KFDX-TV
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KFDX-TV

KFDX-TV (channel 3) is a television station licensed to Wichita Falls, Texas, United States, serving as the NBC affiliate for the western Texoma area. Its third digital subchannel serves as an owned-and-operated station of The CW (via The CW Plus). KFDX-TV is owned by Nexstar Media Group alongside low-power MyNetworkTV affiliate KJBO-LD (channel 35); Nexstar also provides certain services to Fox affiliate KJTL (channel 18) under joint sales and shared services agreements (JSA/SSA) with Mission Broadcasting. The three stations share studios near Seymour Highway (US 277) and Turtle Creek Road in Wichita Falls, where KFDX-TV's transmitter is also located.

KFDX was the third station to sign on in just over a month in the Wichita Falls, Texas–Lawton, Oklahoma market and the second in Wichita Falls itself. An affiliate of NBC and ABC at launch, it became a sole NBC station when KSWO-TV in Lawton, also an ABC affiliate, added Wichita Falls to its primary coverage area in 1960.

On May 19, 1951, Wichtex Radio and Television—a locally based company managed under the direction of Darrold A. Cannan, Sr. and Howard Fry and the owner of KFDX (990 AM)—submitted an application to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for a construction permit to build and license to operate a broadcast television station in Wichita Falls that would transmit on VHF channel 3. This application was resubmitted in June 1952, after the FCC lifted a four-year freeze on TV station license grants. A Dallas oilman, Needy Landrum, applied for channel 3 in October; he withdrew the application in early December, and the FCC awarded the license and permit for channel 3 to the Cannan ownership group on December 18, 1952. Construction immediately began on new studios on Seymour Road to house the radio and TV studios as well as the TV transmitter facility.

KFDX-TV first signed on the air at 6 p.m. on April 12, 1953; the first program ever broadcast on Channel 3 that evening was the local program People from Here and There. KFDX was the third television station to sign on in the Wichita Falls–Lawton market, launching one month after the sign-ons of its two principal competitors: CBS affiliate KWFT-TV (channel 6, now KAUZ-TV), which debuted on March 1, and Lawton-based KSWO-TV (channel 7), which had signed on March 8. KFDX-TV was affiliated with NBC and the ABC network at launch; KFDX radio had been an affiliate of the ABC Radio Network since 1947. The station originally employed a staff of 30 people, which, at the time, was the largest staff of any broadcast television and radio station in west Texas; the majority of stock held in Wichtex was owned by members of the station's staff.

In addition to founding channel 3 and serving as the station's original general manager, Howard Fry was best known by children in the Texoma region for his daily program Uncle Howdy's House Party, which originated on KFDX radio and launched a television broadcast that aired concurrently with the radio program. In 1955, Wichtex sold KFDX radio to Grayson Enterprises in order to concentrate on the television portion of the business, splitting it from channel 3. Among the personalities who worked at KFDX-TV during the station's early years was Don Alexander—lead singer of rock-and-roll group Alexander and the Greats, and composer of the 1964 hit single "Hot Dang Mustang", which topped songs from such musicians as Elvis Presley, The Kinks, Frank Sinatra and The Rolling Stones to peak at #6 on the Billboard Top 100—who came to the television station in 1964. For several years until he transitioned away from program hosting duties in 1966, Alexander served as host of Stage Coach Three, a weekday afternoon children's program featuring a mix of cartoon shorts and educational features; as the character of "Pinto Bean", a marshal who appeared alongside his horse sidekick Swayback, he also donned cowboy garb to host afternoon western and horror movies. After filing live reports on the Watts riots, which began as he was starting a planned trip to visit his mother in Los Angeles in August 1965, Alexander was promoted to main news anchor and occasionally headed KFDX's news department as its news director from 1966 until he departed from the station in 1980.

Nat Fleming, a local country and western bandleader, served as host of the self-titled, half-hour afternoon variety program The Nat Fleming Show on channel 3 from the station's inception in 1953 until the early 1960s, which featured a blend of musical performances (performed alongside bandmates Pee Wee Stewart, Elmer Lawrence, Buck White, Pappy Stapp and Tommy Bruce) and comedy skits. Fleming was also the longtime owner of The Cow Lot, a Wichita Falls–based western wear store which shuttered operations in 2006, and typically signed off television commercials for his store with the locally known tagline "You can tell by looking if it came from the Cow Lot" (the store also served as the homebase for the Horn Honkin' Show, a Saturday morning variety program that Fleming hosted for radio station KNIN-FM 92.9). Fleming would be honored with the North Texas Legend Award by The Museum of North Texas History in May 2012.

On July 30, 1970, Wichtex Radio and Television, then managed by Fry and Darrold A. Cannan Jr., sold KFDX to Charleston, West Virginia–based Clay Broadcasting Corporation for $5.05 million; the sale was approved on January 28, 1971. Clay owned the Charleston Daily Mail and WWAY, a TV station in Wilmington, North Carolina.

As part of the divestiture of the company's newspaper and television properties, on April 30, 1987, Clay sold its KFDX and its four sister television stations—NBC affiliate KJAC-TV (now Fox affiliate KBTV-TV) in Beaumont–Port Arthur, and ABC affiliates WAPT in Jackson, Mississippi and WWAY in Wilmington, North Carolina—to New York City–based Price Communications Corporation for $60 million; the sale was approved by the FCC on June 23.

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