Friday, March 13, 2009

KING-TV

KING-TV, channel 5, is a television station in Seattle, Washington, USA. It is affiliated with the NBC network, and broadcasts on analog VHF channel 5 and digital UHF channel 48. Its offices and broadcasting center are located just east of Seattle Center. The station's transmitter is located in the Queen Anne neighborhood of Seattle. Sometimes, the same television programming that is on KING-TV appears on its sister station, KONG-TV, an Independent station. Such programming includes local news and some syndicated programming. The chief newscasters for KING 5 news are Jean Enersen and Dennis Bounds.

History

The Early Years

When Channel 5 came on the air as KRSC-TV for the first time on November 25, 1948, it became the first television station north of San Francisco and west of the Mississippi River. The first broadcast, a live remote of a Thanksgiving day high school football game, was plagued with technical difficulties but local viewers were said to be impressed nonetheless. After eight months on the air under the ownership of P.K. Lieberman's Radio Sales Corporation, Channel 5 was purchased by Seattle native Dorothy Bullitt's King Broadcasting Company, owners of KING radio (AM 1090, now KPTK; and FM 98.1. The station became KING-TV to match its radio sisters (Bullitt had purchased the KING call letters from a fishing boat). For many years, the stations' logo was King Mike, an anthropomorphized microphone in ermine robes and a crown, drawn by Walt Disney. Sister stations KGW-AM-FM-TV used a similar logo, called Pioneer Mike.

The KRSC-TV calls now reside on an independent educational station in Claremore, Oklahoma.

Channel 5 was a primary CBS affiliate, carrying secondary affiliations with NBC, ABC and (until 1956) DuMont Television Network. Once the FCC-imposed freeze on TV licenses was rescinded in the early '50s, KING lost its monopoly on the Seattle TV market. It lost CBS to KTNT-TV (now KSTW-TV, KIRO-TV picked up CBS in 1958) and NBC to KOMO-TV in 1953, leaving KING with only the poorly performing ABC. Bullitt lobbied NBC for affiliation, and in 1959 NBC pulled its affiliation from cross-town rival KOMO and granted it to KING.

From the start, KING was deeply committed to the Seattle area. Bulitt believed that a television station should serve the public while remaining commercially viable. KING set up one of the first local news departments in the country, and quickly gained national attention for its high quality and hard approach. In 1952, KING kept Senator Joseph McCarthy from delivering a potentially libelous attack on the air. McCarthy threatened to have the station's license yanked, citing undue bias (the Bulitts were staunch Democrats) but was forced to back down. Reporters such as Charles Herring, Ted Bryant, Mike James, Bob Faw and Seattle's first female news anchor, Jean Enersen, set a high standard for television journalism in Seattle that continues today. To this day, it continues to be the leading station in the area.

After Alaska was hit by a major earthquake in March 1964, KING-TV worked together with NBC News to get the latter's footage of the quake's aftermath broadcast over the network. This was prior to the launch of a trans-Pacific television broadcast satellite; footage from Anchorage was flown to Seattle and driven to KING to be fed to the NBC network. NBC was the first network to show footage of the quake's aftermath, several hours before either ABC or CBS.

Management did not remain static. In 1961, Dorothy Bullitt's son Stimson Bullitt became president of King Broadcasting Company while his mother remained chairwoman of the board. In 1966, he took the almost-unprecedented step of airing an anti-Vietnam war editorial, angering the Johnson Administration. Stimson Bullitt also expanded the company to include Seattle magazine and a variety of other business activities, much to the dismay of his mother, who felt he was losing sight of the family's broadcast properties. Investigative reporter Don McGaffin gave significant coverage to growing racial tensions in the city as well as corruption in the Seattle Police Department.

1970s and 80s

Quietly dissatisfied with her son's management style, Dorothy Bullitt arranged for Stimson Bullitt's exit from the leadership of King Broadcasting in 1971. Stimson sold his company shares to his sisters, Harriet and Patsy, and was given control of the family's real estate interests. Ancil Payne, who had served as general manager of the company's Portland stations since 1965, became president and CEO.

By the 1970s and 1980s, KING-TV was the flagship of a growing regional media empire, which at various times included ventures in publishing, moviemaking, cable television and even various timber assets in the Far East.

KING-TV was a pioneer in diversity in the newsroom. In 1972, KING-TV broke new ground by appointing Jean Enersen as an evening news anchor. According to the Washington Post, Enersen was the first permanent female evening news anchor in the country.[1] In addition, KING-TV also appointed Seattle's first African-American evening news anchor, John Raye, who co-anchored with Enersen for several years in the mid-70's.

During this time, the KING-TV news department was also a launching pad for several network news reporters, including CNN's Aaron Brown and Lou Dobbs, CBS Early Show contributor Hattie Kauffman and NBC correspondent James Hattori. Future meteorologist and author Jeff Renner joined KING-TV in 1977.

KING was also a pioneer in starting new types of newscasts. In 1979, KING programmed the first early morning newscast in Western Washington at 6:30am with Don Madsen (news anchor) and Larry Schick (weather). Don Madsen was well-known for coming in at 11:30pm and working all night long to prepare this early morning newscast. The "KING 5 Morning News" became very popular with Western Washington viewers as well as viewers throughout British Columbia. In 1984, KING pioneered "Top Story" at 6:30pm with Mike James and Lori Matsukawa. Top Story, a local version of Nightline, focused primarily on the top news story of the day with in-depth reporting and interviews. Despite efforts to produce a high-quality newscast, Top Story never fully caught on and was cancelled in 1988.

