The Mount Diablo years
On March 5, 1948, Radio Diablo, Inc. (later Television Diablo) filed an application for a new television station to broadcast on channel 13, first assigned to San Francisco and then to San Jose, from Mount Diablo in Contra Costa County.[1] From Mount Diablo, the principals in Radio Diablo operated FM station KSBR, which had an effective radiated power of 250,000 watts and, having just moved to the mountaintop, claimed it was heard from the Oregon state line to Bakersfield.[2] Two other groups applied for the channel by late 1948,[3] but the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) imposed a freeze on new television station grants that October.[4]
When the freeze ended in 1952,[5] channel 13 had been removed from San Jose to Stockton, where it could still cover the city of license from Mount Diablo. Stockton radio station KXOB filed a competing application for channel 13.[6] Radio Diablo, headed by O. H. Brown, estimated it could serve 3.5 million people in San Francisco, Stockton, and Sacramento from its mountaintop site. The owners of KXOB ultimately received shares in Radio Diablo in exchange for the dismissal of KXOB's competing application in a settlement agreement. Broadcaster and furniture store owner Edward Peffer entered into a similar agreement,[7] paving the way for the FCC to grant Radio Diablo the construction permit on February 11, 1954. Leslie Hoffman, who had become the new president of the company, was to have the station named for him as KHOF, but when Hoffman thought of the possibility of "cough" puns based on the designation, the call sign was changed to KOVR, for "coverage".[8]
KOVR began broadcasting September 6, 1954;[9] after an opening night telecast produced in the Stockton studios, it aired live coverage from the California State Fair. It had studios in Stockton on Miner Avenue, as well as a converted bus that served as a remote broadcast van along with two other mobile units.[10] KOVR was the second television station in Stockton; an ultra high frequency (UHF) outlet, KTVU (channel 36), had gone on the air the previous December.[11] As an independent station without network affiliation (but with a secondary link with DuMont, primarily for NFL games and Life Is Worth Living[12]), the program schedule was heavy with local programming. Lynn Taylor hosted a talent show, a weeknight "Do It Yourself" show, and a teen program. Sportscaster Bob Fouts began commuting to Stockton from San Francisco to host a sports show, leaving KGO-TV in that city, and regional news coverage and a bingo program were also slated.[13]
By 1955, the station had opened offices in San Francisco,[15] where at one point it was proposed that NBC might try to affiliate with or purchase KOVR given discord with KRON-TV, its San Francisco affiliate, and a desire by NBC to own its San Francisco outlet.[16] An attempt to move its main operation from Stockton to San Francisco was denied by the FCC as it would have stripped Stockton of its lone very high frequency (VHF) television station and there were already several television channels allotted to the Bay Area. The company did announce it would add a studio in San Francisco on a secondary basis.[17][18] This studio was located in the Mark Hopkins Hotel, where the San Francisco offices were also relocated.[19][20]
As time went on, it became clear that a network affiliation was necessary to provide KOVR with adequate programming and secure its economic viability. Bob Foster, the media critic for The Times newspaper in San Mateo, described the station as "suffering from the lack of sponsors, the lack of network affiliation—at least one that meant anything—and from a lack of good programs".[22] DuMont ceased operating as a network in 1955,[23] but KOVR continued to carry the network's sole remaining program, Boxing from St. Nicholas Arena.[22] The station found itself paying for films and syndicated programs at San Francisco market rates while selling advertising at rates befitting its city of license, the much smaller Stockton;[24] if it were to move out of the San Francisco market, it could cut its film acquisition costs by half.[25] KOVR had no prospect of obtaining a network alliance in the San Francisco market. However, opportunity lay in Sacramento. By 1956, there were three television stations in Sacramento itself. On the VHF band were CBS affiliate KBET-TV
KOVR blindsided KCCC-TV again in February 1957 when it announced that, beginning February 17, it would become an ABC affiliate, something that the network had previously promised KCCC-TV as not forthcoming until after the Butte Mountain move was approved.[30] The relocation application was granted again in April after KCCC-TV withdrew its opposition.[31][32]
On May 31, 1957, KCCC-TV ceased broadcasting in what amounted to a partial merger with KOVR. The Stockton station became the ABC affiliate of record for Sacramento—already simulcasting many ABC programs with channel 40—as KCCC-TV owner Lincoln Dellar purchased stock in Television Diablo.[33] The move to Butte Mountain became effective on October 28, 1957, taking KOVR out of conflict with the Bay Area television stations and cementing its status as a Stockton station serving Sacramento instead of San Francisco.[34]
As work continued on the Butte Mountain transmitter, Television Diablo began to seek a buyer for KOVR. It first proposed to sell the station to the Hudson Valley Broadcasting Company of Albany, New York—which was in the process of buying a television station in Durham, North Carolina, and renaming itself the Capital Cities Broadcasting Company;[35] despite the FCC's approval, this sale was not consummated and was dismissed in November. Weeks later, the Gannett Company of Rochester, New York, entered into an agreement to acquire the station, taking ownership in February 1958.[36] For Gannett, KOVR was far-flung compared to its other media properties. It owned radio and television stations in New York and Illinois as well as newspapers in those states, New Jersey, and Connecticut.[37] The next year, KOVR reopened KCCC-TV's former Sacramento studios on Garden Highway, also providing use of the facilities by new educational station KVIE.[38]
The McClatchy years
On October 4, 1963, Metromedia announced it would sell KOVR for $7.65 million (equivalent to $ in dollars) to McClatchy Newspapers, publisher of The Sacramento Bee and The Modesto Bee newspapers and owner of radio stations KBEE (970 AM) in Modesto and KFBK (1530 AM) and KFBK-FM 92.5 in Sacramento.[44] For McClatchy, the contract to buy a television station serving Sacramento fulfilled a long-held dream of the company. McClatchy had desired to build a station in Sacramento since 1948, when it applied for channel 10.[45] While an FCC examiner's initial decision favored McClatchy for the station,[46] its competition, a group known as Sacramento Telecasters and consisting of non-broadcast interests, successfully objected the award on diversification of media ownership grounds, with the FCC unanimously overturning the examiner and granting Sacramento Telecasters the permit for what signed on as KBET-TV.[47] McClatchy continued legal action to try and force a rehearing on its proposal until February 1958.
