KAUT-TV
Overview
KAUT-TV is a television station in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States, broadcasting on virtual channel 43. It serves the Oklahoma City market as the local outlet for The CW, branding itself as CW 43 Oklahoma City, and is owned and operated by Nexstar Media Group, The CW's majority owner, alongside the market's NBC affiliate KFOR-TV on channel 4. The two stations share studios in the McCourry Heights area of Oklahoma City, and KAUT-TV's programming is presented online through KFOR-TV's kfor.com site, at its CW 43 section. The station's history is one of the most varied of any American television station: since 1980 it has been, in sequence, a subscription-television and news hybrid, a conventional independent, the market's first Fox affiliate, a public television station, a UPN owned-and-operated station, a MyNetworkTV affiliate, a long-running independent branded Freedom 43, and, since September 1, 2023, a CW station.
The call sign itself is a piece of that history. It honours Gene Autry, the singing cowboy actor and singer from Oklahoma, whose company Golden West Broadcasters built the station and whose name, Autry, is embedded in the letters KAUT. Autry's western films were part of the station's early programming, and the station marked the thirty-fifth anniversary of its 1980 launch with on-air celebrations of that founding connection.
History
The channel 43 allocation in Oklahoma City was first granted to a religious nonprofit group. Christian Broadcasting of Oklahoma, led by local evangelist George G. Teague, applied on April 4, 1977 for a non-commercial religious station and received the licence in November 1978, choosing the planned call sign KFHC-TV in January 1979. On July 13, 1979 the group agreed to sell the licence to Golden West Broadcasters, the company owned by Gene Autry and The Signal Companies, which also owned Los Angeles independent station KTLA, for $60,000. The Federal Communications Commission approved the transfer on January 24, 1980.
KAUT went on the air on October 15, 1980, though the station also dates a launch event to September 24, 1980 in its anniversary material. Its original format was split. During the day it offered news programming, an experiment that lasted less than a year, and at night it carried Golden West's VEU subscription television service, which delivered films to paying subscribers with decoders. VEU closed in October 1982, and KAUT became a full-time general entertainment independent, one of three in the Oklahoma City market, adding westerns featuring Autry himself, country music programmes, a local dance show and locally hosted horror films. Rollins Broadcasting bought the station in 1985, and it became part of Heritage Media in 1986.
Network Affiliation
Channel 43's first network affiliation was with Fox, which it joined at the network's launch period in 1986. Fox programming lifted the station from third place among Oklahoma City's independents, but the affiliation lasted only until 1991. Heritage Media acquired competing independent KOKH-TV, channel 25, that year, after an earlier attempt in the late 1980s had failed, and moved the Fox affiliation, programming and staff from channel 43 to channel 25. KAUT was then donated to the Oklahoma Educational Television Authority, the state public broadcasting network, and relaunched as a secondary public service under the call sign KTLC. Branded The Literacy Channel, it aired telecourses and adult literacy programming by day and repeats of PBS children's programmes at night, funded by private donors and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting rather than by state appropriations.
The public television chapter ended in 1998. The Paramount Stations Group bought channel 43 in January of that year, and on June 19, 1998 it became a UPN owned-and-operated station under the temporary call sign KPSG. The KAUT-TV call sign was restored on December 12, 1998, shortly after Gene Autry's death that October. KAUT remained with UPN until the network closed, carrying its final programming in early September 2006. When The CW launched that month it chose the market's WB affiliate, KOCB, so KAUT joined MyNetworkTV at its September 5, 2006 debut, branding itself OK 43 rather than adopting the network's standardised branding. In September 2012 MyNetworkTV moved in Oklahoma City to station KSBI, and KAUT became an independent station again, the status it kept, as Freedom 43, until Nexstar moved The CW to channel 43 from KOCB on September 1, 2023.
Ownership
The station's owners trace the consolidation of Oklahoma City television. After Golden West, Rollins and Heritage, the station passed by donation to the public authority in 1991 and by purchase to Viacom's Paramount Stations Group in 1998. In September 2005 The New York Times Company agreed to buy KAUT from Viacom, completing the purchase that November and creating a duopoly with NBC affiliate KFOR-TV. On January 4, 2007, the Times Company sold its nine television stations, including KFOR-TV and KAUT, to Local TV, a holding company run by Oak Hill Capital Partners, for $530 million; the sale was finalised on May 7, 2007. Local TV's stations later came under Tribune Media, reuniting KAUT with KTLA under the same corporate parent that had once owned both in the Golden West era. Nexstar Media Group acquired Tribune in 2019, bringing channel 43 into the Nexstar group where it remains.
