KTTV, virtual and VHF digital channel 11, is a Fox owned-and-operated television station located in Los Angeles, California, United States. The station is owned by the Fox Television Stations subsidiary of Fox Corporation as part of a duopoly with MyNetworkTV owned-and-operated station KCOP-TV (channel 13). The two stations share studio facilities within the Fox Television Center in West Los Angeles, and KTTV's transmitter is located on Mount Wilson.
The station is available to DirecTV subscribers in the few areas of the Western United States that do not have an over-the-air Fox affiliate.
History
Early years (1947-1954)
KTTV's origins can be traced to December 1946, when the station's license and construction permit was secured by the Times-Mirror Company, publishers of the Los Angeles Times. It was one of five licenses that were granted simultaneously by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to parties interested in launching commercial television stations in Los Angeles. In 1948, CBS, which owned KNX radio, purchased a 49% interest in the station and assisted in completing its construction in exchange for making channel 11 the network's Los Angeles television outlet. KTTV began operations on January 1, 1949 and was operated initially by KTTV, Incorporated, the Times/CBS-owned holding company. The station's first telecast was the Tournament of Roses Parade, which channel 11 would air every New Year's Day until 1995.
In May 1950, Times-Mirror purchased the Nassour Studios – a large motion picture facility on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, and centralized KTTV's operations there. CBS did not join Times-Mirror in the purchase; at the time its West Coast production facilities were based at Columbia Square, with its CBS Television City facility in the planning stages. KTTV converted the Nassour Studios into a major production house for television, producing programs locally and for the emerging syndication market. Prior to the move, KTTV operated out of several different facilities, including the former headquarters of Capitol Records (which was later the longtime home of KHJ radio and what is now KCAL-TV) on Melrose Avenue.
Later in 1950, CBS chose to acquire its own station in Los Angeles – pioneer station KTSL (channel 2, renamed KNXT and now KCBS-TV) – which was being spun off by the Don Lee Broadcasting System as a result of its sale to General Tire and Rubber. The KTSL purchase forced CBS to divest its interest in KTTV due to FCC rules in effect at the time that barred the common ownership of two television stations in the same media market; the Los Angeles Times would regain full ownership of channel 11 when the sales were finalized on January 1, 1951. KTTV's relationship with CBS ended after exactly two years as the network moved its programming to KTSL. A few months later, channel 11 agreed to become the new Los Angeles outlet of the DuMont Television Network, which had been affiliated with KTSL and, before that, KTLA (channel 5).
Independence (1954-1986)
In 1954, DuMont moved its programming to KHJ-TV (channel 9, now KCAL-TV), and KTTV became an independent station. During the late 1950s, the station was also briefly affiliated with the NTA Film Network. In 1958, channel 11 scored an advantage against its rivals when it became the television home of the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team, which had relocated from Brooklyn, New York that year. For the first 11 years and at the request of the team, KTTV's Dodger telecasts were limited to road games against the archrival San Francisco Giants. Eventually, the number of Dodger games broadcast on the station increased and the home game blackout was lifted; the relationship between KTTV and the Dodgers would last until 1992.
The show Confidential File on KTTV covered the 1962 convention of the Daughters of Bilitis and aired after Confidential File became syndicated nationally; this was probably the first American national broadcast that specifically covered lesbianism.
The Times-Mirror Company sold the station to Metromedia in 1963. Later that year, Metromedia purchased KLAC (570 AM) and the original KLAC-FM (102.7 FM, now KIIS-FM), giving channel 11 sister stations on the radio dial. Metromedia would later engineer a trade of FM frequencies, resulting in KLAC-FM moving to 94.7 FM (later to become KMET, now KTWV) in 1965.
By the 1970s, KTTV offered a traditional general entertainment schedule common among independent stations at the time, consisting of children's programs, off-network reruns, sports programming and old movies, along with a 10:00 p.m. newscast. Some of the staff members in the earlier 1970s were: John Jones, Sales Manager; George Putnam, news anchorman; George's co-anchor Hal Fishman; Ken Jones, first black on-air TV newsman in L.A.; Tom Kelly, TV sports reporter; Terry Mayo, noontime news; and Rona Barrett taped her syndicated gossip report at KTTV too, written by assistant Barbara Sternig. With the evolution of cable television, KTTV became a regional superstation. Thanks to its Dodgers broadcasts and round-the-clock programming, KTTV was seen on various cable systems across the Western United States during the 1970s and into the 1980s, as far east as El Paso, Texas. KTLA, with its Angels broadcasts, also became a superstation. KTTV and KTLA were seen on most Southern and Central California cable systems, with KHJ-TV and KCOP also getting carried outside Los Angeles to a lesser extent.
