KXAS-TV, virtual channel 5 (digital channel 41), is the NBC television station for the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. The station was Texas' first television station when the station made its debut on September 28, 1948. Its transmitter is located in Cedar Hill. The station is owned by a joint venture between NBCUniversal (76%) and LIN Television (24%) under the name "Station Venture Operations, LP", its only other sister station under this co-ownership is KNSD in San Diego. However, because NBC has majority control of the station, KXAS is run as an NBC owned-and-operated station.

The station was launched on September 28, 1948, as WBAP-TV, the first television station in the state of Texas. It was owned by Amon G. Carter, publisher of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, along with WBAP radio. A year later, the two stations were joined by WBAP-FM (96.3 FM, now KSCS).

Even though it was obvious that Dallas and Fort Worth would be a single television market, Carter didn't care whether people in Dallas could see channel 5; he had long been a booster for the Fort Worth area. The station moved to the 1,500-foot candelabra tower owned by WFAA and KRLD-TV (channel 4, now KDFW) in Cedar Hill in 1964 along with its FM sister, reportedly only after NBC threatened to yank its affiliation. WBAP-TV started with a 400 foot tower (still at the studios, supporting microwave and remote antennas). In 1957 a taller tower was built at the west end of the property in the Meadowbrook portion of Fort Worth. Before this, WFAA-TV served as the NBC affiliate for the eastern half of the market.

Harold Ernest Taft Jr. (September 5, 1922 - September 27, 1991), affectionately known as "The World's Greatest Weatherman" and "The Dean of TV Meteorologists", was the first television meteorologist west of the Mississippi River and held the post for a record 41 years.

A native of Enid, Oklahoma, he joined the Army Air Corps during World War II, and went to the University of Chicago to study meteorology. Taft was a second lieutenant stationed in Maine on D-Day. Erroneously, he has been listed as assisting Dwight D. Eisenhower in settling the date of the D-Day invasion, but unfortunately, this is mere legend. His input from Maine may have been of some minor help, but he was still too young and inexperienced to have been involved in such important matters. However, by Korea, he was involved in major decisions where weather was an important factor. He graduated from Phillips University in 1946 and joined American Airlines as a staff meteorologist.

In 1949, Taft and two fellow American Airlines meteorologists, Bob Denney and Walter Porter, proposed a nightly weather program to WBAP-TV (now KXAS). “We told them we would present a three-dimensional look at the weather, and we would call it Weather Telefacts, because we wanted to explain the weather to people,” he later said. The three meteorologists were hired, Taft as chief meteorologist at the rate of $7 per show, and at 10:15 p.m. on October 31, 1949, Weather Telefacts premiered.