KOCO-TV
Encyclopedia
KOCO-TV, virtual channel
5 (digital channel 7), is the ABC
affiliate in the Oklahoma City
television market. The station is owned by Hearst Television, Inc., but uses "Ohio/Oklahoma Hearst Television, Inc." as their end tag during their newscasts, the same licensing purpose corporation as sister Cincinnati, Ohio
station WLWT
. KOCO's studios and transmitter are located at 1300 East Britton Road in northeast Oklahoma City, within a mile of competing stations; NBC affiliate KFOR-TV
(channel 4) to the west, CBS affiliate KWTV
(channel 9) to the southwest and Fox affiliate KOKH (channel 25) to the southeast.
The station broadcasts its digital signal on VHF channel 7, using its former analog channel assignment of 5 as its virtual channel via PSIP. On cable, KOCO-TV can be seen on channel 8 in standard definition and channel 705 in high definition on Cox
Oklahoma City and on channel 5 on other Cox systems in Central Oklahoma. The station is also available to DirecTV
and Dish Network
customers within the Oklahoma City market.
This station's digital signal is multiplexed:>
Virtual
channel
Video
Aspect
Programming
5.1
720p
16:9
Main KOCO-TV programming / ABC HD
5.2
480i
4:3
This TV
; movies, classic television series and children's programming
In April 2008, KOCO-TV launched a 24-hour digital weather channel, called First Alert Weather 24/7; an affiliate of The Local AccuWeather Channel
(one of several ABC affiliates carrying the service on its digital signal), that gives up-to-the-minute weather information, as well as carrying local weather inserts from KOCO's First Alert Storm Team on digital subchannel 5.2 and is also available on Cox Digital Cable
in the Oklahoma City area on cable channel 222. It also airs educational and informational
children's programming mandated by the FCC
for a half-hour every day at noon. The service may also take on the responsibility of airing ABC network programming when KOCO-DT 5.1 is not able to in a severe weather emergency. A feed of Advantage Doppler HD may appear on the subchannel as backup programming if technical difficulties occur, with audio from Oklahoma City's NOAA Weather Radio All Hazards
station WXK85
.
In early September 2008, coverage of Hurricane Gustav from NBC affiliate WDSU
in New Orleans (also owned by Hearst), aired on digital subchannel 5.2 for the convenience of evacuees who came to Oklahoma City.
On January 24, 2011 at 6 a.m., KOCO-DT digital subchannel 5.2 dropped Local AccuWeather Channel programming to become the Oklahoma City affiliate of This TV
, a 24-hour digital broadcast network owned by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
and Weigel Broadcasting
, which largely relies on films produced by MGM and its related film studios, and also features a limited amount of syndicated programming and a daily morning block of children's programming (including programs produced by Cookie Jar Entertainment
, which meet the three hours of educational and informational
programming required by the FCC).
After the switch to digital-only broadcast, the station's broadcast range did not cover as much area as it did when broadcasting in analog, creating some gaps in reception in parts of southwest, south-central and north-central Oklahoma that were previously able to receive a fair to decent signal. In May 2010, the station uninstalled its former analog antenna and began installing a new digital antenna that once installed, would help to extend KOCO-TV's digital signal reception to areas unable to receive the station's signal since the station's switch to digital.
, the only full-power VHF station in northern Oklahoma. The station was an ABC
affiliate; during the late 1950s, the station was also briefly affiliated with the NTA Film Network
.
The station's transmitter and studio location were moved to Oklahoma City in 1958, after northern Oklahoma was absorbed into the Oklahoma City market. KOCO's original Oklahoma City studio was located at NW 63rd and Portland Avenue but moved to its present location near the transmitter site on East Britton Road in the early 1980s. Channel 5's arrival returned a full ABC affiliate to the Oklahoma City market. Previously, ABC programming was seen in Oklahoma City on WKY-TV (now KFOR-TV) as a secondary affiliation until KTVQ (channel 25) signed on in 1953 (KTVQ went dark in 1956, signing on the air again as the present-day KOKH-TV in 1959).
In 1974, the station adopted the "Eyewitness News
" branding for its newscast for the first time, this first period was during a time when the format was very popular in TV markets throughout the nation. Local CBS affiliate KWTV
had previously used the Eyewitness News moniker from 1966 to 1971, but dropped it when the newscast was renamed Newsroom 9. Despite the use of the Eyewitness News concept and name, KOCO remained for many years a distant third place in local news ratings against dominant NBC affiliate WKY-TV (channel 4, later KTVY and now KFOR-TV
) and KWTV. KOCO aired its evening newscast at 5:30 p.m. rather than the 6 p.m. time slot used by KTVY and KWTV until the early 1980s when it introduced an early evening newscast at 5 p.m. and a 6 p.m. broadcast with ABC's World News Tonight (now World News with Diane Sawyer) in the 5:30 p.m. timeslot. All three programs were top-rated in the market in November 2006.
KOCO had been the only local television station in Oklahoma that operated and maintained a bureau office elsewhere in the state. For several years after its move from Enid to Oklahoma City, KOCO continued to operate a second bureau in Enid. It was closed by KOCO in the mid-1990s for unknown reasons.
. In 1977, Combined did a makeover of the station's image by adopting the "5 Alive" branding that was introduced at other Combined-owned stations. Although a number of Combined stations that adopted the practice of using the word "Alive" as part of their monikers ended the practice after Gannett purchased Combined in 1979, KOCO continued promoting itself as "5 Alive" until 1994.
During the "5 Alive" era, KOCO's local newscasts were branded as 5 Alive NewsCenter or 5 Alive News, and, thanks to Gannett's resources and investment in the station which included a new studio facility in the early 1980s along with news helicopters, KOCO improved its fortunes in local news ratings in the Oklahoma City market from 1980 to 1982 when the station briefly overtook KWTV for second place and even battled longtime powerhouse KTVY for first place. By 1983, KOCO settled into a solid second place as KWTV rose from a distant third all the way to first place, displacing KTVY from the top spot it held for decades. By the late 1980s, KOCO dropped back to third place, where it lingered for years.
In 1994, KOCO dropped the "5 Alive" branding and the newscast was renamed 5 News and the "5 Alive" logo was retired with a new logo (that was short-lived) that was a variant of the Circle 7 logo, that was replaced with the current version of the Circle 5 logo a few months later. In 1995, Gannett announced that the company would merge with Multimedia, Inc.; this created a conflict as Multimedia, Inc. owned area cable provider Multimedia Cablevision, which served most of Oklahoma City's surrounding suburbs (Multimedia Cablevision later sold its Oklahoma service area to Cox Communications
, which already served areas within the city limits of Oklahoma City, in 2000). This created a conflict as at the time, Federal Communications Commission
rules prohibited the cross-ownership of television stations and cable providers in the same market; Gannett received a temporary waiver by the FCC to operate both KOCO-TV and Multimedia Cablevision, which expired in December 1996.
in Cincinnati to Argyle Television Holdings II in exchange for ABC affiliate WZZM in Grand Rapids, Michigan
and NBC affiliate WGRZ in Buffalo, New York
; the deal was made to resolve conflicts with the FCC's newspaper and cable cross-ownership rules. Argyle merged with Hearst Broadcasting in August of that year, creating what was then known as Hearst-Argyle Television. The company renamed itself as Hearst Television in May 2009. In 1998, after the station was purchased by Hearst-Argyle Television, the newscasts were renamed Eyewitness News 5 - returning the "Eyewitness News" format the station previously used from 1974 to 1977.
On June 13, 1998, as tornadoes touched down in northern sections of Oklahoma City that evening; at 8:10PM, chief meteorologist Rick Mitchell, then-weekend meteorologist Mike LaPoint and a photojournalist had positioned a live shot outside the Channel 5 studios on Britton Road when the studio was hit by a tornado (or damaging straight-line winds). As it hit, LaPoint exclaimed "Rick, it's on the ground!", and both meteorologists and the photographer ran into the station to take shelter. Almost immediately as it happened, the station was knocked off the air until the following evening (although it was still able to feed its signal to cable). However, damage at the station was relatively minor as a fence was knocked down with the most significant damage being to its doppler weather radar dome which had been dented. Video of that tornado as it happened can be seen on Youtube
.
In recent years, the station boosted its commitment to news and weather coverage, adding newscasts and positioning itself as "Live. Local. Latebreaking." The efforts helped propel the station's 5:00 newscast into first place in the market in 2004. In November 2006, KOCO also registered its first-ever outright win at 6:00 p.m.
