Early years
In 1978, Billy James Hargis applied through the David Livingstone Missionary Foundation for permission to build a new TV station on channel 41 in Tulsa.[1] His bid was part of a boom in interest for new TV stations in Tulsa, with four applications seeking one of channels 23, 41, and 47 by the start of September 1978.[2] Further applications were later received by the FCC. Green Country Television, owned by Ray Beindorf and William R. Brannan, applied in early September,[3] Satellite Television Systems, Limited Partnership, had also applied. By 1980, there were three applicants: Satellite Television Systems, Green Country Television, and Western Area Bureau of Information, Broadcasting Division. That July, the FCC granted Tulsa TV 41, a joint venture of Satellite Television Systems (renamed to Satellite Syndicated Systems, SSS) and Green Country Television, a construction permit for the channel.[4]
KGCT-TV launched on March 18, 1981.[5] It broadcast from downtown studios in the Old Lerner's Building on Tulsa's Main Mall. During the day on weekdays, KGCT-TV offered old movies and Westerns from 9 a.m. to noon before broadcasting a seven-hour block of live studio, news, and audience participation programming known as 41 Live!, utilizing its downtown location, with half-hour blocks devoted to cooking, sports, news, and business, among other topics. Hosts included John Erling, Glenda Silvey, and Beth Rengel. Karen Keith was a reporter.[6] After 7 p.m. on weekdays and 5 p.m. on weekends, the station offered subscription television programming to paying customers under the brand In-Home Theater (IT); this included first-run motion pictures from SelecTV.[7] IT also offered limited sports specials, notably games of the 1983 Tulsa Roughnecks season;[8] the team made Soccer Bowl '83, which was broadcast free-to-air.[9]
KGCT-TV was the second television station to launch within six months in Tulsa. KOKI-TV began broadcasting on channel 23 on October 26, 1980, with a more conventional independent station format of movies, sports, specials, and syndicated programs.[10] While KOKI-TV had obtained a 5% share of television viewing in Tulsa as of the May 1981 Arbitron ratings, KGCT was not registering viewers.[11] In response, KGCT canceled its daytime live programming block on June 25 and fired 15 employees, including the entire 10-person news staff. The daytime was reprogrammed with cheaper syndicated programs.[12][13] Two programs—a series of hosted movie blocks and a teen dance show hosted by KRAV-FM disc jockey Steve Cassidy—were added to the lineup in January 1982. At that time, station management announced a marketing campaign to explain to people that had already installed UHF loop antennas for channel 23 that they could also tune channel 41.[14]
In May 1982, KGCT underwent another programming change. Subscription television from IT was expanded with more late-night hours and a weekend startup at 1 p.m.[15] Later that month, the remaining daytime hours were leased to Jack Rehberg Ministries to bring Tulsa its first primarily religious television station.[16] Under Rehberg, who had initially sought time for a religious telethon, KGCT—promoted as "Knitting God's Children Together"—offered local ministry programs as well as national shows such as The 700 Club and Jerry Falwell.[17] The station relocated from the Main Mall to facilities on 59th Street.[18] When Rehberg ceased paying for the station's airtime because he had bought channel 47, Green Country Television continued much the same programming format.[19]
In-Home Theater had as many as 11,000 subscribers in the Tulsa area at its peak in 1982.[20] That number had dwindled to 3,700 by September 1984, in the face of increasing competition from cable television, and the service was losing money. As a result, SSS discontinued IT in Tulsa effective October 31, 1984, and expanded KGCT-TV's ad-supported schedule to fill the gap.[21] In 1985, Tulsa TV 41 attempted to sell KGCT-TV to Channel 41 Associates, a consortium including the Carlyle Group of Los Angeles,[22] owners of KNMZ-TV in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The group's members also included former ABC executive I. Martin Pompadur. The prospective buyers cited low programming costs in the Tulsa market and the station's existing financial difficulty as making the purchase attractive.[23] Channel 41 Associates went as far as to have the new call sign KKTO approved for the station.[24]
In 1985, the Federal Communications Commission's must-carry rules, requiring cable systems to carry the signals of local broadcast stations, was struck down by a federal appeals court. Tulsa Cable Television, the leading cable system in the city, dropped KGCT-TV from its lineup on April 14, 1986, except for the station's carriage of St. Louis Cardinals baseball games.[25] The cable company justified its decision as based on KGCT's low ratings. In an interview with Broadcasting magazine, system president Mark Savage called the station a "very run-of-the-mill" independent and said, "They didn't have any ratings. They probably still don't."[26] The lack of cable carriage played into the events surrounding the new Fox Broadcasting Company network's choice of affiliate. When the network launched in October 1986, it had no affiliate in Tulsa, discussing possible terms of affiliation with KOKI and KGCT. Even though KGCT's manager had sent over what he thought was an affiliation contract, Fox claimed it was only a sample agreement. Fox's vice president of affiliate relations, Bob Mariano, spoke highly of a possible affiliation with KOKI and told the Tulsa World, "Our problem at the moment with KGCT is that it is not carried on Tulsa Cable."[27] In August 1987, Fox agreed to affiliate with KOKI.[28]
The loss of programming (from the end of the Christian television lease) and cable carriage slowed the station's prospects for growth. General manager Bob Davis noted that it took more than 18 months to put the station back on its feet, and even then, the lack of cable carriage and poor-quality programming limited channel 41's appeal. One exception was in the area of sports, where the station aired multiple pro sports packages as well as network sports telecasts that the local affiliates refused to air. Sports telecasts were frequently KGCT's highest-rated programs.[29]
