KOLD-TV is a full-service television station in Tucson, Arizona. It is the CBS affiliate in Tucson, Arizona, and is owned by Gray Television. The station broadcasts in digital on UHF channel 32.
| [1] | |
| Tucson, Arizona | |
|---|---|
| Branding | KOLD News 13 |
| Slogan | Live, Local, Latebreaking |
| Channels | Digital: 32 (UHF) |
| Subchannels | (see article) |
| Translators | 13 (VHF) Tucson
(construction permit) |
| Affiliations | CBS |
| Owner | Gray Television |
| First air date | January 13, 1953 |
| Call letters' meaning | disambiguation from then-sister station KOOL-TV in Phoenix |
| Former callsigns | KOPO-TV (1953-1957) |
| Former channel number(s) | Analog:
13 (VHF, 1953-2009) |
| Former affiliations | Secondary:
DuMont (1953-1956) |
| Transmitter power | 108 kW |
| Height | 1123 m |
| Facility ID | 48663 |
| Transmitter coordinates | 32°24′55.8″N 110°42′51.9″W / 32.4155°N 110.714417°W / 32.4155; -110.714417 |
| Website | www.kold.com |
History
On November 13, 1952, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) granted a construction permit to country singer Gene Autry for VHF channel 13 in Tucson. Two months later, on January 13, 1953, Autry signed the station on the air as KOPO-TV, the second television station in Arizona. Known as "Lucky 13", KOPO played up the "13" angle, coming on the air at 1:13:13 PM, the 13th second of the 13th minute of the 13th hour of the 13th day of the year.[2] It was a sister station to KOPO radio (AM 1450, now KTZR; and 98.3 FM, now KOHT). The station originally operated from studio facilities located on West Drachman Street close to downtown Tuscon.
Channel 13 took the CBS affiliation due to its radio sisters' long affiliation with CBS radio. It also had a secondary DuMont affiliation.[3] In 1957, the station changed its call letters to KOLD-TV, playing off its sister station, KOOL-TV (now KSAZ-TV in Phoenix). KOOL and KOLD remained sister stations until Autry sold off KOLD to Universal Communications, the broadcasting arm of the Detroit-based Evening News Association, in 1969.
Universal Communications was acquired by the Gannett Company as part of Gannett's purchase of the Evening News Association in 1986. Gannett had owned the Tucson Citizen since 1977, and FCC regulations of the time forced Gannett to sell KOLD along with KTVY (now KFOR-TV) in Oklahoma City and WALA-TV in Mobile, Alabama to Knight Ridder Broadcasting after just one day of ownership. The News-Press & Gazette Company acquired KOLD in 1989, when Knight Ridder bowed out of broadcasting. [2] KOLD-TV used this logo from 2004 to 2010.In 1993, Atlanta-based New Vision Television bought NPG's entire television station group of the time, which included KOLD, WJTV in Jackson, Mississippi and its semi-satellite WHLT in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, WSAV-TV in Savannah, Georgia, WECT in Wilmington, North Carolina and KSFY-TV in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. In 1995, New Vision sold all of its stations to another Atlanta-based company, Ellis Communications (New Vision later rebuilt with smaller-market stations, and later resold the group to LIN TV). Ellis, in turn, was sold the next year to a media group funded by the Retirement Systems of Alabama, who purchased two additional broadcasting groups (Aflac's broadcasting unit and Federal Broadcasting) several months later. That same year, KOLD relocated its longtime studios on West Drachman Street to their current location on North Business Park Drive on the northwest side of Tucson. The three groups merged in 1997 to form Raycom Media.
During 2011, the Raycom station Web sites are being redesigned to a uniform format (previously, the Raycom station sites were a hodgepodge of different formats that were inherited from their previous owners). Raycom is Worldnow's largest client in number of station Web sites, but was dwarfed in total market coverage in Spring 2012 by Fox Television Stations, which relaunched its Web sites during that time.
On November 15, 2011, Dallas-based broadcasting company Belo Corporation, owners of local Fox affiliate KMSB and MyNetworkTV affiliate KTTU, announced that it will enter into a shared services agreement with Raycom Media beginning in February 2012, resulting in KOLD taking over the two stations' operations and moving their advertising sales department to the KOLD studios. All remaining positions at KMSB and KTTU, including news, engineering and production, will be eliminated and master control operations will move from Belo's Phoenix independent station KTVK to KOLD. KOLD will also take over operations of KMSB's website. Though FCC rules disallow common ownership of more than two stations in the same market, combined SSA/duopoly operations are permissible (with such operations existing in Youngstown, Topeka, Duluth, Nashville and Honolulu).[4]
Digital television
[3][4]KOLD-TV used this logo from 2004 to 2010.On April 3, 1997, the FCC released its initial digital television companion channel assignments. It assigned UHF channel 32 to KOLD-TV to build its DTV facilities. KOLD received a construction permit to build the new facilities on May 12, 2000, and on September 11, 2003, began broadcasting in digital. The digital station was licensed January 6, 2004. KOLD has elected channel 32 as its final digital channel, meaning that on June 12, 2009,[3] at the end of the digital transition, KOLD will surrender its license for channel 13 and continue broadcasting in digital on channel 32. It will continued to be identified as channels 13.1 and 13.2 on television set tuners. Oddly, a 13.3 subchannel also exists which carries a still message apologizing for the discontinuation of The Tube Music Network, which ended operations in late October 2007.
