KMYT-TV

Not to be confused with WMYT-TV.
KMYT-TV
Tulsa, Oklahoma
United States
Branding My41
Slogan Gotta Get Mine, On My 41
Channels Digital: 42 (UHF)
Virtual: 41 (PSIP)
Subchannels 41.1 MyNetworkTV
41.2 GetTV
41.3 Grit
41.4 Heroes and Icons
Affiliations MyNetworkTV
GetTV (DT2)
ZUUS Country (DT3)
Owner Cox Media Group
(Cox Television Tulsa, LLC)
First air date March 18, 1981
Call letters' meaning MYNetworkTV Tulsa
Sister station(s) TV: KOKI-TV
Radio: KJSR, KRAV-FM, KRMG (AM), KRMG-FM, KWEN
Former callsigns KGCT-TV (1981–1988)
KTFO (1991–2006)
Former channel number(s) Analog:
41 (UHF, 1981–2009)
Former affiliations independent (1981–1987 and 1991–1995)
FNN (1981-1985)
silent (1987–1991)
UPN (1995–2006)
Transmitter power 900 kW
Height 381 m
Facility ID 54420
Transmitter coordinates 36°1′35.8″N 95°40′42.3″W / 36.026611°N 95.678417°W / 36.026611; -95.678417
Licensing authority FCC
Public license information: Profile
CDBS
Website www.fox23.com/s/station/my41tulsa/

KMYT-TV, virtual channel 41 (UHF digital channel 42), is a MyNetworkTV-affiliated television station located in Tulsa, Oklahoma, United States. The station is owned by the Cox Media Group subsidiary of Cox Enterprises, as part of a duopoly with Fox affiliate KOKI-TV (channel 23). The two stations share studio facilities located on South Memorial Drive in the southeast section of Tulsa; KMYT maintains transmitter facilities located on South 273rd East Avenue in southeastern Tulsa County (near Broken Arrow).

On cable, the station is available on Cox Communications channel 10 and AT&T U-verse channel 41.

History

As an independent station

The station first signed on the air on March 18, 1981 as KGCT; originally operating as an independent station, it was the seventh television station to sign on in the Tulsa market and the market's second independent station (after KOKI-TV (channel 23, now a Fox affiliate)). The station was founded as a joint venture between Green Country TV Associates and Satellite TV Systems. It originally operated from studio facilities located at an office complex on South Harvard Avenue (which now has since been converted into a shopping center). Channel 41 originally planned to run an all-local news programming format similar to fellow independent KAUT-TV when it signed on downstate in Oklahoma City the previous year; due to financial issues, the station opted instead to carry low-cost syndicated and barter programs and movies during the morning; a two-hour local program hosted by John Erling, Erling on the Mall, at 12:00 p.m. (which was repeated at 2:00); and a three-hour rolling news block from 4:00 to 7:00 p.m., featuring a mix of local news as well as national and international news programming from CNN. Nighttime hours were filled by the over-the-air subscription television service In-Home Theatre (IT), which signed on nightly at 7:00 p.m.

The news format was ultimately unprofitable and was gradually dropped less than a year later. After that, KGCT's schedule consisted of simulcasts from CNN, religious programs, cartoons, agricultural programming, business news and some barter shows. Entertainment Tonight, at that time a barter program that had not yet become the highly rated series that it is today, ran on the station for about a year. Overall, the station's viewership was relatively low. In 1982, KGCT switched to a mostly religious programming format, carrying live Christian-oriented shows for several hours a day; the station rebranded as "Tulsa Christian Television," and the meaning behind the station's call letters became "Knit God's Children Together". The station continued to run a few low-budget secular shows, while subscription television programs from IT TV continued air during the nighttime hours until early 1984. After that, the station began filling nighttime hours with low-budget general entertainment programming. The station also ran network programs from NBC, CBS and ABC that KJRH (channel 2), KOTV (channel 6) and KTUL (channel 8) declined to clear on their schedules.

By 1985, KGCT-TV was running an all-barter schedule with cartoons, religious programs and low-rated first-run barter shows. At that point, the station was almost sold but the acquisition never went through. Green County Associates bought out Satellite TV Systems at the end of 1985. KGCT was originally slated to become a charter affiliate of the Fox Broadcasting Company, but ultimately signed an affiliation deal with KOKI-TV instead, due partly to channel 41's lack of carriage on area cable providers. In 1987, heavy freezing rain accumulations caused by a major ice storm in the area caused the collapse of the transmitter tower being utilized by KGCT-TV, KTUL and certain local radio stations. KTUL returned to the air shortly afterward and constructed a new 582 m (1,909 ft) tower near Coweta that was completed the following year; however, channel 41 would remain dark for four years due to a lack of financial resources to make necessary repairs, as well as the inability to gain a significant amount of carriage on area cable providers.

After finally obtaining the needed funds, the station resumed operations during the winter of early 1991 as KTFO (standing for "Tulsa Forty-One"). After returning to the air, the station initially ran only religious programs and infomercials. During the spring and summer of 1991, KTFO gradually added general entertainment barter programs. By the fall of 1993, the station ran a wide variety of programs on its schedule – consisting of some children's programs during the morning hours, some first-run syndicated shows – including comedies – in the early evenings, off-network sitcoms and drama series, and older movies on weekends.

