is the
Fox Owned And Operated Station in
St. Louis, Missouri . Its transmitter is located in
Sappington, Missouri ; in a field behind
Lindbergh High School . Its studios are located off
Interstate 64 /
U.S. 40 at the intersection of Berthold, Oakland, and Hampton Avenues in the
Clayton-Tamm/Dogtown neighborhood of western St. Louis.
KTVI runs about 40 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.
KTVI broadcasts in stereo and broadcasts a Secondary Audio Program (
SAP ) channel, used mainly for Descriptive Video Service (
DVS ). KTVI airs also about 42 hours of local news per week.
On
June 13 ,
2007 , Fox's parent company,
News Corporation announced its intent to sell the station, along with eight other owned and operated stations.
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=History=
KTVI began on
August 13 ,
1953 as WTVI, channel 54 in
Belleville, Illinois ; a suburb of St. Louis. 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 ) signed on and took the CBS affiliation, WTVI dropped CBS and became a ABC affiliate. It moved its studios and license across the
Mississippi River to St. Louis on
April 9 1955 changing its calls to KTVI. It also moved to channel 36. DuMont went off the air in
1956 , making KTVI an exclusive ABC affiliate. KTVI moved to 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
White House .
The
WTVI calls currently reside on the
PBS member station in
Charlotte .
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Times Mirror owned the station. As part of a group deal, KTVI was sold to Argyle Broadcasting in
1993 . In
1994 , the Fox network took over the contract from CBS to carry the NFC 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 and sister stations
KDFW in
Dallas , and
KTBC in
Austin in the summer of
1995 .
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 was sold to Tribune.
KTVI didn't pick up
Fox Kids at first, so it moved to
KNLC . However, in the fall of
1996 , due to Reverend Larry Rice's refusal to air commercials on Fox Kids (replacing 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. However, the New World name still survives as a holding company under Fox' corporate structure, as evidenced by the fact that KTVI's licensee is officially "New World Communications of St. Louis." 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 4Kids TV; as of Fall 2006 it airs 2 hours earlier than most affiliates now to accommodate an expanded newscast lineup on Saturday mornings.
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.
=News Operations=
For most of the time since joining Fox, KTVI has led the 9 p.m. news ratings race against 's weekly
St. Louis Rams review show on Mondays. The station's morning news program is 4 hours, 5:00am - 9:00am and another hour from 11:00am-12:00. Since 1998, Fox 2 News In The Morning has been the fastest growing newscast in St. Louis morning Television.
Beginning September 9th KTVI will return their 10pm Newscast titled "News Edge." format from sister station
WTVT in Tampa. with Sandy Miller as Solo Weeknight Anchor.
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 .
On 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 ''FOX2 News at 9'' on Monday,
April 10 ,
2006 .
The theme music that KTVI uses is OSI Music's
FOX O&O News Theme . This theme is being used by other FOX O&O stations that have made identical modifications to their identity.
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.
By the time Fox sells KTVI,
WHBQ and
WJW in Cleveland would have been the only three stations to have their look upgraded to the
Fox News influence.
- ''Action News'' (1971-1975)
- ''Channel 2 News'' (1975-Mid 1980s)
- ''2 News Team'' (Mid 1980s-1995)
- ''FOX 2 News'' (1995-2007)
- ''Here's 2 St. Louis'' (1990s)
- ''Coverage You Can Count On'' (1997-present)
- ''St. Louis' Newsroom'' (1997-present)
- ''The Most Powerful Name In Local News'' (2006-present)
''In addition to providing forecasts on KTVI-TV, the FOX2 Weather team also provides forecasts for
KTRS-AM radio.''
- Martin Kilcoyne : Sports Director, seen Sunday-Thursday/Co-Host of "Rams Weekly with Scott Linehan"
- Rob Desir : Friday and Saturday Evening Anchor/Sunday-Thursday Reporter
- Maurice Drummond : Weekend Morning Anchor/Weekday Reporter
- Chris Pelikan : Sports Producer/Reporter
=External links=
