KDAF

Channel 33 was allocated to Dallas in 1966 as part of a settlement between two applicants that had been competing for channel 29: Maxwell Electronics Corporation and Overmyer Communications. In order to give each applicant a channel, Overmyer suggested moving channel 27 from Tyler to Dallas and substituting 33 for 29, with Overmyer taking 27 and Maxwell taking 33.[2] While the Overmyer application ultimately was dropped, Maxwell's channel 33 went ahead, launching as independent station KMEC-TV on October 1, 1967.[3] It was one of three new UHF independent stations in the Metroplex in six months (KFWT-TV channel 21 had signed on September 19 and KDTV channel 39 would debut in February 1968), and it was the first to fold. On October 25, 1968, Maxwell announced it was taking KMEC-TV dark and selling the station to Evans Broadcasting Company.[4]

Evans did not restore KMEC-TV to operational status. Instead, it sold the construction permit in 1971 to Berean Fellowship International,[5] which returned channel 33 to air as KBFI-TV on February 21, 1972. Berean, a locally based Christian ministry, operated the station as a family-oriented, general-entertainment independent with weekend religious programming.[6] KBFI-TV lasted 10 months, closing on Christmas Eve.[7]

The Portsmouth, Virginia-based Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) purchased the license and returned channel 33 to the air on April 16, 1973 as KXTX-TV. It was CBN's third operating television station, after WYAH-TV in Portsmouth, and WANX-TV in Atlanta. As did CBN's other independent stations (and KBFI-TV), it maintained a general entertainment and religious format.[8] However, just two months later, Doubleday Broadcasting, the owner of KDTV which had sought to sell or donate the facility to a nonprofit organization, opted to donate the channel 39 license to CBN, which paid for $1.2 million in program contracts that had dampened interest in Doubleday's offer from educational groups.[9] On November 14, 1973, KXTX-TV's programming and staff moved to channel 39, using the KDTV license and studio facilities.[10] (The KDTV call letters were then reused by a station in San Francisco.)

In 1974, the National Business Network applied to the FCC for a new construction permit to launch a new station on that allocation, which was issued on June 13, 1977.[11] NBN was a locally based group operated by Nolanda Hill and Sheldon Turner (both of whom, who had previously successfully lobbied the Dallas City Council to have a cable television franchise established in the city, each owned a 40% interest); other investors included, among others, radio broadcaster Gordon McLendon, who had made previous failed attempts to launch a UHF television station in the market and served as a commentator on precious metals once it launched.[12]

The current television station that would become KDAF first signed on the air on September 29, 1980 as KNBN-TV.[13] It operated from studio facilities located in a converted warehouse on 3333 Harry Hines Boulevard near downtown Dallas (the building has since been torn down). The initial programming format consisted of business news programming during the daytime hours; evenings, meanwhile, were occupied by the subscription television service VEU (owned by Gene Autry's Golden West Broadcasters), featuring a mix of feature films, specials and, during the NBA season, Dallas Mavericks game telecasts.

The original mix changed within a year when the station added programming from the Spanish International Network in the early evening hours.[14] In March 1982, the remaining business programming disappeared after Turner was not able to build a national syndication base for NBN's output, and KNBN-TV began devoting its entire conventional broadcast day to Spanish programming from SIN.[15] When VEU bought the subscriber base of rival service Preview, the service transitioned from channel 33 to KTWS-TV channel 27 beginning in December; the decision was taken because the contract with KTWS-TV offered more flexibility for expansion than that with KNBN-TV.[16]

In the fall of 1983, Hill Broadcasting sold KNBN to New York City-based Metromedia, which already owned independent stations in five of the six major U.S. cities where it owned television stations, for $15 million; the sale was finalized on November 8 of that year. Initially, KNBN remained a Spanish language station; however, it had drafted plans to eventually switch to an English language format. Around the time of its acquisition, the station added a couple of English language syndicated programs that were distributed by its new corporate parent's Metromedia Pictures Corporation subsidiary that were not already carried by any other station in Dallas-Fort Worth. SIN programming would eventually be relegated to the late afternoon and nighttime periods, with some English-language programming being added during the daytime hours.

On July 30, 1984, the station's call letters were changed to KRLD-TV to match radio station KRLD (1080 AM), which became a sister property to the television station after Metromedia successfully sought the FCC for a waiver of its cross-ownership regulations to let it retain KRLD radio and the UHF station.[17] (This made channel 33 the second KRLD-TV in Dallas; the call letters had been used on channel 4 when it was co-owned with KRLD until 1970.) Its operations subsequently moved to studio facilities located next door to KRLD radio at the station's current facility on John W. Carpenter Freeway on the northwest side of Dallas. The new KRLD-TV was entering a very crowded marketplace, one of the justifications made by Metromedia in securing the waiver: its competition included KTXA, KXTX-TV and KTVT, the latter of which was the leading independent in the market at the time.

