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KIII (channel 3) is a television station in Corpus Christi, Texas, United States, affiliated with ABC and owned by Tegna Inc. The station's studios are located on South Padre Island Drive (SH 358) in Corpus Christi, and its transmitter is located near Robstown, Texas.
KVDO carried on as an independent station and was sold to H. J. Schmidt's South Texas Telecasting Company in April 1957. It temporarily suspended broadcast operations in August pending what was announced at the time as a reorganization of its studio layout, but a federal tax lien was filed against the station by the Bureau of Internal Revenue in September. In October the station received FCC approval to stay off the air until January 1958, but by November 1957, the former KVDO studio building (minus equipment) had been sold to KRIS-TV, and the station did not relaunch. Coastal Bend Television, which had built the station, continued to face legal actions over debts incurred in constructing channel 22; in 1959, RCA won a $67,000 judgment against the former owners for equipment payments on which it had defaulted.
South Texas Telecasting was awarded channel 3 in December 1962, but Nueces Telecasting then filed a protest alleging that awarding the channel to South Texas Telecasting would violate the FCC's regulations on concentration of media ownership. Nueces withdrew its petition in June 1963 after South Texas Telecasting agreed to pay the company $40,000.
South Texas Telecasting, which had by this time added Clinton D. McKinnon as its major stockholder and executive vice president but still retained most of its original board of directors, later evolved into McKinnon Broadcasting, who remained the station's owners until 2010.
In 1969, KIII started a satellite in Victoria, Texas, KXIX (channel 19), to bring ABC programming to that area. In 1976, KXIX was sold to local ownership. It now operates as Fox affiliate KVCT.
On April 29, 2010, it was announced that KIII would be acquired by London Broadcasting Company. The sale was closed on August 31. On September 18, 2011, KIII began broadcasting newscasts in high definition.
On May 14, 2014, the Gannett Company announced that it would acquire KIII and five other LBC stations for $215 million. Gannett's CEO Gracia Martore touted that the acquisition would give the company a presence in several fast-growing markets, and opportunities for local advertisers to leverage its digital marketing platform. The company also owns fellow Texas ABC affiliates WFAA and KVUE, which it had acquired in its purchase of Belo Corporation. The sale was completed on July 8. 13 months later, on June 29, 2015, the Gannett Company split in two, with one side specializing in print media and the other side specializing in broadcast and digital media. KIII was retained by the latter company, named Tegna.
In 2004, KIII, along with sister station KBMT, was one of the 65 ABC affiliated stations who preempted an uninterrupted Veterans Day broadcast of the 1998 movie Saving Private Ryan.
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