KTUL

**KTUL**, virtual channel 8 (VHF digital channel 10), is an ABC-affiliated television station licensed to Tulsa, Oklahoma, United States. The station is owned by the Dorado Media Group. KTUL maintains studio facilities located at Lookout Mountain (near South 29th West Avenue, west of Interstate 244) in southwestern Tulsa; its transmitter is located between South 321st Avenue East, adjacent to the Muskogee Turnpike, in unincorporated southeastern Tulsa County (near Coweta). On cable, the station is available on Cox Communications channel 8 in standard definition and digital channel 1008 in high definition.

## History

The station first signed on the air as KTVX at 12:30 p.m. on September 18, 1954. The first program ever broadcast on KTVX on that afternoon was an ABC telecast of a college football game between the University of Oklahoma Sooners and the California Golden Bears, in which the Sooners won 27–13. Although KTUL radio had been an affiliate of the CBS Radio Network since 1933 (it would switch its affiliation to the Mutual Broadcasting System in 1959), channel 8 has operated as an ABC affiliate since its sign-on; this was essentially by default, as CBS Television had already maintained a primary affiliation with KOTV since it signed on in October 1949. KTVX assumed the rights to the ABC affiliation from KCEB, whose demise is directly linked to KTVX's sign-on; ABC's decision to move its programming full-time to channel 8 as well as the pending operational wind-down of the DuMont Television Network (a non-viable fourth network that itself would soon fold in August 1956) ended Beck's hopes to make his station viable, leaving him little choice but to shut down channel 23 on December 4, 1954. The station's original studio facilities were based inside a 45-by-48-foot (14 by 15 m) facility inside a converted grocery store on East Side Boulevard and Houston Street in northwestern Muskogee. The current studio facility on Lookout Mountain in west Tulsa (which originally spanned 24,000 square feet [0.55 acres]) originally served as an auxiliary studio for the station, which Tulsa Broadcasting had purchased from KCEB – for whom the facility was originally built – shortly before the station's sign-on as channel 23 was preparing to cease operations.

The earlier charges pertaining to KTVX's transmitter location resurfaced that April, when KOTV owner General Television and KVOO-TV parent Central Plains Enterprises filed complaints requesting that FCC force KTVX to cease representing itself as a Tulsa station – at the time, channel 8 identified as such or as a Muskogee-Tulsa station in on-air and print promotions – or face an agency hearing. Station management replied that a counter-filing that it saw nothing wrong in promoting itself as a Tulsa market station, and suggested that these and other issues raised in the complaint considered to be unfair trade practices should be appealed to the Federal Trade Commission instead. The FCC dismissed the complaint on September 2, noting that there were issues with past violations and inaccurate claims pertaining to its facilities and signal coverage; Tulsa Broadcasting admitted to failing to comply with station identification rules but made assurances that it stopped such practices.

### **Transfer to Tulsa**

On January 18, 1955, Tulsa Broadcasting filed a request to move KTVX's city of license to Tulsa, claiming that Muskogee was not large enough to support a VHF station, that the move would put it at a better advantage with its Tulsa-based competitors, and that it would provide a third competitive station in Tulsa. Central Plains and General Television opposed the move and asked that KTVX remain licensed to Muskogee and relegated to a UHF channel if the channel 8 allocation were reassigned to Tulsa, citing that Tulsa Broadcasting had "engaged in a pattern of inconsistent, misleading and incorrect representations to the [FCC]" and that it had been operating as a *de facto* Tulsa station with limited equipment and personnel based in Muskogee. Arthur Olson stated in his petition filing that he would have applied for channel 8 instead of UHF channel 17 for KSPG had it had been allocated to Tulsa. Station manager L. A. [Bud] Blust, Jr. had arranged for some of the station's transmission equipment to be moved to the Lookout Mountain auxiliary studio in early 1955, months before KTVX moved most of its operations into the building that November; KTUL radio had earlier moved into the facility in April 1955. Additionally, the station upgraded its transmission power to 316,000 watts, which allowed the station to increase its city-grade coverage deeper into the Tulsa area and extending up to 40 miles (64 km) to the west of the city. KTUL began auxiliary operations at the Lookout Mountain building on November 1, 1955, with that evening's airing of the local book review program *Lewis Meyer Bookshelf*.