On February 10, 2009 KOCO was the only Oklahoma City television station offered wall-to-wall coverage of a devastating EF4 tornado
that hit the town of Lone Grove
that killed eight and injured 14, due to KOCO being the default ABC station for the Ada-Sherman television market that Lone Grove is located in. KOCO's coverage along with that of Ada-Sherman area stations KTEN and KXII
undoubtedly saved many lives during the event.
KOCO-TV serves as a default ABC affiliate for the Sherman, Texas/Ada, Oklahoma market due to that market having lacked an ABC affiliate of its own, since KTEN
(channel 10) dropped its secondary ABC affiliation to became a full-time affiliate of NBC in 1998. KOCO-TV is carried as the local ABC affiliate to DISH Network and DirecTV subscribers within that market and the sole ABC affiliate carried by cable operators in cities on the Oklahoma side of the Sherman-Ada market including Sherman and Denison in Texas; as well as Ada in Oklahoma. This has come to an end as KTEN has a subchannel affiliated with the ABC network that went up on May 9, 2010.
airings of Power Rangers
on Saturday mornings due to lack of E/I
content (which was also the reason all of Hearst-Argyle's ABC affiliates did not carry the program), the show was preempted by the station starting in the fall of 2006 (prior to this, said hour was shown six hours behind the network's recommended time slot of 11 a.m.). KOCO currently delays Jimmy Kimmel Live! by one hour, airing at 12:07 a.m., due to an encore presentation of Oprah
and as of September 3, 2011, airs the Litton's Weekend Adventure lineup on Saturday mornings and This Week
on Sunday mornings on a one-hour broadcast delay, due to the third hour of its weekend morning newscast. KOCO-TV is unusual as it is one of the few ABC affiliates that preempt the ABC News Briefs aired in-between One Life to Live
and General Hospital
.
Until January 2, 2008 it was one of several ABC stations to air All My Children
weekdays at 11 a.m., instead of the network's recommended time of 12 p.m., due to their midday newscast airing at that time slot. However beginning on that date, All My Children moved to the noon timeslot formerly occupied by the now-defunct midday newscast (The Chew
now airs in that timeslot, as of September 26, 2011). KOCO-TV also occasionally preempts a primetime ABC program due to special programming. This practice is nothing new, for they also have preempted or delayed some ABC programs during the 1970s and 1980s. For example, the station preempted ABC cartoons The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show and The All New Ewoks on Saturday mornings in order to air the locally-produced program Home Showcase in the spring of 1987.
The station airs most of the highest-rated programs in syndication, with Dr. Phil
after Good Morning America
; Anderson
after The View; The Dr. Oz Show
and The Ellen DeGeneres Show
paired up in mid-afternoons together after ABC daytime programming and before the 5 p.m. newscast; and Wheel of Fortune airing before primetime. Other syndicated programming on KOCO includes Access Hollywood
on weekdays, and House
, Brothers and Sisters and The Closer
on weekends. Currently, Wheel of Fortune airs on KOCO-TV, while Jeopardy!
on the other hand, airs on rival NBC affiliate KFOR-TV (it had previously aired on KOCO during the 1980s and early 1990s, and on KWTV afterwards until 1999); Oklahoma City is one of the few media markets to carry Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune on separate television stations. The station carries just over the minimum amount of E/I
children's programming, as the Litton Weekend Aventure lineup features three hours of E/I shows, and the station airs Teen Kids News
on Saturdays at noon after the Weekend Aventure block.
KOCO also makes the claim based on Nielsen Media Research
numbers that it is one of the top-rated ABC affiliates in the nation, which is based on market size and household ratings percentages. In fact, the three highest-rated ABC affiliates in the nation are all Hearst stations (KOCO, along with WISN
in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and KMBC
in Kansas City, Missouri
).
In December 2010, KOCO became the second station in the Oklahoma City market (after CBS affiliate KWTV
) and the sixth television station in the state of Oklahoma to broadcast syndicated programming in high definition; originally only a limited amount of syndicated shows such as Wheel of Fortune, and reruns of The Closer and Comics Unleashed with Byron Allen were broadcast in HD, but since January 2011, all of KOCO's syndicated programming available in HD is broadcast in the format including Oprah, Dr. Phil and The Ellen DeGeneres Show.
In 1992, KOCO launched a local Saturday morning newscast from 8-9 a.m., the newscast was later dropped but relaunched in 1996 in the later timeslot of 10 a.m.-noon. Also in 1996, KOCO expanded its morning newscast from one hour to an hour-and-a-half from 5:30-7 a.m. and the noon newscast was expanded to one hour (the noon news was cut back to a half-hour when Port Charles
debuted and remained that way after Port Charles cancellation in 2003, while the morning news expanded to two hours in 1999). For a short period from 1998 to the fall of 1999, the station used a variant of the 24 Hour News Source
format, offering hourly weather updates by the station's meteorologists, then known as the "24 Hour First Alert Weather" team (shortened to just "First Alert Weather" by 2001), near the top of every hour; KFOR-TV at the time used the traditional 24 Hour News Source
format featuring round-the-clock news updates. In February 2006, the station added a two-hour Sunday morning newscast from 7-9 a.m.
Like some of its ABC-affiliated sister stations, KOCO has added more newscasts to their schedule over the last few years; on the week of January 2, 2008, the weekday noon newscast was dropped (a 30-second weather update now runs just before the noon slot), a 5 p.m. newscast was added on Saturday evenings and the Saturday and Sunday morning newscasts were moved from 10 a.m.-12 p.m. and 7-9 a.m., respectively to the earlier timeslot of 5-7 a.m. The cancellation of the noon newscast meant that for the first time none of the ABC affiliates in the state of Oklahoma had midday newscasts (KTUL
in Tulsa and KSWO
in Lawton do not carry midday newscasts either). The station is also unusual in programming an hour-long newscast on Sundays at 10 p.m., which expanded from 35 minutes in 2006; as a result, Sunday Sports Xtra was absorbed into the newscast and reduced to a 15-minute segment near the end of the newscast.
KOCO also has partnerships with The Enid News & Eagle
(the station's only link to its former city of license) and The Norman Transcript
. In the 1990s, during its final years under Gannett ownership, KOCO attempted to start its own investigative unit known as the I-Team (which is also the name of investigative units on several other stations including former sister station KSDK
in St. Louis, Missouri). Rival KWTV also attempted an investigative unit around the same time.
Chief Meteorologist Rick Mitchell has had the longest tenure of the entire KOCO on-air staff; Mitchell joined the station in 1994 (he is the only on-air personality to work at Channel 5 under both Gannett and Hearst-Argyle ownership). In a market where many television personalities have been around for fifteen years or more, almost all of KOCO's on-air staff (except for Mitchell) have worked at the station for fewer than ten years. The current Mayor of Oklahoma City since 2005, Mick Cornett
, was a former member of KOCO's news staff. He joined the station in the early 1980s as a sports anchor/reporter. He was later appointed morning and noon news anchor in the mid-1990s before leaving the station in 1998.
In October 2009, KOCO upgraded its news ticker shown during the weekday morning newscast and breaking news and the weather alert map shown during regular programming in advance of severe weather and had months earlier upgraded the school closings ticker to fit 16:9 widescreen televisions. From October 2009 until October 11, 2010 the newscasts were, however, broadcast with blue pillarboxing with the station's callsign angled vertically on the left and right thirds of the screen. On October 11, 2010, just one day after Hearst sister-station WISN
began broadcasting local news in widescreen
standard definition, KOCO began broadcasting their local newscasts in widescreen standard definition, however the station has yet to upgrade its newscasts to high definition. Not all of KOCO's cameras shoot in native widescreen, which results in much of KOCO's video footage being upconverted from the original 4:3 standard definition and stretched to widescreen dimensions in the control room for broadcast. On July 31, 2010 KOCO-TV added an hour-long extension of its weekend morning newscasts from 8-9 a.m., which competes against weekend morning newscasts on KFOR-TV. On September 22, 2010 KOCO expanded its weekday morning newscast to 2½ hours, with the start time moved to 4:30 a.m., becoming the first Oklahoma television station with a pre-5 a.m. morning newscast.
and the Enid News & Eagle
newspapers. Mitchell is a member of the American Meteorological Society
and is a recipient of their Television Seal of Approval. Mitchell has several awards, including "Best Weathercast" by the Oklahoma Association of Broadcasters and the Oklahoma chapter of the Associated Press
.
