KTVT TV

Business Services > Broadcasting

The allocation originally assigned to VHF channel 10 was contested between three groups that competed for approval by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to be the holder of the construction permit to build and license to operate a new television station on the second commercial VHF allocation to be assigned to Fort Worth. Lechner Television Co. – owned by oil and gas exploration and production entrepreneur Walter W. Lechner – filed the initial permit application on July 3, 1952.[1] One week later on July 11, the Texas State Network – a broadcasting consortium owned by Sid W. Richardson (philanthropist and owner of, among other petroleum firms in the state, Fort Worth-based Sid W. Richardson Inc. and Richardson and Bass Oil Producers), media executive Gene L. Cagle, mineral rights firm owner R. K. Hanger, company president Charles B. Jordan and D. C. Homburg – filed a separate license application.[2] The Fort Worth Television Co. – a group led by several oilmen including Raymond O. Shaffer (president and chairman of Fort Worth-based Welex Jet and part-owner of the Texas Rail Joint Co. and oil well drilling firm Monarch Manufacturing Co.), Sterling C. Holloway (a Fort Worth attorney and president/director of Continental Life Insurance Co.); M. J. Neeley (president and majority stockholder of Fort Worth-based trailer manufacturing firm Hobbs Manufacturing Co.), Arch Rowan (chairman of Fort Worth oil well drilling firm Rowan Drilling Co., and president and minority owner of local oil production firm Rowan Oil Co.) and F. Kirk Johnson (oil and gas lease purchaser and royalty collector), along with O. P. Newberry (vice president of Fort Worth National Bank) – became the third applicant for the license on December 11, 1952.[3]

On September 3, 1953, in an approval of proposals submitted by John F. Easley (founding owner of KVSO-TV [now KXII] in Ada) and Eastern TV Corp. (founding owner of KTEN in Ada, Oklahoma) to realign the two VHF channel assignments to alleviate interference issues with their proposed stations, the FCC amended its "Sixth Report and Order" assignment table to reassign channel 10 to Waco (later occupied by CBS affiliate KWTX-TV) and move the VHF channel 11 allocation to Fort Worth. All three applicants subsequently amended their license applications to seek assignment on channel 11 instead.[4][5] The FCC granted the permit to the Texas State Network – now owned by Audacy by way of CBS Radio's 2017 sale of its radio station properties – on September 17, 1954, after the agency formally dismissed the applications by Lechner and the Fort Worth Television Co.[6][7] The Sid Richardson-led group chose to assign KFJZ-TV as the call letters for its television station, using the base callsign that had been used by its existing radio station on 1270 AM (now KFLC; the call letters now reside on an unrelated, Fort Worth-based radio station on 870 AM) since it signed on in 1924.

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