KTVI

KTVI runs about 59 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, virtual channel 2 (UHF digital channel 43), is a Fox-affiliated television station located in St. Louis, Missouri, United States. The station is owned by the Tribune Broadcasting subsidiary of the Tribune Company, as part of a duopoly with CW affiliate KPLR-TV (channel 11). The two stations share studio facilities located at 2250 Ball Drive in Maryland Heights, KTVI's transmitter is located in the unincorporated community of Sappington.

As a CBS affiliate, then over to ABC
The station first signed on the air 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. 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, with ABC and DuMont as secondary affiliations. 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; WTVI retained ABC and DuMont programming, with the former network becoming its primary affiliation. 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 the callsign while flipping the first assigned letter from "W" to "K", thus changing to the current KTVI (the WTVI calls are currently used by a PBS member station in Charlotte, North Carolina). It moved its operations to facilities located in the Clayton-Tamm/Dogtown neighborhood in west St. Louis (off present-day I-64/U.S. 40 at the intersection of Berthold, Oakland and Hampton Avenues).

The station lost DuMont programming when the network ceased operations in 1956, making KTVI an exclusive ABC affiliate. As the Federal Communications Commission 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 relocated from Springfield, Illinois under pressure from the Truman Administration, originally as not to interfere with CBS-owned WBBM-TV in Chicago. For many years, the station was owned by newspaper publishing firm Newhouse News, owners of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. In 1978, Newhouse exited from broadcasting, and sold KTVI to the Times Mirror Company. In 1993, KTVI was sold to Argyle Broadcasting in a group deal, along with Birmingham, Alabama's WVTM-TV, Austin, Texas's KTBC and Dallas's KDFW.

As a Fox station
On December 18, 1993, Fox was awarded the broadcast rights to the NFL's National Football Conference television package over CBS. This inspired New World Communications to sign a long-term deal on May 23, 1994 to switch most of its major network affiliates to Fox, starting that fall at the earliest. New World subsequently bought out Argyle Television, and cut another deal to switch the affiliations of KTVI, KDFW and KTBC to Fox (KTVI was the only Argyle-owned ABC affiliate that was included in the deal, as the other two stations were affiliated with CBS; WVTM did not switch as WBRC, which was placed a blind trust, took the Fox affiliation and was later sold to the network as New World could not keep both due to FCC rules at the time that forbade duopolies).

KTVI affiliated with Fox on August 7, 1995, ending its 42-year affiliation with ABC, which moved to St. Louis' original Fox affiliate, KDNL-TV (channel 30). Starting that September, KTVI became the official "home" station of the St. Louis Rams – which had recently relocated to the city from Los Angeles (with the exception of select primetime telecasts, KTVI only broadcasts the NFL franchise's road games as well as sold-out home games against other NFC teams). The station chose not to carry children's programming from Fox Kids, the block instead aired on religious independent KNLC (channel 24); however due to a controversial decision by Reverend Larry Rice (of KNLC owner New Life Evangelistic Center) to run ministry messages instead of commercials during the block, Fox Kids moved to KTVI in the fall of 1996 (becoming the only New World-owned Fox station to carry the block). Fox Television Stations acquired New World Communications in July 1996; upon the completion of the merger on January 22, 1997, KTVI became the first network-owned station in the market since CBS sold KMOX-TV (which then changed its callsign to KMOV) to Viacom in 1986. Shortly thereafter, programming changed very slightly as Fox Television Stations began acquiring more expensive syndicated programs for KTVI.

KTVI stopped carrying the Fox Kids weekday block in 2000, although the station retained its Saturday morning lineup (this was despite the fact that Fox gave its affiliates the option to push the weekday block to an earlier afternoon timeslot at that period). Fox discontinued its weekday block nationwide on December 31, 2001, and the Saturday lineup was contracted out to 4Kids Entertainment and relaunched as FoxBox on September 14, 2002. From September 2006 until the block (by then, renamed 4Kids TV) ended on December 27, 2008, KTVI aired 4Kids TV two hours earlier than most stations to accommodate the station's Saturday morning newscast (KTVI now airs Fox's Weekend Marketplace infomercial block in its place). KTVI first launched its website on November 1, 1999, which featured a design similar to other sites belonging to Fox's owned-and-operated stations at the time and focused on promotional and programming content initially, but eventually incorporated news content. The website was migrated to the MyFox platform on September 14, 2006. On October 15, 2007, KTVI launched STLMoms.com, a website aimed at St. Louis area moms whose concept spun off from a popular blog featured on the station's main website.

