KOKH-TV

KOKH-TV (channel 25) is a television station in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States, affiliated with the Fox network. It is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group alongside KOCB (channel 34), an independent station. The two stations share studios and transmitter facilities on East Wilshire Boulevard and 78th Street on the city's northeast side.

On July 25, 1958, while it was in the midst of protracted hearings regarding the predecessor station's bankruptcy, the Republic Television and Radio Company (owner of the allocation's original occupant, ABC affiliate KTVQ, which operated from November 1, 1953, until it was forced off the air by court order on December 15, 1955) donated the construction permit and license to Independent School District No. 89 of Oklahoma County (now Oklahoma City Public Schools). Although the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) reserved the UHF channel 25 allocation in Oklahoma City for commercial broadcasting purposes, the school district proposed upon acquiring the permit to operate it as a non-commercial educational independent station. The district requested for the television station to use the KOKH call letters (standing for its state of license, "Oklahoma") assigned at the time to its public radio station on 88.9 FM (now KYLV).

KOKH-TV first signed on the air on February 2, 1959. The station originally operated from studio facilities based out of the district's Broadcasting Center at the former Classen High School building on North Ellison Avenue and Northwest 17th Street in Oklahoma City's Mesta Park neighborhood (later occupied by the Classen School of Advanced Studies until the district consolidated it with Northeast Academy at that school's campus on Northeast 30th Street and Kelley Avenue in August 2019), which also served as a production facility for National Educational Television affiliate KETA-TV (channel 13, now a PBS member station), which the Oklahoma Educational Television Authority (OETA) signed on as Oklahoma's first educational television station on April 13, 1956. Channel 25's programming—which originally ran Monday through Fridays for seven hours per day, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.—consisted mainly of instructional and lecture-based telecourse programs developed or acquired in cooperation with the Oklahoma State Department of Education, which offered the course subjects attributable for college credit. Unlike KETA, which offered educational programming year-round (at least, during prime time through NET and later PBS), KOKH only offered programming during the academic year, temporarily suspending broadcasting operations during the district's designated summer break period.

In the summer of 1970, KOKH became the last television station in the Oklahoma City market to transmit programming in color, after RCA color transmission equipment—including three studio cameras, two videotape recorders, two film systems and two switchers—worth around $500,000 was donated to the school district. By that time, Channel 25 expanded its schedule to nine hours per day (from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.). Operational expenses led to cutbacks in its daily programming schedule for the 1975–76 school year, reducing its schedule to six hours per day (from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.) and suspending programming on Fridays entirely. Programming gradually expanded beginning in the 1976–77 school year, adding two extra hours of instructional programs during the mid-afternoon as well as some off-network syndicated series (such as Leave It to Beaver, Timmy and Lassie, Man Without a Gun and The Munsters) in the late afternoon as part of a re-expanded nine-hour-long schedule. By September 1977, KOKH began offering prime time programs, consisting of science and documentary series and some adult education programs until sign-off. At that time, its broadcast day was expanded to thirteen hours per day (from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m.); the station also began operating on weekends for the first time in its history, resuming a Friday schedule after two years and launching a limited schedule of instructional programs on Saturday and Saturdays during the morning and midday hours (from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.).

In the fall of 1978, Oklahoma City Public Schools declared its intent to sell KOKH-TV, intending to redirect the money it funneled into the television station to raise teacher salaries. The school district cited the station's operating expenses (which averaged $300,000 per year) for its decision, claiming that those outran any benefits that KOKH had to the district; it had also struggled to raise $350,000 in matching funds to replace the station's aging transmitter and broadcast tower. Internal studies also indicated that schoolteachers within the district seldom had used KOKH's instructional programs for classroom credit. In Oklahoma City Public Schools' favor was that it had never formally requested that the UHF channel 25 allocation—which had officially been reserved by the FCC for commercial use—be reclassified to non-commercial status upon acquiring the permit from Republic Television and Radio. The Oklahoma City area had also grown to a population large enough that a commercial independent station could now viably operate, making it possible for the school district to sell the KOKH license to a commercial television station operator. On December 14, 1978, New York City-based John Blair & Co. purchased the KOKH-TV license for $3.5 million; Blair outbid two groups that were also competing for the UHF channel 14 allocation at that time, commercial broadcaster The Outlet Company and the noncommercial religious Trinity Broadcasting Network (which would sign on KTBO-TV on channel 14 in March 1981). The sale to Blair was approved by the FCC on June 6, 1979; since Oklahoma City Public Schools had let out regular classes for its designated summer break period, KOKH had suspended programming as normal during the summer months—while extending that period by five weeks during the transfer process—as the sale was being completed.

