KWTV

KWTV, commonly referred to as "News 9" is the CBS affiliate in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. During the May 2006 sweeps period KWTV was the highest-rated late newscast in the United States. It has long been one of the strongest CBS affiliates in the country. KWTV is owned by Griffin Communications of Oklahoma City.

KWTV has two buildings in the Oklahoma City Metro: one, which houses its main news studio, master control, sales office and its transmitter, located at North Kelley Avenue in Oklahoma City; the other, which houses a secondary studio, located in the Bricktown district of downtown Oklahoma City.

The station broadcasts its analog signal on VHF channel 9, and its digital signal on UHF channel 39. KWTV can be seen on cable channel 10 on Cox Oklahoma City, and on cable channel 9 on other Cox systems in Central Oklahoma. The station is also available to customers on DirecTV and Dish Network within the Oklahoma City market.

History

KWTV went on the air December 20, 1953 and was the third television station in Oklahoma. It has been owned by the Griffin family throughout its history, and along with sister station KOTV in Tulsa, is one of only two locally-owned network affiliates in the state. It is also one of the few stations in the country that has had the same call letters, owner, primary network affiliation and channel number throughout its history.

According to Griffin Communications' president David Griffin, his father John (founder of Griffin Foods), noticed while driving around Oklahoma City that all the homes in the area had outdoor television antennas in order to receive the city's (and state's) first television station, WKY-TV (channel 4, now KFOR-TV). It was then that Griffin decided to expand into television and decided to apply for a television license with the FCC. According to longtime employee Spec Hart, the first thing broadcast on KWTV were employees mentioning their name and which department they were in at the station.

The Griffins also owned KOMA-AM at the time it signed on, but decided to call their station KWTV (for World's Tallest Video) after its then under-construction tower, which was to be the tallest in the world at 1,577 feet. Channel 9 activated its current tower in early 1954.

In 1973, KWTV installed the first weather radar in the country for television. Shortly after it was installed, the radar was utilized by Chief Meteorlogist Gary England on May 24 of that year during a televised severe weather alert of a tornado warning for Canadian County following the sighting of a damaging F4 tornado near the small town of Union City which resulted in extensive damage. An original film of that televised warning from 1973 is often still used today in Channel 9's promos of England and its severe weather coverage.

In 1971, after the FCC issued the Prime Time Access Rule that cut the three broadcast networks at the time (CBS, NBC and ABC) prime time schedules by 30 minutes each night from 3.5 hours to 3 hours, KWTV's 6 p.m. broadcast of Newsroom 9 debuted as the first 60-minute newscast in the Oklahoma City market, broadcast from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. (a format similar to KFOR-TV's current 6:00 p.m. news block). The newscast was split into two separate 30 minute broadcasts at 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. in 1976, with the CBS Evening News sandwiched in between at 5:30 p.m. From 1966 to 1971, KWTV's newscast was titled Eyewitness News, a moniker later used by rival ABC affiliate KOCO.

In 1981, the first commercial Doppler radar in the nation was installed at KWTV at the recommendation of meteorologist Gary England. England believed the radar would help him better forecast the severe weather that often affects Oklahoma. Shortly after KWTV introduced its first Doppler radar, a tornado located in Caddo County near the town of Binger was indicated on Doppler radar during a live cut-in by Chief Meteorologist Gary England and at the same time, a live shot of that tornado was broadcast during that cut-in from a cameraman stationed inside KWTV's news helicopter, Ranger 9, which was flown to the scene. From 1982 to 1990, KWTV General Manager Duane Harm was a frequent contributor to the station's newscast with regular commentaries concerning local and state issues and concerns. Per FCC regulations, the station provided equal time to parties with opposing viewpoints.