Mitchell graduated with a bachelor of science degree in meteorology from the University of Nebraska in 1987, and afterwards began working with the State College, Pennsylvania
-based weather forecasting company AccuWeather
. In 1990, Mitchell entered into television meteorology with his first job at ABC affiliate WOI-TV
in Des Moines, Iowa
. By 1993, he was named the chief meteorologist. In 1994, Mitchell moved to Oklahoma City after being hired as the chief meteorologist at ABC affiliate KOCO-TV, where he has worked ever since. His coverage of the Oklahoma Tornado Outbreak
on May 3, 1999, including an F5 tornado that destroyed parts of the suburbs of Moore
, Midwest City
and Del City
, earned Mitchell and the First Alert Storm Team a special award of recognition from then-governor Frank Keating
.
Mitchell had a cameo appearance (both in voice-only and on a television screen) during a scene in which a large tornado hits a drive-in theatre and served as one of three "weather announcers" (along with KWTV
chief meteorologist Gary England
and Jeff Lazalier, former chief meteorologist at NBC affiliate KJRH
in Tulsa, Oklahoma
) in the 1996 movie Twister.
(channel 34, now a CW affiliate), was the number one WB affiliate in the nation for the 2005-2006 season, its final year as a WB affiliate.
The station's newscasts are currently the top-rated programs (per Nielsen Media Research) at both 5:00 and 6:00 p.m. KOCO-TV also features the market's highest-rated daytime programming and, as of November 2006, the most-watched network newscast in ABC's World News with Charles Gibson.
First Alert Weather
In addition to providing forecasts on KOCO-TV, the First Alert Storm Team also provides forecasts for KATT-FM
, WWLS-AM, KQOB-FM, WWLS-FM
, KKWD
, KYIS-FM radio, and the Enid News and Eagle newspaper.
Sports Xtra
Reporters
Hearst Television Washington Bureau
First Alert Storm Team "FAST Unit" Storm Chasers
Virtual channel
In telecommunications, a logical channel number , also known as virtual channel, is a channel designation which differs from that of the actual radio channel on which the signal travels....
5 (digital channel 7), is the ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
affiliate in the Oklahoma City
Oklahoma city
Oklahoma City is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Oklahoma.Oklahoma City may also refer to:*Oklahoma City metropolitan area*Downtown Oklahoma City*Uptown Oklahoma City*Oklahoma City bombing*Oklahoma City National Memorial...
television market. The station is owned by Hearst Television, Inc., but uses "Ohio/Oklahoma Hearst Television, Inc." as their end tag during their newscasts, the same licensing purpose corporation as sister Cincinnati, Ohio
Cincinnati, Ohio
Cincinnati is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio. Cincinnati is the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located to north of the Ohio River at the Ohio-Kentucky border, near Indiana. The population within city limits is 296,943 according to the 2010 census, making it Ohio's...
station WLWT
WLWT
WLWT, virtual channel 5 , is an NBC-affiliated television station in Cincinnati, Ohio, the station is owned by Hearst Television...
. KOCO's studios and transmitter are located at 1300 East Britton Road in northeast Oklahoma City, within a mile of competing stations; NBC affiliate KFOR-TV
KFOR-TV
KFOR-TV, virtual channel 4 , is the NBC-affiliated television station in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. KFOR-TV is owned by Local TV, a subsidiary of the private equity group Oak Hill Capital Partners, in a duopoly with MyNetworkTV affiliate KAUT-TV ; its studios are located at 444 East Britton Road in...
(channel 4) to the west, CBS affiliate KWTV
KWTV
KWTV-DT, virtual channel 9 , is the CBS-affiliated television station in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; it is owned by Griffin Communications of Oklahoma City...
(channel 9) to the southwest and Fox affiliate KOKH (channel 25) to the southeast.
The station broadcasts its digital signal on VHF channel 7, using its former analog channel assignment of 5 as its virtual channel via PSIP. On cable, KOCO-TV can be seen on channel 8 in standard definition and channel 705 in high definition on Cox
Cox Communications
Cox Communications is a privately owned subsidiary of Cox Enterprises providing digital cable television, telecommunications and wireless services in the United States...
Oklahoma City and on channel 5 on other Cox systems in Central Oklahoma. The station is also available to DirecTV
DirecTV
DirecTV is an American direct broadcast satellite service provider and broadcaster based in El Segundo, California. Its satellite service, launched on June 17, 1994, transmits digital satellite television and audio to households in the United States, Latin America, and the Anglophone Caribbean. ...
and Dish Network
Dish Network
Dish Network Corporation is the second largest pay TV provider in the United States, providing direct broadcast satellite service—including satellite television, audio programming, and interactive television services—to 14.337 million commercial and residential customers in the United States. Dish...
customers within the Oklahoma City market.
Digital television
channel
Aspect ratio
The aspect ratio of a shape is the ratio of its longer dimension to its shorter dimension. It may be applied to two characteristic dimensions of a three-dimensional shape, such as the ratio of the longest and shortest axis, or for symmetrical objects that are described by just two measurements,...
720p
720p is the shorthand name for 1280x720, a category of High-definition television video modes having a resolution of 1080 or 720p and a progressive scan...
16:9
16:9 is an aspect ratio with a width of 16 units and height of 9. Since 2009, it has become the most common aspect ratio for sold televisions and computer monitors and is also the international standard format of HDTV, Full HD, non-HD digital television and analog widescreen television ...
480i
480i is the shorthand name for a video mode, namely the US NTSC television system or digital television systems with the same characteristics. The i, which is sometimes uppercase, stands for interlaced, the 480 for a vertical frame resolution of 480 lines containing picture information; while NTSC...
This TV
This TV is a United States general entertainment television network, with a large emphasis in its programming on movies....
; movies, classic television series and children's programming
In April 2008, KOCO-TV launched a 24-hour digital weather channel, called First Alert Weather 24/7; an affiliate of The Local AccuWeather Channel
The Local AccuWeather Channel
The Local AccuWeather Channel is a 24-hour, weather-oriented, commercially sponsored broadcast and cable television network in the United States owned and operated by AccuWeather, Inc., which is headquartered in State College, Pennsylvania....
(one of several ABC affiliates carrying the service on its digital signal), that gives up-to-the-minute weather information, as well as carrying local weather inserts from KOCO's First Alert Storm Team on digital subchannel 5.2 and is also available on Cox Digital Cable
Cox Communications
Cox Communications is a privately owned subsidiary of Cox Enterprises providing digital cable television, telecommunications and wireless services in the United States...
in the Oklahoma City area on cable channel 222. It also airs educational and informational
E/I
E/I, which stands for "educational and informative," refers to a type of children's television programming shown in the United States. The Federal Communications Commission requires that every full-service Terrestrial television station in the U.S. show at least three hours of these television...
children's programming mandated by the FCC
Federal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, created, Congressional statute , and with the majority of its commissioners appointed by the current President. The FCC works towards six goals in the areas of broadband, competition, the spectrum, the...
for a half-hour every day at noon. The service may also take on the responsibility of airing ABC network programming when KOCO-DT 5.1 is not able to in a severe weather emergency. A feed of Advantage Doppler HD may appear on the subchannel as backup programming if technical difficulties occur, with audio from Oklahoma City's NOAA Weather Radio All Hazards
NOAA Weather Radio All Hazards
NOAA Weather Radio All Hazards is a network of radio stations broadcasting continuous weather information directly from a nearby National Weather Service office. It is operated by the NWS, an agency of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration within the United States Department of...
station WXK85
WXK85
WXK85 is the NOAA weather radio station serving the Oklahoma City metro area, it is programed by the Norman office of the National Weather Service. Counties served by WKX85 include: Canadian, Cleveland, Grady, Kingfisher, Lincoln, Logan, McClain, Oklahoma, Payne, & Pottawatomie.-External links:***...
.
In early September 2008, coverage of Hurricane Gustav from NBC affiliate WDSU
WDSU
WDSU, virtual channel 6, is the NBC-affiliated television station for the New Orleans, Louisiana television market. It is owned by Hearst Television, which in turn is wholly owned by the Hearst Corporation. It broadcasts on UHF digital channel 43...
in New Orleans (also owned by Hearst), aired on digital subchannel 5.2 for the convenience of evacuees who came to Oklahoma City.
On January 24, 2011 at 6 a.m., KOCO-DT digital subchannel 5.2 dropped Local AccuWeather Channel programming to become the Oklahoma City affiliate of This TV
This TV
This TV is a United States general entertainment television network, with a large emphasis in its programming on movies....
, a 24-hour digital broadcast network owned by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of films and television programs. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer...
and Weigel Broadcasting
Weigel Broadcasting
Weigel Broadcasting is an American locally based television broadcasting company. The company is based in downtown Chicago, Illinois, alongside its flagship station WCIU-TV , at the apt address of 26 North Halsted Street in the Greektown neighborhood.- History :The company was founded by Chicago...