The station adopted a general entertainment format, initially programming a schedule made primarily of adult-targeted fare such as first-run syndicated programs, plenty of off-network dramas, reruns of older game shows and some low-budget movies; the programming inventory incorporated very few cartoons at first, as most of these programs and shorts were already carried by other area stations. From 1984 to 1987, Channel 33 served as the broadcast home of the Dallas Sidekicks indoor soccer club. In the fall of 1985, with a huge abundance of barter cartoons now available on the market, KRLD-TV added two-hour blocks of these programs in the 7:00 to 9:00 a.m. and 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. timeslots, and also began phasing in more off-network sitcoms into its lineup.

Under Metromedia's stewardship, its format began to increasingly resemble a traditional independent station for that time. Even still, channel 33 continued to underperform as most of the stronger programs available on the syndication market had been acquired by either its rival independents or by the market's network affiliates; the station also struggled to define a clear programming identity as it heavily incorporated movies, reruns and children's programs, while the shows it did air were repeatedly moved to different time slots in hopes of shoring up their ratings. The station attempted a coup to improve viewership by acquiring the local rights to syndicated reruns of Dallas and Dynasty for a reported fee of up to $38,000 per episode, only for neither show to pull decent ratings locally when they joined the station in September 1985.[18]

In May 1985, Metromedia reached an agreement to sell KRLD-TV and its five sister independent stations–WNEW-TV (now WNYW) in New York City, KTTV in Los Angeles, WFLD-TV in Chicago, WTTG in Washington, D.C. and KRIV in Houston – to News Corporation for $2.55 billion.[19][20] Metromedia sold its radio stations, including KRLD, to Carl Brazell in a $285 million transaction completed in early 1986.[21]

Former KDAF logo, used from September 1993 to June 30, 1995 under Fox ownership.

That October, News Corporation – which had purchased a 50% interest in 20th Century Fox corporate parent TCF Holdings for $250 million in March 1985 – announced its intentions to create a fourth television network that would use the resources of 20th Century Fox Television to both produce and distribute programming, intending for it to compete with ABC, CBS and NBC. The company formally announced the launch of the new network, the Fox Broadcasting Company, on May 7, 1986, with the former Metromedia stations serving as its nuclei.[22] The purchase of the Metromedia stations was approved by the FCC and finalized on March 6, 1986, with News Corporation creating a new broadcasting unit, the Fox Television Stations, to oversee the six television stations.[23] Concurrent with the completion of the Metromedia stations' acquisition by News Corporation, the station's call letters were changed to KDAF (representing the two cities it served, Dallas and Fort Worth," but would later take on an unofficial secondary meaning as "Dallas Area Fox").

KDAF became one of the charter owned-and-operated stations of the Fox Broadcasting Company at the network's launch seven months later on October 6, making it the first network-owned television station (commercial or non-commercial) in the Metroplex. Although it was now part of a network, channel 33, for all intents and purposes, continued to be programmed as a de facto independent station as Fox's initial programming consisted solely of a late-night talk show, The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers;[24][25] even when Fox launched its prime time lineup in April 1987, the network only aired programs during that daypart on weekends for two years afterward, before gradually adding additional nights of programming until it adopted a seven-night-a-week schedule in September 1993. Until Fox began airing prime time programming on a daily basis, KDAF aired a movie at 7:00 p.m. on nights when network programs did not air. The station, which began identifying as "Fox 33," remained unprofitable well into the early 1990s. However, with Fox's growth in the early part of that decade, the station was turning modest profits by 1994.

On December 18, 1993, the National Football League (NFL) accepted a $1.58 billion bid by Fox to acquire the television rights to the National Football Conference (NFC) for an initial four-year contractual tenure, beginning with the 1994 NFL season. The deal resulted in Fox assuming the NFC rights from CBS, which had carried the conference's games since 1956, fourteen years before the NFL merged with the American Football League (with their respective teams being split into the NFC and the American Football Conference).[26] In order to raise the network's profile in advance of the start of the contract, Fox strategized to strengthen its affiliate portfolio by recruiting more VHF stations, especially those located in markets with an NFC franchise; at the time, Fox's stations were mostly UHF outlets that had limited to no prior history as major network affiliates, although it owned VHF outlets in four markets (WNYW, KTTV, WTTG and KSTU in Salt Lake City).

