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KSL-TV (channel 5) is a
television station
A television station is a set of equipment managed by a business, organisation or other entity, such as an amateur television (ATV) operator, that transmits video content and audio content via radio waves directly from a transmitter on the eart ...
in
Salt Lake City, Utah
Salt Lake City (often shortened to Salt Lake and abbreviated as SLC) is the Capital (political), capital and List of cities and towns in Utah, most populous city of Utah, United States. It is the county seat, seat of Salt Lake County, Utah, Sal ...
, United States, affiliated with
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...
. It is the
flagship television property of locally based
Bonneville International
Bonneville International Corporation is a media and broadcasting company, wholly owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) through its for-profit arm, Deseret Management Corporation. It began as a radio and TV networ ...
, the for-profit broadcasting arm of
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, informally known as the LDS Church or Mormon Church, is a nontrinitarian Christian church that considers itself to be the restoration of the original church founded by Jesus Christ. The ch ...
(LDS Church), and is
sister
A sister is a woman or a girl who shares one or more parents with another individual; a female sibling. The male counterpart is a brother. Although the term typically refers to a family, familial relationship, it is sometimes used endearingly to r ...
to
KSL radio (1160 AM and 102.7 FM). The three stations share studios at the Broadcast House building in Salt Lake City's
Triad Center
The Triad Center is a complex of office buildings in downtown Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. Originally planned as a large development, containing several office and residential buildings (including the tallest buildings in Utah), the proje ...
; KSL-TV's transmitter is located on
Farnsworth Peak
Farnsworth Peak is a peak located on the northern end of the Oquirrh Mountain range, approximately south west of Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. The mountain is named for Philo Farnsworth, the inventor of the first completely electronic t ...
in the
Oquirrh Mountains, southwest of Salt Lake City. The station has a large
network of broadcast translators that extend its over-the-air coverage throughout
Utah
Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to it ...
, as well as portions of
Arizona
Arizona ( ; nv, Hoozdo Hahoodzo ; ood, Alĭ ṣonak ) is a state in the Southwestern United States. It is the 6th largest and the 14th most populous of the 50 states. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix. Arizona is part of the Fou ...
,
Idaho
Idaho ( ) is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. To the north, it shares a small portion of the Canada–United States border with the province of British Columbia. It borders the states of Montana and Wyomi ...
,
Nevada
Nevada ( ; ) is a state in the Western region of the United States. It is bordered by Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. Nevada is the 7th-most extensive, ...
and
Wyoming
Wyoming () is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is bordered by Montana to the north and northwest, South Dakota and Nebraska to the east, Idaho to the west, Utah to the southwest, and Colorado to the s ...
.
KSL-TV is one of a few for-profit U.S. television stations owned by a religious institution (most U.S. TV stations owned by religious institutions are affiliated with
non-profit
A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...
religious broadcasting
Religious broadcasting, sometimes referred to as faith-based broadcasts, is the dissemination of television and/or radio content that intentionally has religious ideas, religious experience, or religious practice as its core focus. In some coun ...
networks).
History
As a primary CBS affiliate
The station first signed on the air on June 1, 1949, operating from studios in the Union Pacific Building on Main Street. It was owned by the ''
Deseret News'', who also owned KSL radio (1160 AM and 100.3 FM, call letters
KSFI
KSFI (100.3 FM) is a radio station in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. KSFI maintains studio facilities located at the KSL Broadcast House building in Salt Lake City's Triad Center (which also house KRSP-FM and the KSL-AM-FM- TV partners), ...
). It originally operated as a
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...
affiliate, owing to its sister radio station's longtime affiliation with the
CBS Radio Network
CBS News Radio, formerly known as CBS Radio News and historically known as the CBS Radio Network, is a radio network that provides news to more than 1,000 radio stations throughout the United States. The network is owned by Paramount Global. ...
. In addition to its primary CBS affiliation, the station also shared
ABC
ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script known as the alphabet.
ABC or abc may also refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Broadcasting
* American Broadcasting Company, a commercial U.S. TV broadcaster
** Disney–ABC Television ...
programming with NBC affiliate KDYL-TV (channel 4, now
KTVX
KTVX (channel 4) is a television station in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States, affiliated with ABC. It is owned by Nexstar Media Group alongside Ogden-licensed CW owned-and-operated station KUCW (channel 30). Both stations share studios on ...
