KTRK-TV (channel 13) is a television station in Houston, Texas, United States, serving as the market's ABC outlet. Owned and operated by the network's ABC Owned Television Stations division, the station maintains studios on Bissonnet Street in Houston's Upper Kirby district. Its transmitter is located near Missouri City, in unincorporated northeastern Fort Bend County. History Early years After the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) lifted its freeze on new television station applications, multiple groups expressed interest in channel 13, which became the last VHF assignment to be adjudicated in Houston. By June 1953, six different firms had filed, including the Houston Television Company, featuring a number of prominent local businessmen; the Houston Chronicle via the KTRH Broadcasting Company (which had filed in 1948); South Texas Television Company; Houston Area Television Company; W. W. Lechner; and the TV Broadcasting Co. of Houston, owned by Roy Hofheinz. Lechner dropped out, as did South Texas Television, and the four remaining bidders combined their applications in January 1954 into Houston Consolidated Television, in which KTRH and Houston Area Television each owned 32 percent, Houston Television Company owned 20 percent, and Hofheinz owned 16 percent. Houston Consolidated was then granted the construction permit. The combined company, with its 34 stockholders, was hailed by Houston Chronicle president John T. Jones, Jr. as "the greatest civic achievement in Houston in many years". Construction on the transmitter in Fort Bend County, southwest of Almeda, began in July. For studios, the new KTRK-TV leased the former studios of KNUZ-TV (channel 39), a DuMont affiliate which had gone dark that June, and the call letters KTRK-TV were selected after the FCC denied use of KTRH-TV because the radio station did not have controlling interest in Houston Consolidated Television. KTRK-TV began broadcasting November 20, 1954. It was the first full ABC affiliate for Houston. In its early years, it sought to block the move of a third station into Houston proper by opposing efforts by KGUL-TV (channel 11) to move in from Galveston, which were approved by the FCC in 1956. The present Bissonnet Street studios were inaugurated in December 1961; designed by Hermon Lloyd (later architect of the Astrodome), the facility features a dome that enclosed two studios, which was boasted to be the first such round studio building in the United States. Early local programs included the children's show Kitirik, which featured the station's mascot, a black cat named after