Construction and early years
The KVUE license remained in force, but when station president Melvyn Lucas filed for a renewal in January 1963, another local group filed a competing application for its own channel 40 station under the name Camellia City Telecasters.[16] Camellia City was owned by Jack Matranga and three other men; Matranga believed that between the existence of the prior channel 40 and forthcoming regulation, there would be enough sets capable of receiving the proposed station.[17] Due to a failure to put the station back on the air, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) dismissed the license renewal application for KVUE in December 1963,[18] but it did not grant the Camellia City Telecasters application until March 1965.[19] Though the application was for channel 40, the FCC ordered the station switched to channel 29 in August 1965,[20] only to revert the change the next year.[21]
In December 1967, the FCC authorized Camellia City Telecasters to sell a majority stake to Community Cablecasting Corporation, and KTXL announced its construction plans.[22] For studios, the station leased a warehouse at 10th and B streets; the transmitter facility would be at Locke, 1 mi north of the main Sacramento TV station tower at Walnut Grove.[23] KTXL began broadcasting on October 26, 1968, with a lineup of children's programs, movies, and sports.[24] It also aired NBC and CBS programming not cleared by the local affiliates.[25] As the only independent station in the Sacramento market, it aired sports telecasts that in some cases aired on competing stations in the San Francisco area.[26]
KTXL built a new studio facility on Fruitridge Road in 1969.[27] Later that year, 20 percent of the station was sold to the Business Men's Assurance Company (BMA), an insurer based in Kansas City, Missouri.[28] Matranga later recalled that BMA was an "angel" at a time when KTXL's finances were "very dismal". BMA became the 65-percent owner two years later.[29]
In its early years, KTXL offered a variety of non-news local programming. After two years at Modesto's KLOC-TV, children's host Cap'n Mitch (real name Mitch Agruss) joined the channel 40 lineup in 1968.[30] Two years later, Bob Wilkins, who had hosted horror movies at KCRA-TV (channel 3), moved to KTXL to present the Bob Wilkins Horror Show, which ran until 1981.[31] Cap'n Mitch remained on the air at channel 40 until January 1984, when the station eased him out of on-air duties out of a belief that it no longer needed a host for children's programming and in response to declining viewership.[32]
In addition to the Sacramento area, KTXL was available on cable television systems in parts of California, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Washington state. In 1970, it was added to the cable system serving Reno;[33] Matranga noted that the addition helped Sacramento firms that had stores in Reno.[34] In 1973, Matranga initiated all-night programming in an attempt to entice more cable systems to put KTXL on their lineups. Two years later, Community Television of Utah began offering KTXL, alongside KTVU and KWGN-TV of Denver, to its subscribers on the first cable TV system in Salt Lake City.[35] The next year, KTXL's all-night movies began being seen by cable subscribers in Rapid City, South Dakota, some 1000 mi from Sacramento.[36] Some KTXL programming was included on the Pacific Teletronics microwave channel that also included material from Bay Area independents KTVU, KICU-TV, and KBHK and was distributed to cable systems in Oregon.
An attempt by Camellia City Telecasters to contest the arrival of a second independent station in Sacramento placed KTXL's broadcast license in legal jeopardy. KTXL attempted to show to the FCC that Grayson Television, the owner of the then-proposed KMUV-TV (channel 31), was unqualified to be a broadcast licensee. Camellia City Telecasters submitted a pleading containing what purported to be a telex message from Dun & Bradstreet. The alleged telex claimed that Sidney Grayson was the president of Grayson Television, even though he had previously been convicted of income tax evasion. In actuality, Grayson was not a corporate officer but a general manager. In August 1974, the FCC opened a hearing into charges the teletype was forged.[39] In 1975, Grayson Television sued Camellia City for $7.5 million (equivalent to $ in dollars), claiming the filing was an attempt to prevent KMUV-TV from being constructed. The next year, an administrative law judge issued an initial decision finding against KTXL and recommended its license not be renewed.[40] Shortly after, KMUV won $150,000 (equivalent to $ in dollars) in a settlement with Camellia City. The FCC voted in June 1978 to overturn the recommendation and renew the KTXL license.[41] Having survived the license challenge, KTXL constructed an addition to its studios in 1980 that nearly doubled their size from 13000 ft2 to 25000 ft2.
Matranga gained a reputation as a large-scale buyer of movies and syndicated programming. By 1981, KTXL had a film library of 5,000 titles, double what independent stations in comparably sized markets carried, and Matranga was continuing to buy as prices rose, locking in market exclusivity for years to many films.[42] Koplar Communications, owner of channel 31 (by this time KRBK-TV), sued KTXL in 1982, arguing that its spending on hoarding programming inventory was monopolistic and served to starve KRBK of programming. In 1985, KTXL built a new, 2,000 ft tower in Walnut Grove,[43] and the next year, it affiliated with the new Fox network.[44] In 1988, Fox added America's Most Wanted to its Sunday night lineup after it outperformed the existing program in the time slot, Werewolf, in a test run conducted on KTXL.[45]
