KSMO-TV

KSMO-TV
Kansas City, Missouri-Kansas City, Kansas
United States
City Mission, Kansas (studio)
Branding KSMO (general)
KCTV 5 News (KCTV-produced newscasts)
Slogan Kansas City Plays Here
Channels Digital: 47 (UHF)
Virtual: 62 (PSIP)
Affiliations MyNetworkTV
Owner Meredith Corporation
First air date September 12, 1983 (1983-09-12)
Call letters' meaning KansaS and MissOuri (state postal abbreviations)
Sister station(s) KCTV
Former callsigns
  • KEKR-TV (1983–1985)
  • KZKC (1985–1991)
Former channel number(s)
  • Analog:
  • 62 (UHF, 1983–2009)
Former affiliations
Transmitter power 1,000 kW
Height 356 m
Facility ID 33336
Transmitter coordinates 39°5′25.8″N 94°28′19.2″W / 39.090500°N 94.472000°W / 39.090500; -94.472000Coordinates: 39°5′25.8″N 94°28′19.2″W / 39.090500°N 94.472000°W / 39.090500; -94.472000
Licensing authority FCC
Public license information: Profile
CDBS
Website www.ksmotv.com

KSMO-TV, virtual channel 62 (UHF digital channel 47), is a MyNetworkTV-affiliated television station serving Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas City, Kansas, United States. The station is owned by the Meredith Corporation, as part of a duopoly with CBS affiliate KCTV (channel 5). The two stations share studio facilities located on Shawnee Mission Parkway (U.S. 56/U.S. 169) in Fairway, Kansas; KSMO maintains transmitter facilities located in Independence, Missouri. On cable, KSMO is available on Comcast, Time Warner Cable and SureWest channel 10, and AT&T U-verse channel 62.

History

Early history

The station first signed on the air on September 12, 1983 as KEKR-TV, its call letters coming from a congressman who had helped the station obtain a broadcast license from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). It was the second general entertainment independent station in Kansas City, after KBMA-TV (channel 41, now KSHB-TV), and the third overall after KCIT-TV (channel 50, now Ion Television owned-and-operated station KPXE-TV), which operated from 1969 to 1971. Locally owned, it was a typical independent running cartoons, drama series, classic movies, religious shows, westerns and sitcoms. The new station branded as "Super 62", but the launch was anything but that. It aired only three local commercials on its first day of operation: two for record releases from Candelite Music (an LP collection of Elvis Presley songs and a collection of country songs), and an ad for a modeling school. These commercials ran in nearly every break if the station was not showing a station identification slide of its logo. The picture was substandard with a mysterious black bar that was visible at the top of most programs and commercials.

In 1985, the station was sold to Media Central; its call letters were changed to KZKC on January 27 of that year (the callsign was later used in fictional form on the Kansas City-set UPN sitcom Malcolm & Eddie as the fictional radio station where Malcolm-Jamal Warner's character Malcolm McGee worked during the series' first two seasons; ironically when the series debuted in 1996, channel 62, then the market's UPN affiliate, had stopped using the KZKC calls five years earlier). The station added more sitcoms and movies to its schedule, and decreased the amount of religious programs it aired. It experimented with airing movies that were not edited for inappropriate content. That policy led to trouble for channel 62 when the station aired Private Lessons, a film known for its frontal nudity and a plot involving a relationship between a high school student and a maid. KZKC was fined by the FCC after a viewer filed a complaint about the film's content and nudity. The violation made TV Guide's annual J. Fred Muggs awards (a list of those in television who "made monkeys of themselves"). The station sought an affiliation with the upstart Fox network in 1986, which instead went to KSHB-TV.

Channel 62 remained unprofitable until it was sold to Abry Communications in 1990; the station subsequently changed its call letters to KSMO-TV on April 22, 1991. The new owners put ballots in the local television listings guides asking for programming advice from the public (this lent itself to the new logo that KSMO introduced at this time, featuring a check mark within the "O" in the callsign). Under Abry, the station began to turn a profit, and held its own with a lineup of syndicated cartoons, sitcoms, a few talk and reality shows, and movies. In March 1993, KSMO announced that it had entered into a three-year, $11 million contract to become the exclusive local broadcaster of Kansas City Royals baseball games; two months later, ABC and NBC announced the formation of The Baseball Network. In June 1994, the station sued the Royals for breach of contract arguing that NBC affiliate WDAF-TV (channel 4) and ABC affiliate KMBC-TV (channel 9) would each carry at least five primetime Royals telecasts in July and August, compared with only one or two national Royals games carried previously and that the Royals were obligated to renegotiate their local deal per a clause in the contract.[1]

KSMO picked up some of KSHB's programming, including the Fox Kids children's block in September 1994,[2] after KSHB swapped affiliations with WDAF and became an NBC affiliate. WDAF, like certain other Fox stations owned by New World Communications, opted to fill the Saturday morning timeslot with a locally produced newscast rather than run the Fox Kids lineup. That year, Abry Communications merged with the Sinclair Broadcast Group.