). The two stations continued to share ABC programming until
KUTV
KUTV (channel 2) is a television station in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States, affiliated with CBS. It is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group alongside independent station KJZZ-TV (channel 14) and St. George–licensed MyNetworkTV affiliate K ...
(channel 2) signed on in September 1954 as the
market
Market is a term used to describe concepts such as:
*Market (economics), system in which parties engage in transactions according to supply and demand
*Market economy
*Marketplace, a physical marketplace or public market
Geography
*Märket, an ...
's full-time ABC affiliate. The station also broadcast some programming from the
DuMont Television Network, and during the late 1950s, the station was also briefly affiliated with the
NTA Film Network
The NTA Film Network was an early American television network founded by Ely Landau in 1956. The network was not a full-time television network like CBS, NBC, or ABC. Rather, it operated on a part-time basis, broadcasting films and several f ...
.
A few months after its sign-on, KSL moved its operations to studio facilities at the Broadcast House on Social Hall Avenue. In 1952, a transmission tower was constructed on Farnsworth Peak to improve the station's signal coverage along the
Wasatch Front
The Wasatch Front is a metropolitan region in the north-central part of the U.S. state of Utah. It consists of a chain of contiguous cities and towns stretched along the Wasatch Range from approximately Provo in the south to Logan in the nort ...
and into
Tooele County. It also began building a massive translator network that eventually stretched across five states.
The KSL stations operated as a division of the ''Deseret News'' until 1964, when Bonneville International was formed as the parent company for the LDS Church's broadcasting holdings. Soon afterward, channel 5 began broadcasting its programming in color. In 1984, the station moved to its current facility at Triad Center, also named Broadcast House.
As an NBC affiliate
In July 1994, CBS and
Westinghouse Broadcasting
The Westinghouse Broadcasting Company, also known as Group W, was the broadcasting division of Westinghouse Electric Corporation. It owned several radio and television stations across the United States and distributed television shows for syndicat ...
(Group W) agreed to a long-term affiliation deal for the five Group W television stations, including longtime NBC affiliate
KYW-TV in
Philadelphia
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, largest city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the List of United States cities by population, sixth-largest city i ...
. That November, NBC agreed to trade their O&O stations
KCNC-TV
KCNC-TV (channel 4) is a television station in Denver, Colorado, United States, airing programming from the CBS network. It is owned and operated by the network's CBS News and Stations division, and maintains studios on Lincoln Street (between ...
and KUTV (which was acquired by NBC earlier that year) to CBS in return for CBS' former O&O in Philadelphia,
WCAU-TV
WCAU (channel 10) is a television station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, airing programming from the NBC network. It is owned and operated by the network's NBC Owned Television Stations division alongside Mount Laurel, New Jerse ...
, as a result of a complex ownership deal between the network, Westinghouse and NBC.
[CBS, NBC Changing Channels](_blank)
'' South Florida Sun-Sentinel'', November 22, 1994. NBC also traded their VHF channel 4 frequency and transmitter in
Miami
Miami ( ), officially the City of Miami, known as "the 305", "The Magic City", and "Gateway to the Americas", is a coastal metropolis and the county seat of Miami-Dade County in South Florida, United States. With a population of 442,241 at ...
(then home to
WTVJ
WTVJ (channel 6) is a television station in Miami, Florida, United States, airing programming from the NBC network. It is owned and operated by the network's NBC Owned Television Stations division alongside Fort Lauderdale–licensed WSCV (ch ...
) to CBS in exchange for the channel 6 frequency in Miami (then home to WCIX, which subsequently became
WFOR-TV
WFOR-TV (channel 4) is a television station in Miami, Florida, United States, airing programming from the CBS network. It is owned and operated by the network's CBS News and Stations division alongside independent station WBFS-TV (channel 3 ...
).
The deal took effect on September 10, 1995, resulting in the first network affiliation switch in Salt Lake City since KTVX swapped affiliations with KUTV and became an ABC affiliate in 1960. Initially, NBC sought to reaffiliate with KTVX; but after that station renewed its affiliation agreement with ABC, NBC then secured an affiliation deal with KSL-TV. KUTV continued to air one NBC program, ''
Saturday Night Live
''Saturday Night Live'' (often abbreviated to ''SNL'') is an American late-night live television sketch comedy and variety show created by Lorne Michaels and developed by Dick Ebersol that airs on NBC and Peacock (streaming service), Peacock. ...
