KTRK-TV

The station grew out of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)-imposed VHF "freeze", when three entities vying for the channel 13 assignment, including the Houston Chronicle, decided to merge as Houston Consolidated Television.[2] The group also bought the studio facilities of KNUZ-TV (channel 39), a DuMont affiliate which had gone dark.

The station first signed on the air on November 20, 1954, as KTRK-TV; as the Chronicle was the largest shareholder in the partnership. The station took the ABC affiliation from KPRC-TV (channel 2) and has stayed aligned with the network since its debut. The station's original studio facilities were located at 4513 Cullen Boulevard (at the defunct Texas Television Center district on the University of Houston campus); this studio later housed KHTV (now CW affiliate KIAH, the present channel 39) and PBS member station KUHT (channel 8). Like many stations located on "unlucky" channel 13, it used a black cat as its mascot.

In 1955, the Chronicle bought out its partners. Although this theoretically left the paper free to change its callsign to KTRH-TV to match its radio station, it opted not to. However, for years it called itself "The Houston Chronicle Station." Soon afterward, the station moved to its current Bissonnet Street facility. The studio was the first domed structure in town, predating the better-known Astrodome by ten years. Both projects were designed by the same architect, Hermon Lloyd.

Early programs involved a heavy emphasis on local flavor and reflected themes of the day. Some of the more popular local shows included:

• Kitirik: a children's program, hosted by an actress in a cat costume.
• Cadet Don: A space-themed children's adventure program that focused on the exploits of an interstellar adventurer and the locations he visited. His alien puppet friend Seymour was from the planet Katark.
• Dialing for Dollars: A game show of sorts where a viewer would be phoned by the host and would win a cash prize by answering questions.
• Good Morning Houston: The successor to Dialing for Dollars, which debuted in the late 1970s and expanded to include discussions on local events and topics important to viewer's lifestyles.

KTRK-TV's studios in the Upper Kirby district.

In 1967, the Chronicle sold KTRK to Capital Cities Broadcasting (later to become Capital Cities Communications),[3] earning a handsome return on its 1937 purchase of KTRH. Under Capital Cities ownership, KTRK introduced its "Circle 13" logo – which is loosely patterned after the Circle 7 logo long used by ABC stations and affiliates broadcasting on channel 7 – in 1971. The original version, used until 1995, was set in a Helvetica typeface, with the bottom of the "3" trailing off outside the circle (similar also to the way the stem of the number 7 terminates at the bottom of the Circle 7 logo)--a nod to livestock branding of the Old West.

Capital Cities bought ABC in 1986, making KTRK an ABC owned-and-operated station[4] and the first network-owned television station in the state of Texas. That year, the trailing portion of the station's logo was "trimmed" and was turned slightly horizontal in a similar fashion to the present-day version (the logo began to be superimposed over a stylized version of the Texas state flag on July 3, 1992).

Alternate flat logo.

Capital Cities/ABC was sold to The Walt Disney Company in early 1996.[5] Not long after, the new Disney-led ownership directed KTRK-TV to clear the entire ABC schedule, though there have been instances where local special events have aired in place of network programming (the annual running of the Chevron Houston Marathon is one notable example of this as live race coverage, anchored by the station's news team, preempted the Sunday edition of Good Morning America).

On April 30, 2000, a dispute between Disney and Time Warner Cable resulted in KTRK being pulled from TWC's Houston service area for over 24 hours. Other ABC stations in markets served by Time Warner Cable, such as New York City, Los Angeles and Raleigh-Durham, were also affected by the outage before the FCC forced the provider to restore the affected ABC stations to those areas on May 2[6] (Time Warner traded the Houston franchise to Comcast in exchange for the latter's Dallas-Fort Worth system in 2007).

As of 2019, KTRK is the only major network affiliate in Houston that continues to occupy its legacy studios from the 20th century. Fox owned-and-operated KRIV (channel 26) relocated to its current facility in 1997; while in 2017, KPRC-TV constructed a new studio complex in the parking lot of its previous 1970s-era facility that would later be demolished. CBS affiliate KHOU (channel 11) would lose its facilities (originally built in 1960) to damage from Hurricane Harvey later in 2017 and eventually relocated to an office building along Westheimer Road near Uptown Houston. Consequently, KTRK is now also the only Big Three affiliate with studios located inside Loop 610.

KTRK presently broadcasts 44 hours, 55 minutes of locally produced newscasts each week (including 7 hours, 5 minutes each weekday; five hours on Saturdays; and 4½ hours on Sundays). The station airs its 10 p.m. newscasts for one full hour on weekends and the standard 35 minutes on weeknights (since 1991), and has long carried the only hourlong prime access hour (6 p.m. CT) newscast of any ABC owned-and-operated station.

Appropriate for a station with roots in the Houston Chronicle, KTRK has long been a very news-intensive station. However, in the first two decades KTRK traditionally placed a distant third in the Houston ratings behind rivals KPRC and KHOU, which at times, took turns at No. 1 during this period and benefited from stronger NBC and CBS programming, respectively. Meanwhile, KTRK's ABC offerings that traditionally placed third nationally during this time. However, following its acquisition of KTRK, Capital Cities began to invest heavily into the station's newscasts, which would take on the Eyewitness News name in the 1970s—albeit in name only as the newscasts themselves would bear a closer resemblance to those of the Action News format pioneered by longtime KTRK sister station WPVI-TV in Philadelphia versus the actual Eyewitness News format pioneered at ABC network flagship WABC-TV in New York. Since the 1970s, KTRK's newscasts have long led Houston's news ratings for most of the last 40 years, coinciding with the rise of ABC's prime time ratings during the 1970s, and are also among the highest-rated newscasts in the United States. KTRK ranks in first place among various demographics such as men and women 18 to 49 and 25 to 54 years old, African Americans and suburban audiences. In addition to KTRK's longtime ratings dominance in news, KTRK also ranks #1 sign-on to sign-off and often places first in prime time viewership, outperforming ABC's national prime time ratings.

