| St. Louis, Missouri | |
|---|---|
| Branding | Fox 2 (general) Fox 2 News (news) |
| Slogan | Coverage You Can Count On; St. Louis' Newsroom; The Most Powerful Name In Local News (all news slogans) |
| Channels | Digital: 43 (UHF) Virtual: 2 (PSIP) |
| Subchannels | (see article) |
| Owner | Local TV LLC (Community TV Of Missouri License, LLC) |
| First air date | August 10, 1953 |
| Call letters' meaning | TeleVision Illinois (station originally licensed to Belleville, Illinois) |
| Sister station(s) | KPLR |
| Former callsigns | WTVI (1953-1955) |
| Former channel number(s) | Analog: 54 (UHF, 1953-1955) 36 (UHF, 1955-1957) 2 (VHF, 1957-2009) |
| Former affiliations | Primary: CBS (1953-1954) ABC (1955-1995) Secondary: DuMont (1953-1955) |
| Transmitter power | 1000 kW |
| Height | 337 m |
| Facility ID | 35693 |
| Website | www.fox2now.com |
KTVI, virtual channel 2, is the Fox-affiliated television station serving the St. Louis, Missouri, designated market area. The station is owned by Local TV LLC, the media arm of private equity firm Oak Hill Capital Partners, under a local marketing agreement with Tribune-owned CW affiliate KPLR (channel 11). The station broadcasts its digital signal on UHF channel 43, using its current former assignment of channel 2 as its virtual digital channel via PSIP. KTVI broadcasts in stereo and broadcasts a Secondary Audio Program (SAP) channel, used mainly for Descriptive Video Service (DVS).
Its transmitter is located in Sappington, Missouri; in a field behind Lindbergh High School. Its studios are located at 2250 Ball Drive in Maryland Heights, Missouri. The station's former studios were located off Interstate 64/U.S. 40 at the intersection of Berthold, Oakland, and Hampton Avenues in the neighborhood of western Clayton-Tamm/Dogtown neighborhood of western St. Louis; that property is now vacant.
KTVI runs about 59 hours a week of locally produced newscasts, as well as first-run prime time and sports programming from Fox. It also runs off-network sitcoms, talk shows, reality shows, sports, and court shows.
Contents |
| Channel | Video | Aspect | Programming |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2.1 | 720p | 16:9 | Main KTVI programming / FOX |
| 2.2 | 480i | 4:3 | Antenna TV |
KTVI-DT began carrying Antenna TV, a digital broadcast network owned by Tribune Broadcasting, upon its launch on January 1, 2011 on digital subchannel 2.2.[1]
As part of the analog television shutdown and digital conversion, KTVI shut down its analog transmitter on June 12, 2009,[2] and continued to broadcast on its pre-transition digital channel 43.[3] However, through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display KTVI's virtual channel as 2.
KTVI began on August 10, 1953 as WTVI, channel 54 in Belleville, Illinois; across the Mississippi river from St. Louis, Missouri. It was the St. Louis area's second television station. It was the original CBS affiliate for St. Louis, with a secondary ABC affiliation. Studios were located in Alton.
When KWK-TV (later KMOX-TV and now KMOV, channel 4) signed on and took the CBS affiliation, WTVI dropped CBS and became an ABC affiliate. It moved its studios and license across the Mississippi River to St. Louis on April 9, 1955, keeping the base callsign "TVI" while flipping from "W" to "K", thus KTVI. It also moved to channel 36, carrying some DuMont network programming as well. DuMont went off the air in 1956, making KTVI an exclusive ABC affiliate. Because the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) did not require television sets to be compatible for UHF in those days, KTVI moved to VHF channel 2 on April 15, 1957, where it remains to this day. The station had actually tried to move to channel 2 soon after moving across the Mississippi. The channel 2 allocation had been moved from Springfield, Illinois under pressure from the Truman Administration, originally as not to interfere with CBS-owned WBBM-TV in Chicago. The WTVI calls currently reside on the PBS member station in Charlotte, North Carolina.
