Product Code Database
KPTV (channel 12) is a television station in Portland, Oregon, United States, affiliated with the Fox network. It is owned by Gray Media alongside Vancouver, Washington–licensed MyNetworkTV affiliate KPDX (channel 49). The two stations share studios on NW Greenbrier Parkway in Beaverton; KPTV's transmitter is located in the Sylvan-Highlands section of Portland.
KPTV also broadcast programs from the short-lived original Paramount Television Network during the early 1950s; in fact, it was one of that network's strongest affiliates, carrying Paramount programs such as Time For Beany, Hollywood Wrestling, and Bandstand Revue. During the late 1950s, the station was also briefly affiliated with the NTA Film Network. Empire Coil sold KPTV and its other broadcast property, WXEL (now WJW-TV) in Cleveland, to Storer Broadcasting on November 17, 1954. On August 11, 1954, KPTV became the first television station in Portland to broadcast in color television, three days before KOIN achieved the same milestone.
The VHF channel 12 allocation in Portland was first occupied by KLOR-TV, which signed on March 8, 1955, as a primary ABC affiliate with a secondary DuMont affiliation. However, KLOR's network affiliations were short-lived. In 1956, KLOR lost its affiliations with both networks as the DuMont Television Network ceased operations, and the ABC affiliation moved to KGW-TV (channel 8) when that station signed on the air in December. On April 17, 1957, Detroit businessman George Haggerty purchased KPTV from Storer and KLOR from its local owners. On May 1, the two stations merged under KPTV's license, but using the stronger channel 12 signal (channel 27 was later used by independent station KHTV, which was on the air for less than four months in 1959; more recently, the channel 27 frequency was used by the digital signal of PBS member station KOPB-TV, which returned to its original channel 10 assignment following the analog shutdown; the KHTV call letters were later used to sign on channel 39 in Houston in 1967, that station used the callsign from its launch until 1999; it is now KIAH).
On April 17, 1959, KPTV became an ABC affiliate after swapping its NBC affiliation with KGW. Later that year, KPTV was sold to the NAFI Corporation, which then purchased Chris-Craft Boats in 1960 and changed its name to Chris-Craft Industries. Color broadcasting by KPTV ended when KGW became an NBC affiliate in 1959, but returned in 1962, when ABC began color broadcasting.
KPTV was the home of the two top children's TV hosts in Portland's history: Rusty Nails, a quiet-natured clown who was the rough inspiration for The Simpsons creator Matt Groening's Krusty the Klown; and "Ramblin' Rod" Anders. While Rusty Nails originally ran Three Stooges shorts, Ramblin' Rod featured Popeye cartoons. Ramblin' Rod was the longest-running kids' show in Portland TV history, broadcast from 1964 to 1997. Other KPTV children's hosts included longtime KPTV personality Gene Brendler who played "Bent Nails" (Rusty's "brother"), and George Ross, who played "Dr. Zoom". Bob Adkins, better known as "Addie Bobkins", brought his show to KPTV from Eugene's KVAL-TV in 1961. "Addie Bobkins" featured a wise-cracking beatnik hand puppet named "Weird Beard". Both Ross and Adkins ran a variety of cartoons to entertain the kids.
In 1967, Portland Wrestling returned to KPTV after a 12-year absence. Frank Bonnema, news reporter and afternoon movie host, served as the voice of Portland Wrestling until shortly before his death on October 5, 1982. KPTV had originated telecasts of professional wrestling in 1953, with commentator Bob Abernathy, but lost the franchise to rival KOIN two years later. KPTV regained the franchise in 1967, and aired the wrestling matches until December 1991. Later wrestling commentators were KISN radio DJ Don Coss and former wrestlers Dutch Savage and Stan Stasiak. Portland Wrestlings chief promoters were Don Owen, and later, former wrestler-referee Sandy Barr. Primary long-time sponsors for the show were Chevrolet dealers Ron Tonkin of Portland and Friendly of Lake Oswego, and the celebrated ever-smiling furniture and appliance dealer Tom Peterson. Peterson was also the top sponsor for most of KPTV's movies.
In 1970, KPTV became the first television station in the market to broadcast Portland Trail Blazers basketball games, with sports director Jimmy Jones serving as the team's first play-by-play television announcer; KPTV maintained the broadcast rights to Blazers games until the end of the 1977–78 season. In 1977, Chris-Craft placed its self-named television subsidiary underneath a holding company called BHC, Inc.
KPTV carried Operation Prime Time programming at least in 1978.
Meredith then decided to swap the market's Fox and UPN affiliations; on September 2, 2002, Fox programming moved to the higher-rated KPTV—returning the network to channel 12 after a 14-year absence—while KPDX joined UPN. As part of the switch, KPTV's longtime moniker of "Oregon's 12" was changed to "Fox 12 Oregon". Although KPTV is the senior partner in the duopoly, the merged operation was based at KPDX's newer and larger facility in suburban Beaverton rather than KPTV's longtime home in East Portland. KPTV also absorbed KPDX's news department, resulting in the cancellation of KPDX's 10 p.m. newscast (KPDX now airs a weeknight 8 p.m. newscast that is produced by KPTV). The Fox affiliation switch coincided with a realignment of the National Football League that brought the market's most popular NFL team, the Seattle Seahawks, into the NFC West division. As a result, KPTV became an unofficial secondary station for the Seahawks, airing most of that team's games through the Fox network's rights to air games from the NFL's National Football Conference.
