KONG (channel 16) is an independent television station licensed to Everett, Washington, United States, serving the Seattle area. It is owned by the Tegna subsidiary of Nexstar Media Group alongside NBC affiliate KING-TV (channel 5). The two stations share studios at the Home Plate Center on 1st Avenue South in the SoDo district of Seattle; KONG's transmitter is located in the city's Queen Anne neighborhood. Plans for KONG dated as far back as the early 1980s, when a San Francisco–based investor group obtained the construction permit for a new station in Everett. The group secured the call sign KONG—over threats by KING-TV to sue—and set up a studio, but the station never launched. A dispute over the tower site on Cougar Mountain and difficulty securing financing scuttled the project. The permit was sold to Zeus Corporation of Washington and lay dormant until KING-TV agreed to program the new station in 1996. KONG went on the air in 1997, relying heavily on classic TV series for its programming. It has become a secondary conduit for local news and sports programming from KING-TV; the first newscast on KONG debuted in 1999, and over the years, teams including the Seattle SuperSonics, Seattle Storm, and Seattle Sounders FC aired their games on KONG. Presently, the station is the broadcast home for Seattle Reign FC and the Seattle Kraken. It is one of two ATSC 3.0 stations in the Seattle market.
History
Early permit history In 1981, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) designated four applications for comparative hearing, all seeking the channel 16 allocation at Everett, submitted by Oak Television of Everett; Unity Broadcasting Company of Washington State; Greater Everett Telecasters; and Channel 16, Inc. The designation followed a year of applications. At one point, FNI Communications—a subsidiary of First Northwest Industries, owner of the Seattle SuperSonics basketball team—applied. Channel 16, Inc., was part-owned by Jon Marple, owner of Everett radio station KRKO. Unity, a group led by San Francisco oil marketer Carl Washington and featuring almost entirely minority stockholders, was selected by administrative law judge Joseph Chachkin in November 1982 on account of its lack of other broadcast ownership and strongest integration of ownership and management. As part of a settlement, Sam Schulman, by this time the former owner of the SuperSonics, owned shares in Unity. Unity selected KONG as its proposed call sign. This triggered opposition from Seattle's KING-TV and its owner, King Broadcasting, which believed that the two stations could cause confusion; KONG hoped that the original 1933 film King Kong could be its first program and planned to operate as an independent station with sports, movies, and reruns, from a main studio near Paine Field. Instead, KONG found itself delayed by a tower siting controversy. It applied to the FCC to build a 300-foot (91 m) tower on Cougar Mountain, near Issaquah. The mast would be used by KRAB, which owned the land, and two other FM radio stations. Residents near the mountain protested, fearing that electromagnetic radiation could affect their health. King County initially required a more in-depth environmental review before the new tower received approval in April 1985. KONG had intended to be on the air by September 1984 and purchased $8 million (equivalent to $20.4 million in 2025) in programming to meet that date, but the tower siting decision left the station indebted to program distributors, paying rent on a studio and storing a transmitter—all assets that it could not immediately use. For years, KONG promised it would be on the air, but continued appeals of the tower siting decision and delays in securing financing held the station back. During this time, the Home Shopping Network looked at buying the unbuilt KONG. The originally planned KONG never materialized. Mike Henderson, a columnist for The Herald in Everett, attempted to reach the station in August 1988 and found its Seattle telephone number had been disconnected and its principals had vanished. Carl Gipson, who had been involved with Unity, noted that the company had simply been overwhelmed by the cost of endless problems and court actions over the tower siting dispute; The Herald's Allan May declared KONG "pretty well dead". In 1989, a public auction was held for station equipment and supplies, which included a satellite dish and receiving equipment. The permit was sold to Zeus Corporation of Washington, owned by Walter Ulloa and Paul Zevnik, for $300,000 (equivalent to $658,572 in 2025).
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