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Outlet profile

FOX 13 Seattle

U.S. center-right (local news, Fox-owned)

Owned byFox Television Stations, a division of Fox Corporation (the Murdoch family controls Fox Corporation through voting shares). Fox bought KCPQ and sister station KZJO from Nexstar in March 2020 for about $350 million.
FundingMostly local and national TV advertising. It also earns retransmission-consent fees paid by cable and satellite distributors, and it benefits from Fox network programming.
On the administrationmostly neutral

Background

KCPQ began broadcasting in the 1950s as a station in the Tacoma area. After a shutdown in 1974, the Clover Park School District bought it and relaunched it in 1976 as a noncommercial educational station. Kelly Broadcasting bought it in 1980 and turned it into a commercial independent. It joined the new Fox network in 1986 as one of its early affiliates. Tribune Company bought it in 1998 and combined its operations with KTWB (now KZJO), and the two became co-owned in 1999. Nexstar Media Group acquired Tribune Media in 2019 and then sold KCPQ and KZJO to Fox for about $350 million, which closed March 2, 2020. In that transaction, Fox also acquired the Milwaukee station WITI, and Nexstar received stations in Charlotte. In 2021 the station dropped its long-used 'Q13' name and rebranded as Fox 13 Seattle. As a Fox-owned station, its local news is produced by its own staff and covers regional topics such as crime, transportation, and Seattle-area politics. National programming comes from the Fox network. Critics who see Fox Corporation as right-leaning may view the station through that ownership, but the local newscasts are generally conventional.

Sources

  1. KCPQ (Wikipedia)
  2. History of FOX 13 Seattle, KCPQ-TV and KZJO-TV
  3. Fox Corporation completes acquisition of Q13 FOX and JOEtv
  4. Seattle Fox drops the Q, rebrands as Fox 13 - NCS
  5. Fox to acquire much-coveted Seattle station from Nexstar (The Desk)

Profile compiled 2026-10-23; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

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