, which largely relies on films produced by MGM and its related film studios, and also features a limited amount of syndicated programming and a daily morning block of children's programming (including programs produced by Cookie Jar Entertainment
Cookie Jar Entertainment
The Cookie Jar Group is an American and Canadian producer of children’s entertainment, consumer products and educational materials...
, which meet the three hours of educational and informational
E/I
E/I, which stands for "educational and informative," refers to a type of children's television programming shown in the United States. The Federal Communications Commission requires that every full-service Terrestrial television station in the U.S. show at least three hours of these television...
programming required by the FCC).
Analog-to-digital conversion
KOCO-TV discontinued regular analog programming on June 12, 2009. The station remained on its pre-transition channel 7, using PSIP to display KOCO-TV's virtual channel as 5.After the switch to digital-only broadcast, the station's broadcast range did not cover as much area as it did when broadcasting in analog, creating some gaps in reception in parts of southwest, south-central and north-central Oklahoma that were previously able to receive a fair to decent signal. In May 2010, the station uninstalled its former analog antenna and began installing a new digital antenna that once installed, would help to extend KOCO-TV's digital signal reception to areas unable to receive the station's signal since the station's switch to digital.
History
The station signed on July 2, 1954 as KGEO-TV, based in EnidEnid, Oklahoma
Enid is a city in Garfield County, Oklahoma, United States. In 2010, the population was 49,379, making it the ninth largest city in Oklahoma. It is the county seat of Garfield County. Enid was founded during the opening of the Cherokee Outlet in the Land Run of 1893, and is named after Enid, a...
, the only full-power VHF station in northern Oklahoma. The station was an ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
affiliate; during the late 1950s, the station was also briefly affiliated with the NTA Film Network
NTA Film Network
The NTA Film Network was an early American television network founded by Ely Landau in 1956. The network was not a full-time television network like CBS, NBC, or ABC. Rather, it operated on a part-time basis, broadcasting films and several first-run television programs from major Hollywood studios...
.
The station's transmitter and studio location were moved to Oklahoma City in 1958, after northern Oklahoma was absorbed into the Oklahoma City market. KOCO's original Oklahoma City studio was located at NW 63rd and Portland Avenue but moved to its present location near the transmitter site on East Britton Road in the early 1980s. Channel 5's arrival returned a full ABC affiliate to the Oklahoma City market. Previously, ABC programming was seen in Oklahoma City on WKY-TV (now KFOR-TV) as a secondary affiliation until KTVQ (channel 25) signed on in 1953 (KTVQ went dark in 1956, signing on the air again as the present-day KOKH-TV in 1959).
In 1974, the station adopted the "Eyewitness News
Eyewitness News
Eyewitness News is a style of news broadcasting used by local television stations in different markets across the United States. It refers to a particular style of television newscast with an emphasis on visual elements and action video...
" branding for its newscast for the first time, this first period was during a time when the format was very popular in TV markets throughout the nation. Local CBS affiliate KWTV
KWTV
KWTV-DT, virtual channel 9 , is the CBS-affiliated television station in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; it is owned by Griffin Communications of Oklahoma City...
had previously used the Eyewitness News moniker from 1966 to 1971, but dropped it when the newscast was renamed Newsroom 9. Despite the use of the Eyewitness News concept and name, KOCO remained for many years a distant third place in local news ratings against dominant NBC affiliate WKY-TV (channel 4, later KTVY and now KFOR-TV
KFOR-TV
KFOR-TV, virtual channel 4 , is the NBC-affiliated television station in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. KFOR-TV is owned by Local TV, a subsidiary of the private equity group Oak Hill Capital Partners, in a duopoly with MyNetworkTV affiliate KAUT-TV ; its studios are located at 444 East Britton Road in...
) and KWTV. KOCO aired its evening newscast at 5:30 p.m. rather than the 6 p.m. time slot used by KTVY and KWTV until the early 1980s when it introduced an early evening newscast at 5 p.m. and a 6 p.m. broadcast with ABC's World News Tonight (now World News with Diane Sawyer) in the 5:30 p.m. timeslot. All three programs were top-rated in the market in November 2006.
KOCO had been the only local television station in Oklahoma that operated and maintained a bureau office elsewhere in the state. For several years after its move from Enid to Oklahoma City, KOCO continued to operate a second bureau in Enid. It was closed by KOCO in the mid-1990s for unknown reasons.
Sale to Gannett and change to "5 Alive"
Combined Communications acquired KOCO in 1970 from Cimarron Television. Nine years later, Combined Communications merged with the Gannett CompanyGannett Company
Gannett Company, Inc. is a publicly-traded media holding company headquartered in Tysons Corner, Virginia, United States, near McLean. It is the largest U.S. newspaper publisher as measured by total daily circulation. Its assets include the national newspaper USA Today and the weekly USA Weekend...
. In 1977, Combined did a makeover of the station's image by adopting the "5 Alive" branding that was introduced at other Combined-owned stations. Although a number of Combined stations that adopted the practice of using the word "Alive" as part of their monikers ended the practice after Gannett purchased Combined in 1979, KOCO continued promoting itself as "5 Alive" until 1994.
During the "5 Alive" era, KOCO's local newscasts were branded as 5 Alive NewsCenter or 5 Alive News, and, thanks to Gannett's resources and investment in the station which included a new studio facility in the early 1980s along with news helicopters, KOCO improved its fortunes in local news ratings in the Oklahoma City market from 1980 to 1982 when the station briefly overtook KWTV for second place and even battled longtime powerhouse KTVY for first place. By 1983, KOCO settled into a solid second place as KWTV rose from a distant third all the way to first place, displacing KTVY from the top spot it held for decades. By the late 1980s, KOCO dropped back to third place, where it lingered for years.
In 1994, KOCO dropped the "5 Alive" branding and the newscast was renamed 5 News and the "5 Alive" logo was retired with a new logo (that was short-lived) that was a variant of the Circle 7 logo, that was replaced with the current version of the Circle 5 logo a few months later. In 1995, Gannett announced that the company would merge with Multimedia, Inc.; this created a conflict as Multimedia, Inc. owned area cable provider Multimedia Cablevision, which served most of Oklahoma City's surrounding suburbs (Multimedia Cablevision later sold its Oklahoma service area to Cox Communications
Cox Communications
Cox Communications is a privately owned subsidiary of Cox Enterprises providing digital cable television, telecommunications and wireless services in the United States...
, which already served areas within the city limits of Oklahoma City, in 2000). This created a conflict as at the time, Federal Communications Commission
Federal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, created, Congressional statute , and with the majority of its commissioners appointed by the current President. The FCC works towards six goals in the areas of broadband, competition, the spectrum, the...
rules prohibited the cross-ownership of television stations and cable providers in the same market; Gannett received a temporary waiver by the FCC to operate both KOCO-TV and Multimedia Cablevision, which expired in December 1996.
Sale to Hearst Television
Gannett owned KOCO until January 1997 when it swapped it and NBC affiliate WLWTWLWT
WLWT, virtual channel 5 , is an NBC-affiliated television station in Cincinnati, Ohio, the station is owned by Hearst Television...
in Cincinnati to Argyle Television Holdings II in exchange for ABC affiliate WZZM in Grand Rapids, Michigan
Grand Rapids, Michigan
Grand Rapids is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan. The city is located on the Grand River about 40 miles east of Lake Michigan. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 188,040. In 2010, the Grand Rapids metropolitan area had a population of 774,160 and a combined statistical area, Grand...
and NBC affiliate WGRZ in Buffalo, New York
Buffalo, New York
Buffalo is the second most populous city in the state of New York, after New York City. Located in Western New York on the eastern shores of Lake Erie and at the head of the Niagara River across from Fort Erie, Ontario, Buffalo is the seat of Erie County and the principal city of the...
; the deal was made to resolve conflicts with the FCC's newspaper and cable cross-ownership rules. Argyle merged with Hearst Broadcasting in August of that year, creating what was then known as Hearst-Argyle Television. The company renamed itself as Hearst Television in May 2009. In 1998, after the station was purchased by Hearst-Argyle Television, the newscasts were renamed Eyewitness News 5 - returning the "Eyewitness News" format the station previously used from 1974 to 1977.
