Early years
The KCOM Broadcasting Company applied on February 27, 1952, for a new television station on channel 4 in Sioux City.[1] The application was made in anticipation of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) lifting in the near future a years-long freeze on television station grants.[2] Soon after, another group also filed for channel 4: Perkins Bros. Inc., the owners of Sioux City radio station KSCJ and sister to the Sioux City Journal newspaper. In September 1952, the FCC ordered hearings to be held on the competing applicants for channel 4.[3] However, no hearings were held, as the commission worked through a large backlog of competing TV applications. Instead, in December 1953, KCOM and KSCJ combined their applications;[4] the KCOM Broadcasting Company gave KSCJ an option to acquire half the company and agreed to sell off KCOM.[5] The merger of the KCOM and KSCJ applications cleared the way for the FCC to grant a construction permit on January 20, 1954.
Tower construction began in May at a site in Plymouth County,[6] and KTIV affiliated with NBC and ABC. However, the company had yet to announce where its studios would be located.[7] The station put out its first test pattern on September 23[8] and intended to be on air in time for the 1954 World Series, but officials could not establish a link between the studio and transmitter site to air the games, leaving Sioux City's other TV station—KVTV (channel 9)—to air the Series.[9] In order to get the signal past a tree that blocked the way, the height of the microwave antenna had to be raised twice.[10] KTIV went on the air on October 10, 1954, with programming from NBC, ABC, and the DuMont Television Network; it had no local programming, as its studios at 10th and Grandview streets had not been completed.
In 1961, KTIV hired Tom Brokaw, a native of Yankton, South Dakota. Brokaw earned $75 a week (equivalent to $783 in 2024) to be a staff announcer and part-time weatherman and newscaster.[16] Brokaw worked at the station while enrolled at the University of South Dakota. From KTIV, Brokaw went on to jobs in Omaha and Atlanta before joining KNBC in Los Angeles in 1966, the first in a series of posts at NBC before later anchoring the NBC Nightly News.[17][18]
Perkins Bros. acquired the remainder of the company from the former KCOM group in 1965, spending $2.2 million.[19] Prior to then, Perkins Bros. had been a silent partner, and management duties belonged to Dietrich Dirks, who had founded KCOM.[20] That December, after seven years of joint work and the withdrawal of an objection by KQTV in Fort Dodge,[21] KTIV moved to a new tower near Hinton, Iowa, that it co-owned with KVTV.[22] KTIV then donated its previous 700 ft tower to South Dakota Educational Television, which reassembled the mast near Beresford.[23] The station continued to split ABC programs with KVTV until 1967, when KVTV became KCAU-TV and a full-time ABC affiliate, while new station KMEG acquired the CBS affiliation.[24]
Black Hawk Broadcasting and American Family ownership
In November 1973, Perkins Bros. sold KTIV to Black Hawk Broadcasting, which owned television and radio stations in Waterloo and in Austin, Minnesota, for $2.5 million.[25][26] Ground was broken in 1976 on a new studio facility within the Stonesthrow Office Complex,[27] atop Sioux City's Signal Hill. KTIV began broadcasting from the new structure on June 5, 1977; it was the only studio in the area purpose-built for television and was fitted out with electronic news gathering equipment.[28] The facility also aided Black Hawk in its push to expand the station's staff; the station payroll grew from 32 employees in 1974 to 58 in 1978.[29]
Black Hawk Broadcasting merged into American Family Broadcasting, the broadcast division of insurer American Family Corporation
Quincy and Gray ownership
Quincy Newspapers Inc. acquired KTIV from American Family in 1989. Quincy owned no stations in Iowa, but it did own broadcast properties in Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, and West Virginia, three of which were NBC affiliates like KTIV.[32] At the time, Sioux City was the smallest market in which American Family owned a TV station.[33] To run KTIV, Quincy hired William F. Turner, who had been the general manager at KCAU-TV when Forward Communications owned it and worked in the corporate office of KCAU's then-owner, Citadel Communications; Turner had a long-term friendship with the Oakley family, owners of Quincy Newspapers.[34]
On September 16, 2002, KTIV began broadcasting a digital signal on UHF channel 41.[35] The station continued dual analog and digital broadcasts until it shut down its analog signal on February 17, 2009, the original date for full-power stations to convert to digital service.[36]