In 1994, Clear Channel Communications began operating KTFO under a local marketing agreement, placing it under shared management with Fox affiliate KOKI-TV. As a result, some of the stronger sitcoms, cartoons and other syndicated programs that previously aired on KOKI were added to channel 41's schedule. The stations pooled programming resources, running the strongest shows on KOKI, but some series would air on both stations.

Network affiliation

On January 25, 1994, KTFO signed an affiliation agreement to become the Tulsa outlet for the United Paramount Network (UPN), an upstart network founded by Chris-Craft Industries and its broadcasting subsidiary, BHC Communications/United Television, in a programming partnership with Viacom (the latter of which purchased a stake in the network in 1996).[1] The station became a charter affiliate of UPN when the network launched on January 16, 1995; the station subsequently rebranded as "UPN 41". After the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) began allowing duopolies between television stations, Clear Channel bought KTFO outright in May 2000.

KTFO "UPN41" logo used from September 2002 to August 2006.

On January 24, 2006, CBS Corporation (the rebranded original Viacom, which spun off a new company of the same name) and the Warner Bros. Entertainment division of Time Warner announced that they would dissolve UPN and The WB in September of that year, and move some of their programming to a newly created network, The CW, which would feature a mix of programs from both UPN and The WB as well as newer shows exclusive to The CW.[2][3] On April 10, 2006, WB affiliate KWBT (channel 19, now KQCW-DT) was announced as The CW's Tulsa affiliate.[4]

The formation of MyNetworkTV, another new service owned by News Corporation's Fox Television Stations and Twentieth Television subsidiaries that was created in order to give UPN and WB affiliates that were not named as affiliates of The CW another option besides becoming an independent, was announced on February 22, 2006, less than one month after the announcement of The CW's launch.[5] KTFO was announced as Tulsa's MyNetworkTV outlet on June 15, 2006. Over a month later, on July 20, Clear Channel filed an application with the FCC to change KTFO's callsign to KMYT-TV (standing for "My Network TV Tulsa"), it formally adopted the new calls on August 15. KMYT joined MyNetworkTV when it launched on September 5, 2006 (although UPN continued to broadcast on stations in certain other markets across the United States until September 15, two weeks after MyNetworkTV's launch); the station also rebranded as "My41 Tulsa" with the switch.

On April 20, 2007, Clear Channel entered into an agreement to sell its television station properties to Newport Television, a broadcast holding company controlled by the private equity firm Providence Equity Partners.[6]

On July 19, 2012, Newport Television announced the sale of KOKI and KMYT (along with the Jacksonville, Florida virtual duopoly of WAWS and WTEV-TV) to the Cox Media Group. As Cox Media Group is a subsidiary of Atlanta-based Cox Enterprises, the purchase placed the station under common ownership with the area's major cable operator Cox Communications,[7] creating the first instance in which a company owned a television station and a cable provider in the same market since the FCC repealed its ban on cross-ownership between cable providers and broadcast television stations within the same market in 2003.[8] The sale to Cox also placed KOKI and KMYT under common ownership with Cox's Tulsa radio station cluster (KRMG (740 AM and 102.3 FM), KRAV-FM (96.5), KWEN (95.5 FM) and KJSR (103.3 FM)). The FCC approved the transaction to Cox on October 23, 2012, and the deal was finalized on December 3.[9][10]

Digital television

Digital channels

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:

Channel Video Aspect PSIP Short Name Programming[11]
41.1 720p 16:9 KMYT-TV Main KMYT-TV programming / MyNetworkTV
41.2 480i 4:3 getTV GetTV
41.3 480i 4:3 GritTV Grit
41.4 480i 4:3 Heroes and Icons

From 2012 to March 31, 2014, KMYT digital subchannel 41.2 carried country music network ZUUS Country. On April 1, 2014, the subchannel switched to the movie-oriented GetTV network as part of a four-station affiliation agreement with the Cox Media Group (which also involved sister stations KIRO-TV in Seattle, WAXN-TV in Charlotte and WTEV-TV in Jacksonville); digital subchannel 41.2 is carried on Cox digital cable channel 129.[12] ZUUS Country moved to KMYT digital subchannel 41.3 at that time. About a year later, ZUUS was dropped in favor of another movie channel, GritTV.

Analog-to-digital conversion

KMYT-TV shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 41, on June 12, 2009, the official date in which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 42.[13][14][15] Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 41.

Programming

Outside of the MyNetworkTV network schedule, syndicated programs broadcast by KMYT-TV include Jerry Springer, Hot Bench, The People's Court, Family Guy and TMZ on TV.

Newscasts

Channel 41, as independent station KGCT, produced a rolling block of local news programming during the daytime hours when it debuted in March 1981. After one year, the station's news programming was reduced mainly to updates shown during breaks within regular programming until the station went dark in 1987. In February 2002, sister station KOKI launched its own news department; as a result, KMYT-TV occasionally broadcasts KOKI's 9:00 p.m. newscast during instances in which a Fox Sports telecast or rarely, a special primetime movie scheduled by Fox is expected to run past 9:00 p.m. In September 2013, KMYT began airing a simulcast of KOKI's weekday morning newscast from 5:00 to 9:00 a.m.

References

External links

  1. ↑ https://fnx.org/channels
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