On June 13, 1998, as tornadoes touched down in northern sections of Oklahoma City that evening; at 8:10PM, chief meteorologist Rick Mitchell, then-weekend meteorologist Mike LaPoint and a photojournalist had positioned a live shot outside the Channel 5 studios on Britton Road when the studio was hit by a tornado (or damaging straight-line winds). As it hit, LaPoint exclaimed "Rick, it's on the ground!", and both meteorologists and the photographer ran into the station to take shelter. Almost immediately as it happened, the station was knocked off the air until the following evening (although it was still able to feed its signal to cable). However, damage at the station was relatively minor as a fence was knocked down with the most significant damage being to its doppler weather radar dome which had been dented. Video of that tornado as it happened can be seen on Youtube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
.
In recent years, the station boosted its commitment to news and weather coverage, adding newscasts and positioning itself as "Live. Local. Latebreaking." The efforts helped propel the station's 5:00 newscast into first place in the market in 2004. In November 2006, KOCO also registered its first-ever outright win at 6:00 p.m.
On February 10, 2009 KOCO was the only Oklahoma City television station offered wall-to-wall coverage of a devastating EF4 tornado
February 2009 tornado outbreak
The February 2009 tornado outbreak primarily affected portions of the South Central United States on February 10, as well as sections of the Northeastern United States, on February 11. During the two-day period, 15 tornadoes touched down in seven states. Oklahoma was struck by six...
that hit the town of Lone Grove
Lone Grove, Oklahoma
Lone Grove is a city in Carter County, Oklahoma, United States. The population was 4,631 at the 2000 census. It is part of the Micropolitan Statistical Area of Ardmore.The city, located seven miles west of Ardmore on U.S...
that killed eight and injured 14, due to KOCO being the default ABC station for the Ada-Sherman television market that Lone Grove is located in. KOCO's coverage along with that of Ada-Sherman area stations KTEN and KXII
KXII
KXII, channel 12, is the CBS-affiliated television station for the Texoma region of Texas and Oklahoma. It is licensed to Sherman, Texas. Its transmitter is located southwest of Madill, Oklahoma...
undoubtedly saved many lives during the event.
KOCO-TV serves as a default ABC affiliate for the Sherman, Texas/Ada, Oklahoma market due to that market having lacked an ABC affiliate of its own, since KTEN
KTEN
KTEN is the NBC-affiliated television station for Southeastern Oklahoma and North Texas that is licensed to Ada, Oklahoma. It broadcasts a high definition digital signal on UHF channel 26 from a transmitter north of Milburn, Oklahoma along OK 7. Owned by the Lockwood Broadcasting Group, the station...
(channel 10) dropped its secondary ABC affiliation to became a full-time affiliate of NBC in 1998. KOCO-TV is carried as the local ABC affiliate to DISH Network and DirecTV subscribers within that market and the sole ABC affiliate carried by cable operators in cities on the Oklahoma side of the Sherman-Ada market including Sherman and Denison in Texas; as well as Ada in Oklahoma. This has come to an end as KTEN has a subchannel affiliated with the ABC network that went up on May 9, 2010.
Market firsts
- First station in the country to offer an automated weather warning systemFirst WarningFirst Warning is the name of a severe weather warning system made for broadcast television stations in the United States. A weather advisory product based on First Warning, called First Alert, is an automated version of this product, which has come into widespread use by television stations.Both...
(earned the station a Regional News Emmy Award) - First station in the country to send pictures of a storm over cellular telephone (earned the station a Regional News Emmy Award)
- First station to have a helicopter for aerial news gathering
- First station to have mobile Doppler weather radar
- First station to send video over cellular telephone (earned the station a Regional News Emmy nomination)
- First station to have full-screen video over cellular telephone
- First station in Oklahoma to begin its morning newscast at 4:30 a.m.
Programming
KOCO-TV clears all of the ABC schedule, although until the program was dropped by ABC on August 28, 2010, it preempted ABC KidsABC Kids (United States)
ABC Kids was a children's block of animated television series and live-action children's television series. broadcast on the ABC network on Saturday–Sunday mornings in the U.S. and was broadcast on BBS/CTV in Canada until 2002...
airings of Power Rangers
Power Rangers
Power Rangers is a long-running American entertainment and merchandising franchise built around a live action children's television series featuring teams of costumed heroes...
on Saturday mornings due to lack of E/I
E/I
E/I, which stands for "educational and informative," refers to a type of children's television programming shown in the United States. The Federal Communications Commission requires that every full-service Terrestrial television station in the U.S. show at least three hours of these television...
content (which was also the reason all of Hearst-Argyle's ABC affiliates did not carry the program), the show was preempted by the station starting in the fall of 2006 (prior to this, said hour was shown six hours behind the network's recommended time slot of 11 a.m.). KOCO currently delays Jimmy Kimmel Live! by one hour, airing at 12:07 a.m., due to an encore presentation of Oprah
The Oprah Winfrey Show
The Oprah Winfrey Show is an American syndicated talk show hosted and produced by its namesake Oprah Winfrey. It ran nationally for 25 seasons beginning in 1986, before concluding in 2011. It is the highest-rated talk show in American television history....
and as of September 3, 2011, airs the Litton's Weekend Adventure lineup on Saturday mornings and This Week
This Week (ABC TV series)
This Week is ABC's Sunday morning political affairs program.The Sunday morning talk show has aired on Sunday mornings on ABC since 1981; the program is initially aired at 9:00 AM ET, although many stations air the program later, especially those in other time zones...
on Sunday mornings on a one-hour broadcast delay, due to the third hour of its weekend morning newscast. KOCO-TV is unusual as it is one of the few ABC affiliates that preempt the ABC News Briefs aired in-between One Life to Live
One Life to Live
One Life to Live is an American soap opera which debuted on July 15, 1968 and has been broadcast on the ABC television network. Created by Agnes Nixon, the series was the first daytime drama to primarily feature racially and socioeconomically diverse characters and consistently emphasize social...
and General Hospital
General Hospital
General Hospital is an American daytime television drama that is credited by the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest-running American soap opera currently in production and the third longest running drama in television in American history after Guiding Light and As the World Turns....
.
Until January 2, 2008 it was one of several ABC stations to air All My Children
All My Children
All My Children is an American television soap opera that aired on ABC from January 5, 1970 to September 23, 2011. Created by Agnes Nixon, All My Children is set in Pine Valley, Pennsylvania, a fictitious suburb of Philadelphia. The show features Susan Lucci as Erica Kane, one of daytime's most...
weekdays at 11 a.m., instead of the network's recommended time of 12 p.m., due to their midday newscast airing at that time slot. However beginning on that date, All My Children moved to the noon timeslot formerly occupied by the now-defunct midday newscast (The Chew
The Chew
The Chew is an American talk show/cooking show that airs in the United States on ABC as part of the network's weekday daytime lineup, centering on food-related and lifestyle topics. The program also airs in Canada on the stations of the Citytv television system.It premiered on September 26, 2011 ...
now airs in that timeslot, as of September 26, 2011). KOCO-TV also occasionally preempts a primetime ABC program due to special programming. This practice is nothing new, for they also have preempted or delayed some ABC programs during the 1970s and 1980s. For example, the station preempted ABC cartoons The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show and The All New Ewoks on Saturday mornings in order to air the locally-produced program Home Showcase in the spring of 1987.
The station airs most of the highest-rated programs in syndication, with Dr. Phil
Dr. Phil (TV series)
Dr. Phil is a reality/talk television show hosted by Phil McGraw. After McGraw's success with his segments on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Dr. Phil debuted on September 16, 2002...
after Good Morning America
Good Morning America
Good Morning America is an American morning news and talk show that is broadcast on the ABC television network; it debuted on November 3, 1975. The weekday program airs for two hours; a third hour aired between 2007 and 2008 exclusively on ABC News Now...
; Anderson
Anderson (TV series)
Anderson is an American first-run syndicated talk show that is hosted by CNN anchorman Anderson Cooper, who also serves as co-producer in his first foray into daytime talk television. The show debuted on September 12, 2011, and is distributed by Warner Bros...
after The View; The Dr. Oz Show
The Dr. Oz Show
The Dr. Oz Show is an American syndicated television talk show, hosted by Dr. Mehmet Oz, a cardiothoracic surgeon and teaching professor at Columbia University who became famous for his appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show from 2004 until 2009....
and The Ellen DeGeneres Show
The Ellen DeGeneres Show
The Ellen DeGeneres Show, often shortened to Ellen, is an American television talk show hosted by comedian/actress Ellen DeGeneres. Debuting on September 8, 2003, it is produced by Telepictures and airs in syndication, including stations owned by NBC Universal. For its first five seasons, the show...
paired up in mid-afternoons together after ABC daytime programming and before the 5 p.m. newscast; and Wheel of Fortune airing before primetime. Other syndicated programming on KOCO includes Access Hollywood
Access Hollywood
Access Hollywood is a weekday television entertainment news program covering events and celebrities in the entertainment industry. It was created by former Entertainment Tonight executive producer Jim Van Messel, and is currently directed by Robert Silverstein. In previous years, Doug Dougherty and...
on weekdays, and House
House (TV series)
House is an American television medical drama that debuted on the Fox network on November 16, 2004. The show's central character is Dr. Gregory House , an unconventional and misanthropic medical genius who heads a team of diagnosticians at the fictional Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital in...
