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KRIV

Houston, Texas United States
Branding	Fox 26 Houston
Slogan	You miss a little, you miss a lot
Channels	Digital: 26 (UHF) Virtual: 26 (PSIP)
Affiliations	26.1: Fox (O&O) 26.2: Light TV
Owner	Fox Television Stations, LLC
First air date	August 15, 1971 (47 years ago) (1971-08-15)
Call letters' meaning	Albert KRIVin (former executive of former parent company, Metromedia)
Sister station(s)	KTXH
Former callsigns	KVRL (1971–1975) KDOG-TV (1975–1978) KRIV-TV (1978–1986)
Former channel number(s)	Analog: 26 (UHF, 1971–2009) Digital: 27 (UHF, 2001–2009)
Former affiliations	Independent (1971–1986)
Transmitter power	1000 kW
Height	598 m (1,962 ft)
Facility ID	22204
Transmitter coordinates	29°34′28″N 95°29′37″W / 29.57444°N 95.49361°W / 29.57444; -95.49361Coordinates: 29°34′28″N 95°29′37″W / 29.57444°N 95.49361°W / 29.57444; -95.49361
Licensing authority	FCC
Public license information:	Profile CDBS
Website	www.fox26houston.com

Studios for KRIV and KTXH.

KRIV, virtual and UHF digital channel 26, is a Fox owned-and-operated television station licensed to Houston, Texas, United States. The station is owned by the Fox Television Stations subsidiary of 21st Century Fox, as part of a duopoly with MyNetworkTV owned-and-operated station KTXH (channel 20). The two stations share studios on Southwest Freeway in Houston (between the Uptown and Greenway Plaza districts); KRIV's transmitter is located near Missouri City, Texas, in unincorporated northeastern Fort Bend County.

History[edit]

Early history[edit]

The station first signed on the air on August 15, 1971 as KVRL, operating as an independent station. It was the third UHF television station in Houston, after KHTV (channel 39, now KIAH) and KVVV-TV (channel 16, which lasted only for 18 months). Four years after signing on, in 1975, the station's call letters were changed to KDOG—a callsign chosen by former station general manager Leroy Gloger. Another former general manager, Jerry Marcus commented (upon his retirement) that he saw the calls appropriate during the station's formative years as, in his words, channel 26 was a "dogged station" ratings-wise. The station's slogan during this timeframe was "Where every dog has his day." During this period, the station aired English-language general entertainment programming including old cartoons, sitcoms, and classic movies during the daytime hours, along with Spanish-language programs including telenovelas, movies and serial drama series at night. For its first two decades on the air, channel 26 operated from studio facilities located at 3935 Westheimer Road in Houston's Highland Village section, which is now the site of an H-E-B Central Market.

Acquisition by Metromedia[edit]

In May 1978, Metromedia purchased the station and changed its call letters to the current KRIV-TV, named in honor of then-Metromedia executive Albert Krivin. Jerry Marcus, general sales manager of Metromedia's Washington, D.C. station WTTG, was hired to manage channel 26's operations, remaining there until his retirement in December 1999. This influx of dollars from Metromedia's investment in the station resulted in KRIV acquiring higher-profile syndicated programs and by 1983, the establishment of its news department. The station ran a general entertainment format complete with cartoons, sitcoms, movies, first-run syndicated shows, locally produced talk shows and one of the few Spanish-language public affairs programs on television at the time. Overall, the station's viewership ranked near KHTV, a more well-established outlet, over the years.