'', for five more months until January 1996, when it was moved to then-WB affiliate KOOG-TV (now CW affiliate
KUCW
KUCW (channel 30) is a television station licensed to Ogden, Utah, United States, broadcasting the CW network to Salt Lake City and the state of Utah. It is owned and operated by network majority owner Nexstar Media Group alongside ABC affi ...
).
On January 14, 1999, a shooter entered the station's Broadcast House facility, allegedly looking for a KSL-TV reporter. Anne Sleater, an employee of another company that was housed in the building,
AT&T Wireless Services
AT&T Wireless Services, formerly part of AT&T Corp., was a wireless telephone carrier founded in 1987 in the United States, based in Redmond, Washington, and later traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the stock symbol "AWE", as a sep ...
, was shot during the incident and later died from her injuries.
De-Kieu Duy, a 24-year-old female, was arrested in connection with the shooting. Duy was later found mentally incompetent to stand trial and is currently housed in the
Utah State Hospital.
In 2002, Bruce Christensen was named the president of KSL-TV; Christensen was a former president of
PBS
The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educat ...
, the former dean of the
BYU College of Fine Arts and Communications
The BYU College of Fine Arts and Communications (CFAC) is one of nine colleges at Brigham Young University, a private university operated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and located in Provo, Utah. Founded in 1925, the college ...
, as well as a former KSL-TV reporter. During the
2002 Winter Olympics
The 2002 Winter Olympics, officially the XIX Olympic Winter Games and commonly known as Salt Lake 2002 ( arp, Niico'ooowu' 2002; Gosiute Shoshoni: ''Tit'-so-pi 2002''; nv, Sooléí 2002; Shoshoni: ''Soónkahni 2002''), was an internation ...
in Salt Lake City, KSL-TV was very influential in bringing coverage and technology to NBC. The station heavily lobbied to NBC that the ceremonies be broadcast live.
In July 2010, KSL-TV entered into a
local marketing agreement (LMA) with
independent station KJZZ-TV
KJZZ-TV (channel 14) is an independent television station in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. It is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group alongside CBS affiliate KUTV (channel 2) and MyNetworkTV affiliate KMYU (channel 12) in St. George. The ...
(channel 14), after the LMA between that station and KUTV concluded after five years; the LMA was terminated in 2016, after KUTV's owner,
Sinclair Broadcast Group
Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc. (SBG) is a publicly traded American telecommunications conglomerate that is controlled by the descendants of company founder Julian Sinclair Smith. Headquartered in the Baltimore suburb of Cockeysville, Maryland, ...
, purchased KJZZ.
Programming
In addition to locally produced news and sports programs, and syndicated shows, KSL broadcasts most of the programs seen on NBC's schedule.
Due to its ties to the LDS Church, KSL-TV also airs programs relevant to
Mormonism
Mormonism is the religious tradition and theology of the Latter Day Saint movement of Restorationist Christianity started by Joseph Smith in Western New York in the 1820s and 1830s. As a label, Mormonism has been applied to various aspects of ...
, such as ''
History of the Saints'', ''
Music and the Spoken Word
Music is generally defined as the The arts, art of arranging sound to create some combination of Musical form, form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise Musical expression, expressive content. Exact definition of music, definitions of mu ...
'' and ''
Mormon Times
The ''Deseret News'' () is the oldest continuously operating publication in the American west. Its multi-platform products feature journalism and commentary across the fields of politics, culture, family life, faith, sports, and entertainment. Th ...
'', and preempts regularly scheduled programming to carry the twice yearly
LDS General Conference
General Conference is a gathering of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), held biannually every April and October at the Conference Center in Salt Lake City, Utah. During each conference, church members gather ...
. KSL-TV is one of the few remaining television stations in the United States that still "signs off" at night (though only nominally, because programming immediately continues afterward), doing so at 3:30 a.m. on Sundays.
Program preemptions and deferrals
Historically, KSL-TV has been known to occasionally preempt or assign out-of-pattern scheduling to certain network programs, either to make room for other local or syndicated programs or because of internal concerns over subject matter that station management deems objectionable, typically due to conflicts with to longstanding LDS Church beliefs. (Many of these preempted programs have aired instead on KUCW (channel 30) or
KMYU
KMYU (channel 12) is a television station licensed to St. George, Utah, United States, serving as the MyNetworkTV affiliate for the state of Utah. It is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group alongside Salt Lake City–based CBS affiliate KUTV (cha ...
