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KTXH

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Coordinates: 29°33′45.1″N 95°30′35.8″W / 29.562528°N 95.509944°W / 29.562528; -95.509944
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KTXH
Channels
BrandingMy 20 Vision
Programming
Affiliations
Ownership
OwnerFox Television Stations, LLC
(a subsidiary of Fox Corporation)
KRIV
History
FoundedOctober 27, 1980
First air date
November 7, 1982 (42 years ago) (1982-11-07)
Former channel number(s)
  • Analog:
  • 20 (UHF, 1982–2009)
Call sign meaning
TeXas Houston
Technical information[1]
Licensing authority
FCC
Facility ID51569
ERP421 kW
HAAT596 m (1,955 ft)
Transmitter coordinates29°33′45.1″N 95°30′35.8″W / 29.562528°N 95.509944°W / 29.562528; -95.509944
Links
Public license information
Websitewww.fox26houston.com/my20-houston/
Studios for KTXH and KRIV

KTXH, virtual channel 20 (UHF digital channel 19), branded on-air as My 20 Vision, is a MyNetworkTV owned-and-operated television station licensed to Houston, Texas, United States. The station is owned by the Fox Television Stations subsidiary of Fox Corporation, as part of a duopoly with Fox owned-and-operated station KRIV (channel 26). The two stations share studios on Southwest Freeway in Houston (between the Uptown and Greenway Plaza districts); KTXH's transmitter is located near Missouri City, in unincorporated northeastern Fort Bend County.

History

Early history

The station first signed on the air on November 7, 1982, becoming the third independent station in Houston, after KRIV (then owned by Metromedia), and Gaylord Broadcasting's KHTV (channel 39, now Nexstar Media Group-owned CW affiliate KIAH). Its original studio facilities were located on Kirby Drive in Houston. It was also the second station in Texas owned by a group headed by television station entrepreneur Milton Grant. The station originally branded on-air as "20 Vision."

The group signed on a similarly formatted station, KTXA in Fort Worth, in January 1981. KTXH programmed a general entertainment format consisting of cartoons, vintage off-network sitcoms and dramas, classic movies, westerns and sports events. The fledgling station was broadcasting from the original Senior Road Tower that collapsed on December 7, 1982, killing seven workers as the top half of the master FM antenna was being hoisted to the top. It was eventually replaced by a second tower. The station resumed operations on February 13, 1983 from the original KRIV (originally KDOG) transmitter site on top of One Shell Plaza in downtown Houston.

Ownership changes, switch to UPN

Grant Broadcasting sold both KTXH and KTXA to Gulf Broadcasting in 1984. Gulf sold its television station holdings to Taft Broadcasting in 1985. Even after going through three owners within the same year, the station did not change its programming format, aside from adding more programming owned by Taft and distributed by new sister company Worldvision Enterprises, such as Hanna-Barbera cartoons.

Taft sold its group of independent and Fox-affiliated stations, including KTXH and KTXA, to the TVX Broadcast Group in February 1987. In 1989, Paramount Pictures purchased a minority ownership in TVX, which suffered from financial problems after the Taft purchase. Paramount bought out the remainder of TVX's shares in 1991 and integrated the TVX stations into the Paramount Stations Group. Under Paramount, the station added several first-run syndicated programs in the mid-1990s, and changed its on-air branding to "Paramount 20" (mirroring other Paramount-owned independent stations, such as KTXA, that incorporated such branding).

Viacom acquired ownership of KTXH, KTXA and their sister stations when the company purchased Paramount Pictures in 1994. Channel 20 became an owned-and-operated station of the United Paramount Network (owned by Chris-Craft Industries in a programming partnership with Viacom, and later co-owned in a joint venture with Chris-Craft when it bought a 50% share in the network in 1996) upon the network's January 16, 1995 launch.

Sale to Fox, switch to MyNetworkTV

KTXH was purchased by Fox Television Stations (then a subsidiary of News Corporation) in 2001, as part of a four-station trade deal which saw Viacom swapping KTXH and WDCA in Washington, D.C. in exchange for KBHK-TV (now KBCW) in San Francisco, which Fox had bought as part of its purchase of Chris-Craft's broadcasting division[2] (that acquisition in turn, occurred after Viacom bought Chris-Craft's 50% ownership interest in UPN). The transaction established the first television duopoly in Houston between KRIV and KTXH (Fox had also owned several of KTXH's former sister stations under Taft). Channel 20 also relocated its broadcasting facilities from its original studios on Kirby Drive, near present-day NRG Park, to KRIV's studios near Greenway Plaza.

On January 24, 2006, the Warner Bros. unit of Time Warner and CBS Corporation announced that the two companies would shut down The WB and UPN and combine the networks' respective programming to create a new "fifth" network called The CW.[3][4] Through an affiliation agreement with Tribune Broadcasting, KHWB (channel 39, which changed its callsign to KHCW shortly before the network's launch) was announced as The CW's Houston affiliate. Almost immediately, KTXH dropped all UPN network branding from its station promotions, revamped its logo to just feature the boxed "20", and ceased all promotion of any UPN programming. Additionally, the station began referring to itself in promos as "Houston's 20". Similar changes were also made to Fox's other UPN affiliates, as the initial list of CW charter affiliates consisted of both stations owned by the Tribune Company and network co-parent CBS. News Corporation also chose not to affiliate stations with The CW in markets where neither Tribune nor CBS (excluding CBS owned-and-operated stations) owned a station.

File:KTXH Houston.PNG
KTXH's "My 20" logo, used from June 2006 to September 2018.

