KCTV (channel 5) is a television station in Kansas City, Missouri, United States, affiliated with CBS.

[13] KCMO-TV made the September 27 start date, with an official dedication featuring former president Harry Truman as the guest of honor taking place on October 4.

[17] This gave Meredith its fourth television station: it had built WHEN-TV in Syracuse and made radio-TV purchases in consecutive years that brought WOW-TV in Omaha, Nebraska, and KPHO-TV in Phoenix, Arizona, into the fold.

[19] In January 1955, Meredith reached a group affiliation deal with CBS covering its radio and television properties outside Phoenix.

[20] The news was received, per a report in Variety, with "puzzlement" in Kansas City, where KMBC radio was the sixth-oldest CBS affiliate with more than 25 years of service to the network.

[24] Kansas City councilmembers went as far as to allow the legal department to protest the continued use of the KCMO call letters if the radio and television operations moved to Fairway,[25] though the FCC and a federal appeals court rebuffed their challenges.

[26][27] Kansas City's public television station, KCPT, then agreed to purchase the 31st Street studios from KCMO; however, KCMO-TV itself would continue to be broadcast from the tower at the site.

[38] Meredith entered into a $26.8 million agreement to acquire the non-license assets of KSMO-TV (channel 62), then an affiliate of The WB owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, in November 2004, immediately assuming responsibility for KSMO's advertising sales and administrative operations under a joint sales agreement and moving its staff to the KCTV facility in Fairway.

[43] On the grounds that KSMO-TV's revenue and market share had steadily declined in the preceding five years,[44] the commission granted the waiver in September 2005, approving the transaction.

[54] In 1979, KCMO-TV paired Wendall Anschutz, already a 13-year veteran of the channel 5 news staff at that time, with 23-year-old Anne Peterson to anchor the station's evening newscast.

[59][60][61] It was also the first television station in the United States to begin closed captioning of its local newscasts in 1982—years ahead of Boston's WCVB-TV, which claimed to be the first to do so in 1986.

[66] As part of a major overhaul of the station's news programming, in 1993, longtime sportscaster Don Fortune and reporter Marty Lanus were let go.

[87] In addition to veterans Stan Cramer, Anschutz, and others who were among 170 company employees to take voluntary retirement packages in 2001,[88] several veteran reporters, including 23-year employee Reed Black and 29-year reporter Geri Gosa, departed in 2002;[75][89] while anchor Russell Kinsaul had his contract not renewed in 2004 and was hired at KMOV in St. Louis,[90] KCTV saw its news ratings increase to their best competitive position in years.

A series of reports conducted in partnership with Perverted Justice in the style of the later NBC series To Catch a Predator created legal issues: of the 16 people lured by KCTV's sting, none could be arrested, but three filed defamation complaints and another sued Meredith and Perverted Justice alleging entrapment.

[95] In 2007, a longtime newscast director sued Meredith and charged that the company had engaged in systematic harassment and dismissal of older employees.

A judge denied KCTV's move to dismiss the suit; station management later reached a monetary settlement with the plaintiff.

[100] Black left in 2009 when Meredith promoted him to run its largest and most troubled television station, WGCL-TV in Atlanta.

[101] Citing research showing that the station was perceived as "annoying", his successor, Brian Totsch, moved to tone down the station's style, ditching the "live, late-breaking, investigative" tagline he called a "punchline"; reducing the number of severe weather cut-ins; and dismissing lead investigative reporter Ash-har Quraishi.

[106] From 2003 through 2019, KCTV was the preseason television home of Kansas City Chiefs football and associated coaches shows, complementing its carriage of most of the team's regular-season games as part of CBS's NFL rights.

[107] On September 21, 2019, the Chiefs announced that KSHB-TV and KMCI-TV would become their official broadcast partners, replacing KCTV after 17 years.

[115] KCTV signed on its digital signal on October 15, 2002,[116] but it was not until November 2003 that the station began broadcasting network programming in high definition.

[118][119] Since February 1956, KCTV has been broadcast from a 1,042-foot (318 m), four-sided transmission tower located at its now-former studios at 31st and Grand streets in the Union Hill neighborhood, south of downtown Kansas City.

[24] Falling ice from the tower has been known to damage nearby cars and homes and require police to block off adjacent streets.

It first went dark for a year during the 1973 energy crisis; it was flashed on in the evening and then turned off as a reminder to Kansas Citians to conserve electricity.