KPRC-TV

The station first signed on the air on January 1, 1949, as KLEE-TV. It was Houston's first television station and the second one in Texas, three months behind Fort Worth station WBAP-TV (now KXAS-TV) and over eight months ahead of Dallas station KBTV (now WFAA). KLEE-TV was originally owned by hotelier W. Albert Lee and carried programming from all four networks of the day: NBC, CBS, ABC, and DuMont. However, after a year of difficulty, Lee sold the station to the Hobby family, owners of the Houston Post and Houston's oldest radio station, KPRC (950 AM) and KPRC-FM (99.7, now KODA at 99.1). The Hobby Family took control on June 1, 1950, and changed the television station's call sign to match its radio stations on July 3, 1950. The call letters stand for Post Radio Company.

After the Hobbys took over, channel 2 became a primary NBC affiliate due to KPRC radio's longstanding affiliation with the NBC Red Network. Due to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)-imposed freeze on new station licenses, channel 2 remained the only television station in Houston for four more years.[5] CBS moved its affiliation to KGUL-TV (channel 11, now KHOU) in 1953 and KTRK-TV (channel 13) took over the ABC affiliation when it signed on one year later. DuMont ceased operations in 1956, though it was briefly affiliated with now-defunct KNUZ-TV (channel 39, frequency now occupied by KIAH). Because of its affiliation with NBC, KPRC-TV was the first station in Houston to broadcast a program in color and was subsequently the first to broadcast its entire schedule in color.

KPRC-TV's original "Lone Star 2" logo, used from late 1994 to 2004: The current logo (shown in the infobox) is very similar to the original, but is enhanced for HD.

In March 1953, the station operated its first permanent studio located on 3014 Post Oak Road, which later became the Lakes on Post Oak near the Galleria shopping complex in Uptown Houston. The studio building was along the street frontage, while the KPRC radio transmitter site was in the rear of the lot. The station became the source of controversy after some television viewers in the United Kingdom claimed to receive its signal on September 14, 1953, three years after the original signal was transmitted. However, this was actually a hoax.[6] Over the years, the Hobby family bought several other television stations, including KVOA-TV in Tucson, KCCI in Des Moines, WTVF in Nashville, WESH in Orlando, and KSAT-TV in San Antonio.

In March 1972, KPRC-TV moved into a new state-of-the-art studio facility in the Sharpstown area (then part of unincorporated Harris County) where it operated from for 45 years. Built on property originally lent to Houston Baptist University, KPRC-TV chose the site to build its new facilities in large part due to its location on the feeder road of the Southwest Freeway. The building housed three studios which were suspended from the ground to reduce vibration, and when viewed from space via satellite map, the building resembled a film camera.

In 1983, the Hobbys sold the Houston Post to MediaNews Group, while the family's broadcast holdings were reorganized as H&C Communications, with KPRC-AM-TV remaining as the flagship stations. (KPRC-FM was sold in 1958.) After 40 years under Hobby family ownership, KPRC-TV was sold to The Washington Post Company on April 22, 1994.[7] (The Houston Post was then bought by the Hearst Corporation and absorbed into its Houston Chronicle, with the last edition printed on April 18, 1995.) In 2004, KPRC-TV was rebranded "Local 2". In January 2015, KPRC-TV dropped the "Local" and began simply calling itself "Channel 2". In December 2015, KPRC-TV broke ground on a new studio, behind the old studio in the employee parking lot, on the same Sharpstown site. While the old studio was 90,000 square feet (8,361 m²), the new studio would have only 65,000 square feet (6,039 m²).[8] The new studios were dedicated in April 2016, and the previous 45-year-old studios were demolished. Since 1994, KPRC-TV has used the familiar "Lone Star 2" logo, which was modified in 2004 for HD. WMAR-TV in Baltimore used a similar logo in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but without the Texas star and with the ABC logo in place of the NBC one, since that station had switched affiliations in 1995.

The film and video archives of KPRC have been partially digitized by the Texas Archive of the Moving Image and approximately 250 clips can be viewed on their website.

Since its inception KPRC-TV has been an NBC affiliate, and in part because of NBC's affiliation the station was the first in Houston to broadcast in color. The station also carries a daily lifestyle and entertainment program called Houston Life, which debuted on August 23, 2016, with hosts Jennifer Broome and Derrick Shore (Broome was later replaced by former KPRC reporter and weekend anchor Courtney Zavala), focusing on lifestyle and feature segments in and around Houston. This resulted in KPRC-TV bumping the long-running NBC soap opera Days of Our Lives from its network-recommended 1:00 p.m. Central Time slot to 2:00 p.m., where it replaced the canceled Meredith Vieira Show. Asides from local and network programming, KPRC-TV's daily syndicated lineup includes Entertainment Tonight, Dr. Phil and Celebrity Page.

