KDFW (channel 4) is a television station licensed to Dallas, Texas, United States, serving as the Fox network outlet for the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. It is owned and operated by the network's Fox Television Stations division alongside MyNetworkTV station KDFI (channel 27, also licensed to Dallas). The stations share studios on North Griffin Street in downtown Dallas, while KDFW's transmitter is located in Cedar Hill, Texas.
History
As a CBS affiliate
Times-Herald ownership
On August 20, 1945, the KRLD Radio Corp.—a subsidiary of the now-defunct Dallas Times Herald newspaper, which was headed at the time by Times Herald Printing Co. president Tom C. Gooch—filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for a license and construction permit to operate a commercial television station on VHF channel 2. On August 22, 1946, one year and two days after it filed for the broadcast license, KRLD Radio Corp. amended its application to instead seek assignment on VHF channel 4. (The VHF channel 2 allocation was later reassigned to Denton as part of the FCC's "Sixth Report and Order" in November 1951; it would eventually be assigned to North Texas Public Broadcasting, which signed on KDTN—now a Daystar owned-and-operated station—over that allocation on September 1, 1988.) The FCC Broadcast Bureau granted the license to the Times Herald on September 13, 1946.
The newspaper chose to assign KRLD-TV for use as the television station's call letters; the base KRLD callsign had been used by the Times Herald-owned radio station on 1080 AM – a combined reference to both Edwin J. Kiest, an original investor and one-time owner of the Times Herald, and KRLD (AM), and the radio station's founding owner, Radio Laboratories of Dallas (which changed its name from Dallas Radio Laboratories as it sought the radio permit upon discovering that the KDRL calls had already been assigned for maritime use) – since it signed on its original 1040 AM frequency in October 1926, and applied to its FM sister on 92.5 (now KZPS) upon its March 1948 sign-on.
The station began test broadcasts on November 21, 1949. Channel 4 officially signed on the air, as KRLD-TV, two weeks later on December 3, 1949, at 12:30 p.m., with a short inaugural program featuring speeches from Gooch and KRLD-AM-TV managing director Clyde Rembert dedicating the station's launch, followed by a broadcast of the CBS game show It Pays to Be Ignorant. The first local program aired on the station that day was a college football game in which the Notre Dame Fighting Irish defeated the Southern Methodist Mustangs, 27–20. (The station was originally scheduled to debut on October 1, later pushed back to November 15.) KRLD-TV was the third television station to sign on in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, following Dallas-based KBTV (channel 8, now WFAA) and Fort Worth-licensed WBAP-TV (channel 5, now KXAS-TV), all signing on within a 15-month timeframe. It was also the fourth Texas-based television station to be granted a license by the FCC (along with WBAP-TV, KBTV and NBC affiliate KLEE-TV [now KPRC-TV]).
Channel 4 originally carried programming from CBS, an affiliation that KRLD-TV inherited through the CBS Radio Network's longtime relationship with KRLD (AM), which became the first radio station in Texas to affiliate with the television network's radio predecessor in 1927 (when the station was transmitting at 1040 AM); it was the first Metroplex-area television station to have maintained a singular network affiliation from its sign-on. The station originally broadcast for 4½ hours each weekday (from 7:30 a.m. to noon) and for four hours per day (from noon to 5 p.m.) on Saturdays and Saturdays. Among the local programs on channel 4 in its early years included O.Kay! Mr. Munn (hosted by an artist drawing visual interpretations of various song lyrics, predating the advent of the music video) and Confessions (a series featuring interviews with incarcerated criminals from the Dallas County Jail revealing why they committed the crimes they were convicted of).