KMOV


KMOV is a television station in St. Louis, Missouri, United States, affiliated with CBS and MyNetworkTV. It is owned by Gray Media alongside low-power station KDTL-LD. The two stations share studios on Progress Parkway in suburban Maryland Heights; KMOV's transmitter is located in Lemay, Missouri.

History

Early history

The station first signed on the air on July 8, 1954, as KWK-TV. At its launch, channel 4 was owned by a consortium which included Robert T. Convey and the now-defunct Newhouse Newspapers–published St. Louis Globe-Democrat, who jointly operated KWK radio ; Elzey M. Roberts Sr., former owner of KXOK radio, which had to be sold as a condition of the license grant ; and Missouri Valley Television Inc., made up of Saint Paul, Minnesota–based Hubbard Broadcasting and several St. Louis residents.
Each of the station's part-owners had competed individually for the channel 4 construction permit before agreeing to merge their interests only three months before the station went on the air. Upon signing on KWK-TV took the CBS affiliation from Belleville, Illinois–licensed WTVI. Until 1955, it also aired ABC programs that WTVI declined to broadcast. The station's original studios, built by KWK radio in anticipation of television, were located on Cole Street in Downtown West.

As a CBS owned-and-operated station

However, CBS was planning to operate its own television station in St. Louis alongside its powerhouse radio station, KMOX. The network originally won the permit to build a new station on channel 11 – the last remaining commercial VHF channel assigned to St. Louis – in January 1957. But after being approached with an offer, CBS decided in August of that year to buy KWK-TV instead for $4 million. The agreement required CBS to give up its construction permit for channel 11, and the Federal Communications Commission transferred it to one of the failed applicants, a group led by St. Louis hotelier Harold Koplar, for no financial consideration. Almost immediately, the deal was held up after the St. Louis Amusement Company, another of the original applicants for channel 11, protested to the United States Court of Appeals in January 1958. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately upheld the decision in November of that year. CBS had already taken control of channel 4's operations that March, and changed its call letters to KMOX-TV in reference to its new radio sister. The following April, channel 11 signed on as independent station KPLR-TV.
In July 1968, CBS opened a new studio and office facility in downtown St. Louis to house the KMOX stations, which until that point had been operating from separate locations. Channel 4 moved from Cole Street into the new facility, known as One Memorial Drive, and remained there until December 3, 2023; the Cole Street studio was soon acquired by KDNL-TV, which operated that facility from its sign-on in June 1969 until 2022.

Viacom ownership

By late 1985, CBS was in rough financial straits, an after-effect of successfully fending off a hostile takeover attempt by Ted Turner the year before. CBS spent the latter portion of 1985 repurchasing a large portion of its stock to help block the Turner takeover. Once Turner sold his stock, CBS was saddled with significant debt and needed to raise money. Not long after Laurence Tisch became the company's chairman, CBS decided to sell KMOX-TV, at the time its smallest owned-and-operated television station by market size. On May 16, 1986, the original iteration of Viacom, the former CBS Inc. subsidiary and future parent company, completed its $122.5 million purchase of the station; so as to comply with an FCC regulation in place at the time that prohibited TV and radio stations in the same market but with different ownership from having the same callsigns, KMOX-TV's callsign was slightly modified to the present KMOV almost a month later on June 18. Despite the sale, channel 4's operations continued to be based alongside KMOX radio at their downtown studios on Memorial Drive; KMOX would relocate from that building in 2012. The two stations still have a news partnership.
Viacom announced its purchase of Paramount Pictures in 1993. The merger, completed in 1994, placed Viacom's existing five-station group under common ownership with the Paramount Stations Group; the two groups were formally consolidated in December 1995. However, in 1994, the company decided to divest itself of all of its major network affiliates to focus on stations that carried its then-upstart United Paramount Network, which would start up service on January 16, 1995.

Belo Corporation ownership

-based A. H. Belo Corporation acquired KMOV in a three-way deal also involving two stations in the Seattle–Tacoma market. As part of the transaction, A. H. Belo sold KIRO-TV to Cox Enterprises, who concurrently sold its existing Seattle–Tacoma station, then-CBS affiliate KSTW, to Viacom. The deal was consummated on June 1, 1997.
In the spring of 2013, a lighted sign with the KMOV logo was installed on the top of the south face of Gateway Tower, which not only gave the station visibility on the St. Louis skyline, but was also visible in center field of wide shots of Busch Stadium during St. Louis Cardinals games.

