KSTW

KSTW (channel 11), branded as Seattle 11, is an independent television station licensed to Tacoma, Washington, United States, serving the Seattle area. Owned by the CBS News and Stations group, the station maintains its transmitter on East Madison Street in Seattle's Cherry Hill neighborhood, and its offices are located in the Westlake neighborhood, just north of downtown.

As the first station to sign on in Tacoma (and second in the Seattle metropolitan area overall), KSTW initially signed on in March 1953 as KTNT-TV, the area's CBS affiliate under the ownership of the Tacoma News Tribune. The station lost the affiliation when Seattle-licensed KIRO-TV signed on in 1958; both stations shared the affiliation for two years after their owners agreed to settle an antitrust lawsuit over the switch. The station became KSTW in 1974 when it was acquired by a forerunner of Gaylord Broadcasting; it subsequently became one of the strongest independent stations in the country over two decades, reaching regional superstation status with widespread carriage on cable television systems in Washington and neighboring states/provinces. KSTW rejoined CBS in 1995 during a nationwide affiliation shuffle; two years later, the station became a UPN affiliate via a three-way deal involving it and KIRO-TV, which led it to join The CW when UPN shut down in 2006, carrying the network's programming until 2023, when CBS withdrew its eight affiliates from the network after selling its ownership stake to Nexstar Media Group.

KSTW is available on cable television to Canadian customers in southwestern British Columbia on numerous cable providers such as Shaw Cable and TELUS Optik TV in Vancouver, Victoria, Nanaimo, Kamloops, Penticton and Kelowna.

The construction permit for the station was issued by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on December 10, 1952. Chief Engineer Max Bice immediately ordered equipment through General Electric, and the equipment was delivered within 45 days. The antenna was in Milan, Italy and it was shipped by rail car to Tacoma.^{[citation needed]} The transmitter arrived in Tacoma from Syracuse, New York, on February 9, 1953. It was installed on the next day, and work progressed rapidly. The original studios and transmitter house were located at South 11th Street and South Grant Avenue. The station tested with a 30,000-watt signal and received reports of reception from up to 150 miles (240 km) away.

The station began broadcasting March 1, 1953, in Tacoma as KTNT-TV, named after its founder, the Tacoma News Tribune. At the time, it was a primary CBS affiliate and sister station to KTNT radio (AM 1400, now KITZ, and FM 97.3, now KIRO-FM). During the late 1950s, the station was briefly affiliated with the NTA Film Network. On February 21, 1954, KTNT received permission from the FCC to increase the transmitter's power to 316,000 watts, and to move the transmitter to a new 1,000-foot (300 m) tower near View Park, Washington just south of Harper on the Fragaria Access Road. Parts of the old transmitting equipment were loaned to Portland, Oregon's KGW-TV, due to the damage from the Columbus Day Storm of 1962.

In February 1958, KIRO-TV (channel 7) took to the air as the Seattle–Tacoma market's exclusive CBS affiliate. After being informed by CBS that its affiliation would be discontinued, KTNT-TV filed an antitrust lawsuit against CBS and KIRO-TV, on claims the network had a pre-existing agreement to affiliate with KIRO-TV when and if it ever went on the air. CBS agreed to settle the suit in 1960 by taking on both KIRO-TV and KTNT-TV as primary affiliates. This arrangement lasted until September 1962, when channel 7 became the sole CBS station for western Washington. Channel 11 was left to once again become an independent station, the second in the market after KTVW (channel 13, now KCPQ).

During the late 1960s, the station also occasionally carried NBC prime time programs preempted by Seattle SuperSonics games on KING-TV (channel 5). For one month, in May 1967, the station was also an affiliate of the United Network (also known as the Overmyer Network), a short-lived attempt to create a fourth commercial television network nationally. During the decade, KTNT also presented horror movies under the Nightmare! banner in the early 1960s on Saturday nights, airing around 10:30 p.m. before sign-off.

Due to new newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership restrictions enacted by the FCC in the early 1970s, the Tacoma News Tribune's ownership of the KTNT stations were under threat of potential FCC divestiture. As a result, KTNT-TV was sold to the WKY Television System, forerunner of Gaylord Broadcasting (now Ryman Hospitality Properties), in 1974; the new ownership changed the station's call letters to KSTW (standing for Seattle–Tacoma, Washington) on March 1. With the new ownership and call letters came a new slogan, "Good Lookin' 11", as well as a new logo—a stylized "circle 11" with the circle modified to accommodate the "11". Later in the decade, KSTW became a regional superstation. At its height, it was available on nearly every cable system in Washington, as well as parts of Oregon, northern Idaho, and much of British Columbia. The station also carried many daytime CBS programs preempted by KIRO-TV (including game shows such as The Joker's Wild and The Price Is Right) during the 1970s. From 1976 to 1979, John Lippman worked at KSTW, building a news department.