KWTV was the first Oklahoma television station to use a helicopter for daily news-gathering(launched 1 day before KOCO's Sky5), Ranger 9 (replaced in 2006 by SkyNews9 HD, a Bell 407 helicopter), which became installed with a camera below the nose of the helicopter dubbed as EagleVision in 2000 and the first to use one equipped with a High-Definition Video camera as of early 2006. However, it is not currently broadcast in HD.

KWTV introduced the first broadcast automated weather warning system in the country called First Warning.and was among the first to introduce software for the PC that alerted the user to both severe weather alerts and breaking news in the form of I-News.

Famous for its severe weather coverage with meteorologist Gary England, KWTV is known for having the top technology in the country for storm coverage. In 1986, when a devastating tornado tore through the northern Oklahoma City suburb of Edmond, Channel 9 and England were credited for their advanced warning efforts resulting in relatively few injuries and no casualties despite the millions of dollars in damage. On May 3, 1999, Gary England went on the air to cover the F5 Tornado that damaged much of central Oklahoma from Chickasha to the southeastern portion of the Oklahoma City metro, including the suburbs of Moore, Del City, and Midwest City. There were many other storms that day as well, the final death toll was 44, though it is believed that it would have been much higher without the advance warning provided by Gary and the rest of the KWTV weather staff.

England and the News 9 weather team present a series of programs each spring and summer season titled "Those Terrible Twisters" to local communities throughout Oklahoma in which they visit with viewers and provide lots of information regarding tornado safety precautions and promote the station's efforts in providing up-to-date severe weather coverage to Oklahoma.

KWTV was the first station to produce tornado documentaries of the June 13th, 1998 Oklahoma City tornadoes, the 1998 October Tornado Outbreak and the 1999 1999 Oklahoma tornado outbreak.

On January 26, 2001, KWTV sports anchor Bill Teegins along with nine other members of the Oklahoma State University basketball team were killed when their plane went down in Colorado after a basketball game against the University of Colorado. A memorial has been erected at the crash site, along with a statue of a kneeling cowboy on the Stillwater OSU campus.

In 2001, the station embarked on a media partnership with The Oklahoman newspaper which included the merger of both their websites. That collaboration ended in early 2008. Incidentally, The Oklahoma Publishing Company, owner of The Oklahoman, put rival station KFOR-TV on the air in 1949 as WKY-TV and owned it until 1976. KWTV also partners with Tulsa station KOTV, also owned by Griffin since their acquisition of the station in 1999 from A.H. Belo Corporation. The two stations collaborate on Sunday night extended sports coverage branded as the "Oklahoma Sports Blitz."

In Early November 2006, KWTV began using a brand-new, state-of-the-art news set, specially designed for high-definition broadcasting that could be implemented in the future. The set was designed and built by FX Group (the same group that built KOCO's set 3 years earlier)

Market firsts

KWTV "firsts" in the Oklahoma City market and/or nationwide:

First with videotape
First to have weather radar
First to offer 24 hour programming
First in the nation to have commercial Doppler radar.
First to bring a helicopter to Oklahoma City for news reporting
First to use a broadcast weather warning system for television (KOCO's weather warning system First Alert, shares a similar first as the first automated weather warning system, while KWTV's First Warning system when it was first developed, updated watches and warnings manually)
First to introduce software for the PC that alerted the user to both severe weather alerts and breaking news in the form of I-News.
First Oklahoma television station to use a High-definition video camera for Standard definition broadcast on a TV news helicopter

Ratings

KWTV has long held a rivalry with KFOR-TV (now number 3 at 5pm and 6pm) for the highest-rated newscast in the Oklahoma City area. As of May 2007, the station's 10:00 pm newscast is currently the top-rated newscast (per Nielsen Media Research) in the nation and tied with KFOR in the mornings.

News operation

KWTV currently broadcasts 35.5 hours of news per week, more than any station in the Oklahoma City market. KWTV has partnerships with Tulsa sister station KOTV (also owned by Griffin), and The Oklahoman newspaper, showing news stories from KOTV during evening newscasts and also frequently advertising and is involved in stories in conjunction with The Oklahoman, including airing daily segments previewing stories to appear in the next day's edition of The Oklahoman during their 4:00 and 10:00 newscasts. The station also places great emphasis on weather.

In the 1990s, KWTV attempted to start its own investigative unit called The Investigators, similar in form to that of investigative reports on many CBS and FOX affiliates. Another segment highlighted unsafe conditions at Metro-area restaurants. A similar series of segments was done by rival KFOR-TV in the mid-2000s.

While the Ogle family is a staple of KFOR-TV dating back to the 1950s with Jack Ogle, KWTV's co-anchor of the 5, 6 and 10pm newscasts is Kelly Ogle, whom since 2003 has also had his own opinion segment titled My Two Cents airing weeknights during the 10pm newscast. Morning and noon anchor and former sports reporter/anchor Ed Murray and reporter Gan Matthews have had the longest tenures of any of the station's news staff, both of which date back to the early 1980s. Only Chief Meteorologist Gary England has had a longer tenure as an on-air personality at KWTV, which began in 1972.

KWTV has gone through several different on-air branding schemes including Newsscope, Eyewitness News, Big 9 News and Newsline 9, and finally the present NEWS9, retaining the current logo despite numerous graphics package changes. KWTV has used Image News by Gari Communications as its news music package since 1997 and currently uses the "Series 2" version (Ironically, Hearst-Argyle Television, which owns KOCO-TV, had certain stations choose between Image News and The B Package for their news package until 2004, but because KWTV had used Image News, KOCO was unable to use it).

In May 2003, a tornado hit northern portions of Oklahoma City, KWTV tested a new Doppler radar titled MOAR (an acronym for Massive Output Arrayed Radar, but which Gary England colloquially refers to as the "Mother of All Radars"). The radar detects a tornado's path down to street level. After the radar was put into full-time use in 2004, MOAR also began including GPS tracking of the exact location of the Storm Tracker units.

In February 2007, KWTV launched its new Doppler radar named "Storm Monitor". It has the capability to determine the possibility of a severe thunderstorm producing a tornado via a "TornadoStrengthIndex" and measures the percentage chance of a tornado occurring. Despite its name, the TornadoStrengthIndex primarily determines the strength of a mesocyclone as opposed to guessing how strong the tornado itself will be. Anything on the TornadoStrengthIndex over 5,000 and over 30% on the ProbabilityofTornado is considered significant. The station also uses a VIPIR radar and the long used Doppler 9000XL.

Sports

Since 2000, KWTV has broadcast three Oklahoma State Cowboys basketball games per season, usually airing on a Wednesday or Saturday, in addition to airing CBS' coverage of NCAA basketball.

NEWS9 Notable Personalities

Current On-Air Talent (as of September 13, 2008)

Current Anchors

Charles Bassett: weekends on NEWS9 at 5:30 (Sun.), 6 (Sat.), and 10PM (also fill-in weeknight anchor/reporter)
Alex Cameron: weekdays on NEWS9 First at 4:00 (also fill-in anchor/reporter)
Robin Marsh: weekdays on NEWS9 This Morning
Melissa Maynarich: weekdays on NEWS9 at Noon and First at 4:00 (also reporter)
Kirsten McIntyre: weekends on NEWS9 at 5:30 (Sun.), 6 (Sat.), and 10PM (also reporter)
Amy McRee: weeknights on NEWS9 at 6:00 and 10:00 (also feature reporter)
Ed Murray: weekdays on NEWS9 This Morning and Noon
Kelly Ogle: weeknights on NEWS9 at 5, 6 and 10 (also reporter)
Jennifer Pierce: weekends on NEWS9 This Morning (also reporter)
Amanda Taylor: weeknights on NEWS9 at 5 (also "Consumer Watch" reporter)
Doug Warner: weekdays on NEWS9 This Morning (fill-in noon anchor/feature reporter)