On December 22, 2007, Fox Television Stations announced that it had agreed to sell KTVI and seven other Fox]] owned-and-operated stations to Local TV, a television station group formed by Oak Hill Capital Partners that year to acquire nine stations owned by The New York Times Company; the sale officially closed on July 14, 2008. On June 2, 2008, KTVI launched GarageSaleSTL.com, a free website that primarily features a Google-based map of viewer-submitted garage sales (the site has since been discontinued).

On October 1, 2008, Local TV began managing CW affiliate KPLR-TV (channel 11) under a local marketing agreement with its owner Tribune Broadcasting through a "broadcast management company" that was created to provide services to stations owned by both Tribune and Local TV. Though it is the senior partner in the agreement, KTVI relocated from its longtime Clayton-Tamm/Dogtown studios to KPLR's facility in Maryland Heights (KPLR moved to that building, the larger of the two facilities, in 2003; whereas KTVI had been operating from the Berthold studios for nearly 50 years). Both stations combined their news departments and began sharing certain syndicated programs. On July 1, 2013, the Tribune Company acquired the Local TV stations for $2.75 billion. The FCC approved the sale on December 20, and the sale was completed on December 27 (as the FCC bars duopolies between two of a market's four highest-rated stations, the resulting common ownership between KTVI and KPLR-TV was only permissible as historically fifth-rated KDNL-TV had surpassed KPLR for fourth place in the ratings at the time the deal was struck; St. Louis also has only nine full-power television stations, seven of which are commercial outlets, making this the only legal duopoly allowable in the market under FCC rules).

Digital channels
The station's digital channel is multiplexed:

KTVI began carrying Antenna TV upon its launch on January 1, 2011 on digital subchannel 2.2.

Analog-to-digital conversion
KTVI shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 2, on June 12, 2009, the official date in which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 43. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former VHF analog channel 2.

News operation
KTVI presently broadcasts 59 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with ten hours on weekdays and 4½ hours each on Saturdays and Sundays); in regards to the number of hours devoted to news programming, it is the second-highest local newscast output among Missouri's broadcast television stations, behind the weekly news output of Kansas City sister station WDAF-TV by only a half-hour. KTVI's Sunday 5 p.m. newscast is subject to preemption due to network sports coverage, as is standard with Fox stations that carry early evening weekend newscasts (though the Saturday 5 p.m. newscast is usually delayed to 6 p.m. due to baseball or college football coverage). Since 1998, the station's weekday morning newscast has held the #1 spot in the St. Louis market in its time period. Segments regularly featured on its newscasts include The Jaco Report (featuring an editorial or investigative story presented by Charles Jaco) and You Paid For It (an investigative segment reported by Elliott Davis that uncovers city government tax abuse; the segment ends by giving the phone number of the office of that municipality's mayor, followed by the signoff "Call and speak your mind: after all, you paid for it").

As an ABC affiliate, KTVI's newscasts usually placed third in the ratings, behind longtime leader KSDK (channel 5) and KMOV. However for most of the 1980s and early 1990s, the station fought a spirited battle with KMOX-TV/KMOV for second place. After joining Fox in August 1995, KTVI increased its news programming output from roughly 30 hours a week to nearly 50 hours. All of its existing newscasts were retained, but it expanded its weekday morning newscast from one to three hours (with two hours added from 7-9 a.m.); bridged the weeknight 5 and 6 p.m. newscasts into a 90-minute early evening news block (by adding a half-hour newscast at 5:30 to compensate for Fox's lack of a national news program); and added an hour-long primetime newscast at 9 p.m., which joined the existing 10 p.m. newscast (KTVI is one of several Fox stations that offer newscasts in both the final hour of primetime and the traditional late news timeslot, one of the few affiliated with the network that runs a nightly 10 p.m. (or 11 p.m.) newscast and one of the few to continue its Big Three-era 10 p.m. newscast after switching to Fox). KTVI is able to emphasize a broad array of stories from national and local reports, to investigative stories because of its large news programming output. The station also devotes a sizeable portion of its sports coverage to local high school sports (once partnering with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch to produce the now-canceled Prep Sports Show on Saturdays) and is the home of Jeff Fisher's weekly St. Louis Rams review show on Mondays.

