| ATSC 3.0 station | |
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| City | Kansas City, Missouri |
| Channels | |
| Branding | KSMO-TV |
| Programming | |
| Affiliations |
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| Ownership | |
| Owner |
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| KCTV | |
| History | |
First air date | December 7, 1983 |
Former call signs |
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Former channel number(s) |
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Call sign meaning | Postal abbreviations of Kansas and Missouri |
| Technical information[1] | |
Licensing authority | FCC |
| Facility ID | 33336 |
| ERP | 750 kW |
| HAAT | 358 m (1,175 ft) |
| Transmitter coordinates | 39°5′25.8″N 94°28′19.2″W / 39.090500°N 94.472000°W |
| Links | |
Public license information | |
KSMO-TV (channel 62) is a television station in Kansas City, Missouri, United States, affiliated with MyNetworkTV. It is owned by Gray Television alongside CBS affiliate KCTV (channel 5). The two stations share studios on Shawnee Mission Parkway in Fairway, Kansas; KSMO-TV's transmitter is located in Independence, Missouri.
Channel 62 in Kansas City began broadcasting as KEKR-TV in 1983, changing its call letters to KZKC in 1985. Originally owned by Media Central of Chattanooga, Tennessee, it suffered for most of its first decade on air from a management style more suited to stations in smaller markets, inferior programming, and a poor reputation. In 1988, the station was fined for airing an indecent film in prime time, attracting national attention. Financial issues also strapped KZKC, particularly after Media Central entered bankruptcy reorganization in 1987.
KZKC was sold out of bankruptcy to First American National Bank of Nashville, Tennessee, in early 1990; the bank quickly sold the station to ABRY Communications. ABRY instituted a top-to-bottom overhaul of programming and facilities, changing the call letters to KSMO-TV in April 1991. The relaunched channel 62 cemented itself as the primary sports and children's station in Kansas City; from 1990 to 1995, viewership tripled and advertising revenue quadrupled. ABRY affiliated the station with UPN upon its January 1995 debut. The station also was the broadcast home of Kansas City Royals baseball for four years, further increasing its visibility.
Sinclair Broadcast Group exercised an option to buy KSMO-TV in December 1995. The station dropped UPN in January 1998 after a corporate dispute between Sinclair and the network; two months later, the station became the new Kansas City affiliate of The WB. With the company focusing on duopolies elsewhere and unable to buy a second station in Kansas City, Sinclair sold KSMO-TV to the Meredith Corporation, then-owner of KCTV, in 2005 after Meredith assumed operating control the year before. The station affiliated with MyNetworkTV upon the merger of UPN and The WB into The CW in 2006, and it also added newscasts from KCTV and other local programming to its lineup. Gray acquired Meredith in 2021, the same year that the station converted to ATSC 3.0 (NextGen TV) broadcasting.
- ^ "Facility Technical Data for KSMO-TV". Licensing and Management System. Federal Communications Commission.