For many years, the station was owned by the Newhouse newspaper chain along with the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. In 1978, Newhouse began pulling out of broadcasting, and sold KTVI to Times Mirror, owner of the Los Angeles Times. In 1993, as part of a group deal, KTVI was sold to Argyle Broadcasting along with WVTM-TV in Birmingham, Alabama, KTBC-TV in Austin, Texas and KDFW-TV in Dallas.
In 1994, the Fox network took over the contract from CBS to carry the National Football Conference game package. This inspired a conglomerate called New World Communications to reach an affiliation agreement with the network by switching all of its stations to Fox in the winter of 1994. Then New World bought out Argyle, and cut another deal to switch KTVI, KDFW and KTBC to Fox affiliation. KTVI was the only ABC affiliate included in the deal.
The new owners moved Fox programming to KTVI on August 7, 1995, allowing the former Fox affiliate, KDNL (channel 30), to become St. Louis' ABC affiliate. New World merged with Fox Television Stations Group in 1996, and KTVI was the first major network O&O in St. Louis since KMOX-TV was sold by CBS to Viacom, and became KMOV in 1986. It stayed that way until 2003 when KPLR-TV (channel 11) was sold to Tribune, a former stakeholder in The WB network. When that network merged into The CW (which Tribune did not hold stake in) in 2006, KTVI went back to being the only network-owned station in town.
With the switch, KTVI became the primary station for the then-recently relocated St. Louis Rams starting that September. Unless aired in primetime, KTVI broadcasts all road games of the Rams, and also all sold-out home games against NFC teams
KTVI didn't pick up Fox Kids at first, so it moved to KNLC (channel 24). However, in the fall of 1996, because Reverend Larry Rice refused to air commercials on Fox Kids and replaced them with ministry messages), Fox pulled Fox Kids from KNLC and moved it to KTVI. KTVI was the only New World station to take Fox Kids. Shortly thereafter, KTVI and the New World Fox affiliates were sold to Fox' parent, News Corporation, becoming Fox O&Os. Programming changed very slightly as Fox began buying more expensive syndicated shows for KTVI.
In the fall of 1998, KTVI reduced the weekday Fox Kids programs to just two hours (from three) and, in 2000, dropped weekday Fox Kids completely while Saturday mornings were continued. At the end of 2001, Fox Kids weekdays ended nationwide, and the weekends were revamped as 4Kids TV. KTVI now airs Fox's entire schedule including Weekend Marketplace; from fall 2006 to its shutdown on December 27, 2008, 4Kids TV aired two hours earlier than most affiliates to accommodate an expanded newscast lineup on Saturday mornings.
On November 1, 1999, KTVI launched its first website. The design was similar to other Fox owned-and-operated sites throughout the country. The site focused on promotional and programming content initially, but as broadband slowly penetrated the market, the online audience shifted from evening dial-up users to a 9-to-5 audience, and the need for news content continued to grow more each year.
KTVI's introduced its current logo on April 10, 2006. The station is the fourth to use this logo style (which is similar to that of the Fox News Channel), which is gradually being adopted by the other Fox O&Os. On September 14, 2006, KTVI switched its website domain name to the MyFox branded site and started what was the largest Fox television online community in the country . On October 15, 2007, KTVI launched a second web site for St. Louis moms called STLMoms.com. The concept for this site spun off from the extremely popular blogging section of the MyFox site.
On December 22, 2007, Fox announced that it had entered into an agreement to sell KTVI and seven other Fox O&O stations[4] to Oak Hill Capital Partners' Local TV LLC, which currently owns nine stations formerly of The New York Times Company. On July 14, 2008, KTVI officially began operations under Local TV. On June 2, 2008, KTVI created a third website GarageSaleSTL.com, which is a site that posts viewer-submitted garage sales onto a Google map, along with tips on buying and selling. This site is a free service to the public.
On September 17, 2008, Local and Tribune announced that they would merge the operations of both KTVI and KPLR. Both stations will be co-located at KPLR under the management of KTVI GM Spencer Koch. The move was done to allow both stations to combine news operations and share certain programming. The LMA took place on October 1, 2008.[5] On January 22, 2009, under an agreement with Local TV and Tribune interactive, KTVI debuted its new website in order to distance itself from the MyFox template since the network no longer owns the station.