Network affiliation

KSMO became the Kansas City affiliate of the United Paramount Network (UPN) when the network launched on January 16, 1995. However, it still essentially programmed as an independent station, since UPN only provided primetime programming on Monday and Tuesday evenings at its launch (and would not carry five nights a week of programming until September 1998). On July 21, 1997, Sinclair signed an affiliation agreement with The WB to switch KSMO-TV, the company's four other UPN affiliates and its independent stations to the network.[3] KSMO joined The WB on January 21, 1998; the market's original affiliate of that network, KCWB (channel 29, now KCWE), stopped carrying The WB's primetime programming and affiliated with UPN on that date. However until June 1998, Fox Kids programming remained on KSMO, while the Kids' WB programming block remained on KCWB. That month, KSMO added Kids' WB programming to its schedule, while Fox Kids moved to KCWB.

As time went on, reruns of classic sitcoms (such as Happy Days and Family Ties), and most of the cartoons (such as The Wacky World of Tex Avery, Pokémon, and Beast Wars: Transformers) that KSMO carried would be replaced with more talk, reality and court shows. The Meredith Corporation, longtime owners of KCTV (channel 5), bought KSMO in November 2004 and immediately took over the station's operations through a joint sales agreement until the transaction's closure; the sale was finalized in late September 2005, creating a duopoly with KCTV.[4] In January 2006, The WB discontinued the Kids' WB weekday afternoon block nationally; KSMO had been the last station in the market to run weekday cartoons until that point.

On January 24, 2006, the Warner Bros. unit of Time Warner and CBS Corporation announced that the two companies would shut down The WB and UPN and combine the networks' respective programming to create a new "fifth" network called The CW.[5][6] On February 22, News Corporation announced the launch of MyNetworkTV, another new network operated by Fox Television Stations and its sister syndication unit Twentieth Television.[7][8]

KCWE was confirmed as Kansas City's CW affiliate on March 7, 2006, in a joint announcement by the network and its owner Hearst-Argyle Television.[9] Two days later, KSMO was announced as Kansas City's MyNetworkTV affiliate and rebranded as "My KSMO TV". The station stopped carrying The WB's primetime programming on September 4 with KSMO joining MyNetworkTV the following day, however it continued to air The WB's daytime block until September 15. KCWE officially affiliated with The CW on September 18. In April 2011, KSMO removed the "My" portion of the station's branding as many of MyNetworkTV's affiliates began dropping network references due to its transition into a primetime programming service. KSMO retained the "blue TV" component of the network's logo until October 2011, when it debuted a new wordmark logo.

From the network's launch in August 2013 until its December 1, 2016 end, KSMO's second subchannel carried the Spanish network MundoMax (known as MundoFox for its first two years); with MundoMax ending operations on that date, Meredith chose to take the subchannel silent altogether.

On September 8, 2015, Media General announced it would buy Meredith and take the name "Meredith Media General".[10] However, on January 27, 2016, Nexstar Broadcasting Group announced that it had reached an agreement to acquire Media General and that Meredith agreed to termination of its merger agreement with Media General.

Digital television

Digital channels

The station's digital channel is multiplexed:

Channel Video Aspect PSIP Short Name Programming[11]
62.1 1080i 16:9 KSMO-TV Main KSMO-TV programming / MyNetworkTV

Analog-to-digital conversion

KSMO-TV shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 62, on June 12, 2009, the official date in which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 47.[12] Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 62, which was among the high band UHF channels (52-69) that were removed from broadcasting use as a result of the transition.

Programming

Syndicated programs broadcast on KSMO include Judge Mathis, Friends, Rules of Engagement, Everybody Loves Raymond and Better. Since MyNetworkTV does not air programming on weekend evenings, KSMO normally airs movies from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. It also takes on the responsibility of airing CBS programming whenever KCTV is not able to do so such as during long-form breaking news and severe weather coverage. The station became the broadcast home for Kansas Jayhawks college basketball games starting in late 2009. In June 2011, KSMO announced that it would broadcast high school football games from Kansas City area schools starting that fall. KSMO also serves as the flagship station for the NCAA Division II Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletic Association (MIAA) college football game of the week.

Newscasts

KCTV produces seven hours of locally produced newscasts each week for KSMO (with one hour each on weekdays, Saturdays and Sundays). In October 2005, KCTV began producing a half-hour primetime newscast at 9:00 that competes against WDAF's in-house hour-long news broadcast, and would later gain additional competition when KMBC began producing a half-hour newscast for sister station KCWE on September 14, 2010; the program currently airs seven nights a week. KCTV began broadcasting its newscasts in high definition on October 20, 2008, with the KSMO broadcasts being included in the upgrade. At some point in time, KSMO began simulcasting KCTV's weekday noon newscast.

In 2006, KSMO also began to run an hour-long extension of KCTV's morning newscast at 7:00 a.m. weekdays, and eventually, as a simulcast of that station's 10:00 p.m. newscast on Saturday nightsas well. The 7:00 a.m. newscast was dropped after the December 30, 2011 broadcast. In February 2013, the noon and Saturday night 10:00 p.m. news simulcasts were also dropped. KCTV also produced a weekly public affairs program called Your Kansas City, which was discontinued in September 2012. On August 4, 2014, KCTV began producing a half-hour newscast at 6:30 p.m. for KSMO.[13]

References

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