KVOA


KVOA, virtual channel 4, is an NBC-affiliated television station licensed to Tucson, Arizona, United States. The station is owned by Quincy Media. KVOA's studios are located on West Elm Street north of downtown Tucson, and its transmitter is located atop Mount Bigelow, northeast of Tucson. The station has two low-power translators: K04QP-D in Casas Adobes, Arizona and K28OY-D in Sierra Vista, Arizona.

History

In September 1953, KVOA signed on as Tucson's second television station and NBC affiliate, eight months after KOLD-TV signed on as the CBS affiliate. Although KVOA was an NBC affiliate, it carried a secondary affiliation with ABC until 1956 when KDWI-TV began operations. During the late 1950s, the station was also briefly affiliated with the NTA Film Network.
It was originally owned by Chicago advertising executive John Louis, Sr., along with KVOA-AM 1290. It was a sister station to KTAR in Phoenix. In October 1953, KVOA brought Tucson its first-ever live television event: a World Series broadcast. The Louis broadcasting empire eventually became known as Pacific & Southern Broadcasting, headquartered in Phoenix; however, Louis did not keep KVOA for long. In 1955, Louis sold the KVOA stations to Clinton D. McKinnon, who would later acquire KOAT-TV in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and combine the two television stations to form Alvarado Television. In 1962, the Alvarado stations were sold to Steinman Stations, the owner of WGAL-TV in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
In 1968, the Steinmans sold a controlling stake in KVOA-TV to Pulitzer Publishing, making it Pulitzer's first television station acquisition outside of its home base in St. Louis, Missouri; KOAT went to Pulitzer fully a year later. In 1972, Pulitzer was forced to spin off its share of KVOA to an employee group called Channel 4-TV after it purchased the Arizona Daily Star the year before due to the tightening of the Federal Communications Commission's cross-ownership rules. Channel 4-TV also acquired Steinman's stake in KVOA around the same time.
The station was acquired by the Hobby family of Houston, publishers of the Houston Post, in 1982. When the Post was sold a year later, the Hobby family reorganized its broadcasting interests as H&C Communications. H&C sold off its television stations in 1993, with KVOA going to the Evening Post Publishing Company.
On October 29, 2018, Cordillera announced the sale of its entire station group to the E. W. Scripps Company. Scripps could not acquire KVOA, since it already owns KGUN and CW affiliate KWBA; as a result, KVOA was sold to Quincy Media in a secondary deal for $70 million. The transaction was approved by the FCC on April 5, 2019, and was completed on May 1 of that year.

Digital television

Digital channels

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:
ChannelVideoAspectPSIP Short NameProgramming
4.11080iKVOAMain KVOA programming / NBC
4.2480iCozi-TVCozi TV
4.3480iEscapeCourt TV Mystery
4.4480iN/ADabl
4.5480iN/AGrit

Analog-to-digital conversion

On June 15, 2000, KVOA was issued a construction permit to build digital station KVOA-DT on UHF channel 23. There were delays in building the new station, and on June 18, 2003, KVOA was granted Special Temporary Authority to operate the digital station at reduced power. The STA has been extended several times, and as of September 2006, KVOA-DT continued to operate under STA at reduced power.
In October 2006, KVOA requested companion digital LPTV channels for its Sierra Vista translator, K20FO, and Casas Adobes translator, K64BV. The FCC granted a construction permit for the Sierra Vista companion channel, K10QA-D, and the Casas Adobes companion channel, K04QP-D, on December 26, 2007.
KVOA discontinued regular programming on its analog signal, over VHF channel 4, on June 12, 2009, as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 23, using PSIP to display KVOA's virtual channel as 4 on digital television receivers. The same day, KVOA ended analog broadcasts on its channel 64 Casas Adobes translator, began digital operations on K04QP-D, and applied for a license to cover, which was granted June 16.

