20 Facts About KCTV

KCTV is a television station in Kansas City, Missouri, United States, affiliated with CBS.

KCTV serves as an alternate CBS affiliate for the St Joseph market, as the station's transmitter produces a city-grade signal that reaches St Joseph proper and rural areas in the market's central and southern counties.

KCTV previously served as the CBS affiliate of record for St Joseph when KQTV disaffiliated from CBS in June 1967—after a 14-year tenure as a primary affiliate of the network to become a full-time ABC affiliate—until June 1,2017, when locally based KBJO-LD switched its primary affiliation from Telemundo to CBS.

KCTV currently carries the entire CBS network schedule; however, the station airs certain programs out of pattern to make room for its local weekend morning newscasts.

Since September 1998, KCTV has served as the primary broadcaster of the Kansas City Chiefs, a status that it assumed by way of NBC's former contract with the American Football Conference from KSHB-TV, which had carried the team's games from September 1994 until NBC's broadcast rights to the NFL conference expired after the 1997 season.

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KCTV maintained a broadcast partnership with the team's Chiefs Television Network unit under which it held the exclusive local rights to various weekly analysis and magazine programs plus preseason games that the team syndicates across the region.

KCTV served as the local broadcaster for the Chiefs' appearance in Super Bowl LV.

In 1994, KCTV began leasing a helicopter to provide aerial coverage of breaking news and weather events; branded as "NewsHawk 5", the helicopter was grounded citing budget concerns in 1998.

The fortunes that the station accrued during this time came amid turmoil within the news department, which were chronicled in an May 26,2007 Kansas City Star article that revealed the turbulence behind KCTV's move to become the No 1 news station in the market.

In February 2009, KCTV announced that it would not renew its production outsourcing agreement with Metro Sports past its initial three-year term in a mutual decision, with the station suspending the sports segments within its newscasts and Metro Sports continuing produce Chiefs preseason telecasts seen on channel 5.

KCTV would resume in-house production of sports segments when it reinstated a full-fledged sports department on April 25,2010, hiring Lawrence, Kansas native Michael Coleman to serve as the new department's inaugural sports director and host of a new half-hour sports magazine program, Off the Bench; Coleman remained with the station until April 4,2017, after KCTV declined to renew his contract.

On January 4,2011, KCTV entered into a multi-year content partnership with The Kansas City Star – which formally took effect on the following day, supplanting an existing content sharing agreement that the newspaper had maintained with NBC affiliate KSHB-TV – to collaborate on coverage of local news stories and investigative reports, and to provide the Star with forecast data compiled by KCTV's team of meteorologists for the paper's weather page .

In June 2005, KCTV exposed a Kansas City-area doctor's negligent handling of private medical records.

KCTV attempted to contact several of the patients whose information was found on the discarded computer.

The surgeon filed a lawsuit against the station on the basis that the investigative unit's decision to interview the patients about the discovery was a violation of medical confidentiality laws; the judge presiding over the suit ruled in favor of the doctor, although KCTV management took the case to a federal district court in Kansas City, Kansas.

From 2005 to 2008, KCTV operated digital subchannels on virtual channels 5.

In January 2017, KCTV added its first full-time subchannel, with programming from Sinclair Broadcast Group and MGM's science fiction-themed Comet network .

KCTV maintains transmitter facilities on a 1,042-foot transmission tower located at its former studio facility on East 31st Street on Union Hill .

At the time of its completion in 1956, the KCTV Tower was the third tallest freestanding structure in the world behind only the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building.

KCTV tower has become a widely recognized Kansas City landmark, in large part because of the string lights that adorn the four corners of the structure's frame, which can be seen for miles around the immediate metropolitan area at night.