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Outlet profile

KATU / KVAL

U.S. center-right corporate ownership; local news mostly center

Owned byBoth stations are owned by Sinclair, Inc. (formerly Sinclair Broadcast Group), a publicly traded U.S. broadcaster. Sinclair bought them in 2013 when it acquired Fisher Communications. KATU (Portland, ABC) is channel 2. KVAL (Eugene, CBS) is channel 13.
FundingMainly local and national advertising, including political advertising. They also earn retransmission-consent fees paid by cable and satellite providers, and network affiliation arrangements. Sinclair is also expanding in Oregon, buying Eugene-area stations in 2026 and carrying Trail Blazers games.
On the administrationmostly neutral

Background

KATU signed on March 15, 1962, as an independent station owned by Fisher's Blend Station, Inc. (later Fisher Communications). On March 1, 1964, it took over the ABC affiliation in Portland from KPTV. It still broadcasts from its original Sandy Boulevard site. KVAL in Eugene was also part of the Fisher group, and it carries CBS programming. On April 10, 2013, Sinclair Broadcast Group acquired Fisher's stations, including KATU and KVAL. Sinclair has drawn national criticism for requiring its stations to air centrally produced 'must-run' segments and for a 2018 video in which anchors at its stations read the same script about 'biased and false news.' Sinclair-owned stations are generally viewed as right-of-center at the corporate level, but local newsrooms such as KATU's mostly cover regional news in a traditional format. Because KATU is in heavily Democratic-leaning Portland, its coverage of protests, crime and homelessness is sometimes criticized from both left and right. I did not verify the stations' recent coverage of the Trump administration in detail, so the 'mostly neutral' rating rests on their general local-news orientation. In 2026 Sinclair bought additional Eugene-area stations and, with the Portland Trail Blazers, launched a free over-the-air broadcast network for the team.

Sources

  1. KATU (Wikipedia)
  2. KVAL-TV (Wikipedia)
  3. Sinclair to acquire KPIC, four other stations in Oregon (The Desk)
  4. KATU and Sinclair affiliates to be home of Portland Trail Blazers broadcasts
  5. Sinclair, Inc. Form 10-Q (SEC)
  6. KATU2 (Media Bias/Fact Check)

Profile compiled 2026-10-17; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

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