Changing hands

On June 13, 2013, the Gannett Company, owner of NBC affiliate KSDK, announced that it would acquire Belo. As the deal would violate FCC regulations that disallow common ownership of two of the four highest-rated stations in a single market, Gannett would retain KSDK, while it would spin off KMOV to Sander Media, LLC. Gannett intended to provide services to the station through a shared services agreement, KMOV's operations were to remain largely separate from KSDK, including separate and competing news and sales departments. However, on December 16, 2013, the United States Department of Justice threatened to block the merger unless Gannett, Belo and Sander completely divested KMOV to a government-approved third-party company that would be barred from entering into any agreements with Gannett. The DOJ claimed that Gannett and Sander would be so closely aligned that Gannett would have dominated spot advertising in St. Louis. On December 23, 2013, shortly after the Gannett/Belo deal was approved and completed, Des Moines, Iowa–based Meredith Corporation – which already had a broadcasting presence in Missouri through its ownership of fellow CBS affiliate KCTV in Kansas City – announced that it would purchase KMOV, along with KTVK and KASW in Phoenix for $407.5 million. The sale of KMOV was completed on February 28, 2014.
More than a year later on September 8, 2015, Richmond, Virginia–based Media General announced that it would acquire Meredith for $2.4 billion. If it had been completed, it would have marked KMOV's third ownership shift since 2013. Media General would eventually shelve the Meredith deal in favor of a counter-offer by Nexstar.
On April 24, 2018, it was announced that Meredith would be acquiring CW affiliate KPLR-TV from Tribune Media as a result of station sales ordered by the FCC as a result of Tribune's proposed acquisition by Sinclair Broadcast Group, owners of ABC affiliate KDNL-TV. If Sinclair's acquisition of Tribune and related station sales were approved, it would have created a duopoly between KMOV and KPLR-TV. However, on August 9, 2018, Tribune announced it would terminate the Sinclair deal, intending to seek other M&A opportunities. This came three weeks after the FCC's July 18 vote to have the deal reviewed by an administrative law judge amid "serious concerns" about Sinclair's forthrightness in its applications to sell certain conflict properties. Tribune also filed a breach of contract lawsuit in the Delaware Chancery Court, alleging that Sinclair engaged in protracted negotiations with the FCC and the U.S. Department of Justice's Antitrust Division over regulatory issues, refused to sell stations in markets where it already had properties, and proposed divestitures to parties with ties to Sinclair executive chair David D. Smith that were rejected or highly subject to rejection to maintain control over stations it was required to sell. The deal was nullified, with Tribune eventually accepting another merger agreement with Nexstar that, due to other station spin-offs, retained the existing KTVI/KPLR duopoly and closed without issue in mid-September 2019.

Sale to Gray Television, move to St. Louis County

On May 3, 2021, Gray Television announced its intent to purchase the Meredith Local Media division, including KMOV, for $2.7 billion. The sale was completed on December 1.
On December 3, 2023, with its 6 p.m. newscast, KMOV completed the on-air move from Gateway Tower to a remodeled and adapted facility in the St. Louis County suburb of Maryland Heights which had formerly been occupied by medical device manufacturer ERT, joining KTVI/KPLR in relocating to Maryland Heights, which provides much easier access to the area's freeway system via Interstate 270 and a secured parking lot rather than the cumbersome mix of on-street and underground parking it had at Gateway Tower. The station had soft-launched a new branding, First Alert 4 in the months before, which was solidified in full with the move to Maryland Heights.

Programming

Past programming preemptions and deferrals

As a CBS-owned station, channel 4 cleared the entire network schedule and, after the launch of CBS News Nightwatch in 1982 adopted a 24/7 schedule as a result. When Viacom took over in 1986, this changed rather drastically. KMOV began signing off the air at night, thus preempting Nightwatch. A barrage of scattered prime time preemptions later followed that was so rampant, the station earned a mention in Ken Auletta's 1991 book, Three Blind Mice. KMOV randomly replaced CBS prime time shows with programming such as Billy Graham Crusades and National Geographic specials, syndicated movie packages, and occasional local and regional sporting events, all of which allowed the station and Viacom full control of the ad time airing during the preemptions. According to Auletta, KMOV preempted 103 hours of CBS prime time programs in 1987, accounting for nearly 10 percent of the network prime time schedule. In the 1990s, the prime time preemptions eased as all networks began to tighten down contractually on heavy preemptions, and currently, the station only occasionally preempts a CBS prime time show, usually only due to breaking news or severe weather. The station also resumed a 24-hour broadcast schedule in the early 1990s.
From September 1989 until September 11, 2015, KMOV aired The Young and the Restless on a same-day delay at 3 p.m., and later, at 4 p.m., with The Price Is Right airing on a one-hour delay at 11 a.m.; KMOV also delayed The Late Late Show by a half-hour since 1997 under original host Tom Snyder, in order to run syndicated programming after the Late Show with David Letterman. On September 14, 2015, KMOV moved The Price Is Right, The Young and the Restless and The Late Late Show to their recommended network time periods with the first full season under Meredith ownership, with the relocation of the former two shows occurring as a result of the launch of a half-hour 4 p.m. newscast.