KCTV - Tower

Tower

KCTV's 1,042-foot (318 m) transmitter tower at its former studios on East 31st Street on Union Hill south of Downtown Kansas City is a widely recognized Kansas City landmark. This is due largely in part to the string lights on the four corners of the tower that can be seen for miles around at night. It is so recognized that for a time the "tall tower" (as it was called on-air) was the official logo of KCTV. For many years, the station flashed the lights on the tower due to inclement weather in Kansas City and the immediate surrounding communities in three sections:

• top third flashing = thunderstorm watch / tornado watch / winter weather advisory
• two thirds flashing = thunderstorm warning / winter weather warning
• all lights flashing = tornado warning / highly threatening weather

After the September 11 attacks, KCTV changed the tower to red/white/blue with the top third red and the bottom third blue. The lights on the tower went dark for a period until all of the light bulbs could be changed. On July 1, 2006, it turned the tower back on in all white lights as it had originally been until the 1970s. The lights do not flash as they did before September 11, 2001.

In June 2010, the analog antenna was disassembled and lowered to the ground to allow a new top mounted digital antenna improving coverage of KCTV's digital signal. The tower is similar to the 750-foot (228.6 m) KQTV tower in St. Joseph, Missouri. Coincidently, that station (which serves as the ABC network affiliate for the St. Joseph market) had also begun broadcasting on September 27, 1953.