For much of the time since it affiliated with Fox, KTVI's 9 p.m. newscast had beaten KPLR-TV's own primetime news program in that timeslot. Before Dick Ford retired from the station in December 2005, all four of KTVI's main male anchors (Ford, Tom O'Neal, Dan Gray and John Pertzborn) formerly served as anchors at KSDK. On April 10, 2006, KTVI debuted a new standardized graphics package, logo and news theme (Fox Affiliate News Theme by OSI Music) that was used by Fox's other owned-and-operated stations and select affiliates, during that evening's 9 p.m. newscast. A new set and weather center (replacing one built in 1998) was also introduced (the old news desk was donated to Southern Illinois University Carbondale, with the old weather center donated to the University of Missouri–St. Louis). In December 2008, KPLR temporarily relocated its newscasts to KTVI's now-former Clayton-Tamm/Dogtown studios as KPLR's facility was being remodeled to accommodate both KPLR and KTVI's newscasts; KTVI moved production of its newscasts to a temporary set in January 2009, in order for crews dismantle and move the station's existing news set to KPLR's Maryland Heights facility.

On February 15, 2009, KTVI began broadcasting local newscasts in high definition from its new Maryland Heights studio, accompanied by a new graphics package. The set was updated with several elements added to better fit the new graphics and due to the conversion to HD, while removing the city skyline backdrop in favor of a blue background. In January 2010, KTVI expanded its weekday morning newscast to six hours from 4-10 a.m. (despite the expansion, the station retained its 11 a.m. newscast). On December 23, 2011, KTVI/KPLR opened a news bureau in the newly renovated Peabody Opera House in downtown St. Louis, to better serve the downtown and eastern portion of the St. Louis metropolitan area.

Newscast titles

 * WTVI World News (1954–1955)
 * KTVI World News (1955–1957)
 * City News/Nightly News
 * Weekly News Spotlight
 * Bruce Hayward Reports the News
 * The Big News/24 Hours
 * KTVI News Report (1967-19??)
 * Action News (1971–1970s)
 * Channel 2 News (1970s–1978 & 1981–1990s)
 * NewsCenter 2 (1978–1981)
 * 2 NewsTeam (1990s–1997)
 * Fox 2 News (1997–present)

KTVI Station slogans

 * Let's Get Together on Channel 2 (1970–1971; localized version of ABC ad campaign)
 * This is The Place to Be on Channel 2 (1971-1973; localized version of ABC slogan)
 * Hello St. Louis, Hello Channel 2 (1974-1975; localized version of ABC slogan)
 * Welcome to the Bright New World on Channel 2 (1975-1976; localized version of ABC slogan)
 * Let Us Be The One on Channel 2 (1976-1977; localized version of ABC slogan)
 * We're Still the One, on Channel 2 (1977–1980; localized version of ABC ad campaign)
 * We're The One You Can Turn to Channel 2 (1978-1979; localized version of ABC ad campaign)
 * Channel 2 and You (1980–1984?)
 * You and Me and Channel 2 (1980–1981; localized version of ABC ad campaign)
 * Hello St. Louis (1981–1987; used during period station used Frank Gari's Hello News)
 * Now is the Time, Channel 2 is the Place (1981–1982; localized version of ABC ad campaign)
 * Come on Along with Channel 2 (1982–1983; localized version of ABC ad campaign)
 * That Special Feeling on Channel 2 (1983-1984; localized version of ABC ad campaign)
 * We're With You on Channel 2 (1984-1985; localized version of ABC ad campaign)
 * You'll Love It on Channel 2 (1985-1986; localized version of ABC ad campaign)
 * Together on Channel 2 (1986-1987; localized version of ABC ad campaign)
 * Something's Happening on Channel 2 (1987–1990; localized version of ABC ad campaign)
 * The Spirit of St. Louis (1989–1994; general slogan)
 * The Home Team (1989–1994; news slogan)
 * St Louis is Watching KTVI (1990-1992; localized version of ABC ad campaign)
 * If It's Channel 2, It Must Be ABC (1992–1993; localized version of ABC ad campaign)
 * Watched By More St. Louis, Channel 2, ABC (1993-1995; last localized version of ABC ad campaign; last slogan as ABC affiliate)
 * Cool Like Fox 2 (1995-1996; first localized version of Fox ad campaign; first as Fox affiliate)
 * Here's 2 St. Louis (1994–1999; news slogan)
 * Working For You (1999–2002)
 * Coverage You Can Count On (2002–present)
 * Live. Local. Latebreaking. (2002–2006)
 * St. Louis' Newsroom (2006–present)
 * The Most Powerful Name In Local News (2006–present)
 * So Fox 2 (2009-present; localized version of Fox ad campaign)