As a Fox-owned station (1986-present)
In 1986, Australian newspaper publisher Rupert Murdoch and his company, the News Corporation (which had acquired a controlling ownership interest in the 20th Century Fox film studio the year before), purchased KTTV and the other Metromedia television stations. The Metromedia stations ended up becoming part of a new holding company formed by News Corporation called Fox Television Stations; those stations formed the basis for the new Fox Broadcasting Company television network, which made its debut on October 9, 1986. Following the News Corporation purchase, KTTV added more first-run syndicated talk, court and reality shows. By the early 1990s, it began to run afternoon cartoons from the network's Fox Kids block (which debuted in 1990), as well as top-rated off-network sitcoms during the evening hours. KTTV removed cartoons on weekday mornings in June 1993, due to the launch of the morning newscast Good Day L.A.
In 2001, Fox Television Stations acquired several UPN affiliates owned by Chris-Craft Industries through its BHC Communications station group, effectively creating a duopoly between KTTV and KCOP-TV (channel 13). That fall, channel 11 dropped the Fox Kids weekday block and moved it to KCOP; Fox Kids discontinued its weekday block altogether in January 2002, with the lineup left now airing only on Saturday mornings under the new Fox Box branding (which was replaced by 4Kids TV in September 2002), KTTV began to air Fox's children's programming once again. Since the 4Kids block was replaced by Fox with the infomercial block Weekend Marketplace in December 2008, the station now airs five hours of educational programming, two more than required under FCC guidelines, as Xploration Station replaced Weekend Marketplace, which moved to KCOP, in September 2014.
KTTV also airs reruns of I Love Lucy, which had premiered in 1951, months after the station lost its CBS affiliation. Reruns of the sitcom are still popular among Southern California viewers and have continued to air in the Los Angeles market perpetually since the series ended its run in 1957, thus making KTTV only the second station in the market (the other being KCBS-TV) to continue airing the sitcom since it ended. Weekday airings of I Love Lucy have since moved to KCOP (which airs the program in a one-hour block), but KTTV continues to air the landmark sitcom on weekends during the late afternoon hours.
In 1996, KTTV relocated its longtime studios on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, known as "Metromedia Square" (and later renamed the "Fox Television Center") to a new studio facility a few miles away on South Bundy Drive in West Los Angeles, near the Fox network headquarters (the network's headquarters are located on the 20th Century Fox studio lot). Several television series were filmed at the historic Metromedia Square television studio (which was once home to Norman Lear's Tandem Productions and TAT Communications Company) such as The Jeffersons, Mama's Family, Diff'rent Strokes, One Day at a Time, Soul Train, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, Fernwood 2 Night and the groundbreaking sketch comedy In Living Color. Many of those programs, either in first-run or off-network syndication, aired on KTTV. The Metromedia complex was demolished in 2003 to make way for the construction of Helen Bernstein High School (which is part of the Los Angeles Unified School District).
On May 16, 2006, KTTV launched a new website based on Fox Television Stations' MyFox interface; this format became standard on the websites of each of the Fox-owned stations – and was even adopted by some of Fox's affiliates not owned by the network – by the end of that year (the "MyFox" branded websites were operated by former News Corporation subsidiary EndPlay until 2012, when the sites were migrated to the WorldNow platform).
KTTV launched Light TV network on a subchannel starting December 22, 2016 with another Fox TV station, WNYW.
| TV stations in California |
|---|
| KTTV, Los Angeles KKFX-CD, Santa Barbara/Santa Maria/San Luis Obispo |
| TV stations in Southern California, including Los Angeles, Orange County, and portions of the Inland Empire |
|---|
| KCBS 2 (CBS) KNBC 4 (NBC) KTLA 5 (CW) KHTV-CD 6 (MeTV+) KABC 7 (ABC) KFLA-LD 8 (NEWSNET) KCAL 9 (Ind) KIIO-LD 10 (IND) KTTV 11 (FOX) KTBV-LD 12 (Ind) KCOP 13 (MNTV) KPOM-CD 14 (Story) KSCI 18 (Ind) KNLA-CD 20 (SBN) KVME 20 (H&I) KWHY 22 (Ind) KVCR 24 (PBS) KVHD-LD 26 (EVINE) KSFV-CD 27 (JTV) KCET 28 (ETV) KPXN 30 (Ion) KVMD 31 (LATV) KCIO-LD 33 (IND) KMEX-DT 34 (UNI) KTAV-LD 35 (ALMA) K36JH-D 36 (TVA) KHIZ-LD 39 (COURT) KTBN 40 (TBN) KXLA 44 (Ind) KFTR-DT 46 (UnM) KOCE 50 (PBS) KVEA 52 (TLM) KAZA 54 (MeTV) KDOC 56 (Ind) KJLA 57 (Ind) KLCS 58 (PBS) KRCA 62 (ESTRELA) KBEH 63 (Rel) KILM 64 (BOUNCE) KEDD-LD 69 (HSN) |