Portal:Television/Selected article/62

KPHO-TV (channel 5) is a television station in Phoenix, Arizona, United States, affiliated with CBS. It is owned by Gray Television alongside independent stations KTVK (channel 3) and KPHE-LD (channel 44), a group known together as "Arizona's Family". The three stations share studios on North Seventh Avenue in Uptown Phoenix; KPHO-TV's transmitter is located on South Mountain on the city's south side.

KPHO-TV signed on in 1949 as Arizona's first television station and the only one approved prior to a nearly four-year freeze on new TV stations. It initially aired programming from all of the national networks, though it gradually lost them from 1953 onward as new stations signed on in the Phoenix area once the freeze ended. After losing CBS to KOOL-TV (channel 10) in 1955, channel 5 operated as an independent station for nearly 40 years, during which time it sometimes measured as the most-watched independent within its market in the United States; one of its productions, The Wallace and Ladmo Show, was among the longest-running local children's programs in the country. However, in the 1980s and early 1990s, it faced stiff competition in the guise of new independent outlets KNXV-TV and KUTP and saw declining ratings.