(channel 12) over the years.) Preemptions based on content objections have periodically led to inquiries over the sustainability of a religious institution owning a network-affiliated station as content standards and practices in broadcast television have relaxed in recent decades in a reflection of cultural change.
As a CBS affiliate, in 1977, ''
Match Game
''Match Game'' is an American television panel game show that premiered on NBC in 1962 and has been revived several times over the course of the last six decades. The game features contestants trying to match answers given by celebrity panelis ...
'' host
Gene Rayburn
Gene Rayburn (born Eugene Peter Jeljenic; December 22, 1917 – November 29, 1999) was an American radio and television personality. He is best known as the host of various editions of the American television game show '' Match Game'' for over t ...
mentioned that the often risque then-CBS daytime game show was not being aired in Salt Lake City. In 1987, the station was among several affiliates—amid criticism from parental organizations over concerns it would be merely a program-length ad for the
controversial namesake toys and trading cards, the show's violent content and humor ridiculing the handicapped—that announced that it would not air the children's animated series ''
Garbage Pail Kids
''Garbage Pail Kids'' is a series of sticker trading cards produced by the Topps Company, originally released in 1985 and designed to parody the ''Cabbage Patch Kids'' dolls, which were popular at the time.
Each sticker card features a Garbage P ...
'' ahead of its originally scheduled premiere. (Amid the controversy, CBS elected not to air it in the U.S., though its
distribution arm syndicated it in some international markets.) In the years leading to its switch to NBC, KSL also preempted the 1989–91
sitcom
A sitcom, a portmanteau of situation comedy, or situational comedy, is a genre of comedy centered on a fixed set of characters who mostly carry over from episode to episode. Sitcoms can be contrasted with sketch comedy, where a troupe may use ...
''
Doctor Doctor'' (partway into its third season in November 1990), and three shorter-lived series—''
Dirty Dancing
''Dirty Dancing'' is a 1987 American romantic drama dance film written by Eleanor Bergstein, produced by Linda Gottlieb, and directed by Emile Ardolino. Starring Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey, it tells the story of Frances "Baby" Houseman ...
'' (in 1988), prime time
soap opera
A soap opera, or ''soap'' for short, is a typically long-running radio or television serial, frequently characterized by melodrama, ensemble casts, and sentimentality. The term "soap opera" originated from radio dramas originally being sponsored ...
''
2000 Malibu Road
''2000 Malibu Road'' is an American prime time soap opera television series that aired on CBS during the summer from August 23 to September 9, 1992. The series stars Drew Barrymore, Jennifer Beals, Brian Bloom, Scott Bryce, Lisa Hartman, Tuesd ...
'' and adult-oriented sitcom ''
Grapevine
''Vitis'' (grapevine) is a genus of 79 accepted species of vining plants in the flowering plant family Vitaceae. The genus is made up of species predominantly from the Northern Hemisphere. It is economically important as the source of grapes, ...
'' (both in 1992)—because of their sexual content.
KSL removed ''
Picket Fences
''Picket Fences'' is an American family drama television series about the residents of the town of Rome, Wisconsin, created and produced by David E. Kelley. The show initially ran from September 18, 1992, to June 26, 1996, on the CBS televis ...
'' midway through its first season, partly due to objections over a January 1993 episode ("Nuclear Meltdowns") centering on a teenage girl who becomes pregnant through an incestuous plural marriage with a polygamist Mormon and the perpetrator's allusion that, although plural marriage within the LDS Church ceased after the
1890 Manifesto (issued in response to
Congressional acts to disincorporate and seize assets of the church over the practice), many Mormons still held beliefs in
polygamy
Crimes
Polygamy (from Late Greek (') "state of marriage to many spouses") is the practice of marriage, marrying multiple spouses. When a man is married to more than one wife at the same time, sociologists call this polygyny. When a woman is ...