Cross-ownership woes
A new tenor taken by federal regulators toward cross-ownership of newspapers and broadcast stations significantly escalated the public pressure on McClatchy to act. In 1975, the FCC moved to bar future acquisitions that created cross-ownership and ordered 16 such groups in small markets to break up their holdings, though others were allowed to remain grandfathered.[57] Two years later, on March 1, 1977, a federal appeals court amplified the policy; instead of merely barring future purchases against the rule, it ordered the divestiture of all such pairings except those that were in the public interest.[58]
Within days, McClatchy announced an agreement with Multimedia, Inc., designed to extricate both groups from their heaviest cross-ownership burdens. Where McClatchy owned a newspaper, AM, FM, and TV stations between Sacramento and Stockton, Multimedia had a similar situation in Greenville, South Carolina: two newspapers (morning daily The Greenville News and the afternoon The Greenville Piedmont), WFBC and WFBC-FM radio, as well as WFBC-TV, an NBC-affiliated TV station. McClatchy and Multimedia proposed a straight trade whereby the former would acquire WFBC-TV and Multimedia would receive KOVR; as a result, neither company would own a newspaper and a TV station in the same market.
Changing ownership, falling ratings
On July 5, 1979, McClatchy announced it would sell KOVR to The Outlet Company of Providence, Rhode Island, for $65 million (equivalent to $ in dollars). C. K. McClatchy noted that Outlet was selected despite not making the highest offer because it had committed to ensuring local minority ownership in KOVR by selling 10 percent of the station's stock to minorities.[67] The deal, consummated in May 1980,[68] was the second-most expensive single-station TV station transaction ever at the time.[69] To reduce debt incurred in the KOVR purchase, Outlet sold 91 department stores.[70] During Outlet ownership, ratings for KOVR's newscasts fell to third place, behind KXTV and far behind a dominant KCRA.[71] This occurred despite an infusion of resources to improve KOVR's news ratings.[72]
In 1988, Narragansett received between seven and eleven offers, all unsolicited, for KOVR, and it opted to cash out by selling the station to AnchorMedia, a broadcasting company owned by Texas billionaire Robert Bass, for $162 million (equivalent to $ in dollars)—a price considered to be "top dollar". The Bass Group had been making major business investments in Sacramento, including a purchase of land in Roseville and the acquisition of the insolvent American Savings and Loan in Stockton.[82] AnchorMedia sued Narragansett for allegedly withholding information and taking away key employees.[83]
The immediate task facing AnchorMedia management was one of procuring a new facility, as the Arden Way site had become overcrowded and insufficient for KOVR's needs. Outlet had bought land in Natomas for a potential new studio site, but Narragansett sold the parcel; Anchor began scouting property in West Sacramento. In late 1990, the new $8 million (equivalent to $ in dollars), 43000 ft2 facility opened, featuring two studios and a helipad for the station's news helicopter.[84]
River City and Sinclair ownership; affiliation switch to CBS
In 1994, AnchorMedia—by then known as Continental Broadcasting—was purchased by River City Broadcasting, a St. Louis-based owner of television and radio properties. The three ABC affiliates owned by Anchor represented River City's first major network affiliates.[85] River City found itself navigating an affiliation switch shortly after its purchase. Amid a major national realignment, the A. H. Belo Corporation and ABC renewed their agreement for Belo's ABC-affiliated stations in Dallas and Norfolk, Virginia, including the move of ABC's Sacramento affiliation to the higher-rated KXTV. As a result, KOVR aligned with CBS. The switch took place on March 6, 1995.[86][87] Uniquely for the market, KOVR adopted an early prime time schedule and air weeknight CBS programming from 7 to 10 p.m. instead of from 8 to 11 p.m. At the time, KPIX-TV, the CBS affiliate in San Francisco, programmed on a similar basis (abandoning the practice in 1998),[88]
CBS ownership
By 2004, Sinclair was eyeing the creation of duopolies in as many markets as possible and seeking to sell stations in markets where it had no feasible options to create one. One of those markets was Sacramento.[93] As a result, Sinclair agreed to sell KOVR to the Viacom Television Stations Group—the owned-and-operated stations division of CBS—in December 2004 for $285 million (equivalent to $ in dollars). This created a duopoly with then-UPN affiliate KMAX-TV (channel 31).[94] In order to remain under ownership limits for radio stations in Sacramento, Viacom sold San Francisco radio station KFRC (610 AM).[95]
While operations of KMAX-TV moved in with KOVR in West Sacramento, resulting in the layoffs of 11 newly redundant employees,[96] $7 million (equivalent to $ in dollars) was spent on capital improvements at the studios, where some of the equipment had not been replaced since AnchorMedia built the facility 15 years prior.
