KOAI
As early as July 1967, plans were beginning to crystallize for the construction of a new television station in Flagstaff, the area's first high-power station; the area was only served by two UHF translators of KTVK and KOOL-TV from Phoenix. The primary promoter of the proposed station was Wendell Elliott Sr., who had managed radio station KGNO in Dodge City, Kansas, and had founded associated television station KTVC in nearby Ensign in the 1950s; he also was a founder of the Kansas Association of Broadcasters in 1951.[1] Other stockholders included former Flagstaff mayor Charles L. Saunders, who owned radio station KCLS and had once sought to build a Flagstaff TV station himself. Elliott originally sought to build a 200 ft tower atop Mount Elden and downtown studios, raising $85,000 by selling stock in the venture.[2]
Flagstaff had originally been assigned channels 9 and 13 for television use. However, when the Elliott group—incorporated in 1968 as Grand Canyon Television Company—was forced by the United States Forest Service to switch proposed transmitter sites from Mount Elden to Mormon Mountain, southeast of Flagstaff, it asked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to change out channel 9 for channel 2 in order to avoid potential spacing problems to Tucson's channel 9 station, KGUN-TV.[3] From the start, Grand Canyon planned to obtain NBC affiliation for its station.[4]
Grand Canyon officially filed an application for construction permit on March 26, 1969, the FCC having approved the change to channel 2 earlier in the month,[5] and the commission granted the application on September 10.[6] With the permit approved, construction commenced nearly immediately;[7] in January 1970, power lines were buried under Mormon Mountain to provide electrical service to the summit.[8] The transmitter facility was complete by early April, when the first test patterns went out,[9] and KOAI began broadcasting on May 2, 1970.[10] It was some time before the station began producing local programming, as the studios at 528 W. Aspen were not yet completed.[11]
KOAI was among the first stations seen on much of the Navajo Nation when a tribe-owned translator was completed atop Navajo Mountain in 1973. At the time, the station produced and aired a daily Navajo-language news program hosted by Chester Yazzie; the program was aired the next day on KIVA-TV in Farmington, New Mexico,[12] and later also on KOAT-TV in Albuquerque. It was the only Navajo-language television program in the world at the time.[13]
Wendell Elliott Sr. died in 1974 of an apparent heart attack.[14] His son, Wendell Elliott Jr., took over the operation of the business, which was claimed to be the fourth-smallest TV station in the United States.[15]
KNAZ-TV
In 1980, the Grand Canyon Television Company approved the sale of KOAI to Capitol Broadcasting Company of Jackson, Mississippi, which owned radio and television stations in the Mississippi city and KKTV in Colorado Springs, Colorado.[16] Capitol closed on the sale in February 1981 and immediately sought to improve all aspects of the operation. On March 23, 1981, the call sign was changed to KNAZ-TV to represent the station's service area.[17] (Kevin McCabe, a longtime Phoenix sports journalist who worked for channel 2 at the time, noted that people had "laughed" at KOAI for the preceding decade and that the station had set a "bad precedent".[18]) A new maximum-power transmitter at 100,000 watts was installed; the news department was expanded; and Capitol also moved the station into a new building on Vickey Street in 1982.[19][20] With the upgraded building came much-needed technical updates, notably a conversion to electronic news gathering on videotape from film.
Gannett/Tegna ownership
In January 1997, Grand Canyon announced that it had sold KNAZ-TV and KMOH, by that point disconnected from the Flagstaff station, to the Gannett Company, which owned KPNX in Phoenix.[29] The purchase, which closed in May 1997,[30] attracted attention and concern over the fate of KNAZ-TV; rumors swirled that Gannett would discontinue local newscasts for Northern Arizona and run the station as a full-time rebroadcaster of KPNX.[31] It was noted that the KPNX purchase of KNAZ-TV had taken place after the Flagstaff cable system attempted to drop KPNX from its lineup but found itself unable to do so because Gannett threatened to discontinue carriage on co-owned systems in Sedona, Kingman, Lake Havasu City, and Bullhead City.
In December 2005, Gannett announced its intention to sell KNAZ-TV.[32] While Gannett waited for a buyer to surface, the station ceased producing weekend newscasts in 2006, airing newscasts from KPNX with Flagstaff-specific weather inserts.[33]