On May 23, 1994, News Corporation – as part of a deal that included its acquisition of a 20% equity interest in the latter company – signed a long-term affiliation agreement with New World Communications, in which Fox would affiliate with heritage "Big Three" network stations that New World either owned outright or were in the process of purchasing in twelve markets. Under the initial agreement, nine television stations affiliated with either CBS, ABC or NBC – five out of seven that New World acquired through its 1992 purchase of SCI Television, and four others that it acquired on May 5 from Great American Communications (in a separate deal for $350 million in cash and $10 million in share warrants) – would become Fox affiliates once their existing respective affiliation contracts expired.[27][28][29][30]

Subsequently, on May 26, New World bought four stations owned by Argyle Television Holdings for $717 million, in a purchase option-structured deal. Under the terms, New World included CBS affiliate KDFW-TV – along with two of its sister stations, fellow CBS affiliate KTBC in Austin and ABC affiliate KTVI in St. Louis – in the group's affiliation agreement with Fox (NBC affiliate WVTM-TV in Birmingham was exempted as New World chose to transfer that market's ABC affiliate WBRC as well as ABC affiliate WGHP in High Point, North Carolina into a trust company for later sale to Fox Television Stations to comply with FCC restrictions at the time that prohibited broadcasting companies from owning more than twelve television stations nationwide and, in the case of Birmingham, barred television station duopolies).[31] Although the network already owned KDAF, Fox sought the opportunity to affiliate with a VHF station in what was then the nation's seventh-largest market as KDFW had much stronger ratings than Channel 33 (placing second, behind ABC affiliate WFAA (channel 8), in total day and news viewership at the time) and maintained a news department; as a result, Fox Television Stations announced that it would place KDAF up for sale in early June 1994 (the agreement with New World resulted in Fox also placing Atlanta sister station WATL (now a MyNetworkTV affiliate) up for sale, in order for the network to affiliate with CBS affiliate WAGA-TV, with the former of the two Atlanta stations being sold to Qwest Broadcasting).[32]

CBS, meanwhile, had a thirteen-month leeway to find a new Dallas–Fort Worth affiliate, as its contract with KDFW did not expire until July 1, 1995. In the interim, for the first year of the network's contract with the NFC, KDAF assumed the local broadcast rights to the Dallas Cowboys – which previously had most of their games that were carried on broadcast television air on KDFW starting in 1962 through the NFC's contract with CBS, with the telecasts often drawing high ratings for that station – as a lame-duck O&O, when Fox formally began airing NFL telecasts on September 12, 1994 (Fox had aired its first NFL preseason game telecasts the month before). After approaching longtime NBC affiliate KXAS-TV (channel 5) and later being turned down for an affiliation deal by its then-owner LIN Broadcasting, on September 14, 1994, Gaylord Broadcasting reached an agreement to affiliate KTVT (channel 11) with CBS, in exchange for also switching its sister independent station in Tacoma, Washington, KSTW (now a CW owned-and-operated station), to the network.[33]

On November 15, 1994, Fox Television Stations announced that it would sell KDAF to Greenwich, Connecticut-based Renaissance Communications for $100 million; in exchange, Renaissance would sell existing Fox affiliate KDVR in Denver and its Fort Collins satellite station KFCT to Fox Television Stations for $70 million. Under the terms of the deal, Renaissance also reached an agreement with Time Warner in which KDAF would become an affiliate of The WB once the Fox affiliation moved to KDFW. Initially, KTVT was to become the network's Dallas-Fort Worth charter affiliate; however, Gaylord's pact to affiliate CBS with its stations in Dallas and Seattle effectively nullified that agreement, resulting in Time Warner filing an injunction in an attempt to dissolve The WB's affiliation agreement for those two stations and KHTV (now CW affiliate KIAH, a present-day sister station to KDAF) in Houston, the latter of which would ultimately join the network at its launch. Since KDAF could not join the network until KDFW's contract with CBS expired and Fox moved its programming to that station, The WB entered into a temporary affiliation arrangement with KXTX-TV, in which it would serve as the network's Metroplex charter affiliate in the interim.[34][35][36]

However the de facto trade hit a roadblock that nearly prevented the exchange from taking place: on January 15, 1995, NBC filed a petition to the FCC that called on the agency to reject approval of the KDVR purchase, alleging that News Corporation was in violation of FCC rules prohibiting foreign companies from holding more than a 25% ownership interest in an American television station (News Corporation founder and then-CEO Rupert Murdoch was born in Australia, where the company was founded before moving its operations to New York City in 1988, but became an American citizen in early 1986). Fox structured the KDVR-for-KDAF deal as two separate sales rather than as a trade with a cash exchange in likely anticipation of NBC trying to appeal the transaction and to ensure that Renaissance would continue on with its purchase of KDAF in either event.[37] NBC withdrew the petition – as well as others it filed regarding Fox's concurring purchases of WFXT in Boston and WTXF-TV in Philadelphia, and News Corporation's ownership interest in SF Broadcasting – on February 17, 1995.[38] New World, meanwhile, took over the operations of KDFW and the other Argyle Television stations through time brokerage agreements on January 19, 1995, three months before the group's purchase of the four stations was finalized on April 14.[39]