As an ABC affiliate, KTVI was usually third in the ratings behind KSDK and KMOV. However, for most of the 1980s and early 1990s, it fought a spirited battle with KMOV for the runner-up spot behind longtime leader KSDK.
After joining Fox, KTVI devoted more resources to its news department, as did many of the stations that switched to Fox during this time. KTVI presently broadcasts a total of 59 hours of local news a week (ten hours on weekdays, three hours on Saturdays and 3½ hours on Sundays), more than any other station in St. Louis and the entire state of Missouri; however as is standard with Fox stations that carry early evening weekend newscasts, KTVI's Sunday 5 p.m. newscast is subject to preemption due to NFL football or NASCAR coverage and the Saturday 6 p.m. newscast is subject to delay due to MLB baseball coverage.
For most of the time since joining Fox, KTVI has led the 9 p.m. news ratings race against KPLR-TV. KTVI is able to emphasize a broad array of stories from major national and local reports to small-town local stories/investigations because of the many extra hours of news (7.5 hours per day as opposed to 5 on KSDK and KMOV) that need to be filled. Also because of this, the station features more regular segments such as The Jaco Report, a segment where noted reporter Charles Jaco gives either an editorial or introduces an investigative piece, or You Paid For It, where Elliot Davis finds tax abuse in local governments and closes the segment by giving the phone number of the mayor's office in that municipality, signing off with the locally famous line "Call and speak your mind: after all, you paid for it."
KTVI devotes a larger segment of its sports coverage to local high-school sports (once joining with the Post-Dispatch to air the "Prep Sports Show" on Saturdays, now canceled) and is the home of Steve Spagnuolo's weekly St. Louis Rams review show on Mondays. The station's morning news program is six hours, 4:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. and another hour from 11:00 a.m.-noon. Since 1998, Fox 2 News In The Morning has been the fastest growing newscast in St. Louis morning television.
Before Dick Ford retired in December 2005, all four of KTVI's main male anchors (Dick Ford, Tom O'Neal, Dan Gray and John Pertzborn) were once anchors at KSDK. In early 2010 KTVI, like other Fox stations, extended its morning newscast to six hours from 4-10 a.m. following the cancellation of The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet. Despite the addition, its 11 a.m. newscast remained intact.
On March 31, 2006, KTVI used its set, originally constructed in 1998, for the last time; at 10:00 p.m. crews began tearing down the set and weather center. KTVI broadcast from the newsroom and a temporary set while a new set and weather center were under construction in the old studio. The old news desk was donated to Southern Illinois University Carbondale and the old weather center was donated to the University of Missouri–St. Louis. The new set, along with new graphics, music, and a new logo, debuted for Fox 2 News at 9 on Monday, April 10, 2006.
The theme music that KTVI uses is a news music package which was composed by OSI Music. This theme is being used by all of the FOX O&Os and nearly a quarter of Fox affiliated stations in the United States. With the new set, music, and graphics that first aired in April 2006, the weather graphics were altered in September 2006 with a new background, and other features to better fit the MyFox theme.
In December 2008, KPLR-TV began broadcasting from KTVI's studios as KPLR's facility began remodeling to accommodate both KPLR and KTVI's newscasts.[6] KTVI began broadcasting its newscasts in a temporary set, in January 2009, so crews could dismantle its current set, and move it to KPLR's facility. KPLR's facility was chosen in favor over the KTVI studios because KPLR's studios are much bigger, also KTVI had been broadcasting from the Berthold studios for almost 50 years, whereas KPLR had recently moved into its new studio in 2003.
On February 15, 2009, KTVI began broadcasting local newscasts in HD from its new studios in Maryland Heights. KTVI also debuted new HD news graphics. The news set was updated with the addition of several elements to better fit the new graphics package and the change to HD. KTVI also removed the city skyline backdrop in favor of a blue backdrop.
+ denotes personnel also seen on KPLR-TV
FOX 2 Current anchors
FOX 2 Weather team
In addition to providing forecasts on KTVI, the Fox 2 Weather Team also provides forecasts for KTRS-AM, KPNT-FM, and KIHT-FM radio.
FOX 2 Sports team
FOX 2 Reporters
In addition to providing reports on KTVI-TV, Fox 2 reporters also provide reports for KPLR-TV.
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