KSDK (channel 5) is a television station in St. Louis, Missouri, United States, affiliated with NBC and owned by Tegna Inc.

It was the second commercial station located west of the Mississippi River, following KTLA in Los Angeles, which had signed on just 17 days earlier.

Many St. Louis television pioneers from KSD-TV came from radio, including Frank Eschen,[4] Kay Morton,[5] Russ Severin[6] and Dave Russell.

[3] After Pulitzer sold KSD radio to Combined Communications Corporation in 1979 (prior to Combined's merger into the Gannett Company that same year), KSD-TV, in order to comply with an FCC regulation in place then that stated that TV and radio stations in the same market, but different ownership had to use different call signs, modified theirs to the current KSDK on September 10, 1979.

[citation needed] In 1990, KSDK dropped the Eyewitness News branding and rebranded its newscasts as NewsChannel 5; the station also began to operate on a 24-hour-a-day schedule.

At one point, its 6 p.m. newscast ended with local elementary schoolchildren flashing the hand signs for "5" and "1", signifying that, as a promo featuring the kids said, "Even a second grader could tell you that Channel 5 is number 1."

During the spring 2004 sweeps, it lost its first-place position at 10 p.m. to KMOV, and the two stations have traded the ratings crown in that timeslot several times since then.

From August 1989 until September 2011, Today in St. Louis co-anchors Jennifer Blome and Art Holliday had one of the longest anchor pairings in U.S. local television history.

On November 11, 2010, KSDK entered into a news share agreement with Sinclair Broadcast Group-owned ABC affiliate KDNL-TV, to produce two pre-recorded half-hour newscasts at 5 p.m. and 10 p.m. weeknights for that station starting on January 3, 2011 (prior to the agreement, KDNL had not run any local newscasts since it shut down its news department in October 2001); in addition, KDNL also aired weekend rebroadcasts of KSDK's entertainment/features program Show Me St.

[19] The arrangement was unusual given that KSDK and KDNL are both "Big Three" network affiliates, and the fact that the newscasts on both stations competed against one another.

With these additions, KSDK was reduced to only three hours of syndicated daytime shows to back up its newscasts outside of NBC network programming.

KSDK used to operate a Bell 206B3 JetRanger helicopter called "Chopper 5", that was used for breaking news and severe weather coverage.

[24] Despite a school spokesperson admitting changes to security needed to be made, KSDK was strongly criticized by viewers raising questions about journalistic ethics, and anchor Mike Bush led the 10 p.m. newscast on January 20 with a more formal apology, stating that the station was reviewing its procedures to ensure a similar incident would not occur again.

The Cardinals returned in 1963 and remained on channel 5 until 1987 – long after many other "Big Three" network affiliates dropped local sports event coverage.

KSDK lost the rights to KPLR again after the 1987 season; the station also aired any Cardinals games as part of NBC's broadcast contract with Major League Baseball from 1947 to 1989, including the team's World Series victories in 1964, 1967 and 1982.

On December 7, 2006, KSDK re-obtained the television rights to Cardinals games effective with the 2007 season, ending a 19-year run on KPLR.

KSDK lost the broadcast rights on July 15, 2010, when Fox Sports Midwest signed an exclusive contract with the team beginning with the 2011 season, ending the Cardinals' over-the-air telecasts.

From 2006 to 2021, KSDK broadcast St. Louis Blues games that air via the NHL on NBC; this included the team's victory in the 2019 Stanley Cup Finals.

The program usually broadcasts from the "Window on St. Louis", where local groups and organizations are allowed to bring signs to advertise their events, though it occasionally leaves the studio to broadcast from local attractions (such as the St. Louis Zoo, Busch Stadium, the Fox Theatre) or from surrounding communities (such as Waterloo, Illinois and Florissant) that have uncommon or unknown attractions that may be of interest to viewers; these "Great Escapes" (as the segment within the show is titled) usually occur during summer months.

[28] During the 1980s, the syndicated daytime talk show Sally (hosted by Sally Jessy Raphael) originated from KSDK's studios (Multimedia Entertainment, a subsidiary of former KSDK owner Multimedia, Inc., distributed the program nationally until the company's 1995 merger with Gannett, with the distribution rights held by Universal Television Enterprises and then Studios USA Television until the show's 2002 cancellation).

[36][37] As part of the SAFER Act, KSDK kept its analog signal on the air until July 12 to inform viewers of the digital television transition through a loop of public service announcements from the National Association of Broadcasters.