On October 27, 2012, KPTV revived Portland Wrestling after a 21-year absence from the station and renamed the program Portland Wrestling Uncut. The program had returned with the help of Rowdy Roddy Piper; Don Coss was back to announce the matches along with special guests. The wrestling matches were taped at KPTV's studios in Beaverton. Portland Wrestling Uncut at KPTV Two months later on December 29, Portland Wrestling Uncut moved to KPTV's sister station KPDX, retaining the Saturday night timeslot that the program held when it was revived on KPTV. The show was canceled in mid-2014.
The tradition finally ended in August 2012 when KPTV moved Perry Mason to sister station KPDX channel 49, on September 4, 2012, in an earlier 8 a.m. timeslot ( Rachael Ray replaced Mason in the noon timeslot on KPTV); the program's relocation from the noon slot—and displacement from KPTV—was cited as the result of decreased viewership of Perry Mason in recent years on channel 12 and programming shifts in daytime television towards more first-run syndicated talk and court programs. "'Perry Mason' move: KPTV general manager says, 'I've agonized over this,'" from The Oregonian, August 27, 2012 Because KPTV and KPDX held the broadcast rights to Perry Mason in the Portland market, KATU channel 2 did not broadcast the program on its MeTV subchannel (MeTV held broadcast rights to the program nationally), replacing it with other programs carried by that network.
By September 2014, Perry Mason had left KPDX and was replaced with variable programming, ending a 48-year long Portland tradition. Accordingly, the MeTV subchannel on KATU began showing Perry Mason in pattern with the national schedule until the station replaced the network with Charge! in September 2022. MeTV in Portland is now on the third subchannel of KJYY-LD, a translator of Salem-licensed Telemundo affiliate KJWY-LD.
Originally, KPTV replaced the reruns with syndicated programming, but has since added an hour-long newscast at 12:00 p.m. under The Noon News.
Throughout its entire history, as a network affiliate and as an independent station, KPTV has always operated a local news department. Future Oregon governor Tom McCall, a longtime journalist before entering politics, joined KPTV in 1955 as a newscaster and political commentator. McCall left KPTV in late 1956 for KGW-TV, where he was a member of the original news team for seven years before leaving to run for Oregon's secretary of state. The station's long-running prime time newscast, known as The 10 O'Clock News, debuted in 1970. KPTV was also one of the first television stations in the country to run a mid-afternoon newscast, as the station aired a 3 p.m. news bulletin (known as Coffee Break News) from 1974 to 1978. Since then (especially after switching to Fox), KPTV has begun to go head-to-head with competitors KGW, KATU and KOIN by taking on a more news-intensive format, which took years to take effect.
The station launched its morning news program, Good Day Oregon, in 1996 as a three-hour weekday broadcast. The program has since been extended, and currently runs from 4:30 to 9 a.m.; KPTV was one of a growing number stations in the country with a morning newscast beginning before 5 a.m. until April 19, 2010, when the 4:30–5 a.m. portion of Good Day Oregon was cut, the 4:30 half-hour of the program was restored in 2012. KPTV is also one of the few local stations and one of a handful of Fox stations to offer a three-hour newscast on Saturday and Sunday mornings.
On June 5, 2007, KPTV became the second Portland television station to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in widescreen standard definition. One year later on March 4, 2008, the station expanded its newscast schedule to include a weekday 4 p.m. newscast (which was canceled in 2011 but brought back in September 2019), as well as a weekday 8 p.m. newscast on KPDX, with MyNetworkTV programming on KPDX being shifted one hour to 9 to 11 p.m. as a result. The station expanded its 5 p.m. newscast (which had been airing only on Sundays, except when Fox sports programming was scheduled to preempt it) to seven nights a week, now airing on weeknights after its existing 4 p.m. program on September 8, 2008 (the program was eventually reduced to weekdays only by 2012). On April 19, 2010, KPTV began producing a fifth hour of Good Day Oregon for KPDX called More Good Day Oregon, running from 9–10 a.m.; the show features various entertainment and lifestyles topics from a seasoned panel of experts; this extension of the program was canceled in 2012. In 2011, KPTV began broadcasting an hour-long newscast at 6 p.m. on weeknights. On August 26, 2013, KPTV became the last television station in the Portland market to begin broadcasting its newscasts in high-definition.
In March 2014, KEVU in Eugene started airing some of KPTV's broadcasts. It airs the 8 a.m. hour of Good Day Oregon tape-delayed at 9 a.m. on weekdays and the 7:30 half-hour, live on weekends. It airs the first half-hour of The 5 O'Clock News, tape-delayed at 5:30 p.m. on weekdays and the first half-hour of The 10 O'Clock News, tape-delayed at 11 p.m. every night.
| +Subchannels of KPTV ! scope = "col" | Channel ! scope = "col" | Res. ! scope = "col" | Aspect ! scope = "col" | Short name ! scope = "col" | Programming |
When KPTV vacated its digital signal from UHF channel 30, sister station KPDX immediately switched its signal to that transmitter. Viewers watching KPTV's digital signal saw a cut from the opening of that day's episode of The 700 Club to the cold open of an episode of (KPDX turned off its analog transmitter at 9:30 a.m.).
|
|
