KCTV - Programming

Programming

KCTV currently carries all CBS network programming, though due to the Sunday morning edition of KCTV 5 News This Weekend, Face the Nation is generally delayed to Sunday late nights; the station also is one of several CBS affiliates to split the network's Saturday morning children's programming to Saturday and Sunday mornings, as one hour of the lineup airs on Sunday mornings before CBS News Sunday Morning. Over the years, the station would preempt moderate amounts of CBS programming such as some morning daytime shows, Sunday morning cartoons, a couple Saturday morning cartoons, an occasional primetime show, and some late night shows prior to David Letterman's arrival to CBS in 1993. Today, KCTV still runs a large amount of local news along with most every CBS program.

One of the most common copies of The Star Wars Holiday Special comes from this station. It can be found as first generation bootleg copies all the way down to the third generation. Also during the 1970s into the 1980s, it was very active in locally-produced shows such as Saturday Science Fiction Theatre. It was during the Hyatt Regency Tragedy that one of the station's most popular shows, Friday Fright Night, was preempted for the fear of further traumatizing viewers already in shock. Friday Fright Night was known for its opening sequence of a skull with an announcer giving the lead-in with both a spooky tone of voice and dialogue only to leave the shot with a prolonged sequence of hysterical-sounding laughter. At least two other shows competed in the genre with Friday Fright Night by the early 1980s including Creature Feature with Crematia Mortem and All Night Live! with "Uncle Ed" and "Caffeina the Cat" and later Dick Wilson. However, "Uncle Ed" Muscare had various spook-shows going back to the 1960s albeit in different markets.

In 1998, KCTV began airing Kansas City Chiefs games. The Chiefs are part of the American Football Conference of the National Football League. AFC road games are aired on CBS. This relationship extends to the preseason as well, in which KCTV is the flagship station for non-national telecasts.

In September 2012, KCTV will debut a one-hour lifestyle program called Better Kansas City, which will air at 9 a.m. weekday mornings; the program will be produced independently from the station's news department and will be hosted by weekday morning and noon anchor Kelly Jones, along with an unnamed co-host. As a result, KCTV will drop Live With Kelly from its schedule with the show reportedly moving to Fox affiliate WDAF-TV. Better Kansas City should not be confused with Better, a nationally-syndicated lifestyle program distributed by Meredith, which airs locally on sister station KSMO-TV.