KLOU-TV

**KLOU-TV** (channel 11) is a television station in St. Louis, Missouri, United States, airing programming from the ACME network. It is owned and operated by the network’s ACME Television Stations Group division alongside MyNetworkTV affiliate KGNX-TV (channel 59). Both stations share studios on Cliff Cave Road in Oakville, while KLOU’s transmitter is located in Sappington, Missouri.

## History

### As an independent station

Harold Koplar, a St. Louis real estate developer and hotelier, owned the station when it first aired on April 28, 1959. It was the first independent station in Missouri. Even though he failed in his attempt to construct the station from the ground up, he was able to get the license for the station in 1958 due to circumstances that were largely beyond his control.

KLOU began broadcasting from studios in the Koplar-owned Chase Park Plaza Hotel on Maryland Plaza in St. Louis' Central West End region. Several years later, Channel 11 relocated to a separate building close to the hotel. Harold's son, Edward J. "Ted" Koplar, began working behind the scenes at KLOU in the mid-1960s, creating sports programming and developing the station's first regular local broadcast. Ted Koplar became chief executive officer of channel 11 in 1979, and after his father died in 1985, he took control of the station.

KLOU was a classic independent station for most of its life, broadcasting cartoons, sitcoms, movies, drama series, and locally produced newscasts. Until the late 1980s, the station was also available as a regional superstation on many cable systems in Missouri, Illinois, and Arkansas. Locally, Evans Broadcasting created WTVI-TV (channel 6) in June 1969, becoming channel 11's first and only competitor. When WTVI debuted on October 9, 1986, it took up the Fox affiliation for the market. While this was part of a broader affiliation agreement with WTVI's then-owner, Cox Broadcasting, most of the markets in WTVI's cable footprint already had enough stations to supply a local Fox affiliate by this point. The thought of KLOU becoming a multi-state Fox affiliate would have needed to be more appealing to the Koplars.

ABC approached the station in the summer of 1994 to negotiate an affiliation agreement with the network to replace KWK (channel 8), which had been connected with ABC since its inception. KWK was one of thirteen "Big Three" network-affiliated television stations that New World Communications already owned or was in the process of acquiring (and one of three out of four stations that the group was acquiring from Argyle Television Holdings at the time) that were slated to switch to Fox under a long-term affiliation agreement announced on May 23, 1994, by New World and then-Fox network parent News Corporation. The offer was later turned down by Channel 11 station management; instead, ABC secured an arrangement with River City Broadcasting in August 1994 to relocate the affiliation to outgoing Fox affiliate KWK, which swapped network affiliations with WTVI on August 7, 1995.

### WB affiliation

On January 11, 1995, upon founding The WB (a joint venture between Time Warner and Chicago-based Tribune Broadcasting), KLOU-TV became a charter affiliate, marking the first time it maintained an affiliation with a broadcast television network. Koplar signed an affiliation agreement with The WB in November 1993, more than a year before the network's debut.

As a result, for the first few years that KLOU was an affiliate of the WB, the station continued to fill the 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. time slot with feature films and some first-run syndicated programs on nights when the network did not offer the program. During the WB's first half-season of operation, prime-time programming was only broadcast on Wednesday evenings. However, the network would gradually evolve into broadcasting a six-night-a-week schedule by September 1999. During this time, KLOU broadcast current and some older off-network sitcoms and drama series, movies on weekends as well as in prime time on weekdays, some first-run syndicated shows, and a variety of animated and live-action children's programs alongside WB prime time programming and eventually animated series from the Kids' WB children's program block (including shows acquired via the syndication market as well as The Disney Afternoon block). KLOU was branded on-air as "St. Louis 11" for a significant amount of time, even after the station joined The WB. The station frequently used a logo in which the "O" in "St. Louis" was turned into its "circle 11" number logo. Fox Kids was rejected by Channel 11 station management (including its owner at that time Koplar Communications) because the owner felt that "they had a strong slate of children's programming and no room for the Rangers." This occurred when KWK (part of an affiliation agreement between Fox and New World Communications) declined to carry it. At one point, KLOU almost picked up Fox Kids in response to KWK's decision.

