Construction and Autry-Chauncey ownership In the wake of the
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) lifting its freeze on the award of new television stations, three Tucson radio stations applied for three channels. The Old Pueblo Broadcasting Company, held by
Gene Autry and Tom Chauncey and owner of Tucson's
KOPO (1450 AM) and owned by
Gene Autry and Tom Chauncey, filed for channel 13 without opposition on June 21, 1952, and was granted a
construction permit to build on November 12. Construction got under way in early December on an interim transmitter facility mounted on the AM radio tower, as towers were not yet available, and on a television addition to the KOPO radio facility on West Drachman Street. On January 13, 1953, at 1:13:13 p.m. (13:13:13 in
24-hour time), the KOPO-TV transmitter was turned on. As construction in the television studio was still in progress, no programming was aired until February 1, when the station began to carry programs from CBS and the
DuMont Television Network. The day before, a dedicatory program was broadcast from the studios. Network presentations had to be aired from
kinescopes until a
coaxial cable hookup was completed in September to be shared by KOPO-TV and new station
KVOA-TV, allowing Tucsonans to see live network shows. KOPO radio and television became KOLD radio and television on April 30, 1957. The KOLD call letters had been used by the Autry-owned station in
Yuma until it was sold; that outlet became
KOFA and closed in 1963. Autry and Chauncey owned
KOOL radio and
television in Phoenix; as was done there, the phones were answered "It's KOLD in Tucson". The main transmitter was moved to Mount Bigelow in 1961, simultaneously with KVOA-TV;
KGUN-TV had been built on the mountain five years prior.
Evening News, Knight-Ridder, and News-Press and Gazette ownership In December 1968, Autry and Chauncey announced the sale of KOLD-TV, separate from the radio station, for $3.8 million to the Universal Communications Corporation, the broadcasting arm of the
Detroit-based
Evening News Association. The FCC approved of the deal in 1969, though it required the E. W. Scripps Trust to divest itself of its holding in the Evening News Association, as
Scripps-Howard Broadcasting owned four
VHF stations (of a limit of five), and Evening News now would own two (KOLD-TV and
WWJ-TV in Detroit). The commission tweaked the ruling to allow Scripps to retain an interest of one percent. The radio station, split from channel 13, reverted to its former KOPO designation. The
Gannett Company purchased the Evening News Association on September 5, 1985, for $717 million, thwarting a $566 million
hostile takeover bid by L.P. Media Inc., owned by television producer
Norman Lear and media executive
A. Jerrold Perenchio. The merged company could not retain channel 13. Gannett already owned the
Tucson Citizen newspaper, and channel 13's signal slightly overlapped with Gannett-owned
KPNX in Phoenix. Gannett subsequently divested KOLD-TV—along with
KTVY in
Oklahoma City and
WALA-TV in
Mobile, Alabama—to
Knight-Ridder Broadcasting for $160 million. In October 1988, Knight-Ridder announced its intent to sell the company's station group to help reduce a $929 million debt load and finance a $353 million acquisition of online information provider
Dialog Information Services. The
News-Press & Gazette Company (NPG) acquired KOLD on June 26, 1989, spending $18 million. It implemented budget cuts in the newsroom, which was wracked by employee turnover as a result. NPG also moved KOLD from Mount Bigelow to the Tucson Mountains west of the city; this improved reception in some parts of the city that had terrain blockages, but it created
signal ingress issues for cable subscribers. More critically, it impaired the signal for many over-the-air viewers, notably in outlying areas such as
Benson, Arizona. A 1985 study done for KVOA, KGUN, and KOLD estimated a Tucson Mountains move would affect 15 percent of the station's viewers.
Turnaround In 1993,
New Vision Television, a new broadcast station group based in
Lansing, Michigan, bought NPG's entire television station group of the time, which included KOLD and stations in five other markets. New Vision took over before the end of the year and immediately made moves to shore up flagging employee morale at KOLD. In addition to a new general manager, New Vision began planning for a new facility on Tucson's northwest side with nearly twice as much space as the Drachman facility, which the station had outgrown. The new facility, outfitted with a news studio called the "Newsplex", debuted in late 1994, before New Vision sold its stations to Ellis Communications in 1995; Ellis was in turn folded into
Raycom Media in 1997. Raycom would house its centralized design operation, Raycom Design Group, in Tucson.
Shared services agreement with KMSB and KTTU On November 15, 2011, the
Belo Corporation, then-owner of local Fox affiliate
KMSB and
MyNetworkTV affiliate
KTTU, announced that it would enter into a
shared services agreement (SSA) with Raycom Media beginning in February 2012, resulting in KOLD taking over the two stations' operations and moving their advertising sales department to the KOLD studios. All remaining positions at KMSB and KTTU, including news, engineering and production, were eliminated, and master control operations moved from Belo's
KTVK in Phoenix to KOLD. Though FCC rules disallow common ownership of more than two stations in the same market, combined SSA/duopoly operations are permissible.
Sale to Gray Television In 2018, Raycom Media was acquired by
Gray Television. The $3.6 billion transaction gave Gray its first station in Arizona. The arrangements with KMSB and KTTU remained unchanged. The sale was approved on December 20 of that year and was completed on January 2, 2019. ==News operation==