It's no surprise that the KCMO radio and TV mast would be designated as NGS benchmark KE1486 KANSAS CITY TV STA KCMO MAST, would it? (
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This landmark tall triangular lattice tower is a handsome broadcasting landmark that used to flash a code to warn residents of incoming severe weather. The transmitter facility at the tower are still in use for KCTV's (KCMO changed call sign in the 1980s) digital broadcasts, and the tower still is lit up for the enjoyment of residents and visitors alike.
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"KCTV, virtual channel 5 (UHF digital channel 24), is a CBS-affiliated television station serving Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas City, Kansas, United States. The station is owned by the Meredith Local Media subsidiary of the Meredith Corporation, as part of a duopoly with MyNetworkTV affiliate KSMO-TV (channel 62). The two stations share studio facilities located on Shawnee Mission Parkway (U.S. 56/U.S. 169) in Fairway, Kansas; KCTV maintains transmitter facilities located on East 31st Street in the Union Hill section of Kansas City, Missouri (adjacent to the studios of PBS member station KCPT (channel 19)).
KCTV also serves as an alternate CBS affiliate for the Saint Joseph market, which borders the northern portions of the Kansas City Designated Market Area. . . Since KNPG-LD (channel 21) converted into an NBC affiliate on November 1, 2016, giving the market over-the-air access to four of the six major broadcast networks KCTV and sister station KSMO-TV are the only remaining Kansas City-based stations that act as default carriers of networks not currently affiliated with either of Saint Joseph's four existing commercial television stations. However, on June 1, 2017, KNPG-LD's sister station KBJO-LD, currently affiliated with the Spanish-language Telemundo network, will become a CBS affiliate, ending out-of-market reliance on KCTV.
History
The station first signed on the air on September 27, 1953 as KCMO-TV (for Kansas City, MissOuri). Founded by the KCMO Broadcasting Corporation, owners of radio stations KCMO (then at 810 AM, now at 710 AM) and KCMO-FM (94.9), from which the television station acquired its original call letters. It originally served as a primary affiliate of ABC and a secondary affiliate of the DuMont Television Network, both of which had been affiliated with WDAF-TV (channel 4) on a part-time basis since that station signed on as the Kansas City market's first television station in October 1949. The station originally operated from studio facilities located on East 31st Street in Kansas City, Missouri's Union Hill neighborhood. On October 2, six days after channel 5 made its debut, Meredith Engineering purchased the KCMO radio and television stations from KCMO Broadcasting; the sale was completed less than two months later in December 1953.
In January 1955, Meredith signed a multi-year agreement with CBS to affiliate . . . KCMO-TV with CBS . . . .
While it changed its primary network affiliation, KCMO-TV remained a secondary affiliate of DuMont; it would disaffiliate from that network when it ceased operations on August 6, 1956, resulting in CBS becoming the station's sole network affiliation. For most of its first decade on the air, KCMO-TV branded on-air as "Television 5"; subsequently in 1966, the station's branding was simplified to "TV 5", a moniker which remained in use until the callsign change to KCTV in 1983.
Meredith sold the KCMO radio stations to Richard Fairbanks in 1983, but retained ownership of KCMO-TV. On March 7 of that year, the company changed the station's call letters to KCTV (standing for Kansas City's TeleVision, which also served as the station's on-air slogan from that year on until February 1994), based on the familiarity of the "TV 5" branding. It also relocated its operations across the Missouri-Kansas state line from its original studio facilities on East 31st Street to a new facility on Shawnee Mission Parkway in Fairway, Kansas. The station's original studio building in Union Hill now houses the offices and production facilities of PBS member station KCPT (channel 19), although KCTV's transmitter antenna continues to operate from an adjacent tower located on the studio grounds (see below). . . .
Tower
KCTV maintains transmitter facilities on a 1,042-foot (318 m)[28] transmission tower located at its former studio facility on East 31st Street on Union Hill (south of downtown). The 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. It is so recognized that KCTV incorporated the "tall tower" – as the station referred to it on-air – into the logo it adopted as part of an imaging revamp in November 1999 (at which time, it also adopted the current KCTV 5 News identity as the title for its newscasts), which remained in use until May 2002. The tower itself is similar in structure to the 750-foot (228.6 m) transmission tower on which ABC affiliate KQTV upstate in St. Joseph (which, coincidentally, also began broadcasting on the date KCTV commenced operations, September 27, 1953) maintains its transmitter antenna.
From the 1970s until 2001, the tower also served as a weather beacon to signal residents and visitors of inclement weather affecting Kansas City and its immediate surrounding communities. For this purpose, station engineers switched individual sets of lights on the tower and moded them to flash when a severe weather watch or warning was issued for any county in the immediate Kansas City area by the local National Weather Service Forecast Office or the National Severe Storms Forecast Center/Storm Prediction Center, activating them in descending order – in one or more of three sections – in pertinence to the specific weather situation:
* Lights flashing on the top third of the tower indicated that a severe thunderstorm watch, tornado watch or winter weather advisory was in effect
* Lights flashing on the top two-thirds of the tower indicated that a severe thunderstorm warning or winter storm warning was in effect
* Lights flashing on all sections of the tower indicated that a tornado warning was in effect or that highly threatening weather would occur
After the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and The Pentagon on September 11, 2001, as symbols of American patriotism were heavily embraced in their immediate aftermath, KCTV engineers installed LED lights on the tower to correspond to the colors of the United States flag, placing red lights on the top third, white lights on the middle third and blue lights on the bottom third of the structure.
In 2004, the lights on the tower were turned off entirely until all of the bulbs could be replaced; the lights on the tower were reactivated on July 1, 2006, with white lights having been installed on all of its sections, as had originally been standard until the 1970s. Since then, the lights have not flashed for the purpose of being a notifier of inclement weather conditions as they did prior to September 11, 2001. In June 2010, the analog antenna was disassembled from the tower structure to allow the installation of a new top-mounted digital antenna, which would transmit at 1,000 kilowatts to improve the coverage of KCTV's digital signal in the outer edges of the market.
Digital channels
The station's digital channel is multiplexed:
Channel Video Aspect PSIP Short Name Programming
5.1 1080i 16:9 KCTV-DT Main KCTV programming / CBS
5.2 480i Comet Comet
Analog-to-digital conversion
KCTV signed on its digital signal on November 8, 2003, transmitting on UHF channel 24 and initially broadcasting only CBS programming in the network's 1080i high-definition resolution, with local newscasts, syndicated programs and paid programming relayed from the station's analog signal being upconverted to 1080i at all other times; since September 2011, KCTV transmits all local, network and syndicated programming in HD, with informercials transmitted exclusively in the 480i standard-definition format preferred by most direct response production units.
KCTV shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 5, at 9 a.m. 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 continued to broadcasts on its pre-transition UHF channel 24. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former VHF analog channel 5."