KTRK's success over the years has been attributed in large part to the station having both popular personalities and the most experienced news team in the Greater Houston market. Many of the station's anchors and reporters have been at the station for at least 15–20 years, with some even dating back to KTRK's days under Capital Cities ownership. From 1968 to 2017, Dave Ward served as the station's main anchor, the longest tenure of anyone in American television history, and continues to contribute periodically to the station with various feature segments.

13 Eyewitness News set in December 2009.

KTRK also became known for its legendary consumer and investigative reporter, Marvin Zindler, whose week-long reports on a La Grange brothel in 1973 led to the closing of the Chicken Ranch, a bordello that was later immortalized in the musical and film, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas and ZZ Top's hit song "La Grange." Zindler was also widely noted in the Houston market for his Friday night Rat and Roach Report focusing on Houston restaurants that have failed health inspections, which ended with his trademark line "Slime in the Ice Machine". Zindler signed a lifetime contract with KTRK in 1988, making him the first person ever offered such a contract by then-owner Capital Cities, which had a reputation for being a financially frugal company. Zindler continued to work for the station until his death from pancreatic cancer in 2007, even filing reports from his hospital bed during treatment. As of 2013, the station's consumer reporting is now handled by Action 13 consumer investigator Jeff Ehling and Stretch Your Dollar feature reporter Patricia Lopez, while the station's investigative reporting is now handled by investigative reporter Ted Oberg.

During the 1970s and 1980s, Ward and co-anchor Jan Carson, along with Zindler, sports director Bob Allen and weatherman Ed Brandon, led KTRK to the #1 position at 6 and 10 p.m. In mid-April 1977 the station also debuted its 5 p.m. newscast, Live At Five, which also grew to become the top-rated program in its timeslot, and saw its 6 p.m. newscast expand to a full hour by September 1982, replacing the syndicated version of Family Feud which had moved to KPRC-TV. Later in the 1980s, Ward was joined on the anchor desk by Live at Five anchor Shara Fryer (Carson left KTRK in 1979 for ABC O&O KGO-TV in San Francisco before returning to Houston to anchor at KPRC-TV in 1983). While the newscasts (and ABC's prime time lineup) came to dominate the Houston ratings during the 1980s well into the 1990s, KTRK also had to face spirited competition from KPRC-TV, which became one of the most respected NBC affiliates in the country during the 1980s as NBC came to lead the national prime time ratings, as well as a resurgent KHOU by the dawn of the 1990s and new competition from charter Fox owned-and-operated station KRIV and independent stations KHTV (now CW affiliate KIAH) and KNWS (channel 51; the latter operating as a 24-hour "all news" channel) during this period, even though the latter two eventually shut down their news operations later in the 1990s due to poor ratings.

On October 7, 2002, new Chief Meteorologist Tim Heller (who joined from Fox O&O KDFW in Dallas) would succeed Brandon as the station's lead weatherman, presiding over the station's 10 p.m. and Live at Five weather reports while Brandon would continue to preside over the station's 6 p.m. weather reports until his retirement in 2007 after a 35-year career (with occasional appearances as a fill-in weather anchor afterwards), while Fryer would be succeeded by former MSNBC anchor (and former KTRK morning anchor) Gina Gaston the prior year, with Gaston settling into the position during KTRK's wall-to-wall coverage of Tropical Storm Allison. On August 13, 2007, KTRK became the second television station in the Houston market to begin broadcasting portions of its local newscasts in high definition, becoming the seventh ABC-owned station to make the transition.

In January 2013, sports director Bob Allen left KTRK after a 38-year career with the station, having been succeeded by Greg Bailey (who held the same position at WCNC-TV in Charlotte) four months prior on September 4, 2012. (Allen would later join KHOU as their lead sports anchor, remaining in that position until his death in 2016.) On January 11, 2019, chief meteorologist Tim Heller retired from KTRK after a 17-year career, and was replaced by current chief meteorologist Travis Herzog on the following Monday, January 14.

In recent years, KTRK has expanded its news offerings to include a 4 p.m. newscast that launched in the late summer of 2001. On August 17, 2009, KTRK became the first station in the market to expand its weekday morning newscast to 4:30 a.m., with all of KTRK's competitors following suit later in the year. On August 26, 2013, KTRK-TV split its hourlong 6 p.m. newscast into two separate half hours, with the 6 p.m. half-hour continuing with Dave Ward and Gina Gaston, while Erik Barajas and Ilona Carson would take over as anchors of the newly rechristened 6:30 p.m. newscast; following Ward's retirement in 2017, Live at Five anchor Art Rascon would take Ward's place at 6 p.m., with the station expanding its 10:00 p.m. newscast to one hour on weekends beginning January 4, 2014. On September 10, 2018, KTRK became the first television station in Texas to air a 3 p.m. newscast.

KTRK began producing an hour-long 9 p.m. newscast for KIAH (channel 39) in May 2020 though an agreement with Nexstar Media Group. The newscast bears the Eyewitness News branding and staff members, but is broadcast on the CW affiliate. It is also streamed live on the websites of both KIAH and KTRK.[12]

In August 2019, news director Wendy Granato was promoted to general manager for the station. She was the first woman to lead the newsroom and became the first woman to take the reins of the entire station.[13]

• Official website
• KTRK-TV in the FCC's TV station database