News Operation
KCTV currently broadcasts a total of 32½ hours of local news per week (with five hours on weekdays, 4½ hours on Saturdays and three hours on Sundays), second only to WDAF in the most hours of local news in the Kansas City market. KCTV also produces 8½ hours of local news per week for sister station KSMO with an hour-long extension of More in the Morning weekday mornings from 7-8 a.m. and a half-hour primetime newscast at 9 p.m.
In the Fall of 2005, KCTV began producing a nightly 9 o'clock broadcast for KSMO to compete with WDAF's news show. In May 2006, this station acquired a new helicopter called "Chopper 5". During September 2008, it was announced that KCTV would get a new high definition set and become the third station in Kansas City (after KSHB and KMBC) to broadcast local news in HD. The station began broadcasting its newscasts in high definition on October 20, 2008 beginning with its 4 p.m. newscast. The KSMO shows were included in the upgrade.
KCTV and former News Director Regent Ducas came under fire in recent years for bringing what some call tabloid-style reporting to the market. "Live. Latebreaking. Investigative." became KCTV's new slogan (also the slogan of sister station KPHO in Phoenix) in September 2002 six months after Regent's hiring. A year later, this station's sports department was shut down and sports news was outsourced to Metro Sports (a local cable channel operated by Time Warner Cable) with most of the KCTV former sports personnel making the move; this practice continued until 2009. KCTV had no official sports department; however on March 25, 2010, it announced that sports segments produced in-house would be returning and that a sports director had been hired.
As a result of the station's "new direction", several high-profile anchors and reporters left including Anne Peterson, Russell Kinsaul (who is now working across the state in St. Louis at CBS affiliate KMOV), and Dave Helling. A May 26, 2007, article in The Kansas City Star revealed the turbulence behind KCTV's move to become the #1 newscast producer in the market. A lawsuit filed by a longtime newscast director alleges that the station's owners engaged in systematic harassment and dismissal of older workers. The judge denied KCTV's move to dismiss the suit and the station settled with the plaintiff according to an article in the newspaper.
In April 2010, Greg Adaline and Kelly Jones assumed roles as the new morning anchors for More In The Morning. Adaline moved to his anchor position from his role as a morning news reporter and Kelly Jones joined the morning team from KFMB in San Diego. On September 13, 2010 KCTV will expand its weekday morning newscast to 4½ hours, becoming the third television station in Kansas City to begin its morning newscast at 4:30 a.m. (ABC affiliate KMBC and NBC affiliate KSHB moved the start time of their morning newscasts to 4:30 a.m. on August 23, 2010). On October 12, 2010, KCTV announced that it would begin airing obituaries during the noon newscast and the weekday morning newscast on sister station KSMO, citing concerns caused by the decline of newspaper circulation. KCTV and parent Meredith Corporation also launched two websites, ObitMissouri.com and ObitKansas.com to provide online obituaries, detailed information on the deceased and memorial service information to Kansas City-area residents.
On January 4, 2011 KCTV announced that it had formed a news share partnership with Kansas City Star, in which the station and the newspaper will partner together on local news stories and KCTV will provide weather forecasts for the paper. Incidentally, the Star put rival station WDAF-TV on the air in 1949 and owned it until 1958, and KSHB-TV already had a news share partnership with the Star until the announcement was made.
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Famous quotes containing the words news and/or operation:
“Word of gloom from the war, one day;
Johnston pressed at the front, they say.
Little Giffen was up and away;
A tear—his first—as he bade good-by,
Dimmed the glint of his steel-blue eye.
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“Waiting for the race to become official, he began to feel as if he had as much effect on the final outcome of the operation as a single piece of a jumbo jigsaw puzzle has to its predetermined final design. Only the addition of the missing fragments of the puzzle would reveal if the picture was as he guessed it would be.”
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