Fox's prime time and sports programming moved from KDAF to KDFW on July 2, 1995, with the CBS affiliation concurrently moving to KTVT. Although it lost the rights to most of Fox's programming, KDAF retained the local broadcast rights to the network's children's programming block, Fox Kids, as KDFW station management declined to carry the block's weekday daytime and Saturday morning editions (a move which had become standard practice for the other New World stations that had joined Fox since September 1994). KDAF took over the WB affiliation three days later on July 5, at which time, the station changed its branding to "WB 33"; KXTX simultaneously reverted into an independent station. The sales of KDAF to Renaissance Broadcasting and KDVR to Fox were finalized on July 9.[40]

As it did for most of its tenure as a Fox O&O, KDAF once again filled the 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. time slot with feature films as The WB had only maintained a lineup of prime time programs on Wednesday nights when the network moved over to Channel 33; this would become less of an issue as The WB launched additional nights of programming over the next four years, adopting a six-night weekly schedule in September 1999 (running Sunday through Fridays). In addition, the station's inventory of children's programming expanded when The WB launched a competitor to Fox Kids, Kids' WB, in September 1995; the station carried Kids' WB's weekday morning and afternoon blocks together on Monday through Friday mornings, while the Saturday morning block aired on Sundays as it aired the Fox Kids weekend block in its standard Saturday time slot. Alongside WB prime time programming and a blend of cartoons from both Fox Kids and Kids' WB, KDAF initially carried some syndicated cartoons, older and recent off-network sitcoms, and some first-run syndicated shows, including some series that KTVT was forced to vacate from its schedule to make room for the heavy amount of network programming brought on by its new CBS affiliation.

On July 1, 1996, Chicago-based Tribune Broadcasting announced that it would acquire Renaissance Communications for $1.13 billion.[41][42] At the time, Tribune held a partial ownership interest in The WB; however KDAF could not technically be considered an owned-and-operated station of the network since Time Warner held an 87.5% majority stake in the network – which eventually decreased to 78%, when Tribune increased its stake in the network by purchasing a portion of Time Warner's equity interest. Two weeks later on July 17, News Corporation – which separated most of its entertainment holdings into 21st Century Fox in July 2013 – announced that it would acquire New World in an all-stock transaction worth $2.48 billion;[43][44] the purchase by News Corporation was finalized on January 22, 1997, folding New World's ten Fox affiliates into the Fox Television Stations subsidiary, making KDFW the second television station in the Dallas-Fort Worth market to have served as a Fox owned-and-operated station.

KDAF's programming focus gradually shifted under Tribune ownership; the station reduced its children's programming inventory to that provided by Kids' WB and acquired via syndication in September 1997, when the local rights to the Fox Kids block moved to independent station KDFI, which at the time was operated alongside KDFW through a local marketing agreement. KDAF gradually evolved its programming slate from the mid-1990s to about 2002, shifting focus away from older programs towards a lineup consisting primarily of first-run talk shows, reality series and court shows during the daytime hours, and recent off-network comedy and drama series at night. By September 2002, the only animated programs that were carried on KDAF came from Kids' WB; it became the last station in the market that continued to run cartoons on weekday afternoons until the weekday edition of the block was discontinued by The WB in January 2006, when the network replaced it with the Daytime WB rerun block (which would evolve into The CW Daytime). In January 2005, the station changed its on-air branding to "Dallas-Fort Worth's WB," de-emphasizing the station's Channel 33 allocation; it reverted to the "WB 33" brand and the previous accompanying logo (which it adopted upon the July 1995 switch to the network) by January 2006.

On January 24, 2006, Time Warner's Warner Bros. unit and CBS Corporation announced that the two companies would shut down The WB and UPN. In their place, the companies would combine the respective programming of the two networks to create a new "fifth" network called The CW. On that date, The CW also signed a ten-year affiliation agreement with Tribune Broadcasting, under which sixteen of the group's eighteen WB-affiliated stations would serve as the network's charter stations.[45][46]

One of the stations included in the agreement was KDAF, which was announced as the network's Dallas-Fort Worth affiliate over UPN affiliate KTXA, one of five stations owned by CBS Television Stations that was excluded from a separate affiliation deal between that group and The CW in markets where Tribune owned a WB affiliate and CBS owned either a UPN affiliate or independent station; although since the network chose its affiliates based on which television station among The WB and UPN's respective affiliate bodies was the highest-rated in each market, it is likely that KDAF would have been chosen over KTXA in any event, as it had been the higher-rated of the two stations dating back to its tenure as a Fox owned-and-operated station.[46] In preparation for the launch, the station unveiled its new on-air branding as "CW 33" in July 2006, primarily for promotions for The CW's programming and other related station imaging. KDAF officially joined The CW upon that network's launch on September 18 of that year, at which point, the new brand was applied to full-time usage.

