Description
KTBC (channel 7) is a television station in Austin, Texas, United States, serving as the market's Fox network outlet. It is owned and operated by the network's Fox Television Stations division, and maintains studios on East 10th Street near the Texas State Capitol in downtown Austin; its transmitter is based at the West Austin Antenna Farm on Mount Larson.
News operation
s of October 2021, KTBC presently broadcasts 53 hours of locally-produced newscasts each week (with nine hours each weekday, four hours each on Saturdays and Sundays); the most of all the broadcast television stations in the Austin market. KTBC's Sunday 5 p.m. newscast is subject to preemption due to network sports coverage, as is standard with Fox stations that carry early evening weekend newscasts (though the Saturday 5 p.m. newscast is usually delayed to 6 p.m. due to baseball or college football coverage).
Like most former Big Three affiliates that switched to Fox, KTBC retains a news schedule similar to what it used in its latter days as a CBS affiliate. It continued its 10 p.m. newscast, with the 9 p.m. hour time slot filled by syndicated programming, unusual for that network's affiliates. This changed in 2000 when the station moved its evening newscast to 9 p.m. – the first prime-time newscast in Austin.
For most of its first four decades on the air, KTBC was the dominant news station in Austin, due in part to being the only station in the market for 12 years. However, with the network swap, ratings began to steadily decline and by the late 1990s, KXAN had overtaken it for first place.
