KDOC-TV
The station maintains studios on East First Street in Santa Ana, and its transmitter is located atop Mount Wilson.
The story of channel 56 in Anaheim begins with as many as six applications filed before the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the late 1960s seeking to build what would have been the first commercial television station in Orange County.
Golden Orange had a consortium studded with Hollywood stars: Pat Boone, Fess Parker, Jimmy Durante, Harry Babbitt, and Vic Mizzy were among the shareholders.
[6] The brainchild of the application was Edward J. Kirby, a longtime resident of Santa Ana who felt that Orange County was underserved by broadcasters.
[5]: 3 Golden Orange emerged the winner from the commission's comparative hearing process—the FCC examiner finding its programming proposal superior[5]: 4 —and was granted a construction permit on October 15, 1975, for a station originally given the call sign KGOF.
[9] It took multiple years and several engineering studies before Sunset Ridge, a site in the San Bernardino Mountains, was identified and approved.
A full-time general manager was hired in late 1981, but he was replaced months later by Jack Latham, a former anchorman for KNBC and KESQ-TV in Palm Springs.
The station moved into a studio near Disneyland in Anaheim, changed call letters to KDOC-TV ("Dynamic Orange County"), and went on the air October 1, 1982.
The station was sued in late 1983 over charges that its general manager, Michael Volpe, had denied a job to a woman who refused to perform sexual favors for him.
He alleged that Volpe encouraged sales representatives to make up ratings figures for KDOC and attribute them to a fictitious "Anaheim Research Bureau".
[15] The office politics and romantic pursuits laid bare in the suit contrasted with the on-air image of KDOC-TV as a family-sensitive station that even censored music videos.
On April 4, 2006, Bert Ellis, along with Anaheim Ducks owners Henry Samueli and his wife Susan, bought KDOC for $149.5 million from Golden Orange Broadcasting.
The sale closed in May 2006, placing KDOC under the ownership of Ellis Communications, Inc., a subsidiary of Atlanta-based Titan Broadcast Management, which operated the station under a local marketing agreement.
In 2008, the station's programming began moving away from the "Endless Classics" format adding more recent comedies, and talk and court shows that have ended production.
In October 2012, Time Warner Cable (now part of Charter Communications' Spectrum TV service) added MeTV Hollywood on its Southern California systems on channel 1232, carrying a time-shifted national feed instead of either the KVME or KDOC versions.
Both affiliates are separately owned and operated, broadcasting to specific areas within the Los Angeles region due to signal strength.
In June 2022, Ellis agreed to sell KDOC to Radiant Life Ministries, a sister company of Tri-State Christian Television, for $41 million.
Prior to the sale to TCT, syndicated programs that were broadcast on KDOC's main channel included[27] The Steve Wilkos Show, Maury, Forensic Files, The First 48, Lauren Lake's Paternity Court, Couples Court with the Cutlers, Judge Jerry, Pawn Stars, The Goldbergs, Seinfeld,[32] Impractical Jokers, Bob's Burgers and Family Guy.
From 2014 until 2019, KDOC also broadcast Atlantic Coast Conference football and basketball games from the ACC Network syndication service of Raycom Sports, which was previously on Oxnard-licensed KBEH in the 2013–2014 season.
The station carried games of former Major League Soccer team Chivas USA from 2010 until the club's final season.
In addition to Orange County bands such as No Doubt and Social Distortion, artists including Joy Division, De La Soul, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Black Crowes, and Def Leppard were featured on Request Video.
Following its broadcast, the special gained infamy due to a large number of technical issues, dead air, unedited fleeting profanity, and a fight breaking out on-stage.
The show initially covered Orange County-specific weather, traffic and news headlines; the program was broadcast in high-definition from its launch, after the station's studios moved to the Register's headquarters in Santa Ana, California.
As part of the SAFER Act,[47] KDOC kept its analog signal on the air until later in the afternoon on February 18 to inform viewers of the digital television transition through a loop of public service announcements from the National Association of Broadcasters.