On April 2, 2007, Chicago-based investor Sam Zell announced plans to purchase the Tribune Company, with intentions to take the publicly traded firm private;[47] the deal was completed on December 20, 2007. Tribune subsequently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2008, due to the $12 billion in debt accrued from Zell's leveraged buyout and costs from the privatization of the company; Tribune emerged from bankruptcy in December 2012 under the control of its senior debt holders Oaktree Capital Management, Angelo, Gordon & Co. and JPMorgan Chase.[48][49][50][51]

Because of the consistent relative weakness in the ratings for The CW's programs, both locally and nationally (the national average total viewership of the network's programs ranges from just under one million to around three million viewers depending on the show), most of Tribune Broadcasting's CW-affiliated stations – with the exception of WPIX in New York City, KTLA in Los Angeles and flagship station WGN-TV in Chicago, all of which already used limited network branding – adopted revised on-air brands beginning in 2008 that de-emphasized their ties to the network. In July 2008, the station changed its branding to the simplified "KDAF 33", before rebranding as "The 33" that September as part of a corporate effort by Tribune to strengthen the local branding of its stations and reduce the dependence on the use of references to The CW in its stations' branding in part due to the network's weak national ratings. The "CW 33" name eventually returned full-time in September 2011, as Tribune's CW stations began restoring network references in their branding.

On May 8, 2017, Hunt Valley, Maryland-based Sinclair Broadcast Group entered into an agreement to acquire Tribune Media for $3.9 billion, plus the assumption of $2.7 billion in debt held by Tribune.[52][53][54][55][56][57] In its earlier structures, the deal would have resulted in KDAF and its Houston sister, KIAH gaining sister stations in seven other markets within Texas: Abilene (ABC affiliate KTXS-TV as well as San Angelo semi-repeater KTXE-LD), Austin (CBS affiliate KEYE-TV), Amarillo (ABC affiliate KVII-TV and Clovis, New Mexico satellite station KVIH-TV), San Antonio (the virtual triopoly of NBC affiliate WOAI-TV, Fox affiliate KABB and CW affiliate KMYS), El Paso (CBS affiliate KDBC-TV and Fox affiliate KFOX-TV), Harlingen (CBS affiliate KGBT-TV), and Beaumont–Port Arthur (the virtual duopoly of Fox affiliate KBTV-TV and CBS-CW affiliate KFDM).

On April 24, 2018, Sinclair announced that KDAF and KIAH would be acquired by Baltimore-based Cunningham Broadcasting (which has its non-voting stock controlled and, until January of that year, had been majority owned by the estate of the late Carolyn Smith, mother of executive chairman David D. Smith and widow of company founder Julian S. Smith) for $60 million. Sinclair originally planned to retain operational stewardship of KDAF through a shared services agreement (SSA) with Cunningham; this would have formed a virtual duopoly with Greenville-licensed Stadium affiliate KTXD-TV (channel 47), which Cunningham had acquired from Dallas-based London Broadcasting Company in September 2017. (Sinclair concurrently proposed selling CW-affiliated sister WPIX in New York City to Cunningham, which intended to lease the operations of that station to Sinclair under a master service agreement (MSA); however, FCC and Department of Justice scrutiny over that proposal led Sinclair to seek to directly acquire WPIX on April 24.)[58][59][60][61]

In a revised filing submitted on July 18, Sinclair disclosed it would instead sell KDAF as well as KIAH to an independent third party[62] in order to address concerns expressed by FCC chairman Ajit Pai two days before, concerning the partner licensees Sinclair proposed using to allow it to operate certain Tribune stations while materially reducing Sinclair's national ownership cap space short of the 39% limit. (For this reason, Sinclair also proposed directly acquiring independent station WGN-TV in Chicago, rescinding a proposed sale of the Tribune television flagship to WGN-TV LLC – a limited liability company to have been owned by Steven Fader, a Maryland automotive dealer and business associate of David Smith – which was to have leased WGN's operations to Sinclair under an MSA.) Despite this, that same day, the FCC Commissioners' Board voted unanimously, 4-0, to send the Sinclair-Tribune acquisition proposal to an evidentiary review hearing before an administrative law judge, a move largely seen among media analysts as a potential downfall for the deal.[63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72] On August 9, Tribune announced it would terminate the Sinclair deal, and concurrently filed a breach of contract lawsuit in the Delaware Chancery Court, alleging that Sinclair engaged in protracted negotiations with the FCC and the DOJ over regulatory issues, refused to sell stations in markets where it already had properties, and proposed divestitures to parties with ties to Sinclair executive chair David D. Smith that were rejected or highly subject to rejection to maintain control over stations it was required to sell.[73][74][75][76][77][78][79][80]

