WICHITA FALLS (KFDX/KJTL) — On this day, April 12, 1953, KFDX- TV3 hit the television airwaves from Wichita Falls at 4:30 in the afternoon.

From the early years of big black and white console tube TVs to today’s high-def flat-screen TVs, we’ve remained your close friends and neighbors through good times and bad.

Thirty years before today’s digital broadcast in high definition, KFDX became your 24-hour news team. About 40 years before that, on April 12, 1953, KFDX hit the airwaves as the only locally-owned station in Wichita Falls. In those days, everything was live, so it didn’t take long before variety shows became a big success, music and humor from the Nat Fleming show went right to the hearts of local viewers.

“I always tell people, I had the best band that ever hit this area, and I could say that because I didn’t play an instrument,” Nat Fleming said in a 2013 interview.

“I think that was the intriguing thing at that time. Everything was live from beginning to end for very best, for all the show all the way through,” former Meteorologist Warren Silver said during a 1993 interview for the 40th anniversary of KFDX.

Join us as we take a look back on being Texoma’s “Local News Authority” for the past 70 years and see what some of the folks you have welcomed in your home are up to now.