KTVI

History

As WTVI

The station first signed on the air by Signal Hill Telecasting Corporation on August 10, 1953, as WTVI, broadcasting on UHF channel 54. It was originally licensed to Belleville, Illinois (across the Mississippi River from St. Louis), and was the second television station in the St. Louis market after KSD-TV (channel 5, now KSDK) on February 8, 1947. The station's first broadcast was a baseball game between the St. Louis Browns and Cincinnati Reds, announced by Buddy Blattner, Bill Durney and Milo Hamilton. It operated as a primary CBS affiliate, and held secondary affiliations with ABC and DuMont. DuMont affiliation was agreed to in February 1953 to replace KSD-TV. The station was projected to sign on May 15, 1953. The station originally operated from studios located in Alton, Illinois. The CBS affiliation moved to KWK-TV (channel 4, now KMOV) when it debuted on July 8, 1954; more or less by default, WTVI became a primary ABC affiliate.

As KTVI

The station moved to UHF channel 36, and relocated its city of license to St. Louis on April 9, 1955, keeping the base "TVI" letters as part of its callsign while flipping the first assigned letter from "W" to "K" with this switch of sides of the Mississippi River, thus changing to the current KTVI. It moved its operations to facilities located in the Clayton-Tamm/Dogtown neighborhood in west St. Louis (off present-day I-64/US 40 at the intersection of Berthold, Oakland, and Hampton Avenues). However, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had recently changed its regulations so that the station could have kept its license in Belleville even while moving its main studio to St. Louis. The WTVI calls are currently used by a PBS member station in Charlotte, North Carolina.

The station lost DuMont programming when the network ceased operations in 1956, making KTVI an exclusive ABC affiliate. As the FCC would not require television sets to include UHF tuners until 1961, on April 15, 1957, KTVI moved to VHF channel 2, something it had attempted to do soon after moving to St. Louis–the channel 2 allocation had been reassigned from Springfield, Illinois, under pressure from the Truman administration, originally done so as not to interfere with CBS-owned WBBM-TV in Chicago.

For many years, the station was owned by the Newhouse newspaper chain (now Advance Publications), owners of the now-defunct St. Louis Globe-Democrat. In 1980, Newhouse exited from broadcasting, and sold KTVI and its other television outlets to the Los Angeles-based Times Mirror Company. In March 1993, in order for the company to concentrate on its newspaper and cable television system franchises, Times Mirror sold KTVI and its three sister stations—fellow CBS affiliates KTBC in Austin and KDFW-TV in Dallas–Fort Worth and NBC affiliate WVTM-TV in Birmingham—to Argyle Television Holdings in a two-part deal for $335 million in cash and securities. Under the transaction's purchase option structure, WVTM and KTVI were the first two stations that Argyle sold to New World, which the latter purchased for a combined $80 million. (It would later respectively acquire KDFW and KTBC from the group for $335 million in cash and securities). The purchase of the entire group was completed in December of that year following securement of financing for the deal.

As a Fox station

On May 23, 1994, as part of a $500-million overall deal in which network parent News Corporation also purchased a 20% equity interest in the group, New World signed a long-term affiliation agreement with Fox to switch twelve television stations—five that New World had already owned and seven that the company was in the process of acquiring through separate deals with Great American Communications and Argyle Television Holdings (which New World purchased one week later in a purchase option-structured deal for $717 million), including KTVI—to the network. The stations involved in the agreement—all of which were affiliated with one of the three major broadcast networks (CBS, ABC and NBC)—would become Fox affiliates once individual affiliation contracts with each of the stations' existing network partners had expired. (WVTM did not switch as WBRC, which was placed in a blind trust, was later sold to Fox outright as New World could not keep both due to FCC rules at the time that forbade duopolies). The deal was motivated by the National Football League (NFL)'s awarding of the rights to the National Football Conference (NFC) television package to Fox on December 18, 1993, in which the conference's broadcast television rights moved to the network effective with the 1994 NFL season, ending a 38-year relationship with CBS.

