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KTRK-TV (channel 13) is a television station in Houston, Texas, United States. It is owned and operated by the ABC network via its ABC Owned Television Stations division, and maintains studio facilities on Bissonnet Street in Houston's Upper Kirby district." Harris County Improvement District #3 Upper Kirby. Retrieved August 16, 2021. Its transmitter is located near Missouri City, in unincorporated northeastern Fort Bend County.
Construction on the transmitter in Fort Bend County, southwest of Almeda, began in July. For studios, the new KTRK-TV leased the former studios of KNUZ-TV (channel 39), a DuMont affiliate which had gone dark that June, and the call letters KTRK-TV were selected after the FCC denied use of KTRH-TV because the radio station did not have controlling interest in Houston Consolidated Television.
KTRK-TV began broadcasting November 20, 1954. (Guide to reading History Cards) It was the first full ABC affiliate for Houston. In its early years, it sought to block the move of a third station into Houston proper by opposing efforts by KGUL-TV (channel 11) to move in from Galveston, which were approved by the FCC in 1956. The present Bissonnet Street studios were inaugurated in November 1961; designed by Hermon Lloyd (later architect of the Astrodome), the facility features a dome that enclosed two studios, which was boasted to be the first such round studio building in the United States.
Early local programs included the children's show Kitirik, which featured the station's mascot, a black cat named after the call letters. This was a deliberate play on the station being located on "unlucky" channel 13. The show remained on the air until 1970.
Capital Cities made major investments in news and other programming, and by 1978, KTRK-TV was rumored to be the most profitable station in the entire company. In February 1985, it captured an unprecedented 47 percent of the network audience in Houston.
KTRK also became known for its legendary consumer and investigative reporter, Marvin Zindler, whose week-long reports on a La Grange brothel in 1973 led to the closing of the Chicken Ranch, a bordello that was later immortalized in the musical and film, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas and ZZ Top's hit song "La Grange". Zindler, who joined KTRK in 1973 at Ward's suggestion after being pushed out of the Harris County sheriff's office, and whose arrival was noted as marking the start of a two-decade "broadcast dynasty" for the station, was also widely noted in the Houston market for his Friday night Rat and Roach Report focusing on Houston restaurants that have failed health inspections, which ended with his trademark line "Slime in the Ice Machine". After becoming the first Houston TV personality to sign a contract paying him more than $1 million in 1984, Zindler signed a lifetime contract with KTRK in 1988, making him the first person offered such a contract by Capital Cities, which had a reputation for being a financially frugal company. Zindler continued to work for the station until his death from pancreatic cancer in 2007, even filing reports from his hospital bed during treatment.
Another long-running program was in the mornings. Good Morning Houston, which had evolved from a local Dialing for Dollars program, remained on the air at 9 a.m. from 1967 until it was axed in 1993 to improve KTRK's morning ratings and make more room for syndicated talk shows.
During the 1970s and 1980s, Ward and co-anchor Jan Carson, along with Zindler, sports director Bob Allen and weatherman Ed Brandon, led KTRK to the No. 1 position at 6 and 10 pm. In mid-April 1977 the station also debuted its 5 p.m. newscast, Live at Five, which also grew to become the top-rated program in its timeslot, and saw its 6 p.m. newscast expand to a full hour by September 1982, replacing the syndicated version of Family Feud which had moved to KPRC-TV. Later in the 1980s, Ward was joined on the anchor desk by Live at Five anchor Shara Fryer (Carson left KTRK in 1979 for ABC O&O KGO-TV in San Francisco before returning to Houston to anchor at KPRC-TV in 1983). While the newscasts (and ABC's prime time lineup) came to dominate the Houston ratings during the 1980s well into the 1990s, KTRK also had to face spirited competition from KPRC-TV, which became one of the most respected NBC affiliates in the country during the 1980s as NBC came to lead the national prime time ratings, as well as a resurgent KHOU by the dawn of the 1990s and new competition from charter Fox owned-and-operated station KRIV and independent stations KHTV on channel 39 (now CW owned-and-operated station KIAH) and then-24-hour "all news" channel KNWS-TV on channel 51 (now MeTV owned-and-operated station KYAZ) during this period, even though the latter two eventually shut down their news operations later in the 1990s due to poor ratings.
On October 7, 2002, new Chief Meteorologist Tim Heller (who joined from Fox O&O KDFW in Dallas) would succeed Brandon as the station's lead weatherman, presiding over the station's 10 p.m. and Live at Five weather reports while Brandon would continue to preside over the station's 6 p.m. weather reports until his retirement in 2007 after a 35-year career (with occasional appearances as a fill-in weather anchor afterwards), while Fryer would be succeeded by former MSNBC anchor (and former KTRK morning anchor) Gina Gaston the prior year, with Gaston settling into the position during KTRK's wall-to-wall coverage of Tropical Storm Allison. On August 13, 2007, KTRK became the second television station in the Houston market to begin broadcasting portions of its local newscasts in high definition, becoming the seventh ABC-owned station to make the transition.
In January 2013, sports director Bob Allen left KTRK after a 38-year career with the station, having been succeeded by Greg Bailey (who held the same position at WCNC-TV in Charlotte) four months prior on September 4, 2012. (Allen would later join KHOU as their lead sports anchor, remaining in that position until his death in 2016.) On January 11, 2019, chief meteorologist Tim Heller retired from KTRK after a 17-year career, and was replaced by current chief meteorologist Travis Herzog on the following Monday, January 14.
In recent years, KTRK has expanded its news offerings to include a 4 p.m. newscast that launched in the late summer of 2001. On August 17, 2009, KTRK became the first station in the market to expand its weekday morning newscast to 4:30 am, with all of KTRK's competitors following suit later in the year. On August 26, 2013, KTRK-TV split its hourlong 6 p.m. newscast into two separate half hours, with the 6 p.m. half-hour continuing with Dave Ward and Gina Gaston, while Erik Barajas and Ilona Carson would take over as anchors of the newly rechristened 6:30 p.m. newscast; following Ward's retirement in 2017, Live at Five anchor Art Rascon would take Ward's place at 6 pm, with the station expanding its 10 p.m. newscast to one hour on weekends beginning January 4, 2014. On September 10, 2018, KTRK became the first television station in Texas to air a 3 p.m. newscast.
In August 2019, news director Wendy Granato was promoted to general manager for the station. She was the first woman to lead the newsroom and became the first woman to take the reins of the entire station.
KTRK began producing an hour-long 9 p.m. newscast for KIAH (channel 39) in May 2020 though an agreement with Nexstar Media Group.
KTRK also serves as the official local television home of the Houston Marathon.
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The station's two digital subchannels, which originally featured additional news coverage and features programming on 13.2 and The Local AccuWeather Channel on 13.3, would eventually take on their current subchannel affiliations upon their respective launches (2009 in the case of Live Well Network; 2015 in the case of Laff). In 2015, Live Well no longer produced original programming and was moribund. On February 17, 2020, the ABC Owned Television Stations division launched the rebranded Localish subchannel.
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