On December 3, 2018, Irving-based Nexstar Media Group announced it would acquire Tribune's assets for $6.4 billion in cash and debt. The deal—which made Nexstar the largest television station operator by total number of stations upon closure of the deal—gave KDAF additional sister stations nearby markets including Lawton–Wichita Falls (NBC affiliate KFDX-TV and SSA partners KJTL [Fox] and KJBO-LP [MyNetworkTV]), Waco–Bryan–College Station (Fox affiliate KWKT-TV and MyNetworkTV affiliate KYLE-TV), Tyler–Longview (NBC affiliate KETK-TV and SSA partners KFXK-TV [Fox] and KTPN-LD [MyNetworkTV]) and Abilene (CBS affiliate KTAB-TV and NBC-affiliated SSA partner KRBC-TV). Given that Nexstar's operations are based in the Metroplex, it is unclear whether KDAF will be designated as a flagship outlet for the group (either as a sole flagship or in conjunction with one of the three Tribune-owned stations in the three largest U.S. markets).[81][82][83][84][85][86][87][88][89][90][91] The sale was approved by the FCC on September 16, and was completed on September 19, 2019.

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:

KDAF first launched a digital subchannel on virtual channel 33.2 in July 2006, initially operating as a charter affiliate of The Tube; it carried The Tube until parent company Tube Music Network, LLC shut down the network's operations on October 1, 2007. The subchannel remained in operation without programming until November 1, 2007, when it became an affiliate of the Spanish language network LATV; that network was dropped by KDAF in June 2010. The 33.2 subchannel was later reactivated as a charter affiliate of Antenna TV upon the launch of the Tribune-owned classic television network on January 1, 2011.[93]

KDAF launched a tertiary digital subchannel on virtual channel 33.3 on December 7, 2010 as an affiliate of This TV, through the film-focused network's affiliation agreement with Tribune (which would eventually acquire Weigel Broadcasting's 50% equity share of the network in November 2013). This TV had previously been carried by ABC affiliate WFAA, which had earlier replaced it on the station's 8.2 subchannel with the lifestyle-focused Live Well Network on November 8, 2010.[94] On May 8, 2019, KDAF-DT3 became an affiliate of the revived Court TV, which made available on November 1, 2019.[95]

KDAF launched a fourth digital subchannel on virtual channel 33.4 on January 3, 2018 as an affiliate of Charge!.

KDAF shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 33, at 8 a.m. on June 12, 2009, as part the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television.[96] The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 32, using PSIP to display KDAF's virtual channel as 33 on digital television receivers.

After Channel 33 was sold to Metromedia, its new owners heavily invested in the creation of a news department for the-then KRLD-TV, acquiring modernized technology (including a computer system and several Sony Betacams) for production and newsgathering resources. The station's news staff was based in a small trailer parked within the Harry Hines Boulevard studios, before moving into the larger Carpenter Freeway facility shortly before the newscast's launch. On July 30, 1984, Channel 33 debuted a nightly hour-long newscast at 7:00 p.m., the first local prime time news program ever attempted on a commercial television station in the Dallas-Fort Worth market (it was the first prime time newscast to air in the market overall since PBS member station KERA-TV (channel 13) cancelled its evening news program, the 13 Report, in 1977). However, its debut was less than auspicious, earning at .7 rating (amounting to less than seven-tenths of 1% of all households in the Dallas–Fort Worth market that watched the premiere broadcast), eventually rising to a peak of 2.0 within several months; although its ratings peak still well below the 4.0 target share that was promised to advertisers, Dallas Morning News television critic Ed Bark later noted that the program suffered from the lack of a strong lead-in, even though it performed better than many of the station's syndicated programs. The program, however, would earn two United Press International awards in 1985 for "Best Newscast in Texas" and "Best Spot News" (for its coverage of the 1985 Mesquite tornado). In an effort to increase viewership for the 7:00 p.m. newscast, KRLD-TV launched an extensive promotional campaign that included billboards with such taglines as "Hey [name of anchor], now you too can watch the news/weather/sports" (incorporating the names of popular anchors at its competitors, including KDFW evening anchor Clarice Tinsley, WFAA evening anchor Tracy Rowlett and sports director Dale Hansen, and KXAS chief meteorologist Harold Taft).[18]

