news and public affairs programming in the summer of 1991:Sunday PM ended its run after the July 28 broadcast, while the news and weather updates were discontinued three days later on July 31.
The discontinuance of theNewstouch 25 updates was the decision of then-president and general manager Harlan Reams, who felt that a fourth news operation could not compete against the established news departments of the local Big Three network affiliates (a stance he held while running KAUT and, before that, fellow Fox affiliateKSAS-TV inWichita). Reams affirmed this position in a June 1994 interview withThe Daily Oklahoman, stating that KOKH would not offer a regular newscast under his oversight, even with the likelihood that its ratings and revenue would increase once Fox took over the National Football Conference television contract that fall. During its early years with Fox, KOKH even preempted theFox News Extra segment inserts (produced by New York City O&OWNYW) that aired during commercial breaks within Fox's prime time lineup, choosing to air station promotions in their place.[88] However, in the months following theApril 19, 1995, bombing of theAlfred P. Murrah Federal Building, as the network was planning the launch of both acable news channel and affiliate video feed, Fox urged KOKH management to develop a full-scale news department. Reams—potentially out of concern that Fox, which was shuffling affiliations to major network stations in around 30 other markets, might move its programming to one of the market's major network affiliates or another willing commercial station if it denied the request—ultimately conceded and commenced plans to build the news operation in August 1995, with plans calling for the prime time newscast to premiere in the late spring of 1996. With the cooperation of Reams, his successor Steven Herman andnews director Bob Schadel (who served as assistant news director at KOCO-TV from 1983 to 1995), the newscast was structured to match the "Fox attitude" in a bid to court younger viewers, but instituted a more conventional style—minimizing sensationalistic content—to appeal to area viewers.[89]
KOKH's current news department launched on May 27, 1996, with the premiere ofThe Nine O'Clock News (retitled theFox 25 Primetime News at Nine in November 2000, and later asFox 25 News at 9:00 in October 2020).[90] Originally airing Monday through Fridays for a half-hour, it was first anchored by Jack Bowen (who previously had anchoring stints at KOCO and KWTV, ending his second stint at the former in November 1995) andBurns Flat native Kirsten McIntyre (previously an anchor/reporter atKAUZ-TV inWichita Falls). (Bowen and McIntyre had earlier co-hostedGround Zero, a half-hour special—which aired on KOKH on February 27, 1996, four months before the newscast launched—that showed previously restricted footage recorded by first responders during the Murrah Building bombing's aftermath.)[91][92] They were accompanied by chief meteorologist Tim Ross (who brought a quirky approach to his weather segments, even naming the extended forecast graphic, the "Fearless 5-Day Forecast") and sports director Mike Steely (a former colleague of McIntyre's while he was sports director at KAUZ, and who continued to work as asports talk host at KEBC [1340 AM, nowKGHM; the KEBC calls now reside on1560 AM] after joining KOKH, before moving to WWLS [AM] [now KWPN] in 1998).[93][94] Heritage Media and KOKH invested over $1 million into the new news operation. The station also converted its main "Studio 25" production studio at the Wilshire Boulevard facility into a "working newsroom" set similar in design to the "NewsPlex" set used by ABC affiliateKETV inOmaha from 1996 to 2015, and incorporated Avid nonlinear, Internet-based editing equipment, becoming one of the first stations in the United States to use the technology. (KOKH would move production of its newscasts to a renovated production stage within the building on April 13, 2014, with the debut of an HD-ready news set built by Devlin Design Group that features a dedicated weather center, several large widescreen monitors, and a multi-purpose area used for interviews, and the morning andSports Sunday broadcasts).[90][95]
As the market's first prime time newscast, KOKH held steady in the 9 p.m. timeslot, even with competition from network programs on KFOR, KOCO-TV and KWTV. The weeknight editions of the newscast were expanded to one hour on August 4, 1997 (at which point and until September 1998, it was referred to asThe Nine O'Clock News Hour in on-air promotions and newscast opens and talent bumpers). This was followed by the addition of hour-long Sunday edition on September 12, 1999 (which originally debuted as an abbreviated, delayed half-hour broadcast on that night due to Fox's telecast of the51st Primetime Emmy Awards), and an hour-long Saturday edition that premiered on October 2, 1999. Brad Wheelis and Colleen O'Quinn were hired to co-anchor the Friday and Saturday editions at that time (the two resigned in 2000 after failing to reach contract renewal terms). Prior to the expansion, hour-long editions ofThe Nine O'Clock News were only produced to cover significant breaking news events (such as for thedeath penalty sentencing of Murrah bombing conspiratorTimothy McVeigh on June 13, 1997). To further cement its status as an alternative to KFOR, KWTV and KOCO's 35-minute 10 p.m. shows, news director Henry Chu (who replaced Schadel in the late summer of 1998) moved to expand the number of stories, including national and international items, incorporated into each night's broadcast than those covered on the market's other late newscasts.[96][97]
Over time, however, the news department began experiencing heavy turnover with its on-air staff that continues to this day. Ross—who was replaced by the more conventional Chuck Bell—was fired in early 1999, citing that his style did not work in a serious weather market. Steely—who was replaced by then-sports reporter Zach Klein—resigned from KOKH in June 1999 over creative disagreements with station management and difficulties working two sports broadcasting jobs. Bowen and McIntyre continued to anchor together until November 2000, when Bowen left KOKH after his contract was not renewed by the station.[98] Turnover in the news department was so significant that in 2000, the station temporarily used solo anchors for the weekday and weekend newscasts, while Bell conducted the weather segment seven nights a week.[99] As is the case with competitor KOCO, the fairly heavy turnover that KOKH has experienced with its on-air staff has led to some unfamiliarity that some of its on-air personalities have in the market.