. The drama series returned to KSL in its normal network time slot in April 1993 before being shifted to a one-day delay at 11:00 p.m. Saturdays for its second season in September 1993. The station also did not air CBS' late-night lineup from September 1990 until the September 1993 premiere of the ''
Late Show with David Letterman'', and preempted the network's Saturday morning children's program lineup after September 1989. It also was among several Mountain Time CBS stations that aired ''
CBS This Morning
''CBS This Morning'' (''CTM'') is an American morning television program that aired on CBS from November 30, 1987, to October 29, 1999, and again from January 9, 2012, to September 6, 2021. The program was aired from Monday through Saturday. ...
'' and
its predecessors on a one-hour-ahead basis (from 6:00 to 8:00 a.m.) until it shifted the
morning show
Breakfast television (Europe, Canada, and Australia) or morning show (United States) is a type of news or infotainment television programme that broadcasts live in the morning (typically scheduled between 5:00 and 10:00a.m., or if it is a ...
in-pattern in September 1994 to accommodate an expanded (and relocated, as it was moved up two hours to 6:00 a.m.) local morning newscast.
As an NBC affiliate, KSL declined to air ''Saturday Night Live'' throughout its first 18 years with the network; despite this, between 1995 and 2013, the station carried all of the long-running sketch comedy's "best-of" compilations, actor tributes, documentary specials and Saturday evening repeats that NBC aired in prime time. Unlike most of the later preemptions, while potentially objectionable content in the series were somewhat an issue for the station (NBC rebuffed KSL management inquiries about delaying ''SNL'' to midnight), the decision was largely made to retain its popular local sports discussion and highlight program ''SportsBeat Saturday''. ''SNL'' initially remained on KUTV under arrangement with CBS until January 1996, before moving to then-WB affiliate KOOG (now KUCW). (KOOG similarly acquired local rights to ''
Sunset Beach'', airing the soap opera in lieu of KSL throughout its 1997–99 run.) In June 2013, KSL announced that it would start airing ''SNL'' in its regular timeslot beginning that fall, after revealing that viewership for ''SportsBeat'' had declined in recent years (and was also being beaten by the similar KUTV program ''Talkin' Sports'' in its slot).
Content-wise, Channel 5 declined the short-lived 2003 sitcom ''
Coupling
A coupling is a device used to connect two shafts together at their ends for the purpose of transmitting power. The primary purpose of couplings is to join two pieces of rotating equipment while permitting some degree of misalignment or end mov ...
'' because of its sexual humor and content, and preempted much of NBC's
poker programming (such as ''
Poker After Dark
''Poker After Dark'' is an hour-long poker television program that originally aired on NBC, premiering on January 1, 2007. '' throughout its 2007–11 run) due to Church, ownership and LDS-member viewers' objections toward gambling. In September 2011, KSL-TV also preempted ''
The Playboy Club
''The Playboy Club'' is an American historical crime drama television series that aired on NBC from September 19 to October 3, 2011. Set in 1961, the series centers on the employees (known as Bunnies) of the original Playboy Club operating in ...
'' (replacing it with the locally produced
newsmagazine
A news magazine is a typed, printed, and published magazine, radio or television program, usually published weekly, consisting of articles about current events. News magazines generally discuss stories, in greater depth than do newspapers or n ...
''We Are Utah''), on grounds that the fledgling drama was "completely inconsistent" with the station's mission and branding, not wanting to be associated with the
Playboy brand, even though the program did not specifically focus on the magazine nor include any nudity.
(KSL sponsors "Out in the Light," a campaign aimed at educating Utahns on mental, marital and sociological issues associated with viewing
pornographic material
Pornography (often shortened to porn or porno) is the portrayal of sexual subject matter for the exclusive purpose of sexual arousal. Primarily intended for adults, .) The program aired on KMYU in its Monday 9:00 p.m. time slot
until it was canceled by NBC after its third episode. KSL continued to air already-recorded episodes of ''We Are Utah'' in the 9:00 p.m. slot until the October 31, 2011 premiere of ''
Rock Center with Brian Williams
''Rock Center with Brian Williams'' was an American weekly television newsmagazine that was broadcast on NBC from October 31, 2011 to June 21, 2013 and hosted by former ''NBC Nightly News'' anchor Brian Williams. It aired on Mondays until January ...
''. On August 24, 2012, KSL-TV announced it would not air ''
The New Normal'' due to objections to the sitcom's storyline surrounding
gay parenting, crude dialogue and potentially offensive characterizations. KUCW ran ''The New Normal'' instead in a Saturday night slot, while channel 5 aired the
Live Well Network
Localish (formerly Live Well Network, stylized as LOCALISH) is a lifestyle TV network owned by ABC Owned Television Stations, part of Walt Disney Television, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company.