The news department underwent tumultuous changes in 1986; after original news director Tony deHaro (who previously served in that same role at KRLD radio prior to Metromedia's purchase of Channel 33) was fired by the station, he wrote a scathing letter to D Magazine criticizing the news department and KRLD-TV general manager Ray Schonbak, stating that Schonbak insisted on implementing "sensationalis[tic] and inflammatory" journalism techniques. At the time, station management acquired a state-of-the-art microwave live truck for newsgathering and drafted plans to open a bureau in Fort Worth. On May 10, 1986, shortly after News Corporation assumed control of the station following the completion of its merger with Metromedia, Schonbak announced Channel 33's news department would shut down, stating to staff that the move was his decision; in an August 1986 article that he wrote for D Magazine, former anchor Quin Mathews (who joined KRLD from KDFW in 1984, and was later hired by WFAA as its morning and midday anchor after Channel 33's news department folded) questioned whether the move was solely that of Schonbak or a directive by News Corporation management, despite the company's efforts to expand news programming on its soon-to-be Fox O&Os, noting that Schonbak had given Fox executives five different options for the news department to improve revenue and ratings, all of which were considered by the board to be unacceptable (at the time of the merger, then-sister stations WNYW, KTTV and WTTG had maintained news departments that were either established under the previous ownership of Metromedia or by predecessor owners, while Fox Television Stations launched a news department that year at WFLD; news programming on each of the stations consisted almost exclusively of prime time newscasts).[18]

With an increase in revenues by the early 1990s, Fox Television Stations announced plans to re-establish KDAF's news department and launch a prime time newscast at 9:00 p.m., later setting August 1, 1994 as the program's projected premiere date. Then-general manager Lisa Gregorisch (now a television producer based at Time Warner subsidiary Telepictures) began hiring a "dream team" of reporters, editors, producers and photographers to staff the news operation, which she stated in an interview with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram "would have 'shaken up this news market like never before'." These plans were shelved when Fox decided to affiliate with KDFW – which already had a functioning news department and a sizeable amount of local news programming that would be expanded upon following the switch – as part of its affiliation agreement with New World Communications, and sell KDAF in turn. Fox was already beginning to phase in news departments on most of its stations, gradually expanding beyond its O&Os to affiliates that did not already produce news; the New World stations were among the first aligned with the network to take on a news-intensive format, which mixed newscasts in both common time slots, and time slots normally ceded to morning and early-evening national news programs, and late prime time shows on CBS, ABC and NBC. Most of those hired as part of the aborted operation – around 20 people that were already hired and several others, including some on-air personalities, that made commitments to join the staff – either were able to re-sign in their previous positions at other stations or were placed by the group in positions at other Fox Television Stations properties.[32]

Plans to re-establish a news department for KDAF were revived under Tribune Broadcasting ownership later in the decade, as part of the company's efforts to launch in-house newscasts on the group's WB affiliates. In January 1999, the station began producing a half-hour newscast at 9:00 p.m. that initially aired only on weeknights. Debuting as WB 33 News @ Nine, it was first anchored by Patrick Greenlaw and Crystal Thornton, alongside chief meteorologist Steve LaNore and sports director Bob Irzyk. The program was expanded to seven days a week in January 2000, with Dawn Tongish appointed as weekend anchor; the Monday through Friday editions were then expanded to one hour in January 2001,[98] with the weekend newscasts following suit by 2003. The KDAF 9:00 p.m. newscast continually placed a very distant second behind KDFW's established hour-long prime time newscast, Fox 4 News at 9:00, which had grown to become the ratings leader in that time slot since its debut upon Channel 4's July 1995 switch to Fox under the KDFW news department's former News 4 Texas brand. In September 2005, the station debuted DFW Close-Up, a half-hour public affairs program which aired on Sunday mornings until September 2013.

In late February 2009, anchors Tom Crespo and Terri Chappell – who had served as main anchors of the program since 2004 and 2003, respectively – were replaced on the weeknight newscasts by existing general assignment reporter Amanda Salinas (later Fitzpatrick) and Walt Maciborski (the latter of whom joined KDAF from ABC affiliate WFTS-TV in Tampa). On September 21, 2009, KDAF debuted a nightly half-hour newscast at 5:30 p.m. to compete with part of KDFW's hour-long 5:00 newscast as well as the network newscasts on KTVT, KXAS-TV and WFAA; the program utilized a different format that featured former station interns as full-time reporters, as well as some new feature segments that would be considered irrelevant for the 9:00 p.m. broadcast.

KDAF's former newscast logo as The 33 News, used from 2008 to 2011; still used sporadically in promos for EyeOpener.

On March 1, 2010, KDAF expanded the early evening newscast to a full hour on weekdays from 5:00 to 6:00 p.m. (the weekend editions continued to air for a half-hour at 5:30, competing against national newscasts on WFAA, KXAS and KTVT on Saturdays as an earlier local news alternative, and local newscasts on KTVT, WFAA and KDFW and a national network newscast on KXAS on Sundays). The weekday editions of that newscast was subsequently reduced to a half-hour on May 3, now solely competing against local newscasts on KDFW, WFAA, KXAS and KTVT; the 5:30 p.m. half-hour of the broadcast was replaced by off-network syndicated sitcoms. On May 22, 2010, KDAF became the last remaining English language television station in the Dallas-Fort Worth market to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition. Unlike the other stations in the Dallas-Fort Worth market, video shot during field reports is recorded and broadcast in true high definition. The market's other four news-producing stations broadcast studio segments in HD, but, at the time, video footage during field reports shot for their newscasts was recorded in 16:9 widescreen standard definition.

