KDNL-TV

KDNL-TV is the ABC-affiliated television station for St. Louis, Missouri. It broadcasts a high definition digital signal on UHF channel 31 from a transmitter in Shrewsbury. The station can also be seen on Charter channel 12 and in high definition on digital channel 780. Owned by the Sinclair Broadcast Group, KDNL has studios on Cole Street in the Downtown West section of St. Louis. Syndicated programming on the station includes: The Simpsons, Judge Mathis, Maury, and Swift Justice with Nancy Grace. The station broadcasts in stereo and features a Secondary Audio Program channel used mainly for Descriptive Video Service.

As an independent station
The station first signed on the air on June 8, 1969 as the first UHF television station in the St. Louis market. It began as an independent station that was founded by Evans Broadcasting. KDNL ran a format of business news, religious shows, rejected network programs from KSD-TV (channel 5, now KSDK) and KTVI (channel 30), and classic movies. Several years later, it offered Japanese live-action series and cartoons dubbed into English including Johnny Sokko, Speed Racer, Marine Boy and Ultraman. By 1976, the station ran religious shows during the early morning hours; rejected network shows in the late morning; business news programming during the early afternoon; a couple of cartoons in the late afternoon; westerns and some older sitcoms in the evening; and a few older movies during primetime and late night slots. Also in 1976, KDNL began televising St. Louis Blues hockey games, which ran on the station for five seasons.

In 1977, the business news programming was gradually eliminated and made way for the addition of a few more second-hand classic sitcoms. The Japanese English dubbed shows were phased out as well. The station finally adhered to a more conventional independent format, but its viewership was far behind that of established independent KPLR-TV (channel 11). KDNL's big disadvantage was that at the time, it was the only St. Louis station that was broadcasting on the UHF band. Evans sold the station to Cox Enterprises in 1981. Programming continued to consist of classic sitcoms, a couple of rejected network shows, and some religious programs during the day. Some of the shows during this time included The Brady Bunch, The Little Rascals, I Love Lucy, The Andy Griffith Show, Good Times, What's Happening!! and The Honeymooners.

On June 1, 1982, subscription television service Preview began running on KDNL during the nighttime hours, leaving KPLR as the only full-time independent station in the St. Louis market. Preview was dropped nine months later, and the station resumed running the usual primetime fare of movies and classic sitcoms until 1 or 2 a.m. KDNL regained the broadcast rights to the Blues in 1983 for an additional three seasons. In 1984, cartoons were added to the lineup and the station cut back on religious shows. Also under Cox ownership, the station won bids to acquire stronger off-network sitcoms. On October 6, 1986, KDNL joined Fox as a charter affiliate (after KPLR turned the network affiliation down), eventually branding as "Fox 30" by the early 1990s. The station was still programmed essentially as an independent as Fox would not air a full week's worth of programming until 1993. Still, during this time, it began edging closer to KPLR in the ratings after having been well behind channel 11 for most of its first two decades on the air. In 1991, Cox sold KDNL to St. Louis-based River City Broadcasting.

ABC affiliation
In 1994, New World Communications bought St. Louis' longtime ABC affiliate, KTVI, and three other stations from Argyle Television. New World had signed an affiliation deal to switch the majority of its stations, including KTVI, to Fox. ABC originally wanted to affiliate with longer-established KPLR. However, that station opted to affiliate with The WB instead. More or less by default, ABC cut a deal to affiliate with KDNL and moved its programming there on August 7, 1995. Soon after joining the network, KDNL began showing UPN programming during the late night hours. Despite its size, the St. Louis market did not have enough commercial stations at the time to support a full-time UPN affiliate. After joining ABC, KDNL began to air more first-run syndicated programs and reduced its reliance on older sitcoms. In 1996, River City merged with the Sinclair Broadcast Group. KDNL dropped the secondary UPN affiliation in 1997, which moved to religious station KNLC (channel 24) (UPN moved to KPLR two years later; St. Louis did not have a full-time UPN affiliate until East St. Louis-based WRBU (channel 46) joined the network in April 2003).

In November 2004, KDNL preempted ABC's telecast of the film Saving Private Ryan, following the lead of other Sinclair-owned ABC affiliates, over concerns regarding the violent battle scenes and graphic profanity that were left intact as ABC aired the film uncut (this occurred nine months after the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show controversy). Sinclair refused to allow Charter Communications to carry KDNL's high definition signal until April 19, 2007 (when KDNL-DT began airing on Charter digital channel 780 as part of a three-year national retransmission agreement between Sinclair and Charter), making the station the longest holdout in the area to make its high definition digital feed available on the provider (not counting CBS affiliate KMOV pulling its HD signal from Charter in January 2007).

