KAUZ-TV

KAUZ-TV (channel 6) is a television station licensed to Wichita Falls, Texas, United States, serving as the CBS affiliate for the western Texoma area. It is owned by American Spirit Media, which maintains a shared services agreement (SSA) with Gray Media, owner of Lawton, Oklahoma–licensed dual ABC/Telemundo affiliate KSWO-TV (channel 7), for the provision of certain services. KAUZ-TV's studios and transmitter are located near Seymour Highway (US 277) and West Wenonah Boulevard in western Wichita Falls.

The station also operates a translator station, K29FR-D in Quanah, Texas, to relay its programming to areas of western north Texas and extreme southwestern Oklahoma that are located outside its primary signal coverage area.

The VHF channel 6 allocation was contested between two groups, both of which owned radio stations in the market, 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 the Wichita Falls–Lawton market. Texoma Broadcasting Co.—a consortium associated with Wichita Falls Times owner Times Publishing Co. and then-owner of local radio station KTRN (AM 1290, now KWFS), led by Rhea Howard, Boyd Kelley, Walter Cline, Houston Harte and Eva Mae Hanks—filed the initial permit application for the VHF channel 6 allocation on July 11, 1952.

Rowley-Brown Broadcasting—a group founded in December 1947 by Edward H. Rowley (president of Rowley United Theatres Inc.), Kenyon Brown (owner of media advertising consulting firm Kenyon Brown Inc.) and H.J. Griffith, with Rowley United Theaters Vice President John H. Rowley and Agnes D. Rowley acting as fellow minority shareholders at the time of their submission—filed a separate license application for channel 6 on July 18, 1952. Rowley-Brown also owned the city's oldest radio station, KWFT (AM 620, now KTNO in Dallas–Fort Worth). The FCC awarded the license to Rowley-Brown on January 6, 1953, and Rowley-Brown sought and was granted the call letters KWFT-TV, after the radio station.

KWFT-TV first signed on the air on March 1, 1953; it was the first television station to sign on in the Wichita Falls-Lawton market, debuting one week before the March 8 sign-on of ABC affiliate KSWO-TV (channel 7) in Lawton, and one month prior to the April 12 sign-on of its fellow Wichita Falls-based rival, NBC affiliate KFDX-TV (channel 3). The station has been a primary CBS affiliate since it signed on, owing to KWFT radio's longtime affiliation with the CBS Radio Network. Initially, KWFT-TV held a secondary affiliation with the DuMont Television Network, carrying select programs from the network until it ceased operations in August 1956; during the late 1950s, the station was briefly affiliated with the NTA Film Network.

On December 9, 1955, Rowley-Brown sold KWFT-TV to KSYD-TV Inc.—a consortium led by Sydney A. Grayson and Nat Levine, then-owners of Wichita Falls radio station KSYD (990 AM, now Farmersville-licensed KFCD), which ironically was co-owned with KFDX-TV under prior ownership two years earlier—for $75,000 plus $73,366.40 allocated for color and transmission equipment not yet in use; concurrently, Brown acquired John H. and E. H. Rowley's respective interests in KWFT radio. The sale was approved on January 11, 1956, at which time channel 6's call letters were changed to KSYD-TV. Like its radio sister, it took its calls from its parent company's principal owner. On December 1, 1962, Grayson sold the television station to Mid-New York Broadcasting—a company owned by Albany, New York businessman Paul F. Harron, which then owned primary NBC/secondary ABC affiliate WKTV in Utica, New York (now solely an NBC affiliate on its primary feed) and the World Broadcasting System radio service—for $2.35 million; the sale received regulatory approval 3+1⁄2 months later on March 13, 1963. On July 31 of that year, the station changed its call letters to KAUZ-TV, which were chosen as part of a contest held by the Harron group that was open to media agency and advertiser personnel. (The calls were submitted by H. Wendell Eastling, a media director for Minneapolis-based Knox-Reeves Advertising, who won the grand prize of an MG sports car and a trip for two to Wichita Falls.)

In February 1966, KAUZ became the first television station in the Wichita Falls-Lawton market to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in color, making the transition just a few months after CBS began converting most of its network programming content from black-and-white to color. KFDX and KSWO followed in upgraded production of their respective newscasts to the color format in 1967. Also in 1967, KAUZ-TV was one of several stations nationwide to broadcast The Las Vegas Show, a short-lived late night program from the ill-fated Overmyer Network that ran for a few weeks. On November 3, 1967, Mid-New York Broadcasting sold KAUZ-TV to Bass Brothers Telecasters—led by investor/philanthropist Perry R. Bass, then-owner of fellow CBS affiliate KFDA-TV in Amarillo and satellites KFDW-TV (now KVIH-TV, a satellite of Amarillo ABC affiliate KVII-TV) in Clovis, New Mexico, and KFDO-TV (now defunct) in Sayre, Oklahoma, and 25% owner of KAAR-TV (now NBC owned-and-operated station KNSD) in San Diego—for $3.1 million; the sale was approved by the FCC on April 12 of that year.

In July 1970, two men who were hired to paint the mast on the station's transmitter tower—located on the premises of the KAUZ studio complex, which is said to be coordinated at one of the highest points within the city of Wichita Falls—lost their balance on the apparatus they were standing and fell several hundred feet to the ground; one man was killed, while another was seriously injured. In the late winter of early 1974, Bass Brothers Telecasters sold the station to Forward Communications—a locally based company (doing business as Wichita Falls Telecasters II) owned by local beer distributor Ray Clymer and White Fuel Corp. executive W. Erle White—for $4.25 million; the sale was approved by the FCC on September 19.