ABC had a fourteen-month leeway to find a new affiliate in St. Louis, as its contract with KTVI did not expire until July 1, 1995; its affiliation contracts expired only one month after as CBS's agreement with KDFW and KTBC was scheduled to expire, giving the networks that were already affiliated with the three former Argyle stations slated to switch to Fox a longer grace period to find new affiliates than CBS, NBC and/or ABC were given in most of the other markets affected by the Fox-New World deal (ABC's affiliation contracts with WGHP and WBRC ended even later, respectively expiring in September 1995 and September 1996). Of ABC's options, four prospects were automatically eliminated: KSDK was in the middle of a long-term affiliation agreement between its owner at the time, Multimedia Broadcasting, and NBC; KMOV was under a long-term agreement between CBS and Paramount Stations Group (which was in the process of selling KMOV and its four other major network affiliates to focus on its Fox-affiliated and independent stations that were set to become charter affiliates of group parent Viacom's then-upstart United Paramount Network [UPN]); and KNLC (channel 24, now a MeTV owned-and-operated station) and WHSL (channel 46, now Ion Television O&O WRBU) were respectively owned by the locally based New Life Christian Church and the Home Shopping Network at the time, and both stations had inferior signals, even on cable, making either unlikely choices as even last-ditch options. This left independent station KPLR-TV (channel 11, now a CW owned-and-operated station) and existing Fox station KDNL-TV (channel 30) as the only viable options with which ABC could reach an affiliation agreement. The network first approached KPLR about negotiating an affiliation deal, ultimately to be turned down by its then-owner Koplar Communications. On August 25, 1994, River City Broadcasting reached an agreement with ABC to shift the network's affiliation rights to KDNL.

Aborted sale to Sinclair; sale to Nexstar

Sinclair—which has owned KDNL-TV since the group's 1996 acquisition of its previous corporate parent River City Broadcasting—entered into an agreement to acquire Tribune Media on May 8, 2017, for $3.9 billion, plus the assumption of $2.7 billion in Tribune debt. Prohibited from owning all three stations, Sinclair would have been required to sell KPLR to a third party to comply with ownership rules and alleviate potential antitrust issues. The deal received significant scrutiny over Sinclair's forthrightness in its applications to sell certain conflict properties, prompting the FCC to designate it for hearing and leading Tribune to terminate the deal and sue Sinclair for breach of contract.

Following the Sinclair deal's collapse, Nexstar Media Group of Irving, Texas, announced its purchase of Tribune Media on December 3, 2018, for $6.4 billion in cash and debt. The sale was completed on September 19, 2019.

In August 2025, Nexstar agreed to acquire KSDK owner Tegna for $6.2 billion. The deal was completed on March 19, 2026, and included approval for Nexstar to own three full-power station licenses in markets such as St. Louis.

Programming

KTVI currently carries the majority of the Fox network schedule; however, it delays the network's Saturday late night block (currently, as of September 2016, consisting of reruns of Fox prime time reality series) by a half-hour in order to air its 10 p.m. newscast. The station may preempt some Fox programs in order to air long-form breaking news or severe weather coverage, although live sports events may require such coverage to air simultaneously with the scheduled Fox Sports telecast. Fox prime time shows preempted or otherwise interrupted by such content may either be rebroadcast on tape delay over KTVI's main channel in place of syndicated programs normally shown during overnight timeslots. Station personnel also gives viewers who subscribe to AT&T U-verse, DirecTV, Dish Network and other pay television providers within the KTVI viewing area the option of watching the affected shows on the Fox Now streaming platforms or its cable/satellite video-on-demand service the day after their initial airing.

The only two notable program preemptions that KTVI made as a Fox affiliate—outside of those necessitated by extended breaking news or severe weather coverage, special programming, or other scheduling conflicts—have been the brief one of the Fox Kids block and that of the secondary Sunday morning NFL pre-game show Fox NFL Kickoff, of which KTVI had declined carriage for the 2015 regular season (the program moved to Fox from Fox Sports 1 in September 2015), with the station's second digital subchannel airing it instead in its network-recommended time slot; KTVI began clearing Fox NFL Kickoff in September 2016.

Fox children's programming

Unlike most of its sister stations under its former New World ownership, KTVI has carried Fox's children's programming. Upon joining the network in August 1995, it opted not to run the Fox Kids weekday afternoon and Saturday morning blocks, instead airing children's programs acquired via syndication on weekend mornings (the preemptions of Fox Kids by the New World stations led the network to change its carriage policies to allow Fox stations uninterested in carrying the block the right of first refusal to transfer the local rights to another station; by 2001, affiliates were no longer required to run the Fox Kids lineup even if Fox had not secured a substitute carrier). Fox Kids originally wanted to be broadcast locally on KPLR, but the offer was turned down by that station's then-owner Koplar Communications, because Koplar felt that "they had a strong slate of children's programming and no room for the Rangers". Fox Kids subsequently went unseen in the market, and representatives of the block faced the possibility of piping in KSMO-TV in Kansas City (which aired Fox Kids because WDAF-TV declined carriage of the block) for cable subscribers until September, when Fox Kids arranged for its programming to be aired locally on religious independent KNLC. KNLC then drew the ire of the network by asking children to write to Missouri governor Mel Carnahan to protest the planned execution of Johnny Lee Wilson, then in prison for the 1986 murder of 79-year-old Aurora resident Pauline Martz (Carnahan pardoned Wilson that same month); additionally, KNLC's poor signal—both over the air and on cable—angered members of the largest Fox Kids Club in the nation. As a result, Fox Kids moved to KTVI in 1996.

