Former U.S. Senator Ernest McFarland, author of the GI Bill, was awed by the new medium of television. With a few friends, he formed the Arizona Television Company and applied for a television station license with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). KTVK signed on the air as Phoenix's fourth television station on February 28, 1955—shortly after McFarland was elected governor of Arizona—immediately becoming an ABC affiliate. McFarland quoted that he chose the KTVK call letters "because TV will be our middle name."