Early years
KVOS signed on June 3, 1953; owned by Bellingham businessman Rogan Jones along with KVOS radio (AM 790, now KGMI). Jones had owned the radio station since 1928, and was best known for being the focus of a case that established broadcasters' right to the same news reports as newspapers. Its first broadcast was a kinescope of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation, which took place the previous day. Since Canada had no television stations operating west of Ontario at that point (it was not until that December that Vancouver would get a locally-operated TV station of their own in CBC outlet CBUT), the British government flew film of the BBC's coverage to Vancouver, where the Mounties escorted it to the border. The Washington State Patrol then drove the film to Bellingham.[3] The station's original slogan was "Your Peace Arch Station, serving Northwest Washington and British Columbia."
KVOS initially experienced financial trouble, despite Jones thinking that he could successfully support a television station in a city the size of Bellingham. He built a powerful transmitter on Orcas Island in hopes of reaching Seattle, but even with increased power, it did not cover enough of the Seattle area to solve the problem. For a time, the revenues from his radio station were all that kept channel 12 afloat. In 1955, Jones, realizing that most of his audience was across the border, incorporated KVOS in Canada, establishing a subsidiary company in Vancouver. The subsidiary, KVOS-TV Limited, brought in revenue for the station by allowing many Vancouver-area businesses to buy advertising time on the station. KVOS-TV continued to broadcast from Bellingham, with much of its audience based in southwestern British Columbia.
After just nine years of owning KVOS-TV, in 1962 Jones sold the station to Miami-based Wometco Enterprises.
Prior to the advent of Canadian content regulations in the early 1970s, Canadian television stations typically spent so little money on domestic television production that KVOS's Vancouver production office was actually one of the largest Canadian production studios anywhere in the entire country,[4] investing most prominently in television documentaries through its Canawest Film Studios division[5] and employing more Canadian writers, actors, artists and musicians than any other media organization in Canada besides the CBC, according to Vancouver MP Simma Holt.[6]
The station was further damaged by a 1976 change in Canadian tax law, by which Canadian companies could no longer write off advertising purchased on American television stations as a tax deduction. In its efforts to stop the change, the station had proposed that it be granted an exemption on the condition that it then return $2 million per year back to Canadian television production;[6] its proposal did not succeed, but the station survived the hit by closing its Canadian production office and reducing its advertising rates to offset the tax increase that its advertisers would have to pay.[7] Even into the 1990s, the station was still sometimes criticized in CRTC licensing hearings pertaining to the Vancouver television market for purportedly draining advertising revenue from the Vancouver stations;[4] CKVU-TV president Daryl Duke once even went so far as to compare KVOS to smallpox.[8]
Dave Mintz, who had been a minority investor in the station since 1955 and president of the station since 1961, left the station in 1979 to become president of Canada's fledgling Global Television Network.[9] Although American by birth, due to the importance of the Vancouver operations to the station, Mintz was residing full-time in Vancouver by the time he took the Global job.
Network affiliations, 1955–1980
KVOS began as an affiliate of DuMont upon sign-on in 1953 and remained so until DuMont went off the air in 1956. From January 1, 1955, until about 1979, KVOS was a primary CBS affiliate. In the late 1970s, KVOS sharply reduced its carriage of CBS programming to resolve two commercial disputes. First, Seattle's CBS affiliate, KIRO-TV, had launched complaints against the station and CBS regarding duplicate transmission of CBS programming in the Seattle media market. Second, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) regulations seeking to increase Canadian content and reduce the number of American network affiliates retransmitted on cable television systems in Canada put pressure on the station.
Conversion to independent and secondary Citytv affiliation
While KVOS nominally retained its CBS affiliation up to 1987, carrying a few CBS programs such as 60 Minutes, it transitioned into an independent station which primarily carried a diverse mix of syndicated and locally produced programming, including locally produced news and public affairs programs. Beginning in 1990, the station also carried a number of programs syndicated from the Toronto-based independent station Citytv, whose owner CHUM Limited did not yet have an outlet in nearby Vancouver.[10]
Wometco was bought by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts in 1984. KKR sold off the Wometco group in 1985, with KVOS sold to Ackerley Communications. In the early 1990s, due to Federal Communications Commission syndicated exclusivity rules affecting the Seattle media market, KVOS was dropped from most Seattle cable television systems. For part of this era, the station used both Canadian and American TV ratings at the start of each program, and was believed to be the only station on either side of the border to do so. Since at least early 2007, with the station's realignment toward a U.S. audience, only U.S. ratings have been shown.[11]
Second stint as an independent station
In 2001, CHUM Limited purchased the Vancouver station CKVU-TV from Canwest (turning it into a local version of Citytv in 2002, but beginning to air CHUM-provided programming on September 1, 2001) and launched a new station in Victoria known as CIVI-TV. The launch of the new outlets, along with a major series of affiliation and ownership changes in the Vancouver–Victoria market in September 2001, caused KVOS to be displaced by CIVI from its long-time home on channel 12 on many Vancouver-area cable systems, as well as losing Citytv as a source of programming.[12]
The station came under the ownership of Clear Channel Communications (now iHeartMedia) in 2003, following that company's purchase of Ackerley. On November 16, 2006, Clear Channel announced that it would be selling its entire television division, including KVOS-TV, after being bought by private equity firms. On April 20, 2007, Clear Channel entered into an agreement to sell its entire television stations group to Providence Equity Partners' Newport Television.[13] Providence Equity initially announced that it would not keep KVOS or KFTY in Santa Rosa, California; instead, those stations were to be resold to LK Station Group.
MeTV affiliation and added subchannels
The station became an affiliate of the classic television network MeTV on April 25, 2011. Later, TheCoolTV was added as a subchannel of KVOS on August 18, 2011. Unlike the main 12.1 feed, the 12.2 feed was not carried on any Canadian cable system.[19][20][21] In January 2014, TheCoolTV was dropped in favor of Movies!.
Newport agreed to sell KVOS to OTA Broadcasting, LLC, a company controlled by Michael Dell's MSD Capital, in December 2011. The deal created a duopoly in the Seattle market with KFFV.[22] OTA Broadcasting assumed control of KVOS on March 6, 2012.
Sale to Weigel Broadcasting
Weigel Broadcasting agreed to acquire KVOS-TV and KFFV, along with KAXT-CD and KTLN-TV in San Francisco, in a $23.2 million deal on October 18, 2017, giving Weigel control of both of its MeTV affiliates in the Puget Sound region.[24] The sale was closed on January 15, 2018, with KVOS and sister station KFFV now under Weigel ownership.[25]
On January 17, 2018, H&I became KVOS's primary network and moved to subchannel 12.1, MeTV was relocated to subchannel 12.3 and new offering Decades was added to subchannel 12.4.[26] KVOS' lineup expanded once more on September 3, 2018, when Start TV was added to subchannel 12.5. MeTV Plus was added to subchannel 12.6 on September 27, 2021. On March 28, 2022 Story Television launched on subchannel 12.7.[27]
2024 switch to Univision
During the 2023 holiday season, Weigel quietly updated the station's website to reflect Univision would move to KVOS's main channel from Sinclair Broadcast Group's KUNS-TV (channel 51), which became an affiliate of The CW on January 1, 2024.[29] As a result, H&I moved from subchannel 12.1 to subchannel 12.8. With KVOS's unique status, Univision's domestic schedule became available over-the-air in Vancouver, Victoria, and southwest British Columbia for the first time; Univision has a partnership with TLN to operate a licensed specialty channel, Univision Canada, featuring its programming.
