KOBI: Medford's Locally Owned NBC 5 Since 1953

KOBI is a television station licensed to Medford, Oregon, broadcasting NBC programming on channel 5. It operates together with KOTI, channel 2 in Klamath Falls, as a paired service for the Medford–Klamath Falls market in southern Oregon and northern California. Both stations belong to California Oregon Broadcasting, Inc., the Medford company controlled by the Smullin family, which makes them the only locally owned television stations in the Rogue Valley and the Klamath Basin. KOBI brands itself on air as NBC 5, KOTI as NBC 2, and their shared website is kobi5.com.

In an era when most American television stations are links in national chains, KOBI is a notable exception. Its owner describes California Oregon Broadcasting as the longest continuously independent broadcast group in the West and one of the three oldest in the country. The station that pioneer broadcaster William B. Smullin put on the air in 1953 remains, more than seventy years later, under the leadership of his daughter, broadcasting from studios at 125 South Fir Street in Medford to viewers across a dozen mostly rural counties in two states.

Overview

KOBI's main channel carries the NBC network schedule — prime-time entertainment, national news, daytime programming and major sports — while its digital subchannels have carried services including Cozi TV and Quest. Its sister station KOTI performs the same role for Klamath Falls, historically as a satellite extending the Medford signal into the Klamath Basin. Together, channels 5 and 2 serve twelve counties across southern Oregon and northern California, one of the geographically larger television markets in the country relative to its population, where mountain ridges and long distances make broadcast coverage a genuine engineering challenge.

The station's stated editorial priority is localism. KOBI produces local news, weather and sports for the Rogue Valley from its Medford studios, covering Jackson and Josephine counties, while KOTI serves Klamath and Lake counties, giving the combined operation a footprint that stretches from the California border to the high desert east of the Cascades.

History

KOBI was founded by Bill Smullin and signed on the air on August 1, 1953, under the call letters KBES-TV, the calls spelling out “Best TV.” Like many pioneering stations in small markets, it carried programming from all of the era's major networks at various times, but for its first twenty-five years it was primarily a CBS affiliate, with secondary relationships to NBC, ABC and the short-lived DuMont network. The station claims a string of regional firsts from those pioneering decades, beginning with its status as the first VHF television station in the Medford area.

Smullin quickly recognised that one signal could not cover the whole of southern Oregon, which federal regulators counted as a single market. He acquired the licence for channel 2 in Klamath Falls, and KOTI debuted on August 13, 1956; its call letters are believed to reference the Oregon Technical Institute, the local college now known as the Oregon Institute of Technology. On September 21, 1964, the Medford station changed its calls from KBES-TV to KTVM. Smullin also played a midwife's role for the market's second station, helping the owners of KMED obtain the channel 10 licence and giving them space on his Blackwell Hill transmitter site; KMED-TV, today KTVL, signed on in 1961. In 1968, the Medford station moved to a powerful transmitter on King Mountain and adopted its current call letters, KOBI, a nod to its parent company, California Oregon Broadcasting, Inc.

Affiliation Changes

KOBI's network identity travelled a long road before settling on NBC. Primarily CBS through the 1950s, 1960s and most of the 1970s, the station became a primary ABC affiliate by 1978, when ABC had risen to the top of the national ratings; even then it continued to carry some CBS programmes, including the CBS Evening News and selected daytime shows, because the market still lacked a full-time CBS outlet. The final realignment came in 1983, when KOBI took over the NBC affiliation from KTVL, which switched to CBS. KOBI carried a handful of ABC programmes for roughly one more year, until KDRV, channel 12, signed on in February 1984 and claimed the ABC affiliation outright, finally giving the Medford–Klamath Falls market full, separate service from all three major networks.

KOTI's path mirrored its parent's with local variations, mixing NBC, ABC and CBS programming in different proportions across the decades before settling as the Klamath Falls outlet of the combined NBC service. Since 1983, NBC has been the permanent home of both stations, a stability of more than forty years after three decades of network shuffling.

Ownership

Ownership is KOBI's defining feature. William B. Smullin, a broadcaster with two decades of industry experience before he founded the station, built California Oregon Broadcasting into the region's homegrown media company. He retired in 1985 and was succeeded by his daughter, Patricia C. “Patsy” Smullin, who serves as the stations' president and owner today. While nearly every comparable station in Oregon passed through the hands of national groups — the Medford market's other stations are owned by large out-of-state companies — KOBI and KOTI have remained independent and family-held, headquartered in Medford. The company points with pride to that continuity and to the stations' record of technological firsts in the market: the first local colour programming in Medford, the first station to operate in stereo, the first to employ electronic news gathering technology, and the first with statewide microwave news coverage.