Localish's 24/7 channel streams on Hulu Li ...
series ''My Family Recipe Rocks!'' in the sitcom's Tuesday timeslot. In a twist, although the show was canceled after its first season in May 2013, ''The New Normal'' was the first NBC prime time show that KSL has declined to air since it joined the network in 1995 (and the first prime time network show to have been preempted by Channel 5 since ''Picket Fences'') that lasted at least a full season. (Other prime time series declined by the station for objectionable content have, by coincidence due to insufficient national viewership, been among the network's initial cancellation orders during their debut seasons.)
On April 29, 2013, KSL-TV pulled ''
Hannibal'' after four episodes, due to the drama's graphic violent content and material revolving around the
Hannibal Lecter
Dr. Hannibal Lecter is a Character (arts), fictional character created by the novelist Thomas Harris. Lecter is a serial killer who Human cannibalism, eats his victims. Before his capture, he was a respected Forensic psychiatry, forensic psychi ...
series of novels and films, an action compared by executive producer
Bryan Fuller to how Russian newspaper ''
Pravda
''Pravda'' ( rus, Правда, p=ˈpravdə, a=Ru-правда.ogg, "Truth") is a Russian broadsheet newspaper, and was the official newspaper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, when it was one of the most influential papers in the ...
'' structured its news coverage to fit the
Soviet Communist Party
"Hymn of the Bolshevik Party"
, headquarters = 4 Staraya Square, Moscow
, general_secretary = Vladimir Lenin (first)Mikhail Gorbachev (last)
, founded =
, banned =
, founder = Vladimir Lenin
, newspaper ...
's narrative. KUCW aired the program on Saturday nights (initially following ''Saturday Night Live'', before moving to 11:00 p.m. for the show's second season), while ''Hannibal''s regular timeslot was occupied on Channel 5 by the weekly newsmagazine ''KSL In Depth''.
''Hannibal'' was cancelled after its last episode in August 2015, and the station cleared NBC's entire seasonal prime time schedule for the first time in the 2015–16 season.
On September 4, 2013, KSL announced it was moving ''
Days of Our Lives'' out of daytime to 1:05 a.m., leading out of the network's late-night talk lineup, effective September 9; a local lifestyle program replaced ''Days'' in its former 2:00 p.m. slot (one of the alternate timeslots that NBC assigned for affiliates to air the soap opera). Other than the plausible outcome that locally originated programming in the daytime hour could allow KSL to attain much more ad revenue with a local program, no reason for the move was explicitly stated, with a common theory floated for the move being a storyline involving openly gay characters
Will Horton
Will Horton is a fictional character from the American daytime TV soap opera '' Days of Our Lives'', known for a highly praised coming out story, award-winning performances by actor Chandler Massey, and as one half of US daytime drama's first m ...
and
Sonny Kiriakis }
Sonny Kiriakis is a fictional character from ''Days of Our Lives'', an American soap opera on the NBC network. The role was originally portrayed by Freddie Smith. Sonny is the only biological child of Justin Kiriakis ( Wally Kurth) and Adrienne ...
, who later became the first gay couple to be legally married in-canon. It also gave the show a steady DVR-friendly timeslot, where its preemption by
breaking news
Breaking news, interchangeably termed late-breaking news and also known as a special report or special coverage or news flash, is a current issue that broadcasters feel warrants the interruption of scheduled programming or current news in orde ...
in an overnight timeslot is much rarer than it would be in the afternoon, reducing overall station complaints. The latter reason is much more likely, as KSL continued to air ''Days'' in late night until the series moved exclusively to
Peacock
Peafowl is a common name for three bird species in the genera '' Pavo'' and '' Afropavo'' within the tribe Pavonini of the family Phasianidae, the pheasants and their allies. Male peafowl are referred to as peacocks, and female peafowl are r ...
in September 2022, even with the subsequent "
killing off
The killing off of a character is a device in fiction, whereby a character dies, but the story continues. The term, frequently applied to television, film, video game
Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that ...
" and "resurrection" of Will in the series, and Sonny and Will's summer 2020 departure from the show.