On October 1, 1979, when Blair formally took over channel 25's operations, KOKH was converted into a commercial independent station, the first such station in the state of Oklahoma. (OETA flagship KETA-TV concurrently became Oklahoma City's sole educational television outlet.) The station's first broadcast as a commercial independent was a special 30-minute program inaugurating KOKH's new format at 6 a.m. that morning; this was followed by the station's first entertainment program, the syndicated children's show New Zoo Revue. It adopted a general entertainment format typical of a UHF-based independent, initially carrying a mix of cartoons, classic sitcoms, religious programs, some sports programming, and certain network programs preempted by NBC affiliate KTVY (channel 4, now KFOR-TV), ABC affiliate KOCO-TV (channel 5), and CBS affiliate KWTV (channel 9) to carry local or syndicated programming. (Among the preempted network shows carried by KOKH as an independent station were Search for Tomorrow, which KTVY preempted from April 1982—following the soap opera's move to NBC from CBS—until September 1985, and Nightline, which ABC contracted KOKH-TV to show live-to-air from September 1983 to February 1985, after KOCO attempted to push the newsmagazine to a post-midnight slot to accommodate off-network syndicated sitcoms that it was already airing after its 10 p.m. newscast as well as its acquisition of the short-lived syndicated talk show Thicke of the Night.) The station also heavily incorporated feature films onto its schedule, to such an extent that, from 1979 to 1986, KOKH promoted itself as "Oklahoma's Great[est] Movie Station"; KOKH usually carried four films per day—two each in the afternoon, and one to two films per night in prime time—Monday through Friday, and five to six films per day each weekend.

KOKH gained a competitor four weeks later on October 28, when Seraphim Media signed on the similarly formatted KGMC-TV (channel 34, now CW-affiliated sister station KOCB). This was followed by the launch of KAUT (channel 43) by Golden West Broadcasters on October 15, 1980, which initially featured programming from subscription service Video Entertainment Unlimited (VEU) at night as well as on weekend afternoons. (Three weeks later on November 3, KAUT added a rolling news format as well as a limited schedule of syndicated entertainment programs during the daytime hours on weekdays.) In May 1980, the station relocated its operations into a new 22,000-square-foot (2,000 m²) studio facility on East Wilshire Boulevard and Northeast 78th Street in northeast Oklahoma City; its transmitter facilities were also relocated to a 1,620-foot (490 m) transmission tower that was built adjacent to the studio building. During the early 1980s, KOKH signed on eight low-power UHF translators (in Elk City, Hollis, Erick, Strong City, Woodward, Ponca City and Ardmore) to extend its over-the-air coverage throughout the western two-thirds of Oklahoma and (via a repeater in Quanah) far northwest Texas.

Because of its status as the strongest of Oklahoma City market's three commercial independents, in the spring of 1986, KOKH was approached by News Corporation to become a charter affiliate of the fledgling Fox Broadcasting Company. Station management turned the offer down because Fox's request that its inaugural program, The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers, be aired at 10 p.m. (when the station's second scheduled film of the evening would normally be in progress at the time) would have caused disruption to its prime time double feature strategy. On July 25, Fox reached an agreement with KAUT (then owned by Rollins Communications) to serve as the network's Oklahoma City affiliate.