DENVER — In the autumn of 1952, television was still an exotic new idea in Colorado. Harry Truman was President, America was at war in Korea and our state’s population was only a fraction of what it is today.
That was the reality for KBTV, when Channel 9 in Denver first went on the air with a test pattern at 3 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 12 1952. It’s been going strong ever since.
In the beginning, television was an unknown quantity, but a visionary named Max Goldberg organized a group of investors to get a federal broadcasting license to make Channel 9 happen.
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The original programming was a mixture of ABC and CBS programming, local news and other shows from 2:30 p.m. each day until 11:15 p.m. Today’s 24/7 programming didn’t come along until much later.
Change started almost immediately for the new TV station. It moved into a building at 1089 Bannock in 1953, where Channel 9 stayed until moving into its current home at 500 Speer Blvd. in 1992.
Goldberg’s original investor group soon gave way to a new owner. In 1955, John Mullins bought the station and ran it until his death in 1969. During that time, he added stations in other cities that formed the beginnings of a broadcast company that would later become Combined Communications Corporation, then Gannett Broadcasting and finally TEGNA Media which owns 9NEWS today and operates 64 stations in 51 U.S. TV markets.
Channel 9 was KBTV from 1952 until 1984 when the call letters changed to KUSA in conjunction with what at the time was the company’s brand new national newspaper, USA Today.
The other notable events in Channel 9’s history include color TV in the 1960s, videotape and remote live technology in the 1970s, and digital and social news that began slowly in the 1990s and increased until the nonstop news operation you see today on 9NEWS, My 20, 9NEWS.com, and all our social and digital platforms.
These platforms have helped us cover news including blizzards, floods, fires, elections and everything in between since 1952. Here’s to 70 more years of 9NEWS!
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