, Brothers and Sisters and The Closer
The Closer
The Closer is an American crime drama, starring Kyra Sedgwick as Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson, a Georgia police detective who often closes her cases using sometimes-questionable methods...
on weekends. Currently, Wheel of Fortune airs on KOCO-TV, while Jeopardy!
Jeopardy!
Griffin's first conception of the game used a board comprising ten categories with ten clues each, but after finding that this board could not be shown on camera easily, he reduced it to two rounds of thirty clues each, with five clues in each of six categories...
on the other hand, airs on rival NBC affiliate KFOR-TV (it had previously aired on KOCO during the 1980s and early 1990s, and on KWTV afterwards until 1999); Oklahoma City is one of the few media markets to carry Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune on separate television stations. The station carries just over the minimum amount of E/I
E/I
E/I, which stands for "educational and informative," refers to a type of children's television programming shown in the United States. The Federal Communications Commission requires that every full-service Terrestrial television station in the U.S. show at least three hours of these television...
children's programming, as the Litton Weekend Aventure lineup features three hours of E/I shows, and the station airs Teen Kids News
Teen Kids News
Teen Kids News, initially titled EKN Worldwide Kids News, is an educational newsmagazine series aimed at children and teenagers that debuted in first-run syndication the weekend of September 27, 2003. Teen Kids News discusses important issues in a format intended to educate and inform both children...
on Saturdays at noon after the Weekend Aventure block.
KOCO also makes the claim based on Nielsen Media Research
Nielsen Media Research
Nielsen Media Research is an American firm that measures media audiences, including television, radio, theatre films and newspapers...
numbers that it is one of the top-rated ABC affiliates in the nation, which is based on market size and household ratings percentages. In fact, the three highest-rated ABC affiliates in the nation are all Hearst stations (KOCO, along with WISN
WISN-TV
WISN-TV, virtual channel 12.1 , is a television station located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin serving as an affiliate of the ABC television network. Its signal covers most of southeastern Wisconsin and parts of northeastern Illinois, including Racine, Kenosha, Sheboygan and Waukesha...
in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and KMBC
KMBC-TV
KMBC-TV virtual channel 9 is a television station affiliated with the ABC television network, located in Kansas City, Missouri. KMBC-TV is owned by Hearst Television and its studios are located on Winchester Ave. near Swope Park in Kansas City, Missouri. The station's high guyed mast broadcast...
in Kansas City, Missouri
Kansas City, Missouri
Kansas City, Missouri is the largest city in the U.S. state of Missouri and is the anchor city of the Kansas City Metropolitan Area, the second largest metropolitan area in Missouri. It encompasses in parts of Jackson, Clay, Cass, and Platte counties...
).
In December 2010, KOCO became the second station in the Oklahoma City market (after CBS affiliate KWTV
KWTV
KWTV-DT, virtual channel 9 , is the CBS-affiliated television station in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; it is owned by Griffin Communications of Oklahoma City...
) and the sixth television station in the state of Oklahoma to broadcast syndicated programming in high definition; originally only a limited amount of syndicated shows such as Wheel of Fortune, and reruns of The Closer and Comics Unleashed with Byron Allen were broadcast in HD, but since January 2011, all of KOCO's syndicated programming available in HD is broadcast in the format including Oprah, Dr. Phil and The Ellen DeGeneres Show.
News operation
Currently, KOCO-TV airs 29 hours of local news each week (with four hours on weekdays and 4½ hours on weekends). The station's sports segments are titled Sports Xtra, which the station has used since the early 1990s under Gannett ownership under the similar title Sports Extra. From the early 1990s until 2004, the station had a 15-minute Friday night high school football wrap-up show called Prep Sports Extra; though the show continues to this day, the Prep Sports Extra name has since been dropped. KOCO-TV has the fastest-revolving doppler weather radar in the area, "Advantage Doppler HD", and employs the largest fleet of live trucks in the state of Oklahoma. There is a fairly significant turnover rate with most station personalities staying at the station for one to three years before moving on to another station in the area or another media market.In 1992, KOCO launched a local Saturday morning newscast from 8-9 a.m., the newscast was later dropped but relaunched in 1996 in the later timeslot of 10 a.m.-noon. Also in 1996, KOCO expanded its morning newscast from one hour to an hour-and-a-half from 5:30-7 a.m. and the noon newscast was expanded to one hour (the noon news was cut back to a half-hour when Port Charles
Port Charles
Port Charles was a daytime soap opera which aired on ABC from June 2, 1997 to October 3, 2003. It is a spin-off of the serial General Hospital, which has been running since 1963 and takes place in the fictional city of Port Charles, New York...
debuted and remained that way after Port Charles cancellation in 2003, while the morning news expanded to two hours in 1999). For a short period from 1998 to the fall of 1999, the station used a variant of the 24 Hour News Source
24 Hour News Source
The 24 Hour News Source brand was a common name used by American television stations starting in the early 1990s for brief hourly news updates, usually running 30 seconds to a minute in length. At its peak, dozens of stations across the U.S. were producing these brief news updates...
format, offering hourly weather updates by the station's meteorologists, then known as the "24 Hour First Alert Weather" team (shortened to just "First Alert Weather" by 2001), near the top of every hour; KFOR-TV at the time used the traditional 24 Hour News Source
24 Hour News Source
The 24 Hour News Source brand was a common name used by American television stations starting in the early 1990s for brief hourly news updates, usually running 30 seconds to a minute in length. At its peak, dozens of stations across the U.S. were producing these brief news updates...
format featuring round-the-clock news updates. In February 2006, the station added a two-hour Sunday morning newscast from 7-9 a.m.
Like some of its ABC-affiliated sister stations, KOCO has added more newscasts to their schedule over the last few years; on the week of January 2, 2008, the weekday noon newscast was dropped (a 30-second weather update now runs just before the noon slot), a 5 p.m. newscast was added on Saturday evenings and the Saturday and Sunday morning newscasts were moved from 10 a.m.-12 p.m. and 7-9 a.m., respectively to the earlier timeslot of 5-7 a.m. The cancellation of the noon newscast meant that for the first time none of the ABC affiliates in the state of Oklahoma had midday newscasts (KTUL
KTUL
KTUL, virtual channel 8, is the ABC-affiliated television station in Tulsa, Oklahoma, owned by Allbritton Communications Company. KTUL broadcasts from its studios on Lookout Mountain in west Tulsa...
in Tulsa and KSWO
KSWO-TV
KSWO-TV, virtual channel 7, is the ABC affiliated television station located in Lawton, Oklahoma. It also serves Wichita Falls, Texas. Its transmitter is located near Grandfield, Oklahoma. KSWO broadcasts its digital signal on VHF channel 11...
in Lawton do not carry midday newscasts either). The station is also unusual in programming an hour-long newscast on Sundays at 10 p.m., which expanded from 35 minutes in 2006; as a result, Sunday Sports Xtra was absorbed into the newscast and reduced to a 15-minute segment near the end of the newscast.
KOCO also has partnerships with The Enid News & Eagle
Enid News & Eagle
The Enid News & Eagle is a daily newspaper published each morning in Enid, Oklahoma, USA. The publication covers several counties in northwest Oklahoma and is owned by Community Newspaper Holdings Inc....
(the station's only link to its former city of license) and The Norman Transcript
The Norman Transcript
The Norman Transcript is a daily newspaper published in Norman, Oklahoma, USA, covering Cleveland and McClain counties, in the southern suburbs of Oklahoma City. It is owned by Community Newspaper Holdings Inc....
. In the 1990s, during its final years under Gannett ownership, KOCO attempted to start its own investigative unit known as the I-Team (which is also the name of investigative units on several other stations including former sister station KSDK
KSDK
KSDK, Channel 5, is the NBC-affiliated television station in St. Louis, Missouri. KSDK is owned and operated by Gannett Company, and the station's transmitter is located in Marlborough, Missouri. The station broadcasts a digital signal on UHF channel 35, using its former analog channel assignment...
in St. Louis, Missouri). Rival KWTV also attempted an investigative unit around the same time.
