KDO-TV

KDO-TV, virtual and VHF digital channel 3, is an ABC-affiliated television station licensed to, United States, serving Northwest Washington and the Northern Olympic Peninsula. The station is owned by –based, and is a sister station to the company's sole radio properties, KDO (1260 AM) and KDO-FM (101.5 FM; along with KDO-HD2's country-formatted translator K258AC on 99.5 FM). Together, the four outlets are also known as the KDO Media Group. The four outlets share studios on West Illinois Street in Bellingham near the campus of ; KDO-TV's transmitter is located on on.

Like with many other Bellingham TV stations, KDO-TV has a large audience in, Canada. This includes, a city that is ten times more populous than all of KDO-TV's entire American viewing area combined.

History
KDO-TV, founded in 1949 by KDO owner Hubert Saint-Yves, signed-on for the first time on August 1, 1951. It was the first television station in Northwest Washington and the first VHF station in the state outside of.

Saint-Yves' estate sold KDO-TV-AM-FM to in 1989. After the sale of WOI-DT, WHBF-TV and KCAU-TV to the Nexstar Broadcasting Group was completed on March 13, 2014, KDO-TV and fellow ABC affiliates WAKC-TV in Akron, Ohio, KLKN in Lincoln, Nebraska and WLNE-TV in Providence, Rhode Island would become the only stations with a major network affiliation still owned by Citadel; the company also owns a news-intensive independent station, WSNN-LD/Suncoast News Network in Sarasota, Florida.

On September 15, 2010, the first day of that year's National Hispanic Heritage Month, KDO-TV launched affiliate Telemundo Noroeste on it's second digital subchannel. Previously, Telemundo's national feed had been available in the Bellingham-Blaine-San Juan market on cable.

On May 16, 2019, it was announced that Standard Media would acquire KDO-TV-AM-FM, K258AC, WAKC, KLKN and WLNE for $83 million. The sale was completed on September 5.

Programming
In addition to the ABC network schedule, syndicated programming on KDO-TV includes Caught in Providence (which originated on sister station WLNE-TV), TMZ on TV (a rarity for an ABC station), The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Live with Kelly and Ryan, The Dr. Oz Show, and Dr. Phil.

For several years, KDO-TV would bookend Good Morning America on weekends with syndicated programming. For a number of years, KDO-TV filled the post-Good Morning America timeslot with the WWF/E's syndicated programs, including Championship Wrestling, Wrestling Challenge, Shotgun Saturday Night and Metal; the station also broadcast Jakked on Saturday nights following the ABC primetime lineup. Other syndicated programming, such as The King of Queens and The Ellen DeGeneres Show, would fill that time slot after the WWE stopped producing content for the U.S. syndication market in 2006, eventually the timeslot was given to a weekend morning newscast.

KDO-TV was one of several ABC stations that declined to carry NYPD Blue in its first season, and stuck to their decision until October 1994.

News operation
KDO-TV presently broadcasts 27 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with five hours each weekday and three hours each on Saturdays and Sundays).

For most of its history, KDO-TV has been the far-and-away ratings leader in the Bellingham-Blaine-San Juan Islands market.

In 2015, KDO-DT2, after having produced some daily Spanish-language news updates for a few years, launched a Spanish-language newscast entitled Noticias Telemundo Noroeste. The newscasts for KDO-DT2 are pre-recorded prior to KDO-TV's 5 p.m. newscast (in breaking news situations during Noticias Telemundo Noroeste tapings, KDO-TV originates Channel 3 Eyewitness News coverage from its newsroom instead). Several on-air reporters and anchors within the KDO-TV newsroom have been bilingual, allowing reporters to file stories for both Channel 3 Eyewitness News and Noticias Telemundo Noroeste (with reporters for KDO-TV using an "ABC 3" mic flag and reporters for KDO-DT2 using an "Telemundo Noroeste" mic flag). KDO-DT2's newscasts also utilize content from and  supplied via CNN's Newsource wire service.

Newscast themes

 * Advantage - Gari Media (1993-2005)
 * Metropolis - Stephen Arnold (2005-2012)

Notable current on-air staff

 * Dominick Rader - news anchor
 * Jessica Gold - news anchor
 * Thomas L. Vingoe Jr. - news anchor/reporter
 * Almesha Kitt - reporter
 * Gabriel Iturria - reporter (KDO-TV)/anchor (KDO-DT2)
 * Kerry Pantoja - reporter (KDO-TV/KDO-DT2)
 * Martina Savnik - reporter (KDO-TV/KDO-DT2)
 * Thomas L. Vingoe - veteran meteorologist (AMS Certified Broadcast Meteorologist Seal of Approval)

Notable former on-air staff

 * Al Zelikovitch - news anchor, 1966-2013, now retired
 * Frank Hutchinson - news anchor/reporter, 1997-2015, now with KMON-TV
 * Chuck Elphicke - investigative reporter, 2010-2016, now back in at KLMD-TV