KTVI stopped carrying the Fox Kids weekday block in 1998, although the station retained its Saturday morning lineup via negotiations, although KTVI had to cut to two hours of educational-and-informational programming before cutting back to Fox Kids (this was despite the fact that Fox gave its affiliates the option to push the weekday block to an earlier afternoon timeslot at that period). Fox discontinued its weekday block nationwide on December 31, 2001, while the Saturday lineup was contracted out to 4Kids Entertainment and relaunched as FoxBox on September 14, 2002. In September 2006, KTVI aired the block (by then, renamed 4Kids TV) two hours earlier than most carrier stations to accommodate the station's Saturday morning newscast. Fox ended its network-supplied children's programming on December 28, 2008, replacing it thereafter with the paid programming block Weekend Marketplace. On September 13, 2014, KTVI began carrying Xploration Station, a live-action educational program block distributed by Steve Rotfeld Productions that is syndicated primarily to Fox stations, on Saturday mornings through an agreement involving Tribune's Fox-affiliated stations.

Sports programming

KTVI became the official "home" station of the St. Louis Rams—which had relocated to the city from Los Angeles in 1995 (with the exception of select prime time telecasts on Thursday, Sunday and Monday nights, KTVI broadcast most of the NFL franchise's road games as well as most home games against other NFC teams). The station served as the local broadcaster for the Rams' appearance in Super Bowl XXXVI. KTVI's status as the team's primary station ended after the 2015 season, as a consequence of NFL team owners voting to approve the Rams' relocation back to Los Angeles effective with the 2016 NFL season, 30–2.

Since 1996, channel 2 also airs any St. Louis Cardinals games that are broadcast via Fox's broadcast contract with Major League Baseball; this included the team's World Series victories in 2006 and 2011, and its appearances in the 2004 and 2013 World Series.

News operation

KTVI presently broadcasts 68 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with 11½ hours each weekday and 5½ hours on Saturdays, and 5 hours on Sundays); in regards to the number of hours devoted to news programming, it is the highest local newscast output among St. Louis's broadcast television stations. KTVI's Sunday 5 p.m. newscast is subject to preemption due to network sports coverage, as is standard with Fox stations that carry early evening weekend newscasts (though the Saturday 5 p.m. newscast is usually delayed to 6 p.m. due to baseball or college football coverage).

As an ABC affiliate, KTVI's newscasts usually placed third in the ratings, behind longtime leader KSDK and KMOV. However, for most of the 1980s and early 1990s, the station fought a spirited battle with KMOX-TV/KMOV for second place. Since 2009, the station's weekday morning newscast has placed first among the newscasts in the St. Louis market during that time period. One of the mainstay evening segments is "You Paid For It" (an investigative segment reported by Elliott Davis that uncovers city government tax abuse; the segment ends by giving the phone number of the office of that municipality's mayor, followed by the signoff "Call and speak your mind: after all, you paid for it").

After joining Fox in August 1995, KTVI increased its news programming output from roughly 30 hours a week to nearly 45 hours. It initially retained a news schedule similar to what it had as an ABC affiliate. All of its existing newscasts were retained, but it expanded its weekday morning newscast from one to three hours (with two hours added from 7 to 9 a.m.), and bridged the weeknight 5 and 6 p.m. newscasts into a 90-minute early evening news block (by adding a half-hour newscast at 5:30 to compensate for Fox's lack of a national news program). However, like its Austin sister station KTBC did during its first four years as a Fox station, KTVI did not initially add a prime time newscast at 9 p.m. upon switching to the network to compensate for Fox's lack of prime time network programming during that hour; instead, it filled the slot with syndicated programming from the August 1995 switch until September 1997, when it debuted a half-hour 9 p.m. newscast; it continued to air syndicated shows during the 9:30 half-hour until the prime time newscast expanded to one hour in September 1999, now leading directly into the 10 p.m. newscast (KTVI is one of several Fox stations that offer newscasts in both the final hour of prime time and the traditional late news timeslot, one of the few affiliated with the network that runs a nightly 10 p.m. (or 11 p.m.) newscast and one of the few to continue its Big Three-era 10 p.m. newscast after switching to Fox).

Technical information

Subchannels

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:

KTVI began carrying Antenna TV upon its launch on January 1, 2011, on digital subchannel 2.2.

Analog-to-digital conversion

KTVI shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 2, on June 12, 2009, the official date on which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal continued to broadcast on its pre-transition UHF channel 43, using virtual channel 2.

As part of the repacking process following the 2016-2017 FCC incentive auction, KTVI relocated to UHF channel 33 in 2020.