Chief Meteorologist Rick Mitchell has had the longest tenure of the entire KOCO on-air staff; Mitchell joined the station in 1994 (he is the only on-air personality to work at Channel 5 under both Gannett and Hearst-Argyle ownership). In a market where many television personalities have been around for fifteen years or more, almost all of KOCO's on-air staff (except for Mitchell) have worked at the station for fewer than ten years. The current Mayor of Oklahoma City since 2005, Mick Cornett
Mick Cornett
Mick Cornett is the current Mayor of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States. He also serves on notable positions including the national President of the Republican Mayors and Local Officials , and also serves on the Board of Trustees for the U.S. Conference of Mayors. He was also Chairman of the...
, was a former member of KOCO's news staff. He joined the station in the early 1980s as a sports anchor/reporter. He was later appointed morning and noon news anchor in the mid-1990s before leaving the station in 1998.
In October 2009, KOCO upgraded its news ticker shown during the weekday morning newscast and breaking news and the weather alert map shown during regular programming in advance of severe weather and had months earlier upgraded the school closings ticker to fit 16:9 widescreen televisions. From October 2009 until October 11, 2010 the newscasts were, however, broadcast with blue pillarboxing with the station's callsign angled vertically on the left and right thirds of the screen. On October 11, 2010, just one day after Hearst sister-station WISN
WISN-TV
WISN-TV, virtual channel 12.1 , is a television station located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin serving as an affiliate of the ABC television network. Its signal covers most of southeastern Wisconsin and parts of northeastern Illinois, including Racine, Kenosha, Sheboygan and Waukesha...
began broadcasting local news in widescreen
Widescreen
Widescreen images are a variety of aspect ratios used in film, television and computer screens. In film, a widescreen film is any film image with a width-to-height aspect ratio greater than the standard 1.37:1 Academy aspect ratio provided by 35mm film....
standard definition, KOCO began broadcasting their local newscasts in widescreen standard definition, however the station has yet to upgrade its newscasts to high definition. Not all of KOCO's cameras shoot in native widescreen, which results in much of KOCO's video footage being upconverted from the original 4:3 standard definition and stretched to widescreen dimensions in the control room for broadcast. On July 31, 2010 KOCO-TV added an hour-long extension of its weekend morning newscasts from 8-9 a.m., which competes against weekend morning newscasts on KFOR-TV. On September 22, 2010 KOCO expanded its weekday morning newscast to 2½ hours, with the start time moved to 4:30 a.m., becoming the first Oklahoma television station with a pre-5 a.m. morning newscast.
Rick Mitchell
Rick Mitchell has served as the evening chief meteorologist at KOCO-TV since 1994. Mitchell and the station's First Alert Storm Team also provide forecasts for The Edmond SunThe Edmond Sun
The Edmond Sun is a six-day morning daily newspaper published in Edmond, Oklahoma, U.S., covering the northern suburbs of Oklahoma City.It is published by Community Newspaper Holdings Inc. It is located in Edmond Oklahoma....
and the Enid News & Eagle
Enid News & Eagle
The Enid News & Eagle is a daily newspaper published each morning in Enid, Oklahoma, USA. The publication covers several counties in northwest Oklahoma and is owned by Community Newspaper Holdings Inc....
newspapers. Mitchell is a member of the American Meteorological Society
American Meteorological Society
The American Meteorological Society promotes the development and dissemination of information and education on the atmospheric and related oceanic and hydrologic sciences and the advancement of their professional applications. Founded in 1919, the American Meteorological Society has a membership...
and is a recipient of their Television Seal of Approval. Mitchell has several awards, including "Best Weathercast" by the Oklahoma Association of Broadcasters and the Oklahoma chapter of the Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
.
Mitchell graduated with a bachelor of science degree in meteorology from the University of Nebraska in 1987, and afterwards began working with the State College, Pennsylvania
State College, Pennsylvania
State College is the largest borough in Centre County in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. It is the principal city of the State College, Pennsylvania Metropolitan Statistical Area which encompasses all of Centre County. As of the 2010 census, the borough population was 42,034, and roughly double...
-based weather forecasting company AccuWeather
AccuWeather
AccuWeather is an American media company that provides for-profit weather forecasting services worldwide.AccuWeather was founded in 1962 by Joel N. Myers, then a Penn State graduate student working on degrees in meteorology. His first customer was a gas company in Pennsylvania. While running the...
. In 1990, Mitchell entered into television meteorology with his first job at ABC affiliate WOI-TV
WOI-TV
WOI-DT, channel 5, is the ABC-affiliated television station licensed to Ames, and serving the Des Moines, Iowa market. Its studios are in West Des Moines...
in Des Moines, Iowa
Des Moines, Iowa
Des Moines is the capital and the most populous city in the US state of Iowa. It is also the county seat of Polk County. A small portion of the city extends into Warren County. It was incorporated on September 22, 1851, as Fort Des Moines which was shortened to "Des Moines" in 1857...
. By 1993, he was named the chief meteorologist. In 1994, Mitchell moved to Oklahoma City after being hired as the chief meteorologist at ABC affiliate KOCO-TV, where he has worked ever since. His coverage of the Oklahoma Tornado Outbreak
Oklahoma Tornado Outbreak
The 1999 Oklahoma tornado outbreak was a severe weather event that lasted from May 3 until May 6, 1999 and brought violent storms to Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas, Texas, and Tennessee. This article concentrates on the events on May 3, when 66 tornadoes broke out in Oklahoma and Kansas...
on May 3, 1999, including an F5 tornado that destroyed parts of the suburbs of Moore
Moore, Oklahoma
Moore is a city in Cleveland County, Oklahoma and is part of the Oklahoma City Metropolitan Area. The population was 55,081 at the 2010 census, making it the seventh largest city in the state of Oklahoma....
, Midwest City
Midwest City, Oklahoma
Midwest City is a city in Oklahoma County, Oklahoma, United States, and a part of the Oklahoma City metropolitan area. As of the 2010 census, the population was 54,371, making it the eighth largest city in the state....
and Del City
Del City, Oklahoma
Del City is a city in Oklahoma County, Oklahoma, United States, and a part of the Oklahoma City metropolitan area. The population was 21,332 at the 2010 census....
, earned Mitchell and the First Alert Storm Team a special award of recognition from then-governor Frank Keating
Frank Keating
Francis Anthony "Frank" Keating is an American politician from Oklahoma. Keating served as the 25th Governor of Oklahoma. His first term began in 1995 and ended in 1999...
.
Mitchell had a cameo appearance (both in voice-only and on a television screen) during a scene in which a large tornado hits a drive-in theatre and served as one of three "weather announcers" (along with KWTV
KWTV
KWTV-DT, virtual channel 9 , is the CBS-affiliated television station in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; it is owned by Griffin Communications of Oklahoma City...
chief meteorologist Gary England
Gary England
-External links:* *...
and Jeff Lazalier, former chief meteorologist at NBC affiliate KJRH
KJRH
KJRH-TV, virtual channel 2, is the NBC-affiliated television station in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It is owned by The E.W. Scripps Company. KJRH broadcasts from its studios in the Brookside district in midtown Tulsa on South Peoria Avenue and its transmitter is located in Oneta, Oklahoma.The station...
in Tulsa, Oklahoma
Tulsa, Oklahoma
Tulsa is the second-largest city in the state of Oklahoma and 46th-largest city in the United States. With a population of 391,906 as of the 2010 census, it is the principal municipality of the Tulsa Metropolitan Area, a region with 937,478 residents in the MSA and 988,454 in the CSA. Tulsa's...
) in the 1996 movie Twister.
Ratings
KOCO-TV designated the number one-rated ABC affiliate in the United States in the February 2007 sweeps period and is one of only two stations in the Oklahoma City market (#45, 2006–2007) to have been given the title of the number one network station, owned-and-operated or affiliated, in the United States. The only other is KOCBKOCB
KOCB, virtual channel 34 , is the CW-affiliated television station in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. It is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group of Maryland, LLC, in a duopoly with Fox affiliate KOKH-TV...
(channel 34, now a CW affiliate), was the number one WB affiliate in the nation for the 2005-2006 season, its final year as a WB affiliate.
The station's newscasts are currently the top-rated programs (per Nielsen Media Research) at both 5:00 and 6:00 p.m. KOCO-TV also features the market's highest-rated daytime programming and, as of November 2006, the most-watched network newscast in ABC's World News with Charles Gibson.
