BOISE, Idaho — On July 12, 1953, KIDO-TV went live on the airwaves for the first time. Idaho's first TV station later became KTVB in 1959.
Georgia Davidson, the owner of KIDO Radio, was the first person to bring a radio station, and later a TV station, to the City of Trees. In 1952, a freeze on television sets lifted and Davidson applied for KIDO-TV in December.
At the time, setting up a television station cost as much in Boise as it would in New York City, but Davidson went forward with her plan.
When KTVB became an NBC affiliate, network meetings consisted of 125 men and one woman, Davidson.
In 2003, KTVB celebrated its golden anniversary and spoke with some of the first leaders and stars of Idaho's NewsChannel 7.
"Hectic, busy, everything was new. Every motion was new. You didn't know what you were doing half the time," Bill Harvey, KTVB's weatherman in the 1950s, said. "Actually it was fun."
KTVB began airing some network programing in color in 1955 but there were only about 350 TV sets in the broadcasting area at the time.
In 1956, Bob Krueger was hired by KTVB and soon climbed the ranks until he became the station's president and general manager. He said things at KTVB got really serious in the 1970s when the station broke ground on a new and its current home on West Fairview Avenue in Boise.
"To me, local television is built around its news," Krueger said. "We continually expanded our news from where we started with 15 minutes of just local news and look where we are today."
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