While KOLD's analog station originates from the electronics site in the Tucson Mountains west of downtown, KOLD's digital transmitter is at the Mount Bigelow electronics site to the northeast of the city.
KOLD-TV has a construction permit for a fill-in digital translator on its pre-analog channel 13 which will benefit viewers who live in certain rugged terrain areas that are having difficulty receiving the signal on channel 32. [4]
The station's digital channel, UHF 32, is multiplexed:[5]
Digital channels
| Virtual
Channel |
Video | Aspect | Programming |
|---|---|---|---|
| 13.1 | 1080i | 16:9 | Main KOLD-TV programming |
| 13.2 | 480i | 4:3 | News 13 Now |
News department
On-air staff
News anchors
- Mindy Blake - weekdays at noon
- Scott Kilbury - weekday mornings 4:30am-7am
- Teresa Jun - weekends at 5:30pm and 10pm
- Dan Marries - weekdays at 5pm, 6pm, and 10pm
- Heather Rowe - weekdays at 5pm, 6pm and 10pm
- Mark Stine - Sundays at 5:30pm and 10pm
- Kayna Whitworth - weekday mornings 4:30am-7am
Reporters
- Mindy Blake - morning reporter
- Lauren Burgoyne - morning reporter
- David Gonzalez - morning reporter
- Joan Lee - morning traffic
- Bud Foster - politics
- Barbara Grijalva
- Teresa Jun
- Som Lisaius - crime
- Mark Stine
- J.D. Wallace
Weather
- Chuck George - chief meteorologist; weekdays at 5pm, 6pm, and 10pm
- Erin Jordan - weekday mornings 4:30am-7am and noon
- Aaron Pickering - weekends at 5:30pm and 10pm
Sports
- Damien Alameda - sports director
- Dave Cooney - weekend sports anchor/reporter
News/station presentation
Newscast titles
- Telenews (mid-late 1950s)
- KOLD-TV Big News/Niteline News (1960s-1970s)
- The News
- Channel 13 News (19??–19??)
- NewsCenter 13 (19??–1997)
- News 13 (1997–2004)
- KOLD News 13 (2004–present)
Station slogans
- Arizona's Color Station (1960s)
- The Best is Right Here on Channel 13 (1973-1974; localized version of CBS ad campaign)
- See the Best...Channel 13 (1974-1975; localized version of CBS ad campaign)
- Catch the Brightest Stars on Channel 13 (1975-1976; localized version of CBS ad campaign)
- We're Looking Good on Channel 13 (1979-1980; localized version of CBS ad campaign)
- Looking Good Together, Channel 13 (1980-1981; localized version of CBS ad campaign)
- Reach for the Stars on Channel 13 (1981-1982; localized version of CBS ad campaign)
- Great Moments on Channel 13 (1982-1983; localized version of CBS ad campaign)
- We've Got the Touch, You and Channel 13 (1983-1984; localized version of CBS ad campaign)
- You and Channel 13, We've Got the Touch (1984-1985; localized version of CBS ad campaign)
- We've Got the Touch on Channel 13 (1985-1986; localized version of CBS ad campaign)
- Share the Spirit on Channel 13 (1986-1987; localized version of CBS ad campaign)
- Channel 13 Spirit, Oh Yeah! (1987-1988; localized version of CBS ad campaign)
- You Can Feel It on Channel 13 (1988-1989; localized version of CBS ad campaign)
- Get Ready for Channel 13 (1989-1991; localized version of CBS ad campaign)
- The Look of Arizona is Channel 13 (1991-1992; localized version of CBS ad campaign)
- This is CBS, on Channel 13 (1992-1993; localized version of CBS ad campaign)
- Southern Arizona's News Station (1993–1997)
- Live. Local. Latebreaking. (1997–present)
[5] This film, television or video-related list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it with reliably sourced additions.==KOLD in fiction== Two Nickelodeon shows have used the KOLD call letters for fictional radio stations. A Bikini Bottom version of KOLD is heard in the SpongeBob SquarePants episode Mid-Life Crustacean, and on the first-season Rugrats episodes "Baseball" and "No Bones About It", Grandpa Lou listens to KOLD, "Music for the old and the old-at-heart".
In Tom Clancy's 1991 book The Sum Of All Fears, KOLD-TV is an independent superstation in Denver, Colorado that breaks the first video footage of a terrorist nuclear detonation at the Super Bowl, after the sitting President orders FBI agents to muzzle the major network news operations.
References
- ^ "KOPO-TV Airs First Telecast With No. 13 In Starring Role", Tucson Daily Citizen: 20, 1953-01-14
- ^ "Cable Will Mean More Shows", Tucson Daily Citizen: 24, 1953-09-26
- ^ http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-288530A2.pdf
- ^ http://licensing.fcc.gov/prod/cdbs/pubacc/Auth_Files/1296902.pdf
- ^ Zap2It channel lineup
External links
- News 13 KOLD-TV Home
- Query the FCC's TV station database for KOLD
- BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on KOLD-TV
- Program Information for KOLD at TitanTV.com