KHOU

KHOU (channel 11) is a television station in Houston, Texas, United States, affiliated with CBS. It is owned by the Tegna subsidiary of Nexstar Media Group alongside KTBU (channel 55); Nexstar also owns CW station KIAH (channel 39). KHOU and KTBU share studios on Westheimer Road near Uptown Houston; KHOU's transmitter is located near Missouri City, in unincorporated northeastern Fort Bend County. Houston is the largest television market where the CBS station is not owned and operated by the network.

KHOU (channel 11) is a television station in Houston, Texas, United States, affiliated with CBS. It is owned by the Tegna subsidiary of Nexstar Media Group alongside KTBU (channel 55); Nexstar also owns CW station KIAH (channel 39). KHOU and KTBU share studios on Westheimer Road near Uptown Houston; KHOU's transmitter is located near Missouri City, in unincorporated northeastern Fort Bend County. Houston is the largest television market where the CBS station is not owned and operated by the network. ==History== The station first signed on the air on March 22, 1953, as KGUL-TV (either Gulf of Mexico or seagull). It was founded by Paul Taft of the Taft Broadcasting Co. (no relation to the Cincinnati-based company of the same name nor its associated Taft family). Originally licensed to Galveston, it was the second television station to debut in the Houston market (after KPRC-TV, channel 2), taking the secondary CBS affiliation from KPRC-TV as the network's new primary affiliate, and has stayed aligned with the network ever since. One of the original investors in the station was actor James Stewart, along with a small group of other Galveston investors. The studio was located at 2002 45th Street in Galveston. In 1956, the original owners sold the station to the Indianapolis-based Whitney Corporation (later Corinthian Broadcasting), which became a subsidiary of Dun & Bradstreet in 1971. In June 1959, the station changed its callsign to KHOU-TV (the "-TV" suffix was dropped from the call letters the week following the June 12, 2009, digital transition, as most Belo stations did at the time) and had its city of license relocated to Houston. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) license listed both the Houston and Galveston service areas for a time. On April 24, 1960, the station moved to its first Houston facilities at 1945 Allen Parkway, along Buffalo Bayou in the Neartown neighborhood west of downtown Houston. .]] ==Programming== Since its inception, KHOU has been a CBS affiliate, and has largely cleared the entire CBS network lineup without interruption. In addition to its newscasts, KHOU also airs Great Day Houston, a local talk show hosted by Deborah Duncan with paid segments from local businesses in Houston, following CBS Mornings. The talk show, which has aired on the station since 2005, is taped at KHOU's studios on Westheimer Road west of the Galleria. KHOU also serves as the local television broadcaster of Houston's annual Thanksgiving Day parade, the H-E-B Holiday Parade. Despite being in a market with an ABC-owned station (KTRK-TV), Jeopardy! aired on KHOU from 1986 to 2015 and Wheel of Fortune has aired on that station since 1986 despite their presence on ABC's other network-owned stations along with another ABC O&O syndication staple, The Oprah Winfrey Show, which KHOU carried for its entire run from 1986 to 2011. Jeopardy! moved to KTRK on September 14, 2015, making it the last ABC-owned station to carry the quiz show. However, KHOU continues to carry Wheel of Fortune at 6:30 p.m., making Houston one of the few markets in the United States where both game shows air on separate stations; in most markets, both game shows are sold as a package, often airing next to one another on the same station in prime time access. Both shows rarely air next to each other in most markets in the Central and Mountain time zones, as most network affiliates often program a 6 p.m. newscast during the traditional access hour (7 p.m. ET/6 p.m. CT) before prime time, with KTRK itself having aired an hourlong 6 p.m. newscast in this hour since September 1982. In 1987, KHOU refused to air a television adaptation of the then-popular Garbage Pail Kids trading card series on Saturday mornings, owing to concerns regarding the show's ridicule of the disabled and its abundance of heavy violence; as a result of these decisions and concerns, CBS decided to remove the series from their Saturday morning schedule for the 1987–88 television season, and the series, to date, has never been telecast in the United States. Like most CBS affiliates prior to 1993, KHOU often carried syndicated programming (including Entertainment Tonight and reruns of M*A*S*H) in late night following its 10 p.m. newscast, as the network's late night offerings of the era were considered to be less lucrative compared to syndicated offerings. Beginning in 1993, KHOU (like most CBS affiliates) began carrying the Late Show (then hosted by David Letterman) at 11:05 p.m. CT, eventually moving it to immediately following its 10 p.m. newscast (at 10:35 p.m. CT) by 1995. However, the station had always aired The Late Late Show on a 30-minute delay (beginning at 12:07 a.m. CT) since the show first premiered in 1995, fitting a syndicated sitcom, game show or tabloid news program between the two shows. Because the latter program's original host, Tom Snyder, had a simulcast with the CBS Radio Network (which aired locally on KPRC-AM) and took calls from viewers during his stint as host, KHOU asked via disclaimer for Houston area viewers to not call the toll-free call-in number due to the tape-delay. This practice would continue under later hosts Craig Kilborn and Craig Ferguson, as well as the first few months of James Corden's tenure as host. On September 8, 2015, it began airing The Late Late Show at its network-approved time (11:37 p.m. CT) following Stephen Colbert's debut as host of The Late Show; leaving the station's only CBS preemption being that of the second half-hour of the Sunday morning talk show Face the Nation, which had been tape-delayed to 2:30 a.m. the following Monday morning due to KHOU's