In late 2002, Sinclair Broadcast Group announced plans to launchNews Central, a hybrid newscast format incorporatingcentralcasted national news and sports and local weather segments, alongside locally produced news segments, during evening newscasts on the group's news-producing outlets. WhenNewsCentral launched in January 2003, weather reports during the Friday and Saturday newscasts began to be produced out of production facilities at the ground floor of Sinclair's headquarters in Hunt Valley, Maryland; it also began carryingThe Point (later titledBehind the Headlines), a one-minuteconservative political commentary feature by Sinclair's then-vice presidentMark Hyman. When theNews Central inserts began airing daily with the March 31, 2003, edition of the 9 p.m. newscast, KOKH continued to maintain anchors, reporters and other news production staff based out of its Wilshire Boulevard studios to produce the local news segments. All weather and sports segments were produced out of the Sinclair headquarters full-time; accordingly, the station's weather and sports staff (including chief meteorologist Amy Gardner, weekend evening meteorologist Greg Whitworth, sports director Zach Klein, and sports anchor/reporters Ari Bergeron and Mark Ross) as well as eight other production employees with the news department were laid off. (Local sports headlines began being handled by the news anchor on duty.)[100][101] The first time that KOKH programmed news outside its established 9 p.m. slot was on February 2, 2004, when it premiered theFox 25 Late Edition, a half-hour weeknight 10 p.m. newscast (it is currently one of more than three dozen Fox stations in the U.S. that produces a newscast in the traditional late news timeslot, 10 p.m. in theCentral Time Zone). In 2005, the station debutedOklahoma's Most Wanted, a weekly segment based on the format of now-former Fox seriesAmerica's Most Wanted that aired during the Saturday edition of the 9 p.m. newscast, which profiled wanted criminals being sought by law enforcement for various felonies.
Corporate cutbacks at the company's news operations caused Sinclair to shutter its News Central division on March 31, 2006. KOKH, one of the few non-Big Three affiliates that participated in the venture to retain their news department amid the cutbacks, expanded its on-air news staff in the wake of News Central's closure. Meteorologists Scott Padgett (who conducted weather segments for KOKH as a News Central staffer), and Greg Whitworth (who served as a weekend evening meteorologist at KOKH from 1999 until the outsourcing-induced layoffs) were hired to helm the rebooted weather department. KOKH's sports department was restarted that December, when Myron Patton (then a WWLS radio host, who also formerly served as a sports anchor at KOCO-TV from 1988 to 1994, and is currently the longest-serving member of KOKH's on-air news staff) andLiam McHugh were hired as sports anchors.[102][103] KOKH concurrently launchedFox 25 Sports Sunday on December 4 as a 15-minute Sunday evening sports wrap-up program at 9:45 p.m. (Sports Sunday would be reformatted as a half-hour panel analysis program and move to 10 p.m. on March 25, 2007, ending on December 10, 2023.)[104]
News programming was extended to weekday mornings on April 9, 2007, with the premiere of theFox 25 Morning News (retitledGood Day OK on January 28, 2017) as a three-hour broadcast from 6 to 9 a.m., displacinginfomercials and syndicated children's programs that had previously aired in that time period. (The program would add a fourth hour at 5 a.m. on January 4, 2010.) Formatted as a mix of local and national news, weather updates and lifestyle features, it was initially anchored by Brent Weber (who would later serve as a sideline reporter forOklahoma City Thunder game telecasts onFox Sports Oklahoma) and Angie Mock, alongside meteorologist Jeff George (who was shifted to evenings, subsequently being promoted to his as of 2019[update] as chief meteorologist, in February 2010) and feature reporter Lauren Richardson. The program was the first second local morning newscast in the market to run after 7 a.m., debuting ten years after KWTV'sNews 9 This Morning—which discontinued its 7 a.m. hour in January 2008 to comply with CBS's request that its affiliates clearThe Early Show in its entirety—had expanded into the slot. On January 31, 2011, an hour-long 9 a.m. extension of the newscast,Good Day Oklahoma (later repurposed for the main morning newscast on December 11, 2023), debuted with a format focusing on news updates, discussions, interviews and community event information. (The 9 a.m. broadcast—which, on September 21, 2015, was integrated into the mainFox 25 Morning News broadcast—was replaced byLiving Oklahoma on March 7, 2016, when KOKH moved the lifestyle program from its original 10 a.m. timeslot.)[105][106]
