KIRO-TV Aircheck Videotape Collection, 1986-2017

The KIRO-TV television station first aired in Seattle, Washington, on February 8, 1958. The station’s original studio was located near its broadcast tower in the Queen Anne neighborhood of Seattle. This studio was also across the street from KIRO Radio, which, like KIRO-TV, was owned by Queen City Broadcasting. As KIRO Radio had long been a CBS affiliate station, KIRO-TV also became an affiliate of the CBS television network.

In 1963, both KIRO-TV and KIRO Radio came under the control of the Deseret News Publishing Company (later renamed Bonneville International), which was the broadcasting subsidiary of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. KIRO-TV grew rapidly throughout the 1960s, and in 1968 relocated its offices and studios to Seattle’s Belltown neighborhood at Third Avenue and Broad Street.

Bonneville International sold KIRO-TV to the Belo Corporation in 1994 during a series of affiliate switches and shake-ups throughout the country. Although KIRO-TV had been a CBS affiliate since its founding, Belo Corporation initially intended to use KIRO as a news-intensive independent station. Instead, KIRO-TV reached an affiliation deal with the UPN network on December 6, 1994. As UPN did not have a national news program, KIRO-TV began to air nearly forty hours of local news each week by expanding its morning and early evening newscasts.

KIRO-TV remained affiliated with UPN for over two years, until the Belo Corporation acquired the Providence Journal Company in 1996. As the Providence Journal Company already owned KING-TV, Belo Corporation decided to sell KIRO-TV. Through a series of trades, KIRO-TV came under the ownership of Cox Enterprises, and on June 30, 1997, the station once again became a CBS affiliate

In addition to local news broadcasts, throughout its history KIRO-TV has aired many different news specials and entertainment programs, including In Color, The J.P. Patches Show, Nightmare Theatre, and The John Report with Bob. KIRO-TV has also broadcasted games of the Seattle Seahawks, the Seattle SuperSonics, the Seattle Mariners, and the Tacoma Stars, as well as the hydroplane races of the Albert Lee Appliance Cup H1 Unlimited during Seattle’s Seafair festival.

As a CBS affiliate station, KIRO-TV also produces content for and receives content from CBS Newspath. CBS Newspath, formerly known as CBS News NewsNet, is a news-gathering service that compiles regional news stories that are of national interest and distributes them to affiliate stations for use in local news broadcasts. In addition to its own team of reporters and correspondents who report from the scene of domestic and global events, Newspath also uses shared content from its local CBS affiliates that contribute their own local footage.