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KTXH (channel 20), branded as My20 Vision, is a television station in Houston, Texas, United States, serving as the market's local outlet for the MyNetworkTV programming service. It is owned and operated by Fox Television Stations alongside Fox outlet KRIV (channel 26). The two stations share studios on Southwest Freeway (I-69/US 59) in Houston; KTXH's transmitter is located near Missouri City, Texas.
KTXH began broadcasting in November 1982 as Houston's third independent station. A month after going on air, its broadcast tower collapsed in a construction accident that killed five people. The station recovered and emerged as Houston's sports independent, beginning long associations with the Houston Astros and Houston Rockets that continued uninterrupted through the late 1990s and sporadically until the early 2010s. Not long after starting up, KTXH was sold twice in rapid succession for large amounts. However, when the independent station trade, advertising market, and regional economy cooled, it was sold again for less than half of its previous value. The Paramount Stations Group acquired KTXH and other stations in two parts between 1989 and 1991, bringing much-needed stability.
KTXH was one of several Paramount-owned stations to be charter outlets for the United Paramount Network (UPN) in 1995; in 2001, after UPN was acquired by CBS, Fox took possession of the station in a trade and merged its operations with KRIV. When UPN merged into The CW in 2006, bypassing all of Fox's UPN and independent stations in the process, the station became part of Fox's MyNetworkTV service. In 2021, the station became one of two ATSC 3.0 (NextGen TV) transmitters for the Houston area; its subchannels are now transmitted by other local stations on its behalf.
KTXH began broadcasting on November 7, 1982, branding on-air as "20-Vision" and broadcasting from studios at 8950 Kirby Drive in Houston. By that time, though, Oak had frozen its plans into eventual cancellation, with Grant telling Ann Hodges of the Houston Chronicle that their operation had shut down completely. This was to the benefit of KTXH's ad-supported commercial offerings, giving it prime time hours to program (particularly with sports) and making reticent cable systems more willing to put the new station on their lineups. On opening night, the station showed the film The Deer Hunter, and five nights later, the station aired its first Houston Rockets basketball game; Shlenker was a 10 percent stakeholder in the NBA team. The 30 games the Rockets were slated to telecast in 1982–83 marked a record for the club. Shortly before signing on, the Houston Sports Association, owner of the Houston Astros baseball club, became a new 38 percent stockholder in KTXH, bringing with them television rights to the Astros.
In the first month on air, Houston's third independent station claimed eight percent of the viewing audience in the Houston metropolitan area, immediately moving into a tie for the lead, with its program lineup organized into thematic blocks.
KTXH was the first tenant to use the Senior Road Tower. A month later, work began to install the antenna that the FM radio stations would use on the mast. The first part was put into place on December 6. Despite winds, work proceeded the next morning, December 7. A failure in a clamping device on the hoisting mechanism caused a section of antenna to fall off, severing a guy wire and leading to the tower's collapse. Five people, all tower workers employed by a New Jersey company, died. KTXH suffered a $1.5 million loss in equipment, including the transmitter, on which the falling mast collapsed. A man in the transmitter building saw the tower collapse and fled.
In the wake of the tower collapse, KTXH was out of service for a total of 61 days. The station filed a $42 million lawsuit, alleging negligent construction and claiming a $7 million loss in equipment and advertising. It also immediately ordered a new transmitter as the Senior Road Tower consortium moved ahead with reconstruction of the mast, where KTXH would return upon its completion in October 1983. Even while broadcasting from a temporary facility atop the Allied Bank Plaza, KTXH continued to post competitive numbers against KRIV.
Gulf had scarcely owned the stations when it sold its entire stations group for $755 million to Taft Broadcasting in 1985. Taft doubled the size of the KTXH facility to include a second studio and more office space. Over the course of late 1985 and late 1986, Taft was fending off overtures from activist investor Robert Bass, who was amassing shares in the company. Meanwhile, in addition to a worsening regional economy, the independent television market nationally was softening; the two Texas stations were believed to be the weakest in the Taft chain, even as KTXH boasted the highest audience share of any independent station in a top-35 market built since 1981. On Rockets telecasts during this time, a young Hannah Storm hosted pregame and postgame shows.
Taft put its broadcast group up for sale in August 1986 due to agitation by Bass. While it asked $500 million for five independent stations, the winning bidder—TVX Broadcast Group—only paid $240 million, and Taft estimated its after-tax loss for the sale at $45 to $50 million. TVX implemented budget cuts, laying off about 15 percent of the staff at the acquisitions, and renegotiated programming costs; KTXH's production unit was completely disbanded.
The Taft stations purchase left TVX highly leveraged and vulnerable. TVX's bankers, Salomon Brothers, provided the financing for the acquisition and in return held more than 60 percent of the company. The company was to pay Salomon Brothers $200 million on January 1, 1988, and missed the first payment deadline, having been unable to lure investors to its even before Black Monday. While TVX recapitalized by the end of 1988, Salomon Brothers reached an agreement in principle in January 1989 for Paramount Pictures to acquire options to purchase the investment firm's majority stake. This deal was replaced in September with an outright purchase of 79 percent of TVX for $110 million.
KTXH's relationship with the Rockets continued until the 1997–1998 season, when KIAH (channel 39) outbid channel 20 for the rights to the team's road games. The move was largely precipitated by what was believed to be a reluctance to commit to sports preemptions of UPN programming. KHTV, which became KHWB in 1999, cited its affiliation with The WB when it dropped the team after three years; after a disastrous start to the 2000–2001 season on new independent KTBU, plagued by low ratings and signal coverage issues in parts of the Houston metropolitan area, the Rockets moved their games back to KTXH, with some Houston Comets women's basketball telecasts appearing on the station. At the same time, the Astros—which aired 64 games in the 1997 campaign on channel 20—left for independent station KNWS-TV (channel 51), with KTXH's increasing obligations to UPN as a core factor. In both cases, ratings fell after the teams moved their games off KTXH.
On January 24, 2006, the Warner Bros. unit of WarnerMedia and CBS Corporation (which had been created as a result of the split of Viacom at the start of the year) announced that the two companies would shut down The WB and UPN and combine the networks' respective programming to create a new "fifth" network called The CW. In unveiling the merged network, while WB and UPN affiliates owned by WB minority stakeholder Tribune Media (including KHWB in Houston) and by CBS Television Stations were announced as charter outlets, none of the Fox-owned UPN stations—many of which were competitors to these stations—were chosen. The next month, News Corporation then announced the creation of its own secondary network, MyNetworkTV, to serve its own outgoing UPN stations as well as those that had not been selected for The CW.
Even past the MyNetworkTV switch, KTXH continued its association with local sports. In late 2007 and early 2008, the Rockets and Astros returned to KTXH with a reduced schedule of games, largely in a complementary role to Fox Sports Houston, the Fox-owned regional sports network (RSN). The Astros aired all of their games on Fox Sports Houston in 2011, which was to be their last season on the RSN as the two teams prepared to launch Comcast SportsNet Houston (now Space City Home Network) in 2012.
On December 7, 2021, KTXH became one of two ATSC 3.0 (NextGen TV) transmitters for the Houston area as part of a deployment involving 10 stations in the market.
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