For most of its tenure as an ABC affiliate, KDNL has been among the network's weakest affiliates. In stark contrast, KTVI was one of ABC's strongest affiliates. For the better part of a decade since losing its news department in 2001, KDNL's schedule has more closely resembled that of an independent or netlet-affiliated station than that of a Big Three network affiliate in a major market. The station's schedule is heavy on syndication mainstays seen more often on minor network stations (such as The Simpsons), along with a heavy schedule of paid and religious programming, leaving the ABC schedule without many solid lead-ins. Several ABC shows, such as Good Morning America and ABC World News, garner ratings so low in the St. Louis market that A.C. Nielsen cannot rate them as the samples are too small to classify with a ratings number. The station has also had a habit of preempting ABC prime time programs in favor of paid programming. As a result, KDNL regularly places fifth among the St. Louis market's television stations, behind KPLR (a rare fourth place finish for KDNL in 2013 played a factor in KPLR owner Tribune Broadcasting being able to buy KTVI as part of its purchase of Local TV, which given KDNL's usual ratings performance, would have otherwise not been allowed under FCC duopoly rules). Ironically, given its status, KDNL was actually the local broadcaster for the St. Louis Rams' victory in Super Bowl XXXIV, which had aired on ABC.

There has also been regular rumors of Tribune Broadcasting pursuing the ABC affiliation for KPLR (despite Tribune's strong affiliation ties to The CW, and that group's near lack of any Big Three network affiliates among its stations until it acquired the Local TV station group) after KDNL's affiliation agreement expired due to that station's management agreement with (and now, outright ownership of) KTVI and their downplaying of references to its CW affiliation as part of that station's on-air branding, along with experimentation with The CW primetime schedule to maximize ratings. However, ABC extended its affiliation agreement with KDNL and Sinclair's other ABC affiliates for five years on March 26, 2010, which will keep KDNL affiliated with the network until at least August 2015. On June 23, 2011, KDNL upgraded its severe weather ticker to be overlaid on high definition programming without having to downconvert HD content to standard definition.

Digital channels
The station's digital channel is multiplexed:

On October 1, 2010, KDNL began carrying TheCoolTV on digital subchannel 30.2; it carried the music video network until Sinclair dropped TheCoolTV from 32 of its approximately 70 stations at the time on August 31, 2012. On October 28, 2010, KDNL began to carry The Country Network (now ZUUS Country) through a separate affiliation agreement with Sinclair, it is carried on digital subchannel 30.3.

Analog-to-digital conversion
KDNL-TV shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 30, on February 17, 2009, the original date in which full-power television stations in the United States were scheduled to transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate (the official date was pushed back to June 12). The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 31. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 30.

As part of the SAFER Act, KDNL kept its analog signal on the air until February 26 to inform viewers of the digital television transition through a loop of public service announcements from the National Association of Broadcasters.

News operation
KDNL aired hourly news cut-ins during regular programming for most of its first 25 years on the air. Shortly before agreed to affiliate with ABC in 1994, KDNL established a full-scale news department. Initially, KDNL offered a nightly local news program at 9 p.m. that debuted on January 1, 1995. The program's original anchors were Jim Wicks (who came to St. Louis from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada) and Leslie Lyles (who had been anchoring in Charleston, South Carolina).

When the station switched to ABC seven months later on August 7, the station expanded its news programming; it added newscasts at 5 p.m. daily and at 6 p.m. weeknights, along with weekday morning cut-ins during Good Morning America; the 9 p.m. newscast was also moved to 10 p.m. At the same time, the station fired Wicks and hired longtime KTVI anchor/reporter Don Marsh to join Leslie Lyles on the weeknight newscasts. Ratings plummeted and did not even approach those of KTVI during its latter tenure as an ABC affiliate. The first Nielsen sweep month in the fall averaged only a 2 rating and 5 share. KDNL's newscasts were never competitive with KMOV, KSDK (both have had at least 20% shares over the years), or even KTVI due to the fact that many of the station's on-air staffers came from out-of-town and were unfamiliar with viewers. In KDNL's defense, the station was unable to hire locally since talent on competing stations had either six month or one year non-compete clauses in their contracts. The early evening newscast on weeknights had its time slot fluctuate between 5 and 6 and was even canceled outright for a time. Turnover in the newsroom was very high and this showed in the ratings.

In the spring of 2001, a transmitter failure left KDNL off-the-air for a number of days (or at least broadcasting at a lower power than it did normally). What little audience its newscasts had ended up switching to other sources and never returned. The station finally shut down its news department altogether on October 12, 2001. For the next nine years, KDNL was one of the very few major network affiliates that did not air any local newscasts, with the only news programming on the station consisting of national news programs from ABC News. Until January 2011, the station had been the largest major network affiliate in terms of market size without any local newscasts (CBS O&amp;O WWJ-TV in Detroit was the largest until May 5, 2009, when it launched a now-canceled weekday morning show that was originally produced in partnership with the Detroit Free Press). Most major network affiliates are contractually obligated to air local news, but KDNL's affiliation agreement does not have such a clause.

