is a local
UPN affiliated
Television Station serving the
Dallas /
Fort Worth ,
Texas Designated Market Area . With its transmitter in
Cedar Hill , KTXA is currently owned by the
CBS Corporation and is the sister station of
CBS affiliate
KTVT . Although the station does not carry a regular newscast, it will pre-empt its programming for news coverage from either
KTVT or
CBS News when situations warrant.
On September, 2006 KTXA will go back to being an independent station, for the first time since 1981.
also will become as "Vibe TV21" this fall.
KTXA began broadcasting on
January 4 ,
1981 , and was owned by
Grant Broadcasting . The station ran a general entertainment format of cartoons and sitcoms during the day, while at night it broadcast ON TV, a subscription TV service. By
1983 , KTXA became a full time general entertainment station which also included old movies and off network dramas. The channel 21 frequency had previously been occupied by KFWT, which went on the air in 1967, but went dark 3 years later.
Grant Broadcasting signed on a similarly formatted station,
KTXH , in
Houston in
1983 . In
1984 , both KTXA and KTXH were sold to Gulf Broadcasting. Weeks later, Gulf Broadcasting was sold to
Taft in a group deal.
KTXA was a money loser throughout the
1980s , but Taft kept strong programming on the station. The company sold its network affiliates to Great American while selling independent stations, including KTXA, to TVX. In
1989 , TVX was sold as a unit to Paramount Stations Group.
In the early
1990s , KTXA began turning a profit. It was not substantially affected by the
1995 affiliation switches but did pick up syndicated Disney cartoons from future sister station KTVT along with a few other syndicated shows. In
1995 , the station became one of the first affiliates of the
United Paramount Network .
In the early days of
UPN , KTXA was known as "Paramount 21". In the late 1990s, more first run syndicated talk/reality shows began moving onto KTXA while the amount of sitcoms and cartoons was reduced. Viacom, who had purchased Paramount in 1994, would buy CBS in
2000 . This made KTXA a sister station to KTVT.
Today, KTXA broadcast a lineup of off network sitcoms, talk shows, sports, reality shows, court shows, and first run prime time programming from UPN.
In 1998, the station, then owned by what was then called the Paramount Stations Group (and is now CBS Television Stations Group), began airing long-form paid programming and 6 years later, it had been purchased with sister-station
KTVT on weekends. Upon ownership under then-Viacom, KTXA would move from its longtime Paramount Studios in downtown Dallas on Market Street to share studios with KTVT in Fort Worth (both are two of four stations based here, the other being KXAS and KXTX).
On
January 24 ,
2006 , the UPN and
WB networks announced they would merge. The newly combined network would be called , the letters representing the first initial of its corporate parents CBS and the
Warner Bros. unit of
Time Warner . The merger would take effect on-the-air in September 2006, and at that time KTXA will revert to independent status. (The possibility of KTXA affiliating with
NewsCorp 's second network,
My Network TV , is a dead issue, now that
Fox -owned
Independent Station KDFI will carry programming from that network.) Current WB affiliate
KDAF , owned by the
Tribune Company , will be the CW's Dallas/Fort Worth affiliate. KTXA as an independent could also start airing CBS programs when KTVT cannot-such as in an emergency.
