KDAF (channel 33) is a television station licensed to Dallas, Texas, United States, serving as the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex's outlet for The CW. It is owned by Nexstar Media Group, whose Tegna subsidiary owns ABC affiliate WFAA (channel 8) and independent station KFAA-TV (channel 29). KDAF's studios are located off the John W. Carpenter Freeway (State Highway 183) in northwest Dallas, and its transmitter is located in Cedar Hill, Texas.
KDAF launched in 1980 as KNBN-TV, which aired several types of specialty programs, including business news, subscription television, and Spanish-language programming. Metromedia acquired the station in 1984, converted it to an English-language independent station as KRLD-TV, and made the first of several efforts at local news. When Metromedia's television stations were purchased in 1986, KRLD-TV became KDAF and the Dallas–Fort Worth outlet of Fox; this continued until 1995, when a major realignment of affiliations saw Fox partner with another station and sell off channel 33. Tribune Broadcasting owned the station from 1996 to 2019; during this time, it was one of the most successful affiliates of The WB in the late 1990s and resumed local news production, which continued in some form for nearly two decades.
Prior history of channel 33 in Dallas
Channel 33 was allocated to Dallas in 1966 as part of a settlement between two applicants that had been competing for channel 29: Maxwell Electronics Corporation and Overmyer Communications. In order to give each applicant a channel, Overmyer suggested moving channel 27 from Tyler to Dallas and substituting 33 for 29, with Overmyer taking 27 and Maxwell taking 33. While the Overmyer application ultimately was dropped, Maxwell's channel 33 went ahead, launching as independent station KMEC-TV on October 1, 1967. It was one of three new UHF independent stations in the Metroplex in six months (KFWT-TV [channel 21] had signed on September 19 and KDTV [channel 39] would debut in February 1968), and it was the first to fold. On October 25, 1968, Maxwell announced it was taking KMEC-TV dark and selling the station to Evans Broadcasting Company.
Evans did not restore KMEC-TV to operational status. Instead, it sold the construction permit in 1971 to Berean Fellowship International, which returned channel 33 to air as KBFI-TV on February 21, 1972. Berean, a locally based Christian ministry, operated the station as a family-oriented, general-entertainment independent with weekend religious programming. KBFI-TV lasted 10 months, closing on Christmas Eve.
The Portsmouth, Virginia–based Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) purchased the license and returned channel 33 to the air on April 16, 1973, as KXTX-TV. It was CBN's third operating television station, after WYAH-TV in Portsmouth, and WANX-TV in Atlanta. As did CBN's other independent stations (and KBFI-TV), it maintained a general entertainment and religious format. However, just two months later, Doubleday Broadcasting, the owner of KDTV which had sought to sell or donate the facility to a nonprofit organization, opted to donate the channel 39 license to CBN, which paid for $1.2 million in program contracts that had dampened interest in Doubleday's offer from educational groups. On November 14, 1973, KXTX-TV's programming and staff moved to channel 39, using the KDTV license and studio facilities.
KNBN-TV In 1974, the National Business Network applied to the FCC for a new construction permit to launch a new station on that allocation, which was issued on June 13, 1977. NBN was a locally based group operated by Nolanda Hill and Sheldon Turner (both of whom, who had previously successfully lobbied the Dallas City Council to have a cable television franchise established in the city, each owned a 40% interest); other investors included, among others, radio broadcaster Gordon McLendon, who had made previous failed attempts to launch a UHF television station in the market and served as a commentator on precious metals once it launched.
The current television station that would become KDAF first signed on the air on September 29, 1980, as KNBN-TV. It operated from studio facilities located in a converted warehouse on 3333 Harry Hines Boulevard near downtown Dallas. The initial programming format consisted of business news programming during the daytime hours; evenings, meanwhile, were occupied by the subscription television service VEU (owned by Gene Autry's Golden West Broadcasters), featuring a mix of feature films, specials and, during the NBA season, Dallas Mavericks game telecasts. Golden West had purchased the franchise from Subscription Television of America, a company led by Dallas Cowboys owner Clint Murchison, as well as that company's franchises to operate in Chicago; Atlanta; San Francisco; and Providence, Rhode Island.
The original mix changed within a year when the station added programming from the Spanish International Network in the early evening hours. In March 1982, the remaining business programming disappeared after Turner was not able to build a national syndication base for NBN's output, and KNBN-TV began devoting its entire conventional broadcast day to Spanish programming from SIN. When VEU bought the subscriber base of rival service Preview, the service transitioned from channel 33 to KTWS-TV (channel 27) beginning in December; the decision was taken because the contract with KTWS-TV offered more flexibility for expansion than that with KNBN-TV, and Turner and Hill were reported to be unhappy with VEU.