Current on-air staff
+ denotes personnel also seen on KPLR-TV
 * Anchors


 * Andy Banker - weekend mornings (7:00-9:00 a.m.); also weeknight reporter
 * Elliot Davis - weekends at 5:00, 9:00 and 10:00 p.m.; also "You Paid For It" consumer reporter
 * Margie Ellisor - weekday mornings on Fox 2 News in the Morning (5:00-7:00 a.m.)
 * Tim Ezell - weekday mornings on Fox 2 News in the Morning (9:00-10:00 a.m.); also weekday morning feature reporter
 * Sandy Miller - weeknights at 6:00 and 10:00 p.m.
 * Angie Mock - weekday mornings on Fox 2 News in the Morning (4:00-5:00 a.m.); also 5:00-10:00 a.m. reporter
 * Mandy Murphey - weeknights at 5:00 and 9:00 p.m.; also reporter
 * Randi Naughton - weekday mornings on Fox 2 News in the Morning (7:00-9:00 a.m.); also reporter
 * Tom O'Neal - weeknights at 5:00 and 9:00 p.m.; also health reporter
 * John Pertzborn - weekday mornings on Fox 2 News in the Morning (7:00-9:00 a.m.)
 * + April Simpson - weekdays at 11:00 a.m.; also weekday morning reporter
 * Kevin Steincross - weekday mornings on Fox 2 News in the Morning (5:00-7:00 a.m.)
 * + Shirley Washington - weekends at 5:00, 9:00 and 10:00 p.m.; also reporter
 * Elliot Weiler - weekdays at 11:00 a.m.; also "Contact 2" reporter

In addition to providing forecasts on KTVI, the Fox 2 Weather Team also provides forecasts for KTRS-AM, KPNT-FM, and KIHT-FM radio.
 * Weather team
 * Dave Murray (AMS Seal of Approval) - chief meteorologist; weeknights at 5:00, 6:00, 9:00 and 10:00 p.m.; also home and garden reporter
 * + Chris Higgins (AMS Certified Broadcast Meteorologist Seal of Approval) - meteorologist; weekends at 5:00, 9:00 and 10:00 p.m.
 * Angela Hutti - meteorologist; weekend mornings (7:00-9:00 a.m.); also weather producer
 * Glenn Zimmerman (AMS Seal of Approval) - meteorologist; weekday mornings on Fox 2 News in the Morning (4:00-10:00 a.m.)
 * TBD - meteorologist; weekdays at 11:00 a.m.


 * Sports team
 * Martin Kilcoyne - sports director; Sundays at 5:00, Monday-Thursdays at 6:00 and Sunday-Thursdays at 9:00 and 10:00 p.m.; also co-host of Rams Weekly with Steve Spagnuolo
 * + Kurt Labelle - sports anchor; Fridays at 6:00, Saturdays at 5:00 and Friday-Saturdays at 9:00 and 10:00 p.m.; also general assignment reporter
 * Maurice Drummond - sports anchor; weekend mornings (7:00-9:00 a.m.); also weekday sports reporter
 * Charlie Marlow - sports reporter; also sports producer

In addition to providing reports on KTVI, select member of the station reporting staff also provide stories for KPLR-TV.
 * Reporters


 * Monica Adams - weekday morning traffic reporter (4:00-10:00 a.m.)
 * + Jeff Bernthal - general assignment reporter; also anchor
 * John Brubaker - "SkyFox" pilot reporter
 * Betsey Bruce - general assignment reporter
 * + Patrick Clark - feature reporter
 * Bonita Cornute - general assignment and "Contact 2" reporter
 * Chris Hayes - investigative reporter
 * + Kelley Hoskins - web reporter
 * + Kim Hudson - multimedia journalist
 * + Charles Jaco - war correspondent; also host of The Jaco Report
 * + Anthony Kiekow - general assignment reporter
 * Doug Luzader - Fox News Washington D.C. correspondent
 * Roche Madden - general assignment reporter
 * Chris Regnier - general assignment reporter
 * + Rebecca Roberts - general assignment reporter
 * Paul Schankmann - general assignment reporter
 * George Sells - general assignment reporter; also web producer
 * + Shawndrea Thomas - multimedia journalist

Notable former on-air staff

 * John Brown - anchor (now at WOFL/Orlando)
 * Dana King - anchor (retired from broadcasting in 2012, last with KPIX-TV/San Francisco)
 * Russ Mitchell - reporter (now at WKYC/Cleveland)
 * Paul Moyer - anchor/reporter (later anchor at KNBC/Los Angeles, now retired)
 * Lisa Sylvester - anchor (2000; currently at CNN)