KCPQ

KCPQ (channel 13) is a television station licensed to Tacoma, Washington, United States, serving the Seattle area. It is owned and operated by the Fox network through its Fox Television Stations division alongside KZJO (channel 22), an independent station with MyNetworkTV. The two stations share studios on Westlake Avenue in Seattle's Westlake neighborhood; KCPQ's main transmitter is located on Gold Mountain in Bremerton. The station signed on in August 1953 as KMO-TV, the television outgrowth of Tacoma radio station KMO. It was briefly an NBC network affiliate until another Seattle station signed on; the next year, KMO radio and television were sold to separate owners. The Seattle broadcaster J. Elroy McCaw bought channel 13, changed the call sign to KTVW, and ran it as an independent station. While KTVW produced a number of local programs, McCaw, a famously parsimonious owner, never converted the station to broadcast in color, and its syndicated programming inventory was considered meager. McCaw died in August 1969; three years later, his estate sold the station to the Blaidon Mutual Investors Corporation. While Blaidon tried several new programs and began color telecasting, the station continued to underperform financially. Two attempts to sell KTVW to out-of-state buyers failed because of its high liabilities. After a walkout by employees in January and the appointment of a receiver in July, KTVW was ordered closed on December 12, 1974. The Clover Park School District in Lakewood purchased KTVW at bankruptcy auction in 1975. The station returned to the air on a non-commercial basis as KCPQ in January 1976, serving as an effective replacement for Clover Park's UHF station, KPEC-TV (channel 56). Changes to the structure of school financing in Washington and the refusal of voters to approve bonds to rebuild Clover Park High School forced the school district to sell KCPQ...