The fourth attempt to build the channel was originally spearheaded by a group of local investors as well as Washington attorney John Dean; after the construction permit for KDNL-TV was sold to Thomas Mellon Evans, the station began broadcasting on June 8, 1969.

Barry Baker and Larry Marcus, former executives of rival independent KPLR-TV who were fired for trying to buy that station, purchased KDNL-TV from Cox in 1989.

Ratings and revenue improved with the success of the Fox network, with total viewership approaching KPLR-TV, and led the station to start a local news department in January 1995.

More critically, it led to neglect of the station's transmitter facility, causing signal issues, and the suspension of early evening newscasts for the struggling news operation.

Other officers included a Black dentist, Dr. Benjamin F. Davis, and a Washington attorney, John Dean; his then-wife, Karla Hennings, was also a stockholder.

[21] Citing "unanticipated difficulties and unexpected changed circumstances",[22] the stockholders of Greater St. Louis Television Corporation filed in April 1968 to sell the construction permit to financier Thomas Mellon Evans.

[22] At the time, Evans was in the middle of a push into UHF television, buying dormant construction permits for stations from Dallas to Worcester, Massachusetts.

The former studios of KMOX-TV at 13th and Cole streets were acquired to house channel 30, while the station was approved to build a tower in Shrewsbury, on land that was part of the Kenrick Seminary of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St.

However, the Evans proposal attracted protests from southern Illinois residents who feared the channel would merely be used to rebroadcast KDNL-TV programming and wanted to see a full-fledged local station for their area.

[35] Though Evans had secured another site and even shipped the 1,000-foot (300 m) tower to Salem to be erected, the FCC responded to the residents' concerns by rescinding the permit grant in November 1979.

[21] The application languished because another company, Midwest St. Louis, had filed for channel 24 and proposed the same type of programming, and at the time the FCC only permitted one STV station per market.

Time Inc., which through its American Television and Communications unit had cable and pay TV operations, entered into negotiations to purchase the station from Evans.

[21] Evans announced in March 1981 that he had sold KDNL-TV for $13.2 million to Cox Broadcasting, which at the time owned no UHF stations and only one independent, KTVU in Oakland, California.

[41] Upon completing the purchase in January 1982, Cox announced its plans to debut subscription television service on the station later in the year, once it had acquired sufficient equipment and personnel to handle the new operation.

Cox Broadcasting president William A. Schwartz believed that the service could be viable even if just 15 to 20 percent of residents signed up for it, citing the large market and relatively low cable penetration.

In May 1989, a deal was struck to acquire KABB, an independent station in San Antonio, Texas, under the name River City Television Partners,[55] which came to represent the entire group.

Within a year, aided in part by the introduction of meters to measure ratings, the station doubled its total-day audience share from five to eleven percent, narrowly behind KPLR, as well as its revenue.

General manager Gregg Filandrinos credited the decision to start a newscast to Fox's acquisition of National Football League television rights.

Though KPLR was the stronger-rated independent and a VHF station unlike KDNL, it was heavily committed to sports with contracts for Cardinals baseball and Blues hockey games that would lead to significant preemptions of network prime time programming, and it had also signed on to affiliate with The WB when it launched in 1995.

[63] The agreement was concurrent with a renewal for two of the three ABC stations River City was buying at the time: WSYX-TV in Columbus, Ohio, and WLOS in Asheville, North Carolina.

Unlike other startup newsrooms of the period at Fox affiliates, KDNL shied away from an offbeat, edgy style in favor of a more straightforward news presentation.

[75] Fox Kids programming did not immediately move to KTVI; KNLC stepped in to pick up the shows,[76] but issues over signal quality and replacement of commercials with public service announcements (including urging children to protest an execution), plus the size of the Fox Kids Club in St. Louis, the nation's largest, resulted in the children's block moving to KTVI in September 1996.

[78] On April 11, 1996, River City announced that it would merge with the Sinclair Broadcast Group for $2.3 billion, creating a company with 29 television and 34 radio stations nationwide.

Barry Baker relocated to Baltimore, where Sinclair is headquartered, and remained with the combined company as the president and chief executive officer of its broadcasting division.

Original news director Gary Whitaker had left to run a TV station in Springfield, Missouri; the general manager then resigned to produce a syndicated talk show.

[83] Don Marsh left the television news business in August 1998 when he failed to come to terms with Sinclair on a contract renewal; he was replaced by Patrick Emory, who had worked for CNN as well as KMOV-TV and KSDK.

Maintenance of the station's equipment fell off, and after a late 1999 fire affecting the transmission line on its Shrewsbury mast, the transmitter repeatedly failed, forcing KDNL off the air.

On September 28, 2001, KDNL-TV general manager Tom Tipton informed the staff and the public that the station would cease airing local news on October 12, laying off all 47 staffers in its newsroom.

[108] On April 24, 2018, the Meredith Corporation, owner of KMOV, announced that it would purchase KPLR-TV for $65 million;[109] the bid was soon scratched amid objections by the Department of Justice, with Sinclair instead proposing to sell KPLR to a divestiture trust.

The cancellation took place two weeks after Allman tweeted a message alluding to him wanting to assault 17-year-old David Hogg, a student who was on campus at the time of the Parkland high school shooting, by sodomizing him with a heated fire poker for his gun control activism.