On February 22, 2006, in response to The CW's launch announcement, News Corporation announced the creation of a new "sixth" network called MyNetworkTV, which would be operated by Fox Television Stations and its syndication division Twentieth Television, with KTXH and the other Fox-owned UPN affiliates serving as charter affiliates.[5][6] With the impending switch to MyNetworkTV, channel 20's on-air branding was changed to "My20" in June 2006. KTXH became a MyNetworkTV owned-and-operated station when the network began operations on September 5 of that year. Although UPN continued to broadcast its programming on stations across the United States until September 15, 2006 (with some stations airing the final two weeks of the network's programming outside their regular primetime slots), KTXH and its Fox-owned sister stations did not carry UPN's final two weeks of programming as those stations dropped the network entirely on August 31, 2006.

On October 1, 2009, KTXH launched its new website at www.my20houston.com using the same platform as its sister station KRIV. Early content included a schedule for both local and national programming with links to weather, news, and traffic on www.myfoxhouston.com.

On the night of May 25, 2015, KTXH's over the air signal was knocked off the air for several hours as a result of the historic severe flash flooding event in Texas.

On December 14, 2017, The Walt Disney Company, owner of ABC's owned-and-operated station KTRK-TV (channel 13), announced its intent to buy KTXH's parent company, 21st Century Fox, for $66.1 billion, pending regulatory approval; the sale excluded KTXH and sister station KRIV as well as the Fox network, the MyNetworkTV programming service and the Fox Television Stations unit, which was transferred to a separate company.[7][8] The split was officially completed on January 1, 2019.[citation needed]

On September 24, 2018, KTXH adopted a new on-air branding as "My 20 Vision", paying homage to the station's popular 1980s-era branding as 20 Vision that was first adopted under Taft ownership and lasted until its acquisition by Paramount.[9] The station is one of several Fox-owned MyNetworkTV affiliates to have moved away from the service's brand given its eventual transition from a network to a programming service, though unlike KTXH most chose to rebrand as an extension of their sister Fox O&O's branding.

Digital television

Digital channels

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:

Channel Video Aspect PSIP Short Name Programming[10]
20.1 720p 16:9 KTXH-DT Main KTXH programming / MyNetworkTV
20.2 480i Movies! Movies![11]
20.3 theGRIO theGrio
20.4 BUZZR Buzzr[12]

Decades moved from the DT3 subchannel to KRIV 26.2 on November 29, 2020 to prepare for the launch of theGrio on January 15, 2021.

Analog-to-digital conversion

KTXH discontinued regular programming on its analog signal, over UHF channel 20, on June 12, 2009, as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television.[13] The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 19,[14] using PSIP to display KTXH's virtual channel as 20 on digital television receivers.

Programming

Despite being a network affiliate, KTXH for the most part operates as a general entertainment independent station as MyNetworkTV only broadcasts for two hours on weeknights. While it does serve as a secondary Fox affiliate in events where breaking news or severe weather coverage may preempt Fox programming, it does not regularly carry any newscasts from sister station KRIV. Syndicated programming on KTXH includes Family Feud, Divorce Court, The Big Bang Theory, The Simpsons, and Schitt's Creek, among others.

Sports coverage

Throughout most of the 1980s and 1990s, as well as for select games from 2005 to 2008, KTXH was the over-the-air broadcast home for Houston Astros baseball and Houston Rockets basketball games, with a primary emphasis on road games while most of the teams' respective home games aired on Home Sports Entertainment (which eventually became Fox Sports Houston and even produced the teams' broadcasts on KTXH from 2005 to 2008). Hannah Storm, later a noted national broadcast personality, anchored the station's coverage of the Rockets in the mid-1980s. Another noted broadcast personality, former American Gladiators co-host Lisa Malosky, would preside over studio hosting duties in the 1990s.

See also

References

  1. ^ "Facility Technical Data for KTXH". Licensing and Management System. Federal Communications Commission.
  2. ^ Hofmeister, Sallie (August 12, 2000). "News Corp. to Buy Chris-Craft Parent for $5.5 Billion, Outbidding Viacom". The Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 23 March 2011.
  3. ^ 'Gilmore Girls' meet 'Smackdown'; CW Network to combine WB, UPN in CBS-Warner venture beginning in September, CNNMoney.com, January 24, 2006.
  4. ^ UPN and WB to Combine, Forming New TV Network, The New York Times, January 24, 2006.
  5. ^ "News Corp. to launch new mini-network for UPN stations". USA Today. February 22, 2006. Retrieved January 21, 2013.
  6. ^ News Corp. Unveils MyNetworkTV, Broadcasting & Cable, February 22, 2006.
  7. ^ "Disney Buys Big Chunk Of Fox In $66.1B Deal". TVNewsCheck. December 14, 2017. Retrieved December 15, 2017.
  8. ^ "Murdoch: New Fox Interested In More Stations". TVNewsCheck. December 14, 2017. Retrieved December 14, 2017.
  9. ^ Mcguff, Mike (2018-09-20). "KTXH bringing back that 20 Vision feeling". mikemcguff.com. Retrieved 2019-07-27.
  10. ^ RabbitEars TV Query for KTXH
  11. ^ Movies!: Where to Watch Archived 2013-06-07 at the Wayback Machine
  12. ^ KTXH HOUSTON, TX RabbitEars.info (Print page for Technical Data). Retrieved 3 December 2020
  13. ^ List of Digital Full-Power Stations Archived 2013-08-29 at the Wayback Machine
  14. ^ CDBS Print
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