In September 2007, theEqual Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) filed a racial and gender discrimination lawsuit against KOKH on behalf of Phyllis Williams (an assignment-turned-crime reporter at KOKH from the current news operation's launch in May 1996 until her departure in November 2007). The suit—which sought back compensation, and compensatory and punitive damages—claimed that Williams was paid a lower salary than white female reporters of similar comparability and male reporters of various races, and that station management did not offer her a new contract until several months after she filed a discrimination complaint with the EEOC in 2005. Through a settlement reached in March 2011, KOKH management awarded Williams $45,000 in damages and additional monetary consideration.[107][108]
On August 14, 2013, KOKH became the last remainingEnglish-language station and the fourth in the Oklahoma City market overall to begin broadcasting its newscasts in high definition. On July 6, 2014, the station debutedThe Middle Ground, aSunday morning discussion program focusing on state and national political issues that was produced by theOklahoma Council of Public Affairs; the program was cancelled in April 2015.[109] Channel 25 first launched an early-evening newscast on September 1, 2014, when it premiered an hour-long, Monday-through-Friday 5 p.m. newscast, replacing sitcom reruns that had traditionally aired at that hour. The program—which is treated as two separate half-hour programs, and acts as a local alternative to national network newscasts aired onKFOR,KWTV andKOCO during the broadcast's second half-hour—evolved out of an online-only 5 p.m. newscast that KOKH began offering on its website on February 10, 2014. On March 7, 2016, concurrent withLiving Oklahoma's timeslot shift and the resulting removal of the fifth-hour extension of the morning newscast, the station launched an hour-long midday newscast at 11 a.m.; it was the first local newscast in the Oklahoma City market to air in that timeslot since KWTV's midday news ended an eight-month run as an 11 a.m. broadcast in September 1980.[110][106]
On November 9, 2023, Sinclair announced that it would consolidate the news operation of Tulsa sister stationKTUL into a regional hub at KOKH. On December 11, simulcasts of the weekday 5–7 a.m., 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. newscasts replaced Tulsa-originated broadcasts in those timeslots on KTUL, with those programs being reformatted to feature news coverage centered around the Oklahoma City and Tulsa markets. (The KTUL lifestyle showGood Day Tulsa was also replaced by a simulcast ofLiving Oklahoma, although that station continues to produce its main evening newscasts primarily from its facility in Tulsa.)[111]
The station's signal ismultiplexed:
| Channel | Res. | Aspect | Short name | Programming |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 25.1 | 720p | 16:9 | KOKH | Fox |
| 25.2 | 480i | Charge! | Charge! | |
| 25.3 | TheNest | The Nest | ||
| 43.2 | 480i | 4:3 | RewTV | Rewind TV (KAUT-DT2) |
| 43.3 | Mystery | Ion Mystery (KAUT-DT3) |
KOKH-TV discontinued regular programming on its analog signal, overUHF channel 25, on February 17, 2009, to conclude thefederally mandated transition from analog to digital television.[113] The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 24, usingvirtual channel 25.
As part of theSAFER Act,[114] KOKH kept its analog signal on the air until March 3 to inform viewers of the digital television transition through a loop ofpublic service announcements from theNational Association of Broadcasters.
On October 8, 2020, KOKH commencedATSC 3.0 digital transmissions over the signal of local NextGen TV host station KAUT-TV; the KOKH/KOCB duopoly was among five Oklahoma City-area stations owned by broadcasters associated with the Pearl NextGen TV consortium—accompanied by the duopoly of NBC affiliate KFOR-TV and then-independent station (now CW affiliate) KAUT-TV (owned by Nexstar Media Group), and ABC affiliate KOCO-TV (owned byHearst Television)—that deployed the fledgling ATSC 3.0 standard on that date.[115] The station's 3.0 signal—which, rather than transmitting KOKH's primary channel, uses KOKH-DT2 as the station's designated 3.0 feed—transmits over UHF digital channel 19.5003, using PSIP to display KOKH's virtual channel as 25.2 on digital television receivers; KOKH, in turn, hosts the ATSC 1.0 signals of KAUT-DT2 (on UHF channel 24.6, remapped to virtual channel 43.2) and KAUT-DT3 (on UHF channel 24.7, remapped to virtual channel 43.3).
KOKH-TV extends its over-the-air coverage area through the followingtranslators:
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** Owned by third parties and operated by Sinclair through various operating agreements. *** Owned by Sinclair and operated byMarquee Broadcasting. JV Joint venture. | ||||||||||||||||||
