News department history
A staple of channel 3's schedule was RFD-3, a long-running early morning agriculture and public affairs program which premiered in 1964. Originally airing weekdays at 6:30 a.m., before the launch of a conventional morning newscast in the early 1990s eventually led to the program moving to a 5 a.m. slot as the latter program expanded, it was hosted for the majority of its existence by Joe Brown, who served as the station's farm director beginning in the early 1960s and also worked as farm editor for the Wichita Falls Times Record News. RFD-3 ended its 47-year run in August 2011, following Brown's retirement from broadcasting.[32][33][34] The station launched a similar program, Texoma Country, which originated as a 15-minute segment that aired during KFDX 3 News Today before expanding to a separate half-hour program serving as a lead-in to the morning newscast—as Texoma Country Morning—in 2014 (the program is co-hosted by Mike Campbell and Joe Tom White, who had previously co-hosted a morning news/talk show on KWFS [1290 AM]; White joined the program in 2014, after announcing his departure from KWFS).[35][36]
For many years, Warren Silver—who originally joined KFDX as a member of its production staff when it signed on in March 1953—served as the station's chief weathercaster and continuity announcer as well as acting as the original host of RFD-3. After the station's sale to Clay Communications, Silver was promoted to a management position as the station's general manager, and headed channel 3's operations from 1971 to 1988. After his retirement, Silver continued to serve as a contributor for the station's newscasts, hosting "The Silver Report", a weekly feature segment reporting on issues affecting senior citizens that aired during the 6 p.m. edition of Newscenter 3 until his death in 2001. Another longtime weathercaster who appeared on channel 3's newscasts from 1954 to 1971 was Tom Crane, who was known by his nickname, "Tom Crane, the Weathervane". After he left KFDX, Crane worked as vice president of City National Bank in Wichita Falls, and later operated local advertising agency Crane & Company from 1980 until his death on July 6, 2009.
During the late morning of April 3, 1964, a destructive tornado ripped through the City View section of northwestern Wichita Falls and neighboring Sheppard Air Force Base. The event made history as it would become one of the first tornadoes ever to be shown on live television. As rival KAUZ-TV interrupted regular programming that morning to show live footage of the tornado through a studio camera brought outside of channel 6's Seymour Highway studios, KFDX also moved one of its studio cameras outside its facility and pointed it toward the tornado—which initially appeared as a large, rotating dust cloud—as it approached the northwest portion of Wichita Falls, with Shaw and reporter Dee Fletcher providing commentary (sometimes interfered by line voltage and wind noise severe enough that cameramen positioned outside could not hear instructions warning viewers of the approaching tornado over their headphones).[37] The 800 ft tornado (later retroactively rated as an F5 on the Fujita Scale) killed seven people, injured 111 others, and produced damage estimated at $15 million (with around 225 homes and businesses on the north side of town and at Sheppard AFB being reported destroyed).[38][39]
During the afternoon and evening of April 10, 1979, about 15 years after the City View twister, KFDX-TV provided complete coverage of an outbreak of tornadic thunderstorms that spawned several strong to violent tornadoes across northwest Texas and southwestern Oklahoma. That evening's coverage culminated with the opening segment of the 6 p.m. edition of Newscenter 3, as chief meteorologist Bill Warren was relaying reports of a multiple-vortex tornado that was beginning its path of destruction across southern sections of Wichita Falls. Four minutes into the newscast, electricity to the KFDX studio and transmitter facilities went down as the storm knocked sections of the city's electrical grid offline. (KAUZ, KSWO and five of the six radio stations operating in the Wichita Falls area at the time also lost power in the storm, although local radio station KTRN [102.3, now KWFS-FM] was able to remain on-air as it had an auxiliary power supply.) Along its 45 mi, 2 mi path, the F4 tornado killed 42 and injured more than 1,700 people, and produced damage estimated at around $400 million; among the 20,000 residents estimated to have been left homeless because of the twister, sixteen of them were part of KFDX-TV's 39-person staff at the time. When the station came back on the air at 6:56 p.m. the following evening (April 11), KFDX provided 3 1/2 hours of continuous live coverage of the aftermath of the tornado. One week later, Channel 3 broadcast a half-hour documentary about the 1979 tornado, Terrible Tuesday, chronicling the Wichita Falls tornado and its aftermath by way of news footage taken by the station after the storm.[40][41][42][43]
Former KFDX chief meteorologist Skip McBride, a retired airman who joined the station as its weekday evening meteorologist on January 29, 1983, was the area's longest-running local television weathercaster.[44] McBride's 31-year tenure—which lasted until his retirement on November 20, 2014—was surpassed only by that of Joe Brown for the longest-tenured television personality in the Wichita Falls-Lawton market; McBride was replaced as chief meteorologist by Kevin Selle (who joined KFDX/KJTL from Texas Cable News, where he previously served as chief meteorologist since the regional news channel's launch in 1998).[45][46][47]
In August 1992, KFDX also implemented the "24-Hour News Source" concept (which was enforced in the promotional slogan used by the station until 2005, "Texoma's 24-Hour News Team"). Providing news headlines to viewers at times when the station was not carrying regularly scheduled, long-form newscasts, the concept involved both the production of 30-second news updates that aired at or near the top of each hour and brief weather updates every half-hour during local commercial break inserts within syndicated and NBC network programs—even during prime time network and overnight programming—in addition to the existing half-hourly updates it aired during Today. (Producers and other newsroom personnel anchored the segments for several years during the 1990s.) KFDX discontinued production of these hourly updates in 2005.
Following its sale to Mission Broadcasting and the formation of the SSA between the two stations, on September 20, 1999, KFDX began producing a half-hour newscast at 9 p.m. through a news share agreement with Fox affiliate KJTL; the program, titled Fox 18 News at 9:00, was the first local prime time newscast to debut in the market and originated from a secondary set at the KFDX/KJTL/KJBO studios on Seymour Highway in Wichita Falls. The newscast was eventually canceled after the December 31, 2001, edition, due to poor ratings. After a four-year sabbatical, KFDX launched a second venture at a prime time newscast for channel 18 on September 17, 2007. Originally titled Fox: Texoma's News at 9:00 (later retitled Texoma's Fox News at Nine in September 2011). The program competed against an existing 9 p.m. newscast on CW affiliate KAUZ-DT2, which parent station KAUZ-TV premiered in September 2006; it would gain another prime time news competitor in September 2012, when KSWO began producing a newscast for its Live Well Network–affiliated DT3 subchannel (now a This TV affiliate). As a result of the cancellations of KSWO and KAUZ's 9 p.m. news broadcasts (in September 2015 and July 2017, respectively), the KFDX-produced newscast is currently the only local prime time news program in the market.
In July 2012, KFDX became the second television station in the Wichita Falls-Lawton market (after KSWO) to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition; the 9 p.m. newscast on KJTL was included in the upgrade. Footage shot in-studio has been broadcast in high definition since the conversion, while all news video from on-remote locations was initially broadcast in standard definition and upconverted to widescreen until April 2013, when KFDX/KJTL upgraded its ENG vehicles, satellite truck, studio and field cameras and other equipment in order to broadcast news footage from the field and the newsroom in high definition, in addition to segments broadcast from the main studio.[48]
- Heidi Collins – anchor/reporter
- Brad Edwards – anchor/reporter/photographer
- John Hambrick – anchor/reporter (1964)
- Frances Rivera – news anchor/reporter
