KVOA

KVOA (channel 4) is a television station in Tucson, Arizona, United States, affiliated with NBC and owned by Allen Media Group. The station's studios are located on West Elm Street north of downtown Tucson, and its primary transmitter is located atop Mount Bigelow, northeast of the city, supplemented by translators in the Tucson Mountains and in Sierra Vista.

KVOA-TV, originally associated with KVOA radio, went on the air in September 1953 as Tucson's second television station. The station was an NBC affiliate from the start; early owners included KTAR in Phoenix, Clinton D. McKinnon, and the Pulitzer Publishing Company. Pulitzer had to divest the television station to purchase the Arizona Daily Star newspaper; this transaction was prolonged by issues with the potential buyer at the Federal Communications Commission. In 1973, KVOA was purchased by a local ownership group that led the station to ratings leadership in local news for nearly 30 years, from the mid-1970s to the early 2000s. Allen acquired KVOA in 2021, the second sale of the station in four years owing to ownership conflicts from a merger. The station produces more than 39 hours a week of local news programming.

From October 1948 to April 1952, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) imposed a freeze on the award of new television stations to revise technical standards. With the end of the freeze imminent, activity began around television in Tucson, and three Tucson radio stations applied for three television channels. The Arizona Broadcasting Company, owner of KVOA (1290 AM), filed for channel 4 without opposition on February 7, 1952, and was granted a construction permit to build on November 12. KVOA, Tucson's NBC-affiliated radio station, selected channel 4 because it was preferred by RCA and because NBC-owned stations in major cities, including New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., were on channel 4.

By the start of 1953, KVOA had announced its television plans. At the station's radio transmitter site at Lee Street and 10th Avenue, work would begin on studios, and the AM radio tower would be rebuilt to accommodate a television antenna. KVOA-TV had set a September 15 start date for launch, and construction proceeded uneventfully, but it opted to wait because it would be nearly two weeks after that when network coaxial cable service would be available in Tucson for the first time. The station began broadcasting September 27, 1953, and its initial offering was the first TV program piped in to Tucson by coaxial cable. In addition to NBC programs, it carried a secondary affiliation with ABC; ABC's radio affiliate in Tucson, KCNA, had planned a station but bowed out.

Arizona Broadcasting Company, a subsidiary of KTAR radio and KVAR television in Phoenix, opted to exit Tucson broadcasting in 1955 and sold KVOA radio and television to Clinton D. McKinnon of San Diego for $515,000. Under McKinnon, KVOA-TV was the first to broadcast in color in Tucson, in November 1956. ABC programs moved off of channel 4 in March 1957, when a third station, KDWI-TV, was sold and became KGUN-TV, acquiring the ABC affiliation. Some of this program void was filled by the NTA Film Network, for which KVOA-TV had signed up at its launch the year before. McKinnon sold the radio station to Sherwood Gordon in 1958, keeping KVOA-TV and merging it with Alvarado Television, owner of KOAT-TV in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the next year. The transmitter was moved to Mount Bigelow in 1961, concurrently with KOLD-TV (channel 13); the change put all three commercial stations on the mountaintop site.

Several of the partners in Alvarado, in ill health and wishing to liquidate their holdings, pushed McKinnon to sell Alvarado Television in 1962. KVOA-TV and KOAT-TV were sold to Steinman Stations of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, headed by Clair McCollough, for $3.5 million, with FCC approval coming in January 1963. Steinman owned the Tucson station for five years before selling it in 1968 to the Pulitzer Publishing Company, publishers of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and owners of KSD radio and television in that city, for $3 million.

An antitrust lawsuit involving the two daily newspapers in Tucson would have an impact on KVOA-TV. In 1971, a six-year antitrust lawsuit brought by the United States Department of Justice concluded in the sale of the morning Arizona Daily Star—which had been owned by the publisher of Tucson's afternoon daily, the Tucson Daily Citizen—to Pulitzer; negotiations for Pulitzer to purchase the newspaper had been ongoing for months, but while an agreement had been reached, final details relating to KVOA-TV's fate remained uncertain. To acquire the Daily Star, the Department of Justice required Pulitzer to sell KVOA-TV within a year.

In mid-May, the sale of the television station to Donrey Media Group of Arkansas, whose holdings included television stations in Arkansas and Las Vegas and Reno, Nevada, was announced. However, Donrey would be embroiled in a series of issues at the FCC that held up consideration of the KVOA-TV transfer. By January 1972, the Donrey TV stations were being investigated for a practice called "clipping", in which network credits or commercials would be clipped out of broadcast and replaced with local commercials. KORK-TV, the Donrey station in Las Vegas, was facing a license renewal challenge. By May, per a report in Broadcasting magazine, FCC staff were recommending hearings be convened to analyze revocation of Donrey's television station licenses and would likely require a hearing to approve the Tucson TV station purchase. This threatened to prolong any sale attempt to Donrey at a time when Pulitzer was under a court order to find a buyer. In April, Pulitzer asked the Department of Justice for more time to sell KVOA-TV, after which it was granted another extension in June; however, if it could not sell the station by April 1973, Pulitzer would have to sell the Star, and the television station would be placed in trusteeship. Meanwhile, the commission's actions were putting the nails in the coffin of a Donrey sale, as the Las Vegas station's license renewal was designated for hearing later in June, and Pulitzer called off the Donrey deal on June 8, 1972.