KCPQ

rdf:langString KCPQ

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rdf:langString By Fish

rdf:langString KCPQ

rdf:langString Station was owned by the Clover Park School District

rdf:langString Tacoma, Washington

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rdf:langString United States

rdf:langString File:Fts-seattle-a.svg

rdf:langString The Fox network logo next to a black numeral 13 in a sans serif typeface. On a line below, the word "Seattle" in another sans serif, width-justified.

rdf:langString [KTVW] used to be worse than no TV at all, so we pretended it wasn't there.

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rdf:langString in a 1974 column in The Seattle Times

rdf:langString KCPQ (channel 13) is a television station licensed to Tacoma, Washington, United States, broadcasting the Fox network to the Seattle area. It is owned and operated by the network's Fox Television Stations division alongside MyNetworkTV outlet KZJO (channel 22). The two stations share studios on Westlake Avenue in Seattle's Westlake neighborhood; KCPQ's main transmitter is located on Gold Mountain in Bremerton. The station signed on in August 1953 as KMO-TV, the adjunct to Tacoma radio station KMO. It was briefly a network affiliate until another Seattle station signed on; the next year, KMO radio and television were sold to separate owners. The buyer for channel 13 was Seattle broadcaster J. Elroy McCaw, who changed the call letters to KTVW and ran it as an independent station. While KTVW produced a number of local programs, McCaw, a famously parsimonious owner, never converted the station to broadcast in color, and its syndicated programming inventory was considered meager. McCaw died in August 1969; three years later, his estate sold the station to the Blaidon Mutual Investors Corporation. While Blaidon tried several new programs and began color telecasting, the station continued to underperform financially. Two attempts to sell KTVW to out-of-state buyers failed because of its high liabilities. After a walkout by employees by January and the appointment of a receiver in July, KTVW was ordered closed on December 12, 1974. The Clover Park School District in Lakewood purchased KTVW at bankruptcy auction in 1975. The station returned to the air on a non-commercial basis as KCPQ in January 1976, serving as an effective replacement for Clover Park's UHF station, KPEC-TV (channel 56). However, changes to the structure of school financing in Washington and the refusal of voters to approve bonds to rebuild Clover Park High School forced the school district to sell KCPQ back into commercial use. After being off the air for most of 1980 to relocate its transmitter, KCPQ returned under new owner Kelly Broadcasting, who rebuilt the station as a competitive independent. During Kelly's 19-year ownership of KCPQ, the station became a Fox affiliate; relocated its studios from Lakewood to Seattle; and established its present local news department. KCPQ was sold to Tribune Broadcasting in 1999 as part of Kelly's exit from the broadcasting industry. As Tribune expanded the station's news output, it also had to fend off overtures by Fox, which had coveted owning the station since the 1990s and at one point threatened to buy another station to broadcast Fox programming. Tribune was purchased by Nexstar Media Group in 2019; Nexstar then traded KCPQ to Fox as part of an exchange of Fox affiliates in three cities.