KOLD TV Tucson

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( Info currect as of Mar 2014 WIKI article see Wikipedia for more info on current history of station personnel etc.. we are mainly concerned with the past at SMECC)

KOLD-TV is the CBS-affiliated television station, licensed to Tucson, Arizona. Owned by Raycom Media, it is a sister to Fox affiliate KMSB (owned by Sander Media, LLC) and MyNetworkTV affiliate KTTU (owned by Tucker Operating Co., LLC) through its shared services agreement. It broadcasts an ATSC digital signal on UHF channel 32 (remapped to virtual channel 13.1 via PSIP) from a transmitter located atop the Santa Catalina Mountains. Its studios are located on North Arizona Pavilions Drive (off of Interstate 10) on the northwest side of Tucson (near the Casos Adobes neighborhood), which are shared with the Raycom Design Group,^[1] an in-house firm that designs graphics packages for Raycom Media's television stations.

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).

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.

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. Two years later, 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. 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

Channel	Video	Aspect	Programming
13.1	1080i	16:9	Main KOLD-TV programming / CBS
13.2	480i	4:3	Me-TV^[5]

Analog-to-digital conversion

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, and began broadcasting in digital on September 11, 2003, with final FCC licensing coming January 6, 2004. KOLD elected to continue broadcasting on digital channel 32 after the digital transition on June 12, 2009,^[6] and continues to identify as Channel 13 via PSIP. Oddly, a 13.3 subchannel also exists which formerly carried until about April 2011 a message apologizing for the discontinuation of The Tube Music Network, which ended operations in late October 2007. On August 15, 2011, KOLD-TV added Me-TV to subchannel 13.2 and moved its "News 13 Now" programming to the previous vacant 13.3.^[7] In January 2012, KOLD-TV dropped the 13.3 subchannel, discontinuing the News 13 Now service.^[8]

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.^[9]

News operation

This section requires expansion with: further information on the history of KOLD's news operation. (November 2011)

Currently, KOLD-TV broadcasts a total of 29½ hours of local newscasts each week (with 5½ hours on weekdays and one hour each on Saturdays and Sundays).

On August 30, 2010, KOLD became the second station in Tucson to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition.

On November 15, 2011, KMSB owner Belo Corporation announced that due to a lack of advertising revenue, that in February 2012, it will enter into a news share agreement with KOLD and shut down KMSB's in-house news department. KOLD will take over production of KMSB's nightly 9 p.m. newscast, as well as debut a two-hour 7-9 a.m. newscast on weekday mornings on that station.^[10]^[11]

News/station presentation

Newscast titles

Telenews (mid-late 1950s)
KOLD-TV Big News/Niteline News (1960s)
Channel 13 News (1970s–early 1980s)
NewsCenter 13 (mid-1980s–1997)
News 13 (1997–2004)
KOLD News 13 (2004–present)^[12]

Station slogans

"Arizona's Color Station" (1960s)
"Southern Arizona's News Station" (1993–1997)
"Live. Local. Latebreaking." (1997–present)