Locally produced programming included Seattle Today (known as Telescope before that hosted by Howard Hall), a midmorning talk show hosted by Cliff Lenz, Shirley Hudson, later Susan Michaels, Colby Chester; Seattle Tonight, Tonite! hosted by Ross McGowan and later Dick Klinger, Almost Live!, a Saturday night talk and sketch-comedy program originally starring Ross Shafer; and a local Evening Magazine franchise, first hosted by Penny LeGate and Brian Tracey. Only Evening Magazine exists today. How Come? a half hour early Sunday evening family television program hosted by Al Wallace won several awards during its run during 1970s and early 1980s. The show covered topics of how things were made or done within the world. Dick Klinger hosted the show after Al Wallace died.

In addition, KING-TV and its sister stations in Spokane, Boise, and Portland formed the KING Northwest Network. They often shared news reports during this time and jointly covered significant stories such as the eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980. The midmorning talk show, Seattle Today, was re-named Northwest Today and expanded to 90 minutes. While the bulk of the show was produced in Seattle, each station had a local host who would do short segments.

King Broadcasting stations included KGW radio and television in Portland, KREM-TV Spokane, KTVB-TV Boise, KHNL-TV and KFVE-TV Honolulu and KYA/KOIT radio San Francisco.

Long-time station-owner Dorothy Bullitt died in June 1989.

1990s

Dorothy Bullitt's daughters Harriet Bullitt and Priscilla "Patsy" Bullitt Collins decided to sell the King assets in 1992 -- eventually unloading King Broadcasting (including KING, KREM, KGW, KTVB, KHNL/KFVE and the cable system assets) to the Providence Journal Company. KING-TV and other King Broadcasting stations later became Belo properties as a result of that company's merger with ProJo in 1997. (KHNL/KFVE was later sold to Raycom in 1999.)

Bonneville International Corporation purchased KING-AM in 1994, changed the station's call letters to KINF (later KNWX) and switched to an all-news format. KNWX switched frequencies with KRPM 770 a year later, transferring ownership of the 1090 allocation to EZ Communications, Inc. Since late 2004, CBS Radio-owned KPTK 1090 is home of Air America Radio.

KING-FM was donated to a non-profit partnership of the Seattle Symphony, the Seattle Opera, and ArtsFund. It continues the classical music format started by Dorothy Bullitt and is one of the few remaining commercial classical radio stations in the nation today.

The 1990s also saw the end of Almost Live!. During this decade, the show launched the career of Bill Nye the Science Guy, Joel McHale (of The Soup fame) and locally, Pat Cashman and John Keister (who replaced Ross Shafer as host).

On December 18, 1995, King Broadcasting launched Northwest Cable News, a 24-hour regional cable news operation available to viewers chiefly in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, and to a lesser extent in Alaska, Montana and California. In the Seattle area, NWCN can be located on Comcast Channel 2 or WAVE Broadband Channel 54.

King Mike was brought back for KING's 50th anniversary in 1998 and still appears in promotional announcements.

In 1999 to compete against KOMO, KING also began doing High Definition newscasts, although only one studio camera was HD until April 2007 when KING upgraded all of their studio cameras, graphics, and weather system to HD. "HDTV - KING5.COM". http://www.king5.com/HD/. Field reports are still standard-definition (480i converted to 1080i HD for air) but are taped in a 16x9 aspect ratio, giving the appearance of high-definition. According to KING, they are "Seattle's First HD Newscast".

[edit] Present day

Belo also operates KONG-TV, an independent station featuring some news programming (provided by KING) and syndicated shows. KONG is available on UHF channel 16.

In addition, an NBC Weather Plus affiliate, owned by Belo, broadcasts from the building. It is broadcast over-the-air on digital channel 5.2, and cablecasts on Comcast's digital tier in the Puget Sound area.

Currently, syndicated TV shows seen on this station include The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Dr. Phil, The Oprah Winfrey Show and Inside Edition.

KING opted not to carry NBC's telecasts of the 2006 Stanley Cup finals, the 2007 Stanley Cup Finals, and the 2008 Stanley Cup Finals when the games began at 5 p.m. Pacific time and CBC telecasts were available to most regional cable subscribers via CBUT in Vancouver. KING chose instead to air its regular lineup of newscasts and syndicated shows. KONG picked up the NBC telecasts of the games. For the 2007 and 2008 Stanley Cup Finals, however, KING aired NBC's Saturday night telecasts of the Stanley Cup Final while KONG aired the other NBC Stanley Cup Final telecasts.

For most of the last quarter-century, KING has waged a spirited battle for first place in the Seattle news race with KOMO. However, for the past couple of years, KING has been in first place in virtually every local newscast. Some of its newscasts rank higher than all the other newscasts combined.

It is one of five local Seattle TV stations seen in Canada on the Bell TV and Star Choice satellite providers.

KING is carried on several cable systems in south-eastern Alaska and Northwestern Oregon.

In 2008, chief newscaster Jean Enersen celebrated her 40th year at KING (36 of those years as primary evening anchor -- the longest serving female evening anchor in the country) with a 1-hour special which aired August 1. Recently, she stated in the Seattle Times that she has no plans to retire anytime soon.

The station also has the distinction of having the longest-serving numeric logo in the Seattle market- the 'K5' logo with three dots over the "K" (representing a crown, like a king's crown, hence the call letters) having been in use since 1977, with the current italicized version first used in 1998 (during the '80s, the "5" in the K5 was also seen by itself at times). The "K" part of the logo also served as King Broadcasting's corporate logo.


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