Programming
KAUT-TV's non-network schedule has reflected each of its identities. As an independent in the 1980s it mixed films, westerns, music and locally produced entertainment. As a Fox, UPN and MyNetworkTV affiliate it carried those networks in prime time with syndicated comedies, dramas and talk shows elsewhere, a pattern that continued during its second independent period, when reruns of familiar sitcoms were a staple of its late-night schedule. Its Freedom 43 branding, adopted on April 11, 2011, was presented by its management as an appeal to values of faith, freedom and patriotism and to the Oklahoma City market's large military community, connected to nearby Tinker Air Force Base, and its partner-produced newscasts were adjusted to include stories and profiles of interest to military viewers and conservatives.
Since September 2023 the prime-time core has been The CW's schedule. The station serves as one of the CW owned-and-operated outlets Nexstar assembled that autumn, when the network also moved to Nexstar stations in several other major markets as existing affiliation agreements ended.
News Operation
News has been part of KAUT-TV's story at both ends of its history. Its original 1980 daytime format was built around news, although that first effort was abandoned within a year. In its modern form, news on channel 43 is produced by KFOR-TV. The station's morning programme, Rise and Shine, and a 9 p.m. newscast were established under the KFOR partnership during its MyNetworkTV and independent years; the 9 p.m. programme was known for a period as Freedom 43 News before taking KFOR's Oklahoma's News 4 branding in 2017, and the morning show likewise adopted the News 4 name. These programmes give channel 43 a local news presence at hours that complement, rather than duplicate, KFOR-TV's own broadcasts on channel 4.
Subchannels
KAUT-TV broadcasts its main CW service in high definition on virtual channel 43.1. Its additional services have included classic television and entertainment networks carried on its secondary subchannels, and one of its subchannel services, Cozi TV, has been listed as appearing in the multiplex of Sinclair's KOCB under a broadcast-on-behalf arrangement connected with the market's ATSC 3.0 hosting pattern, shown there as 43.4. KAUT-TV is itself designated an ATSC 3.0 station, participating in Oklahoma City's NextGen TV arrangements, under which stations host one another's services in the new standard while continuing ordinary digital broadcasts.
Studios and Transmitter
KAUT-TV shares studios with KFOR-TV in the McCourry Heights section of northeast Oklahoma City, in the East Britton Road area near U.S. Route 77. Its transmitter is on the city's northeast side, with some descriptions placing it further east on Britton Road across from the studios of another local station. FCC technical data list facility ID 50182, an effective radiated power of 750 kilowatts and a height above average terrain of 467 metres, about 1,532 feet, making channel 43 one of the stronger UHF signals in the market.
Digital Transition
KAUT-TV broadcast in analog on UHF channel 43 from 1980 until the 2009 digital transition. Its digital signal began on UHF channel 40 in 2006 and remained there until the spectrum repack moved it to UHF channel 19 in 2018. Viewers continue to select virtual channel 43. The station's later designation as an ATSC 3.0 broadcaster added a second digital chapter, in which its services are also transmitted in the NextGen TV standard as part of the Oklahoma City market's shared hosting arrangements.
Market Role and Availability
Few stations in the United States have served as many different kinds of outlet as KAUT-TV: commercial independent, network affiliate for four different entertainment networks over its life, public educational station and network owned-and-operated station twice over. Its present role is clearer than most of its past ones. As CW 43 it gives Nexstar a company-owned CW home in Oklahoma City paired with one of the market's strongest news stations, KFOR-TV. It is available over the air on channel 43 across central Oklahoma, on cable and satellite systems in the Oklahoma City area, where cable positions vary by provider, and online through KFOR-TV's website. Its call sign, retained or restored at every ownership change since 1998, keeps the station permanently linked to Gene Autry, the Oklahoma entertainer who founded it in 1980.
