KCRL: Circle L years
The first application for channel 4 in Reno was made by Western Television Company in January 1953.[1] The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) granted an application made by Nevada Telecasting Corporation in April 1955.[2] Soon after, it emerged that Nevada Telecasting had misrepresented its ownership to the commission and there were additional undisclosed parties in interest. A Zephyr Cove man, Charles E. Halstead, filed for the channel in 1956;[3] Halstead had been the owner of radio station KDIA in Auburn, California, whose broadcast license had been canceled in 1953.[4] In March 1958, an FCC examiner recommended revoking the Nevada Telecasting permit,[5] which the commission did in June 1959.[6]
E. L. Cord—a businessman, Nevada state senator, and owner of KFAC in Los Angeles—asked the FCC to insert channel 11 at Reno in July 1958, while channel 4 was mired in litigation.[7] After the revocation of Nevada Telecasting's permit, Cord applied for channel 4 on June 25, 1959,[8] with Halstead and the Electron Corporation of Dallas also seeking the permit.[9][10] Six applicants sought the channel, but all except Cord's Circle L, Inc., had withdrawn by 1961, when an FCC hearing examiner recommended Cord's application;[11] the FCC awarded the construction permit on June 15, 1961.
In 1962, Circle L began constructing a studio and offices at Vassar Street and Harvard Way, and approval was received to erect an antenna in rural Washoe County.[12] The station began broadcasting on September 30, 1962, as KCRL.[13] In addition to NBC, the station split ABC programming with Reno's first station, KOLO-TV (channel 8), until 1967, when KTVN (channel 2) debuted.[14]
Under a separate corporation, the Cord family started a radio station, KCRL (780 AM), in October 1970.[15] The station was sold in 1981 and became KROW.[16]
Cord died in 1974, setting off a years-long court dispute for control of his estate. A preliminary sale agreement was reached with 20th Century Fox for a $17.5 million acquisition of KCRL in 1980.[17] At the time, Chris-Craft Industries owned a 19-percent stake in 20th Century Fox. Between them, they already owned the limit of five very high frequency (VHF) stations, creating possible legal issues for any attempt by Fox to purchase stations.[18]
KRNV: Sunbelt ownership
Beginning in 1983, Washoe Broadcasting Company—a company partly owned by James Rogers which also owned KVBC in Las Vegas—made a concerted effort to take control of channel 4. On September 1, it filed an application for a new station to broadcast on channel 4 at Reno.[19] Washoe Broadcasting urged the FCC to hold hearings pitting it against Circle L for the right to use channel 4. It also sought to force the Cord Foundation to sell its 90-percent stake in Circle L, Inc. It contended that the Cord Foundation's management of the station was so poor and underperforming as to not fulfill its fiduciary duty to the estate.[20] The owner of the other 10 percent, estate co-executor Charles Cord, died in 1986 at the age of 70.[21]
The Cord Foundation put KCRL on the market in February 1989.[22] In July 1989, after two months of negotiations, the Cord Foundation signed a deal with Sunbelt to sell the station for $27 million.