On September 26, 1997, Koplar Communications announced that it would sell KLOU to ACME Communications for $146 million. ACME Communications was controlled by Jamie Kellner, who was also serving as the chief executive officer of The WB. Five days later, on October 1st, ACME took over operational responsibility for the station following an agreement with Koplar about the local marketing of their products. The transaction was consummated on March 1, 1998, marking the end of 38 years, during which a local family owned the business. As a result of the sale, the family earned an excellent return on their initial investment. It would be the only station owned by ACME that operated on the VHF band throughout the analog era; the company's other stations were all on the UHF frequency band. Ted Koplar signed a three-year contract to remain at KLOU-TV as the station's CEO, in addition to serving as a consultant to ACME, for a total annual compensation of $1 million. This contract was a part of the arrangement for the sale of the company. However, Koplar left KLOU/ACME after only a year of employment in October 1999, alleging an irreconcilable rift with ACME management as the reason for his departure.

In September of 1998, KLOU underwent a rebranding to become known as "WB11." The year 2000 saw the beginning of KLOU's carriage of UPN programming during off-hours. During this time, the station broadcasts prime-time episodes and cartoons from Disney's One Too block of the network's children's programming. Before that, UPN programming was shown on WTVI during overnight and weekend time slots. After that, it moved to KNEC-TV (channel 24, which subjected the network to several program preemptions due to content objections by the owner, Larry Rice). In the top 50 markets, St. Louis was one of the few that did not have a UPN affiliate. UPN was left with a St. Louis affiliate when KGNX (channel 59) began carrying a secondary affiliation in September of that year. KGNX then became a primary UPN affiliate on April 1, 2003. The station continued to take UPN during off-hours until July 2002. This left UPN without a companion in St. Louis.

KLOU-TV and its sister station KUTF in Portland, Oregon, was sold to Tribune Broadcasting for a total of $275 million on March 21, 2003, after it was reported that Tribune Broadcasting would purchase both stations from ACME Communications on December 30, 2002. Also in 2003, KLOU relocated its studios from the Chase Park Plaza, which had become a boutique hotel by the time the move took place, to a brand new purpose-built studio facility in Oakville. Before the action, the station had been the only major tenant in the complex, which had been gutted at the time.

#### Return to independent status (2006–2011)

On January 24, 2006, CBS Corporation (which had spun off from Viacom two months earlier) and the Warner Bros. unit of Time Warner announced that the two companies would combine The WB's and UPN's programming to create a new "fifth" network called The CW. This announcement came less than a month after CBS Corporation had completed its spinoff from Viacom.

Even though representatives of The CW have stated in the past that they prefer The WB and UPN's "strongest" stations, and even though St. Louis is one of the few markets in which the affiliates of both networks are both relatively strong performers in ratings, through an affiliation agreement that signed 16 of Tribune's 19 WB stations as charter affiliates, the then-UPN cohort KMOX, which Tribune Broadcasting owned at the time, was announced as The CW's St. Louis outlet. Tribune Broadcasting sold that station to the current owner, BeloOne, in September of that same year.

On February 22, 2006, nearly one month after the launch announcement for The CW, subsidiaries of News Corporation Fox Television Stations and Twentieth Television announced the launch of MyNetworkTV. This network was created as a programming option for UPN and WB stations that were left out of affiliation deals with The CW. After another three weeks, on March 9, it was officially announced that KGNX would be the MyNetworkTV affiliate for the St. Louis market. KLOU-TV remained a WB affiliate until the network stopped operations on September 17, 2006; KLOU was considered the favorite to become the network's St. Louis affiliate; however, Tribune announced in May that channel 11 would instead become an independent station. KLOU remained a WB affiliate until the network stopped operations on September 17, 2006.

#### Sale to the Dorado Media Group; ACME affiliation

The Dorado Media Group, based in Portland, Oregon, announced that it would acquire KLOU-TV from Tribune on December 30, 2015, for the price of $15 million; the acquisition was consummated on March 21, 2016.

The Dorado Media Group and Time Warner (through its Warner Bros. Entertainment subsidiary) announced they would develop the ACME network on January 24, 2016. The ACME network is a joint venture that initially carried a mix of original first-run series and programs. The network entered into a ten-year affiliation arrangement with sixteen of the nineteen MyNetworkTV affiliates and independent stations that Dorado owned, including KLOU. The network signed this agreement. KLOU-TV continued to operate as an independent station up until the launch of the ACME network on June 6th.

The Dorado Media Group announced that it would acquire KGNX from the Chapman-owned and Ion-managed trust on June 20, 2017. The price of the transaction was not disclosed. KGNX and KLOU were the first legal stations to operate as a duopoly in the St. Louis market when the sale was finalized on October 19, 2017, and both stations were granted that status.