From 1969 to 1998, KPRC-TV produced the longest-running syndicated television program in Texas, The Eyes of Texas, a lifestyle program which focused on segments relating to Texas culture and life (the program continues to air locally on PBS member station KUHT, channel 8). KPRC-TV was also one of the first stations to air telethons, raising $28,000 for the American Cancer Society in 1950. It carried the MDA Labor Day Telethon every Labor Day from 1970 to 2012 (KPRC's status as an MDA "Love Network" affiliate ended in 2013, when the telethon discontinued its syndicated distribution model and moved to ABC as the rebranded MDA Show of Strength, where it aired locally on KTRK-TV until the program ended after 2014).

Historically, KPRC-TV was the original Houston affiliate for the nighttime syndicated editions of Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy!, both of which had their roots as NBC daytime game shows, from their respective 1983 and 1984 debuts until the game shows moved to rival KHOU in 1986. (The latter was picked up by KTRK in 2015.) From 1986 to 1993, KPRC-TV filled Wheel's 6:30 p.m. slot with various syndicated revivals of Hollywood Squares, Family Feud and You Bet Your Life before settling on Entertainment Tonight in 1993. The station also gained a reputation from the 1980s well into the early 2000s for airing various syndicated tabloid talk shows that often fit the pejorative definition of "Trash TV". Indeed, KPRC-TV was the original Houston affiliate for Geraldo, which the station carried from its 1987 debut until complaints from viewers and even station management over its content led KPRC-TV to drop the show in 1990 (Geraldo moved to KTXH, then later to KTRK). After Post-Newsweek acquired the station, KPRC-TV nonetheless began broadcasting more syndicated talk shows in the afternoon including ones hosted by Montel Williams, Maury Povich, Jenny Jones, Ricki Lake and Jerry Springer, as well as infotainment news programs such as A Current Affair, Hard Copy, Extra, Access Hollywood and Inside Edition. Many of these shows eventually moved to other stations due to ratings declines and the overexposure of their genres, as well as the gradual expansion of NBC's Today (which KPRC-TV has historically aired in its entirety) from two to three hours in 1999, and eventually four hours by 2007.

KPRC STL tower off Interstate 69/U.S. Route 59 in the Greater Sharpstown area of Houston

Chopper 2 departing George Bush Intercontinental Airport

KPRC-TV presently broadcasts 39½ hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with 6½ hours each weekday, three hours on Saturdays and four hours on Sundays). The station also carries Sports Sunday, which has been a staple of the station since its days as a locally owned station in the 1980s, at 10:20 p.m. following its late Sunday newscast, as well as Houston Newsmakers (a local Sunday morning talk show similar in format to NBC's Meet the Press) at 10:30 a.m.

Appropriate for a station with roots in the Houston Post, KPRC-TV has long been a very news-intensive station, and in particular one with a history of innovation in television journalism. In its early years under the stewardship of news director Ray Miller, KPRC-TV often led the local news ratings with such notable personalities as Miller and fellow anchors Steve Smith and Larry Rasco. KPRC-TV was the first station in Houston to use weather radar for its weather reports, to use videotape for field reporting, to have a fully staffed news bureau in Austin, to hire female and African American reporters, and to hire a Hispanic news anchor for an English-language newscast.

In 1973, after Smith departed for KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh (at the time, a larger market than Houston), the station hired former KHOU anchor Ron Stone and paired him with weatherman Doug Johnson and sportscaster Bill Worrell (who had formerly co-anchored the news with Rasco) for its evening newscasts, then known as Big 2 News (Smith would eventually return to Houston as the lead anchor at KHOU in 1975). In addition to Stone, other news anchors for Big 2 News included Cindy Martin and former ABC News correspondent George Caldwell (later George Sells).[15] KHOU sportscaster Ron Franklin, along with news anchor Bill Balleza would follow Stone to KPRC-TV in 1980. That same year, KPRC-TV rebranded their newscasts from Big 2 News (which was used since 1969) to Channel 2 News (presented on air as 2News). During this time, KTRK overtook KPRC-TV and became the dominant news station in Houston, even though KPRC-TV would continue to fare a strong second from the late 1970s well into the early 1990s as KHOU began to struggle with management and ownership issues during this period. From 1985 to 1992, the station's newscasts were branded as ChannelTwoNews, broadcasting round-the-clock news updates throughout the day, including during NBC prime time shows. For several years during the early 1990s, updates also aired during the overnight hours with producers and other newsroom personnel serving as anchors. During this time, national voiceover announcer Charlie Van Dyke served as the station's image announcer, with KPRC-TV personality Don Armstrong serving as the local promo announcer.

With anchors such as Stone, Balleza, Jan Carson, Linda Lorelle, Dan O'Rourke, and Bob Nicholas, weathermen Johnson and Ted Shaw, and sports anchors Ron Franklin, Craig Roberts and Lisa Malosky, the station's newscasts often competed for and even placed first at times. In the fall of 1994, shortly after Post-Newsweek Stations bought KPRC-TV, its newscasts were retitled as News 2 Houston with a somewhat more tabloid presentational style (in contrast to its more traditional format under local ownership) similar to that of its Detroit sister station, WDIV-TV. Three years later, KPRC-TV constructed a new newsroom within one of its three studios, utilizing the newsroom as a backdrop that was similar to the "newsplex" set used by Miami Fox affiliate WSVN, itself a former NBC affiliate which became a ratings leader in that market after losing its NBC affiliation and switching to a similar tabloid-style format. This set was referred to as the "News Center" and was used on-air until 2006, even though the physical newsroom continued to exist until the move to its current facilities in 2017.

