is a television station based in
Albuquerque, New Mexico . It's an
NBC network affiliate and broadcasts on channel 4. KOB is owned by
Hubbard Broadcasting, Inc. . Its transmitter is located on
Sandia Crest , east of Albuquerque.
KOB-TV started operations on
September 13 ,
1948 , after
Albuquerque Journal owner and publisher Tom Pepperday won a television license on his second try. Pepperday, who also owned
KOB-AM -FM , had previously applied for one in
1943 . It is the oldest television station in New Mexico, the first television station between the
Mississippi River and the
West Coast , and the second oldest in the
Mountain Time Zone (KDYL-TV in
Salt Lake City , now
KTVX , had signed on a month earlier). Initially KOB-TV ran programming from all four networks--NBC,
ABC ,
CBS and
DuMont Television Network . However, it has always been a primary NBC affiliate.
Later, in May
1952 , the station was purchased by Time Life (now
Time Inc. ) and former
FCC chairman
Wayne Coy . It was Time Life’s first television asset. In
1953 as each network gradually increased its schedule and as two new TV stations signed on within a week KOB-TV would drop programming of ABC and CBS. DuMont went out of business in
1956 . CBS programming would move to KGGM (now
KRQE ) and ABC programming moved to
KOAT .
Stanley E. Hubbard, founder of Hubbard Broadcasting, bought KOB-TV from Time Life in
1957 . KOB's radio cousins were later sold off and are now known as KKOB-AM-FM, owned by
Citadel Broadcasting ; many people still confuse the television and radio stations today.
In
2005 , KOB-TV entered into a news partnership with KKOB-AM.
In
September 2006 , KOB-TV began broadcasting
NBC WeatherPlus on digital subchannel 4-2, at first inserting its
Doppler Radar during time reserved for local segments.
Three stations rebroadcast KOB's signal and insert local content for other parts of the
Media Market :
KOBF went on air in 1972 as KIVA-TV. It operated at about half of the class maximum (158 of 316kw) from an antenna 410 feet above average terrain. The station had always been an NBC affiliate.
Up until March 2007, KOBF had broadcast a short
Four Corners news, weather and sports segment, "Eyewitness News 12," during some KOB news broadcasts. On March 1, 2007, KOB management fired three of the four members of the news department, including the news director and two technical directors. A similar practice of providing local newscasts had been done at KOBR, but to a much smaller extent. Those local broadcasts also ceased on March 1, 2007
KOBG has a license to broadcast a digital signal on channel 8, but has not begun digital broadcasts.
KOBR has been a KOB satellite since 1983, after previously operating as as a free-standing local station with a primary NBC affiliation and later as a satellite of NBC affiliate
KCBD-TV in
Lubbock, Texas . A separate article about
KOBR-TV includes more extensive details about the history of the Roswell station.
The last letter of the satellite station callsigns stands for the city or county where the station is located. KOBG is in
Grant County .
In addition to KOB and its three satellite stations, there are dozens of low-powered repeaters that carry KOB's programming throughout New Mexico, as well as a handful in Colorado and Arizona.
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Ordinarily, KOB airs five and a half hours of local news each weekday, three hours each Saturday, and an hour each Sunday. During the school year, KOB broadcasts a weekly 15-minute sportscast, "New Mexico Gameday," dedicated to high school sports. Also, during the fall of
2006 , KOB broadcasts the Lobo Coaches Show, a 30-minute sportscast dedicated to the
University Of New Mexico football team.
KOB produced an hourlong newscast for Albuquerque's
Fox affiliate,
KASA-TV , through
September 14 ,
2006 . The next day, CBS affiliate
KRQE took over production of that newscast as that station's parent company,
LIN TV , began taking over KASA's operations as it purchased the station.
KOB's newscasts identify themselves as ''"
Eyewitness News 4"''.
KOB-TV has a history of strong news talent, although it is a fixture at second place in
Market ratings.
The station's hiring of Dick Knipfing in 1980 from
KOAT-TV , a local competitor, created the Albuquerque's first, big-dollar anchor, and stood out in the industry as the "
Anchorman wars" moved to relatively smaller markets. Knipfing's
1980 salary was approximately $90,000. Despite his hiring, the station was never able to overtake KOAT in the news ratings, largely due to the staying power of anchor Johnny Morris and a folksy weatherman Howard Morgan. Knipfing, now with KRQE-TV, his third time around, remains a fixture in the local TV news scene.
Today, KOB-TV's anchor team features Carla Aragon, who used to co-host ''
PM Magazine '' with Gary Doll for KOB-TV in the early 1980s, before station management rejected her audition for a news anchor position, only to see her hired away by
KNBC-TV in
Los Angeles . Aragon, a native New Mexican, spent eleven years at KNBC as the morning co-anchor of the top-rated weekday morning newscast, ''
Today In LA '' and as a general assignment
Reporter . She returned to KOB-TV in 1994 and is teamed with anchor Tom Joles, who followed Knipfing and Nathan Roberts in the anchor chair. Both Aragon and Joles are
Emmy Award winners. With the retirement of his colleague Robin Marshment in 2006, Chief Meteorologist Larry Rice, recruited to come to KOB-TV from
KIRO-TV in Seattle in 1995, now holds the distinction of having the longest continuous tenure of any of the present weather-casters in New Mexico.
KOAT-TV 's Joe Diaz may have more total years, but he left for more than a decade before returning in 1997 to resume his career as Chief Meteorologist in 1997 at
KOAT-TV . Rice is also the only Albuquerque television meteorologist to earn an
Emmy Award in weather-casting.
Other KOB-TV alums include intern-reporter Jane Wells, formerly with the ''
Geraldo '' show and now with
CNBC ; and Jeff Schwartz, formerly of
Flint, Michigan 's
WJRT-TV , who accepted a Fellowship with
Los Alamos National Laboratory and would become its Public Affairs Officer.
Also in the 1980s, long time weekend anchor Greg Gurule, replaced by Joe Vigil, moved from KOB-TV to KOA-TV (now
KCNC-TV ) in
Denver, Colorado ,
KGO-TV in
San Francisco, California , and
KNTV in
San Jose, California , before returning to his home state to join
KRQE .
- Weekend Anchor
- Weeknight Anchor
- Morning Anchor
- Weeknight Anchor
- 4PM Anchor
- Morning Anchor/Weather Forecaster
- Weekend Anchor
- ' Weekend Morning Anchor
- General Assignment Reporter
- Investigative Reporter
- General Assignment Reporter
- General Assignment Reporter
- General Assignment Reporter
- General Assignment Reporter
- Chief Meteorologist
- Weekend Meteorologist
- 4pm Weather Forecaster
- Sports Director/Anchor, seen weeknights
- Weekend Sports Anchor/Sports Reporter/Assistant Sports Director
- ''Eyewitness News 4'' (1970s-1980s)
- ''Eyewitness News Network'' (1980s)
- ''News 4 New Mexico & News 4'' (1980s)
- ''Channel 4 Eyewitness News'' (1990s)
- ''Eyewitness News 4'' (1996-present)
- ''Superstation KOB & Great Southwest Superstation'' (1980s)
- ''We're There 4 You'' (1980s)
- ''Working 4 You'' (2000s)
- ''Live, Local, Late-Breaking Coverage.'' (2005-present)