Reporters

Stacey Cameron: General Assignment Reporter
Colleen Chen: General Assignment Reporter
Jim Craig: Substitute Traffic Reporter
Mason Dunn: SkyNews9 HD Pilot Reporter
Audrey Esther: News9.com InSite team, also usually seen on NEWS9 Late Edition (Saturdays)
Adrianna Iwasinski: General Assignment Reporter (previously reporter from 2000-2003)
Dave Jordan: General Assignment Reporter
Jon Jordan: General Assignment Reporter
Andrew Harris: Traffic Reporter
Amy Lester: General Assignment Reporter
Gan Matthews: General Assignment Reporter
Jacqueline Sit: General Assignment Reporter
Rusty Surrette: General Assignment Reporter

Experts

Dr. Mary Ann Baumann: Medical Contributor
Irven Box: Legal Analyst
Scott Mitchell: Political Analyst

NEWS9 Weather Team In addition to providing forecasts on KWTV, the NEWS9 Weather Team also provides forecasts for KOKC-AM, KOMA-FM, KMGL-FM and KRXO-FM radio, and the Oklahoma News Network family of radio stations.

Gary England (AMS Seal of Approval): Chief Meteorologist, weekdays on NEWS9 First at 4:00, weeknights on NEWS9 at 5, 6 and 10
Michael Armstrong: weekends on NEWS9 at 5:30 (Sun.), 6 (Sat.), and 10PM (also fill-in Meteorologist)
Nick Bender: weekends on NEWS9 This Morning (also fill-in Meteorologist)
Jed Castles: weekdays on NEWS9 This Morning (also fill-in Meteorologist)
Carrie Rose: Weather Producer/Substitute Meteorologist

NEWS9 StormTracker Spotter Unit

Alan Broerse
Hank Brown
Amy Johnson Castor
Val Castor
Billy Griffin
Marty Logan
Bobby Payne
Rob Satkus

NEWS9 Sports

Dean Blevins: Sports Director, weekdays on NEWS9 at 5, 6 and 10 (also "Oklahoma Sports Blitz" co-host)
Toby Rowland: weekends on NEWS9 at 5:30 (Sun.), 6 (Sat.), and 10PM (Sat.) (also Friday Football Blitz host/sports reporter)
John Holcomb: Oklahoma Sports Blitz Co-Host (also sports director and anchor at KOTV in Tulsa)
Chad McKee: Sports Reporter/Fill-in Sports Anchor