As a Fox owned-and-operated station[edit]

In 1986, Australian newspaper tycoon Rupert Murdoch purchased KRIV and the other five television stations in the Metromedia group, all of which became the founding owned-and-operated stations of his new television network, the Fox Broadcasting Company; upon the change in ownership, the station officially dropped the "-TV" suffix from its callsign. The acquisition resulted in channel 26 and the other former Metromedia stations to suddenly adopt a more sophisticated on-air appearance for a network, that at the time, did not exist. A unified music and graphics package was featured on all of the original Fox-owned stations, including KRIV, which was consistently noted for featuring graphics that were among the first of their kind for local television. The station changed its on-air branding to the current "Fox 26" upon the network's October 9, 1986 launch. Despite being a member of the new network, KRIV's schedule wouldn't change that much, as at that time, Fox only aired a late-night talk show upon the network's launch; even when primetime programming followed in 1987, the network initially aired the lineup on Saturdays and Sundays. Fox continued to gradually add additional nights of programming over the next six years until it went seven days a week in 1993. Over that seven-week wait, KRIV was still essentially a de facto independent station.

As a Fox owned-and-operated station, KRIV acquired more first-run syndicated programming. Upon adding its weekday morning newscast in 1993, KRIV removed its morning cartoon block, although it continued to run afternoon children's programming from Fox Kids until the network discontinued that block's weekday lineup nationwide in the end of 2001. It should also be noted that, from the 1993–1994 period when Fox acquired the rights to carry the NFC package from CBS as well as more VHF outlets to accommodate this (resulting in affiliation switches through New World Communications), KRIV is the longest serving Fox O&O not to be located in an NFC market (the Houston Texans are a member of the AFC, however, since their founding in 2002, the station does air at least two Texans games a year, when the team plays host to an NFC team at NRG Stadium, or, beginning in 2014, with the institution of 'cross-flex' rules, games that are arbitrarily moved from KHOU to KRIV).

In 1997, KRIV moved from its original Westheimer Road studios to a state-of-the-art digital facility near the Southwest Freeway (the former studio facilities currently house a Central Market food store, owned by the grocery chain H-E-B). and upgraded the look of its newscasts with the debut of a brand new set, graphics, news theme ("The Edge" by VU Music, now Cue11) and a new multi-paned rectangle logo similar to those implemented by other Fox-owned stations following the network's 1994 affiliation agreement with New World Communications.

With this upgraded presence in Houston, channel 26 went from outperforming former independents KTXH and KHWB (the former KHTV, now KIAH) to regularly challenging the market's Big Three stations–NBC affiliate KPRC-TV (channel 2), CBS affiliate KHOU-TV (channel 11) and ABC-owned KTRK-TV (channel 13)–in the ratings. During this time KRIV's studios also became a taping location for various syndicated programs produced by 20th Television, including the court shows Texas Justice, Cristina's Court and Judge Alex. In mid-August 2006, channel 26's website adopted the MyFox website design originally designed by Fox Interactive Media; this technically marked the station's first serious online venture in a number of years, as the station's previous 2001-era website served as somewhat of a placeholder and contained little station information.

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 KRIV's parent company, 21st Century Fox, for $66.1 billion, pending regulatory approval; the sale will exclude KRIV and sister station KTXH as well as the Fox network, the MyNetworkTV programming service and the Fox Television Stations unit, which will be transferred to a separate company.^[1][2]

Digital television[edit]

Digital channels[edit]

The station's digital channel is multiplexed:

Analog-to-digital conversion[edit]

KRIV discontinued regular programming on its analog signal, over UHF channel 26, on June 12, 2009, as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television.^[4] The station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition UHF channel 27 to channel 26 for post-transition operations.^[5]

Programming[edit]

Syndicated programming on KRIV includes Judge Judy, The Wendy Williams Show, The Real, Steve, and TMZ (including it's live counterpart).

Sports programming[edit]

Channel 26 airs all Fox Sports productions. It includes select games of Big 12 Conference football, plus at least two Houston Texans games each season (primarily when playing an NFC opponent at NRG Stadium, and since 2014, via the NFL's new 'cross-flex' broadcast rules, Texans games involving an AFC opponent that are moved over from KHOU). The station was also involved with the Houston Oilers for three seasons, from 1994 to 1996. Through Fox's Major League Baseball contract, it has carried both World Series featuring the Houston Astros in 2005 and 2017, the latter giving the Astros their first World Series title. It also airs any Saturday afternoon games that involve the Astros.

