KTVI
KTVI (channel 2) is a television station in St. Louis, Missouri, United States, affiliated with the Fox network. It is owned by Nexstar Media Group alongside CW owned-and-operated station KPLR-TV (channel 11). The two stations share studios on Ball Drive in Maryland Heights; KTVI's transmitter is located in Sappington, Missouri.
For the PBS member station in North Carolina that currently uses the callsign formerly used by KTVI, see WTVI.
- St. Louis, Missouri
- United States
- St. Louis, Missouri
- United States
Fox 2
- 2.1: Fox
- for others, see § Subchannels
August 10, 1953
WTVI (1953–1955)
- Analog: 54 (UHF, 1953–1955), 36 (UHF, 1955–1957), 2 (VHF, 1957–2009)
- Digital: 43 (UHF, until 2020)
Television Illinois (station originally licensed to Belleville, Illinois)
35693
1,000 kW
336 m (1,102 ft)
History[edit]
As WTVI[edit]
The station first signed on the air by Signal Hill Telecasting Corporation[2] 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.[2] The station was project to sign on May 15, 1953.[2] 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[edit]
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.[3][4][5][6][7][8][9]
Technical information[edit]
Subchannels[edit]
The station's digital signal is multiplexed: