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| City | Cape Girardeau, Missouri |
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| Channels | |
| Branding | KFVS 12;Heartland News; Heartland's CW (DT2) |
| Programming | |
| Affiliations |
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| Ownership | |
| Owner |
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| WQWQ-LD | |
| History | |
First air date | October 3, 1954 (70 years ago) (1954-10-03) |
Former channel number(s) |
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Call sign meaning | from former radio sisterKFVS (AM) |
| Technical information[1] | |
Licensing authority | FCC |
| Facility ID | 592 |
| ERP | 11.8 kW |
| HAAT | 609 m (1,998 ft) |
| Transmitter coordinates | 37°25′46″N89°30′14″W / 37.42944°N 89.50389°W /37.42944; -89.50389 |
| Translator(s) | K17LV-D 17 (UHF)Poplar Bluff, MO |
| Links | |
Public license information | |
| Website | www |
KFVS-TV (channel 12) is atelevision station licensed toCape Girardeau, Missouri, United States, serving SoutheasternMissouri, thePurchase area ofWestern Kentucky,Southern Illinois, andNorthwest Tennessee as an affiliate ofCBS andThe CW. The station is owned byGray Media alongsidePaducah, Kentucky–licensedTelemundo affiliateWQWQ-LD (channel 18). The two stations share studios in the Hirsch Tower on Broadway Avenue in Downtown Cape Girardeau; KFVS-TV's transmitter is located northwest ofEgypt Mills, inunincorporatedCape Girardeau County.
KFVS-TV had previously served theJonesboro, Arkansas, media market as the default CBS station on cable, until the sign-on of the Jonesboro area's first locally based CBS affiliate August 1, 2015, on a second digital subchannel ofFox affiliateKJNB-LD/KJNE-LD.[2]
KFVS began broadcasting on October 3, 1954, and aired an analog signal on VHF channel 12. It was owned by broadcasting pioneer Oscar C. Hirsch, who had signed-on the area's firstradio station, KFVS radio (AM 960, nowKZIM) in his radio shop in 1925. Although the KFVS call letters appear to stand for "Five States", they were actually randomly assigned by then-Secretary of CommerceHerbert Hoover. At the start, channel 12 did not have any video cameras. Instead, its first broadcast showed slides of its new transmitter tower that was under construction at the time.[3] Channel 12 was housed along with its radio sister until 1968 when it moved to its present location on Broadway Avenue. Hirsch sold the station toAFLAC in 1979,[3] but his family retained the radio station until 1985.
In 1997, AFLAC sold its entire broadcasting division, including KFVS, to a group headed byRetirement Systems of Alabama. It, in turn, merged with Ellis Communications a few months later to formRaycom Media. KFVS offeredThe Tube Music Network (a 24-hour digital music video channel) on its thirddigital subchannel which ceased operations on October 1, 2007.
On June 25, 2018,Atlanta-basedGray Television announced it had reached an agreement with Raycom to merge their respective broadcasting assets (consisting of Raycom's 63 existing owned-and/or-operated television stations, including KFVS and WQTV/WQWQ), and Gray's 93 television stations under the former's corporate umbrella. The cash-and-stock merger transaction valued at $3.6 billion—in which Gray shareholders would acquire preferred stock currently held by Raycom—resulted in KFVS and WQTV/WQWQ gaining newsister stations in nearby markets, includingNBC/ABC affiliatesKYTV andKSPR-LD inSpringfield and ABC/Fox affiliateWBKO inBowling Green, in addition to its current Raycom sister stations.[4][5][6][7] The sale was approved on December 20,[8] and was completed on January 2, 2019.[9]
Compared with the otherbig four stations in themarket, KFVS has traditionally covered Southeastern Missouri. The newscasts of ABC affiliateWSIL-TV focus exclusively on Southern Illinois, from studios inCarterville, and it does not even mention the market's other two primary cities (Cape Girardeau and Paducah) in its on-air legal identification. This is despite the fact that WSIL operates a full-timesatellite, KPOB, inPoplar Bluff, Missouri. KFVS offers secondary coverage of Southern Illinois from a newsroom on East Plaza Drive in Carterville near WSIL. NBC affiliateWPSD-TV, based in Paducah, focuses more on the Western Kentucky side although that station operates a bureau inMarion, Illinois and barely even covered the northernWest Tennessee side of the market.KBSI later debuted its own newscasts in 2022, outsourced from ABC affiliateKLKN inLincoln, Nebraska.
At one point in time, KFVS produced a nightly prime time newscast on WQTV/WQWQ. Known asHeartland News at 9, the show could be seen for a half-hour and was targeted specifically at a Southeastern Missouri audience.[10] It competed with another broadcast in the time slot on Fox affiliateKBSI which also aired every night for thirty minutes. However, that program was produced by WPSD, so it featured more of a regional summary of headlines since it originated from the NBC outlet's facility in Kentucky. The WQTV/WQWQ newscast was dropped on July 29, 2007, after nearly eight years. KFVS-DT2 currently replays three weekday newscasts from KFVS including the 6 a.m. hour ofThe Breakfast Show (at 7),Heartland News at Noon (at 1 p.m.), andHeartland News at 10 (at 11 p.m.). The Sunday edition ofThe Breakfast Show is also repeated on the subchannel.
On October 1, 2010,Heartland News at 9 was brought back after a news share agreement was established with KBSI, which offers a nightly hour-long prime time newscast originating from the KFVS studios. With that addition, this station offers more than thirty hours of local news each week.[11] Unlike other outsourced news arrangements at Sinclair-owned television stations, KBSI features the same graphics scheme and music package as seen on this CBS outlet. Also, there are no on-airduratrans separately identifying the KBSI newscast. In instances ofsevere weather (most notably during atornado warning in the viewing area), KBSI may simulcast live coverage from KFVS if an event occurs outside the prime time newscast. On October 3, 2010, WPSD brought back its own newscast at 9 p.m. known asThe Nine to both of its digital subchannels which is seen every night, except Saturdays, for a half-hour, until it was canceled in 2019.
In July 2011, KFVS became the second news operation in the market to upgrade local news production to high definition level. Included with the switch was the debut of a new studio and updated graphics (the KBSI newscast was included in the change).
During weather segments, the station uses liveNOAANational Weather Service radar data from several regional sites. This system is known on-air as "First Alert Doppler Network". KFVS also operates its ownDoppler weather radar, called "Live StormTeam Radar", that is located on top of the Hirsch building. It is a Collins radar sold by ADC inBloomington, Indiana, and is the only live radar source in the market since the National Weather Service data seen on rival stations is delayed.
The station's signal ismultiplexed:
| Channel | Res. | Aspect | Short name | Programming |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12.1 | 1080i | 16:9 | KFVS DT | CBS |
| 12.2 | 720p | CW | The CW | |
| 12.3 | 480i | KFVSOUT | Outlaw | |
| 12.4 | MeTV | MeTV | ||
| 12.5 | Grit | Grit | ||
| 12.6 | Oxygen | Oxygen |
KFVS-TV shut down its analog signal, overVHF channel 12, on June 12, 2009, the official date on which full-power television stations in the United Statestransitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transitionUHF channel 57, which was among the high band UHF channels (52-69) that were removed from broadcasting use as a result of the transition, to its analog-era VHF channel 12.[13]
KFVS refers to its viewing area as "The Heartland", which is included in KFVS-DT2's on-air branding. KFVS serves more than fifty counties in four states including all of southeastern Missouri, southern Illinois, western Kentucky, and northwesternTennessee. KFVS considersClay County as the only northeastern Arkansas county in its viewing area as shown during its nightly weather segments which be seen in the local temperature graphic.[14]Cable systems inCorning,[15]Piggott,Rector,Marmaduke,Pollard,Greenway,St. Francis, andLafe, Arkansas[16] list KFVS on their local cable lineups. However, Jonesboro[17] andLake City[18] cable systems do not carry the station. According toDirecTV, KFVS is still carried on its Jonesboro area lineup as a local channel.[19]
While broadcasting an analog signal, a portion of its off-air signal reached into theMissouri Bootheel overlapping with sister stationsWMC-TV inMemphis, Tennessee, andKAIT in Jonesboro. During the analog era, KFVS' coverage area overlapped withKMOV inSt. Louis, extending as north asBelleville, Illinois, with cable systems on the edge of both markets providing both stations until CBS forced carriage of only the market's given affiliate on those systems in the early 2010s.
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