Programming

Long known as Tucson's NBC affiliate, KVOA currently clears that network's entire lineup. Syndicated programming on KVOA includes: Inside Edition, The Dr. Oz Show, Rachael Ray and Dr. Phil.
KVOA began airing NBC's long-running Tonight Show sometime in 1960 or 1961; for the remainder of Jack Paar's tenure on the show and for the first few years of Johnny Carson's tenure on the show, KVOA only joined the show's East Coast feed for 45 minutes, thus, for the latter, the station did not air his monologue and pre-interview sketches until the station expanded its late-night newscast to 30 minutes during the 1970–71 season and established a satellite link with NBC's Phoenix affiliate KTAR-TV. KVOA appeared to have shown The Tonight Show in its entirety by 1975 and is still doing so today.
Starting in the 1982–83 season, KVOA delayed Late Night with David Letterman to 12:00 midnight in order to carry programs ranging from Entertainment Tonight to the original version of the game show Love Connection. During the early part of the era in which comedian Conan O'Brien hosted the talk show, KVOA also bumped it by half an hour in order to carry the TV extension of Rush Limbaugh's radio program, Access Hollywood, and same-day reruns of Extra. On September 2, 2002, KVOA began clearing O'Brien's program at the network-designated 11:35 p.m. time slot for Mountain Time Zone affiliates, and moved the same-day Extra rerun to 1:35 a.m.
During Super Bowl XLIII in 2009, Comcast's standard-definition transmission of the station was interrupted for approximately 20 seconds replacing KVOA's broadcast of the game with hard-core porn, affecting Comcast's analog subscribers in portions of the Tucson area; it allowed KVOA to join Chicago stations WGN-TV and WTTW and the cable channel HBO as victims of broadcast signal intervention. The substitution appears to have been made at Comcast, not at KVOA, leaving KVOA's over-the-air, satellite and other cable providers viewers unaffected. Also, Comcast's high-definition transmission of KVOA was not affected.
In May 2011, KVOA announced that it would delay the showing of an upcoming episode of based on the mass shootings which occurred in Tucson earlier that year with a late-night airing, due to concerns that its content would be too sensitive. To date, it has been the station's last known preemption of any NBC program for any reason other than for breaking news or severe weather coverage.

News operation

KVOA formerly operated Southern Arizona News Network, a 24-hour cable news television network that was exclusive to local Cox Cable subscribers, that premiered on June 7, 2007, and ended broadcasting on March 31, 2010.
From the early 1970s to 2006, KVOA had used the Eyewitness News moniker, and later used the slogan "Where The News Comes First". These newscasts first used a variation of Lalo Schifrin's "Tar Sequence" from the 1967 film Cool Hand Luke, and then later used the various "News Series" themes composed by Frank Gari. These themes were all usually associated with local newscasts on ABC stations, not those of KVOA's affiliated network of NBC, which was more than satisfied with KVOA's news ratings; those in particular had made it one of NBC's strongest affiliates in the Southwest. Just as NBC became the nation's overall leader during the 1980s and 1990s, KVOA also was the market's news leader: by 1995, Channel 4 had led the Tucson news ratings for 21 straight years, half of its history – but only after Jon F. Ruby became the station's general manager in 1974 and initiated a major expansion of news. In 1995, KVOA's $750,000 satellite truck was the market's only microwave-based live news vehicle; Eyewitness News equaled or beat KGUN and KOLD combined in all time slots; was first with stereo, closed captioning, and microwave electronic news gathering; and had the largest television news staff in the market. However, in February 2006 the name of the station's newscasts was changed to News 4, with the new slogan "Coverage You Can Count On". In November 2007, KVOA changed its slogan to "Balanced News You Can Count On", and also began using normal NBC station themes.
On April 22, 2007, KVOA became the first station in Tucson to broadcast its local newscasts in high definition, starting with the 10 p.m. newscast; among the changes included a new set and updated graphics. KVOA is the first station in Tucson to offer news in high definition and the second in Arizona.

Notable current on-air staff