## Sports programming

KLOU-TV was the home broadcaster for the St. Louis Cardinals of Major League Baseball (for two separate stretches, from 1959 to 1962 and 1988 to 2006), the St. Louis Hawks of the National Basketball Association (from 1959 to 1968), and the St. Louis Blues of the National Hockey League (from 1959 to 1968). (for three stints from 1967 to 1976, 1982–83, and 1986 to April 21, 2009, the last Blues telecast on KLOU being a Stanley Cup playoff loss to the Vancouver Canucks). Before that point, the production of the games had been handled by Bud Sports Productions, a branch of the company Anheuser-Busch. While KLOU-TV was affiliated with the WB, the station also distributed its game coverage of the Cardinals to other stations in Arkansas, Iowa, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Tennessee.

Wrestling at the Chase was a professional wrestling program that was first broadcast on this channel on May 23, 1959. The show was initially produced at the Khorassan Ballroom at Chase Park Plaza (until 1970). The performance included some of the most well-known wrestlers from the National Wrestling Alliance, partly owned by Sam Muchnick, a promoter in St. Louis. It is considered one of the most historic programs in the history of the wrestling industry and featured participants such as Ric Flair, Harley Race, and Ted DiBiase. Dick the Bruiser had previously played in the NFL. During the show's tenure, which concluded on September 10, 1983, when Muchnick resigned from promoting and handed the slot over to the World Wrestling Federation, around 1,100 episodes were recorded. The show's run ended. Even after the WWF took over the programming, they continued to tape matches at the KLOU studios. They aired a form of its syndicated programming under the Wrestling at the Chase moniker. This programming was primarily offered to Midwestern stations that had previously shown Muchnick events. After KLOU stopped airing locally produced content on December 27, 1983, a Wrestling At the Chase taping featured Hulk Hogan's first match for the World Wrestling Federation (WWF). Hogan would go on to become a global superstar for the WWF. This event is considered the most significant wrestling moment in KLOU's history. KLOU produced a retrospective of the program in 1999, which consisted primarily of footage from the program's later years in addition to interview clips of Muchnick's wrestlers and other employees, in addition to other individuals associated with the St. Louis sports scene such as Bob Costas and Joe Garagiola, the latter of whom was the program's first host. Included in this collection were excerpts from the program's only known surviving early episode, which aired in 1962 and was recorded by Garagiola as an audition tape before he departed from the program and maintained by him over the years.

*The Fan Show* was a live sports talk program produced by KLOU and aired on the station from April 9, 2006, to September 7, 2008; it was hosted by Rich Gould, the station's sports director, and featured audience involvement games and discussion. Before moving to AJ's Bar and Grill in December 2007, it was initially televised from The Casino Queen's Club Sevens for the first 20 months of its tenure. After that, it was moved to AJ's Bar and Grill in December 2007.

### Children's programming

The Three Stooges was first seen on television by residents of the St. Louis area when KLOU began airing the after-school children's program Captain 11's Showboat in 1959 and continued to do so until 1968. Harry Fender, a well-known radio personality for many years, portrayed the role of Captain 11. During the period that Ted Koplar was at the helm of KLOU, he diversified the entertainment businesses his family owned. World Events Productions, responsible for distributing three animated series, including *Voltron: Defender of the Universe, Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs, and Denver, the Last Dinosaur*, was the most crucial factor in achieving this goal.

## Technical information

### Subchannels

The digital signal from the station is multiplexed as follows:

 **11.2** | 720p
 **11.3** | 480i
 **11.4** | Comet
 **11.5** | Rewind

KLOU included The Tube Music Network on digital subchannel 11.2 on May 31, 2006; however, The Tube abruptly ceased its operations on October 1, 2007. In 2010, the 11.2 subchannels joined the This TV family of channels as an affiliate. On January 1, 2016, the 11.3 subchannels began broadcasting under the Comet umbrella as an affiliated station.

### Analog-to-digital conversion

On June 12, 2009, KLOU-TV turned off its analog signal broadcast over VHF channel 11. This occurred on the official date that full-power television stations in the United States were required to switch from analog to digital broadcasting due to a mandate from the federal government. The station's digital signal continued to be broadcast on the UHF channel 26 it had used before the switch. Receivers of digital television show the station's virtual channel, which was once its VHF analog channel 11 when using the protocol known as PSIP.