Former On-Air Talent

Jerry Adams: Anchor/reporter (1974-1982)
Paul Bouchereau: Meteorologist (1984-1986 and 1994-2001; now owner and general manager of the Oklahoma Weather Network)
Jack Bowen: Co-Anchor (1987-1990)
Brady Brus: Weekend Meteorologist (1991-1999; now chief meteorologist at KSBI-TV, and co-owner and general manager of KSBI's owner Family Broadcasting Group of Oklahoma)
Angela Buckelew: Anchor/Reporter (1992-2006; now at OETA)
Mike Carpenter: Anchor/Reporter (1980s-late 1990s)
Stan Chase: Sports Reporter (1980-1986)
Ronald Clark: Sports Reporter (Late 1970s-1985)
Ralph Combes: Anchor/reporter (1960s-1970s)
Roger Cooper: Co-anchor (1982-1987 and 1990-1993)
Zach Daniel: Weekend Evening Meteorologist (2001-2008; now at WTVR in Richmond, VA)
Jennifer Eve: Anchor/reporter (1980s; now freelance, hosts "Together at the Table" feature for Sunday AM newscasts)
Deborah Fabien: Anchor/Reporter (1980-1982)
Shon Gables: Weekend Morning Anchor/Reporter (1998-2001)
Chris Harrison: Weekend Sports Anchor/Reporter (1993-1997; now host of ABC's The Bachelor and The Bachelorette)
Tarra G. Haskins: Education Reporter (1984-1985)
Amy Hawley: Weekend Anchor/Reporter (1990s-2000s; now at KSHB-TV in Kansas City)
Mitch Jelniker: Evening Anchor/Reporter (1982-1995; now at KMGH in Denver)
Wayne Liles: Farm Reporter (1957-1981)
Alicia Malaby: Reporter (1983-1989; now weekend anchor at KXTV in Sacramento)
Kia Malone: Weekend Morning Anchor/Reporter (2001-2004; now anchor of syndicated morning show The Daily Buzz)
Russ McCaskey: Reporter (1992-1995; now at KJRH in Tulsa)
Deborah Lauren McCaskey: Reporter (1986-1995; later at KJRH in Tulsa)
Fran Morris: Host of Children's Show Miss Fran from Storyland (1950s)
Casey Norton: Weekend Anchor (1999-2002; now at KOMO-TV In Seattle)
Pam Olson: Oklahoma City's First Female News Anchor (1970s-early 1980s; now reporter for the Tulsa World)
Bruce Palmer: Anchor/Reporter (1953-1959)
Tamara Pratt: Anchor/Reporter (1990s-2007; now married to Oklahoma County D.A. David Prater)
Randy Renner: Reporter (1980s-1998; fired, now at KOKC-AM)
Jenifer Reynolds: Anchor/Reporter (mid 1980s-2001; now co-host of Integris Health's Discover Oklahoma)
Mark Rodgers: Weekend Sports Anchor/Reporter (2000-2003; now at KOCO)
Tony Sellars: Sports Anchor/Reporter (1984-1987; now director of communications at Feed The Children)
John Snyder: Sports Director (1973-1975 and 1982-1987; now at WCNC in Charlotte)
Patti Suarez: Co-Anchor (1982-1990)
Dean Swanson: Anchor/Reporter (1977-1982)
Leroy Tatom: Ranger 9 Pilot Reporter (1994-2001; deceased)
Bill Teegins: Sports Director/Anchor (1986-2001; deceased, killed in OSU plane crash in Colorado in 2001)
Ed Turner: Anchor (1950s-1960s)
Harry Volkman: Chief Meteorologist (1954-1960; later at WGN-TV and WFLD-TV in Chicago)
Mark Weaver: Anchor (1950s-1960s)
Gene Wheatley: Agri-Business Reporter (1983-1986)

News/Station Presentation

Newscast Titles

Four Star Report, Channel 9 Report, Newsscope and KWTV News (1953-1966)
Eyewitness News (1966-1971)
Newsroom 9 (1971-1980)
Big 9 News (1980-1981)
Newsline 9 (1981-1997)
News 9 (1997-present)

Station Slogans

Television 9, Eyewitness News, In Color (1966-1971)
Newsroom 9, Oklahoma's News in Color (1971-1975)
All The News on Newsroom 9 (1975-1979)
We're Coming On, The Big 9 is There (1979-1981)
Count On 9 (1981-1984)
The Spirit of Oklahoma (1984-2000)

Variations: Working In The Spirit of Oklahoma, In The Spirit of Oklahoma

More Local, More Meaningful (2000-2003)
Where the News Comes First (2003-2007)
Making a Difference (2007-present)
Stay with NEWS9, We'll Keep You Advised (weather slogan, has also been read prior to 2000 as "Stay with TV-9, we'll keep you advised.")

Trivia

For a period in the early 1990s, KWTV preempted CBS News Sunday Morning, which it had aired during the 1980s and since about 1995. The only CBS program it currently regularly preempts is The Saturday Early Show in favor of NEWS9 This Morning Weekend Edition.

Office location

KWTV's studios and transmitter are located at 7401 North Kelly Avenue, just across the street from the studios of the Oklahoma Educational Television Authority. KWTV's studio was revamped in 2006 and fitted with a new set built by the FX Group.