On October 31, 2011, KDAF began airing the Tribune-distributed morning news program EyeOpener, which originally premiered six months earlier on May 9 as a test concept on Houston sister station KIAH. Initially airing only on weekday mornings (for three hours starting at 5:00 a.m.), before expanding to include hour-long weekend editions in April 2015, the program's hybrid format is billed as a "provocative and unpredictable" combination of daily news, lifestyle, entertainment and opinion segments. All national content is produced at KDAF's Carpenter Freeway studios, which, in conjunction with KDAF's acquisition of the local rights to EyeOpener, replaced its corporate parent's Tribune Tower headquarters in Chicago as the program's main production base. Local news, weather and traffic updates are also presented live during each half-hour by a solo anchor at the KDAF studios; local news and traffic reports were first presented by Nerissa Knight, who served as the program's national news segment anchor (and was a former anchor at KTVT), while weather segments were presented by meteorologist Krista Villarreal (formerly of KXAS-TV). Tribune gradually began syndicating the program to its stations in four additional markets (Philadelphia, Miami, Portland, Oregon and Fort Smith, Arkansas), as well as a non-Tribune station in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, all of which provide local news and weather segments during the program.[99]

During the summer of 2012, KDAF's news department underwent a series of staff departures: following ratings declines during his tenure, news director David Duitch left the station in July to become website editor for The Dallas Morning News;[100] that August saw the departures of chief meteorologist Bob Goosmann and sports reporter Chase Williams,[101] the resignation of reporter Giselle Phelps[102] and Walt MacIborski's departure for Fox-affiliated sister station WXIN in Indianapolis.[100] On August 16 of that year, EyeOpener senior producer Larissa Hall was promoted to a director of content position to oversee the newscasts.[100]

NightCap newscast logo, used from November 1, 2012 to May 19, 2014.

On September 4, 2012, KDAF management announced in a meeting with station staff that it would adopt a format similar to EyeOpener for the 5:00 and 9:00 p.m. newscasts, in order to reduce production and operation costs for the news department, and to make the broadcast profitable. The evening newscasts were revamped under the Nightcap concept on November 1, 2012; the program made use of multimedia journalists (which require a single person to film, edit and report news stories) and incorporated humor within most of its story content, except for news items and feature pieces that warranted a more serious tone.[103] New staff members were hired to anchor and report for the newscasts, while about half of the newsroom staff (including several employees that were with KDAF since the current news department's inception in 1999) had been laid off.[104]

Even with the format switch, KDAF remained in last place among Dallas–Fort Worth's news-producing English stations, with viewership having declined to the point of registering "hashmarks" (indicating viewership too low to register a ratings point) on some nights during the initial switch to the Nightcap format. Ratings slowly increased over the next year-and-a-half while the format was instituted, particularly in the key age demographic of adults 25–54.[105][106] Larissa Hall, who oversaw Nightcap's launch as KDAF's director of content, left the station at the end of 2012, shifting to other duties within the Tribune corporate umbrella and giving Nightcap only partial oversight.[107]

In November 2013, KDAF hired Steve Simon (a former weekend anchor-turned-producer at KIAH) as its news director. While in Houston, Simon helped launch NewsFix, a stylized news format that first launched in March 2011 on KIAH and described by that station's general manager Roger Bare as "a newsreel updated for the 21st century," which de-emphasized on-camera anchors and reporters – using only an off-camera narrator for continuity to place more of a direct focus on footage involving those tied to the story – requiring a far smaller staff than most news programs.[108][109] Many on-air members of the KDAF news staff departed in the months prior to the format change, including longtime reporter Barry Carpenter and anchor Amanda Fitzpatrick, both of whom were with the station prior to the adoption of the Nightcap format.[110] NewsFix officially debuted on May 20, 2014, beginning with the 5:00 p.m. broadcast, with Greg Onofrio – a Houston radio personality who also continues to serve in the same capacity on the KIAH edition of the program – serving as its narrator, in addition to making on-screen appearances for a commentary segment at the end of the broadcast.[110][111] The weekday early-evening edition expanded to an hour on September 7, 2015.[112] On September 6, 2018, Tribune announced that NewsFix would be cancelled effective September 14; Morning Dose, the successor program to EyeOpener, was concurrently cancelled effective October 19.[113]

On March 13, 2019, the station began a partnership with Urban One, where the morning show from radio station KBFB (97.9 FM), Veda Loca in the Morning, was simulcast on KDAF from 6 to 8 a.m. During that time, it was known on-air as The Beat on 33.[114] The partnership quietly ended on January 3, 2020 when Veda Loca in the Morning itself was cancelled.

• Walt Maciborski – weeknight anchor (2009–2012; now at KEYE-TV in Austin)