KDNL occasionally employs its former news set for commentary on sporting events. It also airs local weather cut-ins on weekday mornings during Good Morning America. These updates were formerly compiled and presented by meteorologist Tony Pagnotti at Sinclair's News Central headquarters in Hunt Valley, Maryland. The forecasts are now compiled and presented from Columbus, Ohio sister operation WSYX/WTTE by those stations' evening meteorologists.

On January 3, 2011, NBC affiliate KSDK began producing weeknight 5 and 10 p.m. newscasts for KDNL through a news share agreement. Both broadcasts air in high definition from a virtual set at KSDK's Market Street studios in Downtown St. Louis and required the hiring of additional personnel. KDNL general manager Tom Tipton stated that the station did not want to run simulcasted or repurposed newscasts in its efforts to return daily news broadcasts to the station. The KSDK-produced newscasts on KDNL are pre-taped in advance. There is no sports report featured during the program. The news share agreement between the two stations is quite unusual given the rarity of a Big Three network affiliate producing newscasts for another Big Three station. In this case, KDNL and KSDK compete against one another in both timeslots. Although KDNL does not run any local news programming on weekends, the station does air replays of KSDK's entertainment/features program Show Me St. Louis. The agreement with KSDK was to end on December 31, 2013. however the last newscast produced by KSDK aired on January 31, 2014. On February 3, 2014, the 5 and 10 p.m. newscasts were replaced with Family Feud and The Simpsons respectively. On February 10, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that the station intends to restart an in-house news department in the spring, with 5 and 10 p.m. newscasts slated to be anchored by KFTK (97.1 FM) morning host and former KMOV reporter Jamie Allman.[19]

Newscast titles

 * TV-30 Newswatch (1970s)
 * TV-30 News (1980s–1994)
 * News 30 Now (January–August 1995)
 * News 30 (1995–1997)
 * ABC News 30 (1997–1999)
 * ABC 30 News (1999–2001)
 * STL Now on ABC 30, powered by NewsChannel 5 (2011–2014)

Station slogans

 * "It's on Us" (late 1980s–early 1990s)
 * "Don't Let Fox 30 Weekends Pass You By" (1987-1988; localized version of Fox campaign)
 * "Fox 30, This is the Year" (1988-1990; localized version of Fox campaign)
 * "It's On Fox 30" (1990-1992; localized version of Fox campaign)
 * "Everybody Knows It's on Fox 30" (1992-1993; localized version of Fox campaign)
 * "It Could Only Happen on Fox 30" (1993-1994; localized version of Fox campaign)
 * "Fox 30 is Kickin' It" (1994-1995; localized version of Fox campaign)
 * "Cool Like Fox 30" (May-August 1995; final localized version of Fox campaign last as Fox affiliation)
 * "Watched By More St. Louis, KDNL-TV 30, ABC" (1995-1996; first localized version of ABC campaign)
 * "Nobody Does It Like ABC-30" (1996-1997; localized version of ABC campaign)
 * "It's the News That Matters Most" (1998–1999; localized version of ABC campaign)
 * "You Get More" (1999–2000; localized version of ABC campaign)
 * "We Love TV, on ABC-30" (1999-2000; localized version of ABC campaign)
 * "America's (#1) Broadcasting Company on ABC 30" (1999-2000; localized version of ABC campaign)
 * "Bringing News Home" (2000–2001; localized version of ABC campaign)
 * "St. Louis Favourite Network" (2001-2003; localized version of ABC campaign)
 * "Celebrating 34 Years of ABC 30 St. Louis" (2003; localized version of ABC campaign)
 * "Welcome to the New ABC 30" (2004-2005; localized version of ABC campaign)
 * "Only ABC-30" (2005-2007; localized version of ABC campaign)
 * "St. Louis' Leader in Entertainment Programming" (2006–present)
 * "ABC-30, Start Here" (2007–present; localized version of ABC campaign)

Current on-air staff

 * Anchors
 * Jeff Small - fill-in news anchor (KSDK)
 * Ashley Yarchin - news anchor; weeknights at 5:00 and 10:00 p.m. (KSDK)
 * TBD - news anchor; weekday mornings at 6:30 a.m. (KSDK)


 * Weather team
 * Cindy Preszler (AMS and NWA Seals of Approval) - chief meteorologist; weeknights at 5:00 and 10:00 p.m. (KSDK)
 * TBD - meteorologist; weekday mornings at 6:30 a.m. (KSDK)
 * Bill Kelly (NWA Seal of Approval) - meteorologist; rotating weekday mornings (WSYX/WTTE)
 * Dana Turtle - meteorologist; rotating weekday mornings (WSYX/WTTE)


 * Reporters
 * Grant Bissell - multimedia journalist
 * Tracy Clemons - general assignment reporter
 * Alex Fees - freelance reporter
 * Heidi Glaus - feature reporter
 * Talia Kaplan - general assignment reporter
 * Elizabeth Matthews - general assignment reporter
 * Casey Nolen - general assignment reporter
 * Mike Rush - general assignment and consumer reporter
 * Sharon Stevens - education reporter