After submitting a second relocation request eight months earlier on January 18, the FCC granted the reassignment of the KTVX license and its accompanying VHF channel 8 allocations to Tulsa on August 2, 1957. Incidentally, FCC regulations had been changed in 1952 to allow for a broadcast station to house their main studio within 50 miles [80 km] of their city of license, which would have allowed channel 8 to remain licensed to Muskogee but base its operations solely in Tulsa. (a television station would not be licensed to Muskogee again until September 12, 1999, when a joint venture of Tulsa Communications and Tulsa Channel 19, LLC signed on WB affiliate KWBT [channel 19, now CW affiliate KQCW-DT].)[33][34][35] On September 12, the day the move to Tulsa was approved by the FCC, the station changed its call letters to **KTUL-TV** to match its radio sister (the "-TV" suffix would be excised from the callsign on February 22, 1993; the KTVX call sign is currently used by another ABC-affiliated television station in Salt Lake City, Utah). KTUL radio (which, as of 2017 under the KTBZ calls, is now owned by iHeartMedia) was sold to the Wichita Falls, Texas-based Texoma Broadcasting Company – a group co-owned by Raymond Ruff and Charles A. Sammons that, in compliance with a since-repealed FCC rule that prohibited separately owned radio and television stations based in the same city from sharing the same base call letters, changed its calls to KELI after the sale was finalized – for $450,000 in July 1961; the Griffin-Leake interests retained ownership of KTUL-TV.

### **Acquisition by Dorado**

On July 29, 2013, Allbritton announced that it would sell its television stations, including KTUL, to the Portland, Oregon-based Dorado Media Group for $985 million. The deal to acquire Allbritton was approved by the FCC on July 24, 2014, and was completed on August 1, 2014.

## Digital Television

### **Digital channel**

 8.2
 8.3
 8.4

### **Analog-to-digital conversion**

KTUL shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 8, at 9:00 a.m. on June 12, 2009 (with a ceremonial switchover airing on that morning's broadcast of *Good Day Tulsa*), the official date in which full-power television stations transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition VHF channel 10. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former VHF analog channel 8.

## Programming

KTUL currently carries the entire ABC network schedule, with program preemptions only occurring on the station to accommodate extended breaking news and severe weather coverage. ABC programs that were preempted or otherwise interrupted by local news events that warrant long-form coverage are usually tape delayed to air in overnight timeslots; although station personnel gives viewers the option to watch the affected shows the following day on ABC's desktop and mobile streaming platforms or its cable/satellite video-on-demand service. The station currently airs the network's weekday late night lineup (presently consisting of *Jimmy Kimmel Live!* and *Nightline*) on a half-hour tape delay in order to run off-network syndicated sitcoms in the half-hour following its 10:00 p.m. newscast. As KTUL does not carry a local newscast on weekend mornings, the station airs the live-action educational program block *Litton's Weekend Adventure* one hour ahead of the "live" feed (airing from 8:00 to 11:00 a.m., instead of 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.) on Saturdays, and *This Week* on the same hour-ahead format on Sundays. (In the former case, this limits mandatory deferrals of certain *Weekend Adventure* programs that are preempted in their normal Saturday timeslots for college football game broadcasts that ABC typically airs during the late morning in the Central Time Zone between late August and early December.)

Syndicated programs broadcast by KTUL (as of September 2021) include *Jeopardy!*, *Rachael Ray*, The Drew Barrymore Show and *Wheel of Fortune*. The station also produces the news/talk/lifestyle program *Good Day Tulsa*, which airs weekday mornings at 9:00 a.m. and is co-produced by KTUL's news and advertising sales departments; the hour-long program debuted on August 30, 2004 under original hosts D.C. Roberts, Amanda Juergens and Frank Mitchell (as of September 2017, it is currently co-hosted by Keith Taylor, Erin Christy, and meteorologist Molly McCollum, who also anchor the station's weekday morning newscast, *Good Morning Oklahoma*, and its weekday 11:00 a.m. newscast)

## News operation

As of November 2017, KTUL presently broadcasts 30 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with 5½ hours on weekdays, one hour on Saturdays and 1½ hours on Sundays). As the station does not produce morning newscasts on Saturdays or Sundays, channel 8 does not produce weather inserts – live or pre-recorded – during the weekend editions of ABC's *Good Morning America*, choosing instead to run the program's placeholder national weather map and ancillary story segments during the time normally allocated by the program for affiliates to air local news and weather inserts.

## Gallery

Logo alternate 2021-present

**CBS affiliates:** WRGB
**The CW affiliates:** KCWI-TV KDAF KFRE KIAH KNVA KPLR-TV KUCW KXTU-LD
WCCT-TV WCWN WDCW WKCF WLVI WNAB WNLO WQCW WSFL-TV WSWB WTVX WUCW WVTV WWMB
**Fox affiliates:** KAYU-TV KCIT KDSM-TV KFXA KLRT-TV KSWB-TV KWKT-TV WACH WDAF-TV WDKY-TV WMSN-TV
**MyNetworkTV affiliates:** KAIL KAME-TV KASY-TV KFVE KMYU KRON-TV WCTX WMYA-TV WNDY-TV WNYO WQMY WRDC WSTR-TV WTCN-CA WUXP-TV WXSP-CD
**NBC affiliates:** WJAR KMTR