Early years
It took multiple years and several engineering studies before Sunset Ridge, a site in the San Bernardino Mountains, was identified and approved. A full-time general manager was hired in late 1981, but he was replaced months later by Jack Latham, a former anchorman for KNBC and KESQ-TV in Palm Springs. The station moved into a studio near Disneyland in Anaheim, changed call letters to KDOC-TV ("Dynamic Orange County"), and went on the air October 1, 1982.[8] The lineup consisted of older syndicated shows, college sports, and movies, plus two local programs covering Orange County, a "roving reporter"-type program at noon and an evening magazine show.[9] The station had taken so long to build that Durante had died and was replaced as an investor by his estate.
KDOC-TV made news headlines often in the 1980s, typically for the wrong reasons. The station was sued in late 1983 over charges that its general manager, Michael Volpe, had denied a job to a woman who refused to perform sexual favors for him.[10] That case was settled out of court, but a 1984 lawsuit would expose serious issues at KDOC-TV. In July 1984, Steve Conobre, a former advertising salesman for the station, sued KDOC, Boone, Durante's estate, and conservative commentator Wally George, who aired a program on the station. He alleged that Volpe encouraged sales representatives to make up ratings figures for KDOC and attribute them to a fictitious "Anaheim Research Bureau". Arbitron, one of the main television ratings companies at the time, was also known in the industry as "ARB". Conobre also alleged that Volpe received kickbacks by assigning large advertising accounts to his girlfriend and receiving some of her commission.[11] Former sales manager John Funk brought a similar case in 1985.
Similar allegations were raised by another salesperson at the station, Linda Ford, in a third suit filed in May 1986. She also claimed that George threatened her with loss of her job if she did not "protect" Volpe.[12] Even after the board of directors opted not to renew Volpe's contract,[13] the Conobre case went to a jury in November 1987.[14] The office politics and romantic pursuits laid bare in the suit contrasted with the on-air image of KDOC-TV as a family-sensitive station that even censored music videos.[15] A jury awarded Conobre $256,000.[16] The other two cases were settled out of court.[17]
The Wally George talk show, Hot Seat, continued to tape until July 2003, completing 20 years on air; George died that October at the age of 71, at which time station CEO Calvin Brack remarked that he was KDOC-TV's most popular personality.[18] During this period, the station was also popular for weekend broadcasts of Asian programming, which gained a significant non-Asian audience with the broadcast of the 1984–1985 (subtitled) Japanese television series Miyamoto Musashi.
Much of the station's programming through the years has been situation comedy and dramatic reruns that were seen on other Los Angeles area stations in years past, after those stations either relinquished or shared the rights with KDOC. Among those shows were The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Beverly Hillbillies, The Cosby Show, Saved by the Bell, The Doris Day Show and My Three Sons. Reruns of the iconic courtroom drama Perry Mason had been on the station since 1988, where it aired weekdays at noon for about 20 years, and aired early mornings on KDOC's main channel until September 2011 (several of the aforementioned shows currently air on the station's MeTV subchannel on digital channel 56.3).
