26 Facts About KTLA

KTLA is a television station in Los Angeles, California, United States, serving as the West Coast flagship of The CW.

KTLA's studios are located at the Sunset Bronson Studios on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, and its transmitter is located atop Mount Wilson.

KTLA was the first commercially licensed television station in the western United States, having begun operations in January 1947.

KTLA was originally affiliated with the DuMont Television Network, of which Paramount held a minority stake; it disaffiliated from the network in 1948 and converted into an independent station.

In 1958, KTLA moved its operations into the Paramount Sunset Studios on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood.

Related searches

For many years, those who have worked on Stage 6 at KTLA were told that it was the site where Al Jolson's landmark film The Jazz Singer was shot in 1927, when the lot was known as the Warner Bros.

KTLA is currently the only Los Angeles area broadcaster that remains based in Hollywood as many other television and radio stations have moved to other parts of the region.

KTLA has the distinction as being the first news station to use a helicopter as a news broadcasting platform.

In November 1963, KTLA was purchased by actor and singer Gene Autry for $12 million; upon the sale's finalization in May 1964, Autry merged the station with his other broadcasting properties, including KMPC radio into an umbrella company known as Golden West Broadcasters.

KTLA sought a different programming strategy from its competitors during the late 1960s and 1970s, emphasizing syndicated reruns of off-network hour long dramas with a heavy emphasis on western-themed programs such as The Gene Autry Show, Bonanza, The Big Valley, first-run talk shows, movies and sports programming.

In 1979, KTLA acquired much of the programming inventory of struggling independent competitor KBSC-TV including The Little Rascals, The Three Stooges, The Munsters, The Addams Family, Gilligan's Island, Leave It to Beaver, among others.

Under Tribune, KTLA continued to acquire high rated off-network sitcoms as well as talk shows for its schedule.

KTLA spent much of the early and mid-1980s battling KTTV for the spot of the top-rated independent station in Southern California, offering a variety of general entertainment programs including movies, sports and off-network reruns; it took the top spot among the market's independents full-time after KTTV became a Fox charter station upon that network's start-up in October 1986.

In September 1995, KTLA added afternoon cartoons and Saturday morning cartoons from the network's newly launched Kids' WB block, bringing weekday children's programs back to channel 5 for the first time in close to 25 years.

The new look included a modernized logo with a halo emblem over the KTLA calls and WB logo, and a change in branding to KTLA, The WB.

The "LA" in the KTLA callsign is rendered in bold lettering to emphasize the station's Los Angeles location and coverage area, similar to a previous wordmark logo used from 1997 to 2005.

The prospect of Sinclair acquiring KTLA was met with consternation among station employees, due to concerns over the influence the company might have on the station's news content.

KTLA has broadcast the annual Tournament of Roses Parade from Pasadena each New Year's Day since 1948; while other local stations have broadcast the parade over the years, KTLA remains the sole English-language outlet in the Los Angeles market to continuously broadcast the event.

KTLA served as the local over-the-air television broadcaster rights to Los Angeles Dodgers baseball games from 1993 to 2001.

KTLA carried selected Los Angeles Lakers road games from 1967 to 1977, and as well as selected Los Angeles Kings road games during that same time period .

In March 1991, KTLA was the first station to air the infamous video of Rodney King's beating by three Los Angeles police officers, whose eventual acquittal sparked rioting within the city in 1992.

In recent years, KTLA's newscasts have become more tabloid-based in nature, perhaps to compete with KTTV .

Shortly afterward, KTLA expanded the station's traffic reports to the afternoon and evening newscasts .

In July 2015, KTLA became the first television station in Los Angeles to carry live audio simulcasts of its newscasts on the iHeartRadio app.

KTLA, in the tradition of television pioneering successes, was an FCC volunteer "early adopter" HD station.

Related searches

KTLA-DT went on to do the first HD Rose Parade and the first HD Dodgers baseball game broadcasts in the several months that followed.