KMIZ (channel 17) is a television station licensed to Columbia, Missouri, United States, serving the Columbia–Jefferson City market as an affiliate of ABC and MyNetworkTV.

It is owned by the News-Press & Gazette Company alongside Fox affiliate KQFX-LD (channel 22, also licensed to Columbia); the stations together are branded as the "Networks of Mid-Missouri".

The two stations share studios on the East Business Loop 70 in Columbia; KMIZ's transmitter is located west of Jamestown near the Moniteau–Cooper county line.

It struggled in its early years with its ultra high frequency (UHF) signal, the first in the market; entrenched and established competition; and lack of financial resources to invest in local programming and technical improvements.

In 1979, Koenig agreed to sell the station to the Wooster Republican Printing Company, but the deal turned sour, and the prospective buyers sued for breach of contract.

Under Benedek Broadcasting ownership, KMIZ purchased two low-power stations to start the area's Fox affiliate, a predecessor of KQFX-LD.

[3] The two applications were designated by the commission for comparative hearing,[4] but Jeffco dropped out due to problems at its station in Illinois,[5] allowing Channel Seventeen to receive the construction permit on August 28, 1970.

If a network program was preempted in either of those cities, KCBJ-TV could not show it;[5][8] occasionally, weather warnings and other material from the Springfield area appeared on channel 17 as well.

[9] In its first three and a half years of operation, the station never once made a profit, and as a result was unable to afford a microwave link that would have improved the quality of its network feed.

In the ratings, KCBJ-TV struggled against KOMU and KRCG, which had been in the market nearly 20 years when channel 17 signed on and were better-funded stations with stronger local news presences.

He successfully led the FCC to deny a tower upgrade for KTVO, an ABC affiliate in Kirksville, that threatened to take viewers away from his station in such cities as Moberly, Mexico, and Centralia.

The acquisition of channel 17 would have marked the return of the Dix family to television after their sale years prior of WTRF-TV in Wheeling, West Virginia.

[15] Koenig appealed the ruling; federal judge Scott Olin Wright, a former lawyer in Columbia, ordered the station to be transferred to a receiver during the process, but Koenig refused, claiming Wright held a grudge against KCBJ-TV from an earlier legal contact when the station started and that a short-form transfer of control was not appropriate for the process.

[29] The switch and new name took effect on December 30, 1985; at a party for employees, Evans blew up a large plaster and Styrofoam block bearing the KCBJ-TV call letters after the playing of "Taps".

The early 2000s recession reduced ad sales and caused the company to miss interest payments on a set of bonds issued in 1996, prompting a filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

[41] Chelsey owned KMIZ for a year before selling it to JosephWood (JW) Broadcasting, a partnership formed by David J. Joseph and James Wood.

The sale marked NPG's entry into a second Missouri TV market after starting a low-power station, KNPN-LD, in its home city of St.