longstanding broadcasts of religious programs from Houston-based Lakewood Church and Second Baptist Church, with the former also airing on Sunday night following its 10 p.m. newscast and KHOU 11 Sports Extra (see below). After Lakewood's broadcasts moved to KTRK in 2020 (only to return to KHOU at 11 p.m. only on Sunday nights the following year), Face the Nation began airing its full hour at 9:30 a.m., where the first half-hour had already been airing for years, with the religious broadcast from Second Baptist Church continuing to air at 10:30 a.m. ===News operation=== KHOU presently broadcasts 36 hours, 25 minutes of locally produced newscasts each week (with 6 hours, 5 minutes each weekday and three hours each on Saturdays and Sundays). On weekdays, this includes a two-hour morning newscast from 5 to 7 a.m., a full hour at 4 p.m., and half-hours at noon, 5 p.m., 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. Its weekend newscasts include a one-hour morning newscast on Saturday morning, hour-long newscasts at 10 p.m. on Saturday and on Sunday morning, and half-hours at 6 p.m. on Saturday and 5:30 p.m. and 10 p.m. on Sunday. The station also airs KHOU 11 Sports Extra, which features extensive Sunday night sports coverage and commentary, following its 10 p.m. newscast on Sunday night. for "Under Fire: Discrimination and Corruption in the Texas National Guard"]] Throughout its existence, KHOU has been widely regarded as a stepping stone for many well-known television news personalities, as many of its reporters have gone on to work for national networks. KHOU's best known former on-air staffers include former CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather, NBC News correspondent Dennis Murphy, newswomen Linda Ellerbee and Jessica Savitch, and sports anchors Jim Nantz (now the lead announcer for CBS Sports), Harry Kalas (later a legendary broadcaster for Major League Baseball and NFL Films) and Ron Franklin (later with ESPN). Outside of broadcasting, one of its former sports anchors, Dan Patrick, eventually became Lieutenant Governor of Texas. KHOU also has gained a reputation for its investigative reporting staff (currently known as KHOU 11 Investigates), whose most notable stories include its 2000 investigation into defective tire designs by Firestone – which led to the mandatory recall of Wilderness AT, Firestone ATX and ATX II tires, as well as numerous lawsuits (the defective tires resulted in a number of deaths, including that of KTRK reporter Stephen Gauvain), a story in the early 2000s that led to the shutdown of the Houston Police Department's crime lab, and allegations of dropout rate fraud in the Houston Independent School District, which resulted in the dismissal of several HISD officials. All of these stories were initially reported by investigative reporter Anna Werner, who eventually went on to become the chief investigative reporter for CBS News. ====Notable current on-air staff==== Jacob Rascon – anchor/reporter ====Notable former on-air staff==== Steve Edwards – anchor/talk show host (1972–1975) Linda Ellerbee – reporter (1972–1973) Dr. Neil Frank – chief meteorologist (1987–2008) Ron Franklin – sports director (1971–1980) John Hambrick – anchor/reporter (1960s) Joanne Herring – host of The Joanne King Show (1950s–1974) Dennis Murphy – reporter/assignment editor (1975–1978) Jim Nantz – sports anchor/reporter (early 1980s) Chau Nguyen – anchor/reporter (2003–2007) Giff Nielsen – sports director (1984–2009) Dan Patrick – sports director (1979–1984) Dan Rather – anchor/reporter (early 1960s) Rick Sanchez – reporter (1986–1988) Jessica Savitch – anchor/reporter (1971–1972) Janet Shamlian – anchor/reporter (1987–1995) Ron Stone – anchor (1961–1972) ===Criticism=== On November 24, 2022, KHOU was criticized for interrupting a Thanksgiving Day game between the Buffalo Bills and the Detroit Lions for a tornado warning with 23 seconds left in the game, which caused viewers to miss a last second game-winning field goal by the Bills. The station did not incorporate a picture-in-picture treatment or split-screen format for viewers in Houston to continue watching the game when the weather report was issued. KHOU did not make a public apology after the interruption incident. ==Technical information and subchannels== KHOU's transmitter is located near Missouri City, in unincorporated northeastern Fort Bend County. The station's signal is multiplexed: On September 26, 2011, KHOU began broadcasting Bounce TV on its second digital subchannel (which originally launched as a quasi-independent station) upon the network's launch. The station had previously signed on to carry the .2 Network on one of its digital subchannels, although .2 Network never debuted. In 2015, the station began carrying programming from the Justice Network on its third digital subchannel. Quest was added to the fourth digital subchannel on January 16, 2018, and was changed to a simulcast of sister station KTBU after that station switched to the network on March 27, 2020; in February 2021, the fourth digital subchannel became an affiliate of Twist. The fifth digital subchannel, Circle, which was 50 percent owned by Gray Television with the other half owned by a subsidiary of Ryman Hospitality Properties' Opry Entertainment Group, debuted with the network on January 1, 2020. Bounce TV moved to KPXB-DT2 in January 2022. Twist and Circle were both removed on December 31, 2023; the former was discontinued by Tegna, while the latter transitioned into a free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) operation. The fourth digital subchannel became an affiliate of Sinclair Broadcast Group's Comet network in February 2024. ===Analog-to-digital conversion=== KHOU ended regular programming on its analog signal, over VHF channel 11, on the morning of June 12, 2009, as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television. The station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition UHF channel 31 to VHF channel 11. ==Notes== ==References== ==External links== KHOU Collection at the Texas Archive of the Moving Image

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