News operation[edit]

KRIV presently broadcasts 54 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with 9 hours on weekdays, 5 hours on Saturdays and 4 hours on Sundays); in regards to the number of hours devoted to news programming, it is the highest newscast output of any television station in the Houston market. As is standard with Fox stations that carry early evening weekend newscasts, KRIV's Saturday and Sunday 5:00 p.m. newscasts are subject to preemption due to network sports telecasts that are scheduled to overlap into the timeslot.

KRIV has touted its newscasts as the fastest growing in the Houston area ratings, and had outperformed KPRC's newscasts during the February 2007 sweeps period. During Jan Jeffcoat's tenure as morning anchor from 2004 to 2007, KRIV saw a major jump in ratings in the morning slot, surpassing KPRC (though still behind ABC-owned KTRK-TV and CBS affiliate KHOU). The station's flagship 9 p.m. newscast often trails behind network programs in the ratings, and KRIV's newscasts still trail in overall viewership behind KHOU and KTRK (both of which battle for first place in Houston television ratings books, with KTRK's dominance dating back to the 1970s); however, channel 26's newscasts perform well among young women 25-35, and teenagers, which are both key audiences for KRIV.

Prior to the formation of KRIV's news department, the station ran hourly local news updates during regular programming from 1971 to 1983. Full-fledged newscasts on channel 26 began in 1983, with the debut of the flagship 9 p.m. newscast as the first major primetime news program in the market; the program was moved to 7 p.m. shortly after joining Fox but moved back to the 9 p.m. slot in 1989 as the network had expanded its primetime schedule to additional nights. In 1987, the station formed an investigative unit, and a program called City Under Siege, which aired after the late evening newscast. Originally hosted by anchors Jim Marsh and Fran Fawcett, the show was actually a predecessor to one of the Fox network's later standout hit series, Cops. In 1993, KRIV joined several other Fox-owned stations in launching a weekday morning newscast. Also in the early 1990s, KRIV added a midday newscast at 12:30 p.m., which would later move to noon during the early 2000s.

The station debuted an hour-long weeknight 5 p.m. newscast on August 18, 2008; the program later expanded to Saturday and Sunday evenings on July 7, 2012 (prior to the 5 p.m. newscast's expansion to weekend evenings, KRIV was one of only two Fox-owned stations – alongside Chicago sister station WFLD – that did not have an early evening newscast seven nights each week); that same date, KRIV debuted a three-hour newscast on weekend mornings.^[6]

On January 31, 2009, KRIV became the fourth television station in Houston (behind KHOU, KTRK-TV and KPRC) to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition. With the transition came the adoption of a new high-definition version of the standardized graphics package used on Fox's owned-and-operated stations. On September 7, 2009, the station expanded its weekday morning newscast to five hours with the launch of Fox 26 Morning News Extra as a less formal, hour-long newscast at 9 a.m. On March 29, 2010, KRIV became the first station in Houston and the first Fox-owned station to start their morning newscasts at 4 a.m., with the addition of a sixth hour to its morning newscast.

Notable current on-air news staff[edit]

• 
  Isiah Carey - general assignment reporter


• 
  Kaitlin Monte - anchor

Notable former on-air staff[edit]

• 
  Anna Davlantes - anchor (later at WFLD in Chicago)


• 
  Jan Jeffcoat - (2004–2007; was most recently at WUSA-TV in Washington, DC)


• 
  Katie McCall - (2014–2016; now at WTSP in St. Petersburg/Tampa, FL)


• 
  Chau Nguyen - reporter (1998–2000)^[7]
  


• 
  Hank Plante^[8]
  

References[edit]

External links[edit]

• Official website


• Query the FCC's TV station database for KRIV


• BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on KRIV-TV