KSWO-TV

KSWO-TV (channel 7) is a television station licensed to Lawton, Oklahoma, United States, serving the western Texoma area as an affiliate of ABC and Telemundo. It is owned by Gray Television, which maintains a shared services agreement (SSA) with American Spirit Media, owner of Wichita Falls, Texas–licensed dual CBS/CW+ affiliate KAUZ-TV (channel 6), for the provision of certain services. KSWO-TV's studios are located on 60th Street in southeastern Lawton, and its transmitter is located near East 1940 and North 2390 Roads in rural southwestern Tillman County, Oklahoma (near Grandfield). History Early history On May 22, 1952, Oklahoma Quality Broadcasting Co.—a locally based company founded by M&D Finance Co. owner Ransom H. Drewry, who co-founded the licensee with a group of shareholders that included J.R. Montgomery (then-president of Lawton's City National Bank), T.R. Warkentin, Robert P. Scott (both of whom were minority partners in locally based S.W. Stationery) and G.G. Downing—submitted an application to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for a construction permit to build and license to operate a broadcast television station in the Wichita Falls–Lawton market that would transmit on VHF channel 7. When the FCC awarded the license and permit for channel 7 to the Drewry-led group on December 23, 1952, the group requested and received approval to assign KSWO-TV as the call letters for his television station; the calls were taken from the Lawton radio station that Drewry founded in 1941, KSWO (1380 AM, now KKRX). KSWO-TV first signed on the air on March 8, 1953; it was the second television station to sign on in the Wichita Falls-Lawton market, launching one week after CBS affiliate KWFT-TV (channel 6, later KSYD-TV and now KAUZ-TV)—located across the Oklahoma–Texas state line in Wichita Falls—made its debut on March 1. (Wichita Falls NBC affiliate KFDX-TV [channel 3] would sign on one month later, on April 12.) Channel 7 has been an ABC television affiliate since its debut, inheriting those rights through KSWO radio's longtime relationship with the progenitor ABC Radio Network; however, the station also maintained a secondary affiliation with the DuMont Television Network.