Newscast titles
- KGEO-TV News (1954–1958)
- The Big News (1958–1964)
- Newscope (1964–1974)
- Channel 5 Eyewitness NewsEyewitness NewsEyewitness News is a style of news broadcasting used by local television stations in different markets across the United States. It refers to a particular style of television newscast with an emphasis on visual elements and action video...
(1974–1977; Eyewitness NewsEyewitness NewsEyewitness News is a style of news broadcasting used by local television stations in different markets across the United States. It refers to a particular style of television newscast with an emphasis on visual elements and action video...
branding previously used by KWTV from 1966–1971) - 5 Alive NewsCenter (1977–1983)
- 5 Alive News (1983–1994)
- 5 News (1994–1997)
- Oklahoma's 5 News (1997–1998)
- Eyewitness NewsEyewitness NewsEyewitness News is a style of news broadcasting used by local television stations in different markets across the United States. It refers to a particular style of television newscast with an emphasis on visual elements and action video...
5 (1998–present)
Station slogans
- "The NewsCenter of Oklahoma" (late 1970s–early 1980s)
- "Hello Oklahoma" (early 1980s–1986, when the station used Frank Gari's Hello News)
- "Something's Happening on 5 Alive" (1987–1989; localized version of ABC ad campaign)
- "The Station Where You Get More News" (1992–1994)
- "The One to Count On" (1994–1998)
- "Live. Local. Latebreaking." (1998–present; news slogan)
- "America's #1 ABC Station" (2007–2009)
- "Believe in Oklahoma" (2007–present; originally used in special reports relating to the Oklahoma Centennial)
- "One of America's Leading ABC Affiliates" (2009–present; used in newscast opens)
- "Stay with Eyewitness NewsEyewitness NewsEyewitness News is a style of news broadcasting used by local television stations in different markets across the United States. It refers to a particular style of television newscast with an emphasis on visual elements and action video...
5, We'll Keep You Ahead of the Storm." (weather slogan)
Current on-air staff (as of November 1, 2011)
Anchors- Anita Blanton - weekday mornings (4:30-7 a.m.); also fill-in evening anchor and weeknight reporter
- Wendell Edwards - Saturdays at 5 and 6, Sundays at 5:30 and weekends at 10 p.m.; also weeknight reporter
- Paul Folger - weeknights at 5, 6 and 10 p.m.; also reporter
- Mat Garcia - weekday mornings (4:30-7 a.m.); also reporter
- Jessica Schambach - Sundays at 5:30, Monday-Thursdays at 5 and 6, and Sunday-Thursdays at 10 p.m.
- Maggie Stokes - weekend mornings; also weekday morning reporter
- Dan Thomas - weekend mornings; also weekday reporter
First Alert Weather
In addition to providing forecasts on KOCO-TV, the First Alert Storm Team also provides forecasts for KATT-FM
KATT-FM
KATT-FM , known as "Rock 100.5 The KATT", is an active rock radio station serving the Oklahoma City area and is owned by Cumulus Media.-History:...
, WWLS-AM, KQOB-FM, WWLS-FM
WWLS-FM
WWLS-FM is a radio station broadcasting a Sports radio format. Licensed to The Village, Oklahoma, USA, the station serves the Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA, area...
, KKWD
KKWD
KKWD, known as "WILD 104.9", is a Rhythmic Top 40 radio station serving the Oklahoma City area. The Cumulus Media outlet broadcasts at 104.9 MHz with an effective radiated power of 6 kW and is licensed to Bethany, Oklahoma....
, KYIS-FM radio, and the Enid News and Eagle newspaper.
- Rick Mitchell (AMSAmerican Meteorological SocietyThe American Meteorological Society promotes the development and dissemination of information and education on the atmospheric and related oceanic and hydrologic sciences and the advancement of their professional applications. Founded in 1919, the American Meteorological Society has a membership...
Seal of Approval) - chief meteorologist; weeknights at 5 and 6, Sundays at 5:30, and Sunday-Thursdays at 10 p.m. - Damon Lane (AMS Seal of Approval) - meteorologist; weekday mornings
- Rusty McCranie (AMS Certified Broadcast MeteorologistCertified Broadcast MeteorologistCertified Broadcast Meteorologist is a rating for meteorologists given by the American Meteorological Society.The Certified Broadcast Meteorologist program was established to raise the professional standard in broadcast meteorology and encourage a broader range of scientific understanding,...
Seal of Approval) - meteorologist; Friday-Saturdays at 5, 6 and 10 p.m. - Steve Carano - substitute meteorologist; weekend mornings
Sports Xtra
- Bob Irzyk - sports director; weeknights at 6 and 10 p.m., also Sports Xtra co-host
- Daniel Holdge - sports anchor; Saturdays at 5, 6 and 10, and Sundays at 5:30 p.m., also Sports Xtra co-host
- Carson Cunningham - sports reporter
Reporters
- Katy Blakey - general assignment reporter
- Rachel Calderon - weekday morning "Traffic Watch" reporter
- Caleb Collier - "Sky5" pilot
- Naveen Dhaliwal - general assignment reporter
- Jessica Holloway - general assignment reporter
- Michael Seiden - general assignment reporter
- Carla Wade - general assignment reporter
Hearst Television Washington Bureau
- Kate Amara - Washington D.C. bureau reporter
- Sally Kidd - Washington D.C. bureau reporter
- Nikole Killion - Washington D.C. bureau reporter
First Alert Storm Team "FAST Unit" Storm Chasers
- Chad Bradley - FAST Unit 51
- Chris Caldwell - FAST Unit 55
- Gary Clouch - FAST Unit 56
- Brandon Foster - FAST Unit 11
- Mark Fryklund - FAST Unit 5
- Chris Lee - FAST Unit 2
- George McKinnis - FAST Unit 52
- Jack Quirk - FAST Unit 54
- Jimmy Taylor - FAST Unit 13
Notable former on-air staff
- Ed BirchallEd BirchallEdward Phillips Birchall was known to generations of Oklahomans as HO-HO the Clown.- Biography :Mr. Birchall was born on July 16, 1923 of Irish heritage in Colchester, Connecticut and served in the United States Army Air Corps during World War II. A lover of the circus, he performed as a freelance...
(a.k.a. "Ho Ho the Clown") - children's television personality (1959–1988) - Dean BlevinsDean BlevinsDean Blevins is an American sportscaster. He is the main sportscaster for KWTV, the CBS affiliate in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. He also is a co-host of an afternoon radio show on the Sports Animal called "The Total Dominance Hour."...
- sports director (1990–1994; now at KWTV in same position) - Mick CornettMick CornettMick Cornett is the current Mayor of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States. He also serves on notable positions including the national President of the Republican Mayors and Local Officials , and also serves on the Board of Trustees for the U.S. Conference of Mayors. He was also Chairman of the...
- sports anchor/morning news anchor/reporter (1981–1999; now Mayor of Oklahoma City) - Jane Jayroe - anchor/reporter (1977–1980 and 1985–1992; former Miss America 1967)
- Ben McCainBen McCainBen McCain is a Los Angeles-based actor, television host, news anchor, reporter, producer, director, writer and one half of The McCain Brothers, a singing and songwriting duo...
- news anchor (1987–1994; now actor and producer/host/reporter at Time Warner CableTime Warner CableTime Warner Cable is an American cable television company that operates in 28 states and has 31 operating divisions...
in Los Angeles) - Butch McCainButch McCainButch McCain is an American actor, broadcaster, writer, producer and one half of the singing songwriting team, The McCain Brothers. Butch has appeared numerous films including MGM's cult classic Bio-Dome, Roger Corman's remake of Humanoids from the Deep, and in Bruce Campbell's My Name Is Bruce,...
- weatherman (1987–1994; now actor/weather anchor at KKCOKKCOKKCO digital channel 12 is an NBC affiliate in the Grand Junction/Montrose, Colorado market. The station is owned by Gray Television.-History:...
in Grand Junction, Colorado) - Mike MorganMike Morgan (meteorologist)Mike Morgan is a television meteorologist. Since January 1993, he has served as the evening chief meteorologist at KFOR-TV, the NBC-affiliated television station in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Morgan is a member of the American Meteorological Society and the National Weather Association...
- chief meteorologist (1989–1992; now at KFOR-TV in same position) - Cameron SandersCameron SandersRonald L. "Cameron" Sanders Ronald L. "Cameron" Sanders is an American Journalist as well as a Consultant to non-profits and corporations on media matters. He was Business Editor and Host of public radio’s Marketplace 1989-1993 and a correspondent for CNN from 1989–1993, based in Los Angeles. He...
- reporter (1982–1983; later correspondent for CNNCNNCable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
and host of NPR's Marketplace)