Early years
From October 1948 to April 1952, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) imposed a freeze on the award of new television stations to revise technical standards.[3][4] With the end of the freeze imminent, activity began around television in Tucson, and three Tucson radio stations applied for three television channels. The Arizona Broadcasting Company, owner of KVOA (1290 AM), filed for channel 4 without opposition on February 7, 1952, and was granted a construction permit to build on November 12.[5][6] KVOA, Tucson's NBC-affiliated radio station, selected channel 4 because it was preferred by RCA and because NBC-owned stations in major cities, including New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., were on channel 4.[7]
By the start of 1953, KVOA had announced its television plans. At the station's radio transmitter site at Lee Street and 10th Avenue, work would begin on studios, and the AM radio tower would be rebuilt to accommodate a television antenna.[8] KVOA-TV had set a September 15 start date for launch, and construction proceeded uneventfully, but it opted to wait because it would be nearly two weeks after that when network coaxial cable service would be available in Tucson for the first time.[9] The station began broadcasting September 27, 1953,[10] and its initial offering was the first TV program piped in to Tucson by coaxial cable.[11] In addition to NBC programs, it carried a secondary affiliation with ABC; ABC's radio affiliate in Tucson, KCNA, had planned a station but bowed out.
Arizona Broadcasting Company, a subsidiary of KTAR radio and KVAR television in Phoenix, opted to exit Tucson broadcasting in 1955 and sold KVOA radio and television to Clinton D. McKinnon of San Diego for $515,000.[12] Under McKinnon, KVOA-TV was the first to broadcast in color in Tucson, in November 1956.[13] ABC programs moved off of channel 4 in March 1957, when a third station, KDWI-TV, was sold and became KGUN-TV, acquiring the ABC affiliation.[14] Some of this program void was filled by the NTA Film Network, for which KVOA-TV had signed up at its launch the year before.[15] McKinnon sold the radio station to Sherwood Gordon in 1958,[16] keeping KVOA-TV and merging it with Alvarado Television, owner of KOAT-TV in
Several of the partners in Alvarado, in ill health and wishing to liquidate their holdings, pushed McKinnon to sell Alvarado Television in 1962. KVOA-TV and KOAT-TV were sold to Steinman Stations of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, headed by Clair McCollough, for $3.5 million,[19] with FCC approval coming in January 1963.[20] Steinman owned the Tucson station for five years before selling it in 1968 to the Pulitzer Publishing Company, publishers of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and owners of KSD radio and television in that city, for $3 million.[21][22]
