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KPRC-TV, virtual channel 2 (UHF digital channel 35), is an NBC-affiliated television station located in Houston, Texas, United States.〔"(Contact )." KRPC-TV. Retrieved on March 3, 2010.〕〔"(Districts )." Greater Sharpstown Management District. Retrieved on August 15, 2009.〕 The station is owned by the Graham Media Group subsidiary of Graham Holdings Company. KPRC maintains studio facilities located on Southwest Freeway (Interstate 69/U.S. Route 59) in the Sharpstown district on the city's southwest side, and its transmitter is located in unincorporated northeastern Fort Bend County (near Missouri City). Prior to the digital transition, KPRC was the only Houston station on the VHF dial whose cable channel position did not match their over-the-air analog channel, due to interference from the low-band VHF terrestrial signal; it was placed on Comcast cable 12 instead.〔()〕 Other cable systems on the outer edges of the Houston media market carried KPRC on cable channel 2. It is also available on cable in Lufkin-Nacogdoches, Victoria and Bryan-College Station. ==History== The station first signed on the air on January 1, 1949 as KLEE-TV. It was Houston's first television station and the third station in Texas, signing on just a little less than a month after KRLD-TV in Dallas (now KDFW). it was originally owned by hotelier W. Albert Lee and carried programming from all four networks of the day--NBC, CBS, ABC and DuMont. However, after a year of difficulty, Lee sold the station to the Hobby family, owners of the ''Houston Post'' and Houston's oldest radio station, KPRC (950 AM and 99.7 FM, now KODA at 99.1). The Hobbys took control on June 1, 1950 and changed the television station's call letters to match its radio sisters on July 3, 1950. Although the call letters appear to stand for Post Radio Company, they actually stand for Kotton Port Rail Center. After the Hobbys took over, channel 2 became a primary NBC affiliate due to KPRC radio's longstanding affiliation with the NBC Blue Network, a link that remains today. Due to the Federal Communications Commission-imposed freeze on new station licenses, channel 2 remained the only television station in Houston for four more years.〔(earlytelevision.org )〕 CBS moved to KGUL-TV (channel 11, now KHOU) in 1953 and KXYZ (channel 13, now KTRK-TV) took over the ABC affiliation when it signed on one year later. DuMont ceased operations in 1956, though it was briefly affiliated with now-defunct KNUZ-TV (channel 39, frequency now occupied by KIAH). Because of its affiliation with NBC, KPRC was the first station in Houston to broadcast a program in color and was subsequently the first to broadcast its programming entirely in color. The station originally operated from studios located on Post Oak Road, near what would later become the Galleria shopping complex in Uptown Houston. KPRC was the first station in Houston to utilize weather radar, to use videotape for field reporting, to have a fully staffed news bureau in Austin, and to hire female and African-American reporters. The station became the source of controversy after some television viewers in the United Kingdom claimed to receive its signal on September 14, 1953, three years after the original signal was transmitted. However, this was actually a hoax.〔()〕 Over the years, the Hobby family bought several other television stations, including KVOA-TV in Tucson, KCCI in Des Moines, WTVF in Nashville, WESH in Orlando and KSAT-TV in San Antonio. From 1969 to 1998, KPRC produced the longest-running syndicated television program in Texas, ''The Eyes of Texas'', a lifestyle program which focused on segments relating to Texas culture and life (the program continues to air locally on PBS member station KUHT, channel 8). KPRC was also one of the first stations to air telethons, raising $28,000 for the American Cancer Society in 1950. It carried the ''MDA Labor Day Telethon'' every Labor Day from 1970 to 2012 (KPRC's status as an MDA "Love Network" affiliate in 2013, when the telethon discontinued its syndicated distribution model and moved to ABC, where it aired locally on KTRK-TV up to 2014). In March 1972, KPRC-TV moved into a new state-of-the-art studio facility in Houston's Sharpstown neighborhood, where its operations remain to this day; the three studios located within the building are suspended from the ground to reduce vibration. In 1983, the Hobbys sold the ''Houston Post'' to MediaNews Group, while the family's broadcast holdings were reorganized as H&C Communications, with KPRC-AM-TV remaining as the flagship stations (KPRC-FM had been sold some years earlier). After 40 years under Hobby family ownership, KPRC was sold to The Washington Post Company in April 1994 (the ''Post'' was then bought by the Hearst Corporation and absorbed into its ''Houston Chronicle'', with the last edition printed on 18 April 1995). In 2004, KPRC was rebranded "Local 2." In January 2015, KPRC dropped the "Local" and began calling themselves "Channel 2." 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「KPRC-TV」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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