Metromedia ownership as KRLD-TV In 1983, Hill Broadcasting sold KNBN to New York City-based Metromedia, which already owned independent stations in five of the six major U.S. cities where it owned television stations, for $15 million; the sale was finalized on November 8 of that year. While KNBN continued its existing programming, it was immediately apparent that it would not last for long. Though Hispanic leaders protested the change at the Metroplex's only Spanish-language station, it was to no avail, as Metromedia sought to switch to an English-language format that would attract advertisers.
On July 29, 1984, the station's call letters were changed to KRLD-TV to match radio station KRLD (1080 AM), which became a sister property to the television station after Metromedia successfully sought the FCC for a waiver of its cross-ownership regulations to let it retain KRLD radio and the UHF station. (This made channel 33 the second KRLD-TV in Dallas; the call letters had been used on channel 4 when it was co-owned with KRLD until 1970.) That same day, channel 33 relaunched as an English-language general-entertainment independent. Its operations relocated to studio facilities located next door to KRLD radio at the station's current facility on John W. Carpenter Freeway on the northwest side of Dallas. The new studio facilities, which replaced the Harry Hines Boulevard site that incoming anchor Quin Mathews called "a dump" and "a warehouse that had not even been disguised effectively as a television station", also included a newsroom, accommodating the centerpiece of KRLD-TV's programming, a 7 p.m. newscast. The newscast, along with plans that were ultimately delayed and aborted to start a local news service at Metromedia's WFLD-TV in Chicago, were part of securing the ability to co-own KRLD radio with the UHF station.
The new KRLD-TV was entering a very crowded marketplace, one of the justifications made by Metromedia in securing the waiver. Its competition included KTXA, KXTX-TV, and KTVT, the latter of which was the leading independent in the market at the time. Months later, KDFI debuted on channel 27 after it was sold to a group that immediately dropped the VEU programming. Even under Metromedia, one of the country's largest owners of major-market independents, channel 33 continued to underperform as most of the stronger programs available on the syndication market had been acquired by either its rival independents or by the market's network affiliates; the station also struggled to define a clear programming identity as it heavily incorporated movies, reruns, and children's programs, while the shows it did air were repeatedly moved to different time slots in hopes of shoring up their ratings. The station attempted a coup to improve viewership by acquiring the local rights to syndicated reruns of Dallas and Dynasty for a reported fee of up to $38,000 per episode, only for neither show to pull decent ratings locally when they joined the station in September 1985.
The KRLD 7 pm News After channel 33 was sold to Metromedia, its new owners heavily invested in the creation of a news department for the-then KRLD-TV, acquiring modernized technology (including a computer system and several Sony Betacams) for production and newsgathering resources. The station's news staff was based in a small trailer parked within the Harry Hines Boulevard studios before moving into the larger Carpenter Freeway facility shortly before the newscast's launch.
On July 30, 1984, channel 33 debuted a nightly hour-long newscast at 7 p.m., which at the time was the only independent television newscast in the market. Its debut was less than auspicious, earning a .7 rating (amounting to less than seven-tenths of 1% of all households in the Dallas–Fort Worth market that watched the premiere broadcast), eventually rising to a peak of 2.0 within several months but still half of the target promised to advertisers. The KRLD 7 pm News would earn two United Press International awards in 1985 for "Best Newscast in Texas" and "Best Spot News" (for its coverage of the 1985 Mesquite tornado).
The news department underwent tumultuous changes in 1986. After original news director Tony deHaro, who had previously served in that same role at KRLD radio prior to Metromedia's purchase of channel 33, was fired by the station, he wrote a scathing letter to D Magazine criticizing the news department and KRLD-TV general manager Ray Schonbak, stating that Schonbak insisted on implementing "sensationalis[tic] and inflammatory" journalism techniques. At the time, station management acquired a state-of-the-art microwave live truck for newsgathering and drafted plans to open a bureau in Fort Worth. However, on May 10, 1986, shortly after News Corporation assumed control of the station following the completion of its merger with Metromedia, Schonbak announced channel 33's news department would shut down, stating to staff that the move was his decision; in an August 1986 article that he wrote for D Magazine, former anchor Quin Mathews (who joined KRLD from KDFW in 1984, and was later hired by WFAA [channel 8] as its morning and midday anchor after channel 33's news department folded) questioned whether the move was solely that of Schonbak or a directive by News Corporation management, noting that Schonbak had given Fox executives five different options for the news department to improve revenue and ratings, all of which were considered by the board to be unacceptable. Art Chapman in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram found the newscast lacked any elements to distinguish it from the other offerings in the market and blamed the time slot.
As a Fox owned-and-operated station In May 1985, Metromedia reached an agreement to sell KRLD-TV and its five sister independent stations—WNEW-TV (now WNYW) in New York City, KTTV in Los Angeles, WFLD-TV in Chicago, WTTG in Washington, D.C., and KRIV in Houston—to News Corporation for $2.55 billion. Metromedia sold its radio stations, including KRLD, to Carl Brazell in a $285 million transaction completed in early 1986.