In 1996, KPRC-TV debuted a half-hour 4 p.m. newscast. During this time, KPRC-TV won more awards and continued to avidly compete in the ratings with KTRK as well as a resurgent KHOU, even occasionally beating KTRK at 10 p.m. on the strength of NBC's "Must See TV" programming of the 1990s. Notable personalities who rose to prominence in the News 2 Houston era included Dominique Sachse (who started as a traffic reporter before moving to an anchor role on the morning news), chief meteorologist Frank Billingsley (who left his position as KTRK's weekend meteorologist to succeed Doug Johnson as evening weather anchor), and investigative reporter Tony Kovaleski (whose reports resulted in numerous awards for the station).

In 2004, KPRC-TV retitled its newscasts as Local 2 News, putting the station in line with its fellow Post-Newsweek stations which adopted similar branding and perhaps to avoid confusion with News 24 Houston, a 24-hour local cable news channel owned by Time Warner Cable and Belo (then-owner of KHOU) which shut down just weeks before KPRC-TV's transition was complete. However, by this time the station had gone into a period a decline both in terms of quality and ratings. At one point, KPRC-TV's 5 p.m. newscast even reportedly finished in fifth place, behind English-language newscasts on KHOU and KTRK-TV, a Spanish-language newscast on Univision station KXLN (channel 45), and even syndicated reruns of The Simpsons on Fox station KRIV (channel 26) which at one point even led all Houston newscasts airing in that timeslot. Despite a strong lead-in from Dr. Phil, KPRC-TV also continued to decline at 4 p.m. and in both the morning and evening hours as NBC's ratings began to enter a steep decline following the ending of several of its 1990s-era staples such as Friends and Frasier, with the station even dropping Dr. Phil at one point and not even clearing the show for another Houston station to pick up. KPRC-TV was also hit with a 2006 boycott by civil rights activist Quanell X and other African American leaders following the demotion of African American anchors Linda Lorelle and Khambrel Marshall from its evening broadcasts. In response to the controversy, KPRC-TV hired longtime KHOU anchor Jerome Gray, who is African American, to anchor its early evening newscasts as well as serve as a managing editor, and moved former anchor Khambrel Marshall to executive producer, with Marshall eventually moving back on-air as a weekend meteorologist and host of Houston Newsmakers.

Overall, by early 2007, KPRC-TV was in third place behind KHOU and KTRK. However, since Nielsen Media Research began using Local People Meters in the Houston market in October 2007, KPRC-TV began to see gains in most timeslots, while its competition saw declines.[16] KPRC-TV's morning and late-evening newscasts made the most gains in 2007, competing for second place with KHOU. On July 19, 2008 during its 6 p.m. newscasts, KPRC-TV began broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition in the run up to NBC's coverage of the 2008 Summer Olympics. On August 24, 2009, KPRC-TV expanded its morning newscast to an additional half-hour at 4:30 a.m. By 2012, the station's 6 p.m. newscast had ratings gains, boasting its highest viewership in November and December, as well as significant increases in all other time periods; the 10 p.m. broadcast also grew, besting KTRK for first in the timeslot for several consecutive months that year. KPRC-TV retitled its newscasts back to Channel 2 News in 2015.

In January 2020, Bill Balleza retired from KPRC-TV.[17] His replacement is Kris Gutierrez, who was previously with KPRC-TV from 2003 to 2007. In between his stints for KPRC-TV, Gutierrez was a Fox News Channel correspondent and an anchor for WBBM-TV in Chicago, as well as for fellow NBC affiliate KXAS-TV in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex.[18] As of January 2021, KPRC-TV's newscasts are branded as KPRC 2 News.

In 1958, Reader's Digest published an article on how one afternoon in 1953, a signal showing KLEE's station ID supposedly appeared on TV sets throughout England—three years after the station was sold and changed to KPRC-TV. Although quickly revealed as a hoax to sell TV sets in the UK, it remains a long-standing urban legend.[22]

Screen-capture image of KPRC's building facade and STL tower, appearing as fictional station 'KVIK' from the opening sequence of former NBC soap opera Texas.

In the 1980–82 NBC soap opera Texas, which was set primarily in Houston, the series made several mentions of fictional television station "KVIK", run by one of the show's characters. A brief view of the exterior of KPRC-TV's studio facility, which was marked with a "KVIK" sign out front, can be seen during a later version of the show's opening title sequence. One episode of the series features a scene in which two characters are conversing while walking down a second-floor hallway at "KVIK" (which was filmed at the KPRC building) that overlooks the first-floor lobby.

• Official website
• Snopes.com article about a KLEE-TV phantom broadcast
• BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on KPRC-TV
• KPRC Film and Video Collection at the Texas Archive of the Moving Image