Programming

Beyond the NBC schedule, KOBI's local programming has produced some distinctive chapters in southern Oregon television. During the 1980s the station aired a popular interactive game show, Jackpot Bingo, modelled on the Dialing for Dollars format and shown before Days of Our Lives. Hosted initially by Tom Carnes, it offered contestants the chance to win up to $5,000 playing blackout bingo; when Sally Holliday took over as host in 1987 the programme was retitled $10,000 Jackpot Bingo with doubled top prizes, and although most winners collected the minimum $200, the show earned the highest ratings in its time period before ending in 1988. The stations have also championed academic competition, backing a quiz format in which local high schools compete head-to-head for a championship and substantial scholarship money.

The station's digital tiers have evolved with the multicast era. KOBI added a second digital channel carrying AccuWeather's local and national weather service in early 2008, replaced it with This TV in January 2014, and has since carried networks including Cozi TV and Quest on its subchannels, with KOTI mirroring the same lineup for the Klamath Basin.

News Operation

Local news is the principal bond between KOBI and its audience. The Medford newsroom produces newscasts covering the Rogue Valley's city governments, courts, wildfire seasons, agriculture and high school sports, while KOTI's presence extends that coverage into Klamath Falls and the Basin. The stations emphasise their local ownership in their news positioning: decisions about coverage are made in Medford rather than at a distant corporate hub, a distinction the company stresses under its declaration that its number one interest is localism.

The terrain makes newsgathering demanding. Reporters routinely cover long distances between Medford, Grants Pass, Klamath Falls and the northern California counties in the market, and the stations' historic investment in microwave links — they were the first in Medford with statewide microwave news coverage — grew directly out of that geography. Community service is woven into the operation as well; in the years after the September 11 attacks, for example, the stations partnered with the Automobile Association of Oregon on a “Tank of Gas Getaway” promotion encouraging residents to vacation within driving distance, paired with travelogue features in their newscasts profiling regional destinations.

Market and Audience

The Medford–Klamath Falls market covers a large swath of southern Oregon and northern California, ranked in the middle tier of American markets by population but among the larger ones by land area. Its viewers are spread across the Rogue Valley's growing retirement and health-care economy, the timber and ranching country around Klamath Falls, and small communities down into California's Siskiyou County. It is a market where over-the-air broadcasting still matters: distances are long, weather can be severe, and local television remains a primary source of fire, road and storm information. Serving more households than any competing station in southern Oregon and northern California, by the stations' own account, KOBI and KOTI function as a shared regional institution across two states and a dozen counties.

Technical Details

KOBI broadcasts digitally on VHF channel 5, displaying as virtual channel 5, with its transmitter in the Medford area; station references place the site on Blackwell Hill near Jacksonville, the historic Smullin transmitter location, while the station's 1968 upgrade involved a powerful facility on King Mountain. FCC records list KOBI under facility ID 8260, with an effective radiated power of 6.35 kilowatts and an antenna height above average terrain of about 823 metres, the high site offsetting the low power typical of low-band VHF digital signals. KOTI, facility ID 8284, broadcasts on digital channel 13, displaying as channel 2, at 9 kilowatts from a site roughly 659 metres above average terrain. KOBI also operates a UHF translator, K32DY-D on Mount Baldy east of Phoenix, Oregon, to serve households between Medford and Ashland. Both stations broadcast in analogue on their heritage channels — 5 and 2 — from sign-on until the 2009 digital transition.

Notable People

Two generations of one family define KOBI's leadership. William B. Smullin founded the station in 1953, added KOTI in 1956, assisted in the creation of Medford's channel 10 and built California Oregon Broadcasting into what it describes as the West's longest-running independent broadcast group. His daughter Patricia C. Smullin succeeded him in 1985 and has led the company for four decades, an unusually long tenure in modern broadcasting. In the station's programming history, presenters Tom Carnes and Sally Holliday hold a fond place in local memory as the hosts of Jackpot Bingo, the interactive game show that dominated its time slot in the 1980s.

Recent Developments

KOBI's recent history is one of continuity rather than upheaval. While neighbouring stations have been bought, sold and consolidated, NBC 5 and NBC 2 have continued under Smullin family ownership, investing in their digital platforms at kobi5.com and maintaining local news operations in both Medford and Klamath Falls. The stations marked their seventieth anniversary in 2023, a milestone few American television stations have reached under the same founding family. In a market reshaped by national consolidation, KOBI's persistence as a locally owned, locally managed NBC affiliate stands as its most distinctive modern story.