KSHB-TV - History

History

Channel 41 signed on August 10, 1970 as KBMA-TV (for Businessmen's Assurance Company of America, which provided initial funds for the station's founding), owned by Wilson D. Grant. Its first studio was located in the BMA Tower, and its first local program was an afternoon children's show with cartoons called 41 Treehouse Lane.

KBMA was originally an independent station—the second in Kansas City. However, it had stronger financing and programming than the city's original independent, KCIT-TV (channel 50, now KPXE). KCIT went off the air in 1971, and for the next 12 years, channel 41 was the only general entertainment station in Kansas City (channel 50 eventually signed on once again in 1978, but as a religious station). From the early 1970s through the 1980s, it was available on many cable systems in Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma, effectively becoming a regional superstation. This included many large Midwestern cities that didn't have independent stations of their own, such as Des Moines, Omaha, Lincoln, and Wichita.

KBMA was sold to Scripps Howard Broadcasting in 1977. To reflect its new ownership, the station later changed its call letters to KSHB-TV in 1981. The station acquired some strong off-network sitcoms and movie packages and remained the area's leading independent station. The station affiliated with the upstart Fox network in 1986, but it remained essentially an independent station since Fox only provided a couple of hours of network programming a day. During its Fox affiliation, KSHB was known on-air as "Fox 41". The station began to add a few talk and reality shows in the early 1990s.

On May 22, 1994, New World Communications announced an affiliation agreement with the Fox Broadcasting Company, months after Fox won the broadcast rights to NFC football games. This resulted in most of its stations set to become Fox affiliates. One of the stations due to switch was Kansas City's longtime NBC affiliate, WDAF-TV (channel 4). NBC sought to find a new affiliate, eventually finding one in KSHB. On September 12, 1994, WDAF dropped its NBC affiliation after 45 years and took over the Fox affiliation, while Fox Kids moved to KSMO (channel 62). Meanwhile, NBC agreed to affiliate with KSHB on the condition that KSHB run as much local news as WDAF had as an NBC affiliate, and as a result, launched newscasts in the morning and at 5 and 6 p.m., and moved its 9 p.m. newscast to 10 p.m. KSHB was not part of the Scripps-ABC affiliation deal due to ABC's long-term affiliation contract with KMBC-TV (channel 9). For a four-year period, KSHB aired most Kansas City Chiefs games as part of the NFL on NBC, which covered the American Football Conference. KSHB lost these rights to KCTV in 1998 when the AFC package moved to CBS.

Scripps Howard began to manage KMCI (channel 38) in 1996, and moved KSHB's sitcoms to that station. From 2000 to 2003, KSHB also produced a 30-minute 9 p.m. newscast on KMCI; by the time it was canceled, the newscast was called 38 News Now and had completely differentiated itself from KSHB, using different graphics, different (and drastically smaller) set, and a different all-percussion theme.