Even with its tradition of screening possibly objectionable programs, some, such as ''
The Book of Daniel'' (which was not shown by several other NBC affiliates, especially in
Bible Belt
The Bible Belt is a region of the Southern United States in which socially conservative Protestant Christianity plays a strong role in society and politics, and church attendance across the denominations is generally higher than the nation's a ...
states) and a paid political message criticizing the
Iraq War
{{Infobox military conflict
, conflict = Iraq War {{Nobold, {{lang, ar, حرب العراق (Arabic) {{Nobold, {{lang, ku, شەڕی عێراق ( Kurdish)
, partof = the Iraq conflict and the War on terror
, image ...
(which featured
Cindy Sheehan) have been aired by the station.
KSL is one of the few NBC stations in the United States to not air ''
NBC News Daily'', which was offered as a replacement for ''Days of Our Lives''. Consequently, the news program does not air on linear television in the Salt Lake City market, although it is already available on the
NBC News Now streaming platform nationwide. The NBC-offered overnight repeat of NBC News Now's evening program ''Top Story with Tom Llamas'' airs on KSL in the slot vacated by ''Days''.
Sports programming
Owing to
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...
's longstanding contract with the
International Olympic Committee
The International Olympic Committee (IOC; french: link=no, Comité international olympique, ''CIO'') is a non-governmental sports organisation based in Lausanne, Switzerland. It is constituted in the form of an association under the Swiss ...
(IOC), KSL-TV was the local broadcaster of the 2002 Winter Olympics held in Salt Lake City. As host city, NBC excluded KSL from its long-time mandate that its Olympics telecasts be
tape delayed on the West Coast (a policy that applied for all other stations, even though the Games were being held in a time zone only an hour ahead of
Pacific Time
The Pacific Time Zone (PT) is a time zone encompassing parts of western Canada, the western United States, and western Mexico. Places in this zone observe standard time by subtracting eight hours from Coordinated Universal Time ( UTC−08:00). ...
).
The station also aired
Utah Jazz
The Utah Jazz are an American professional basketball team based in Salt Lake City. The Jazz compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the league's Western Conference (NBA), Western Conference, Northwest Division (NBA), ...
games selected for national broadcast, first through
CBS Sports
CBS Sports is the sports division of the American television network CBS. Its headquarters are in the CBS Building on W 52nd Street in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, with programs produced out of Studio 43 at the CBS Broadcast Center on W ...
from the team's move to Salt Lake City in
1979
Events
January
* January 1
** United Nations Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim heralds the start of the '' International Year of the Child''. Many musicians donate to the '' Music for UNICEF Concert'' fund, among them ABBA, who write the so ...
until
1990
File:1990 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1990 FIFA World Cup is played in Italy; The Human Genome Project is launched; Voyager I takes the famous Pale Blue Dot image- speaking on the fragility of humanity on Earth, astrophysicist ...
, then
NBC Sports from
1995
File:1995 Events Collage V2.png, From left, clockwise: O.J. Simpson is acquitted of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman from the year prior in "The Trial of the Century" in the United States; The Great Hanshin earthquake str ...
to
2002. The NBC years saw two Jazz appearances in the
NBA Finals (
1997
File:1997 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The movie set of ''Titanic'', the highest-grossing movie in history at the time; '' Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'', is published; Comet Hale-Bopp passes by Earth and becomes one of ...
and
1998
1998 was designated as the ''International Year of the Ocean''.
Events January
* January 6 – The ''Lunar Prospector'' spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for frozen water, in soil in permanently s ...
), both ending in losses to
Michael Jordan and the
Chicago Bulls
The Chicago Bulls are an American professional basketball team based in Chicago. The Bulls compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the league's Eastern Conference Central Division. The team was founded on January ...
.
News operation
![Gardner execution protest Utah news media](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/Gardner_execution_protest_Utah_news_media.jpg)
KSL-TV presently broadcasts 30½ hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with 5½ hours each weekday and 1½ hours each on Saturdays and Sundays). Despite its roots in the ''Deseret News'' and its link to KSL radio, channel 5 was initially an also-ran in news. That changed in 1965, when the station poached sportscaster
Paul James (better known as the voice of
BYU
Brigham Young University (BYU, sometimes referred to colloquially as The Y) is a private research university in Provo, Utah. It was founded in 1875 by religious leader Brigham Young and is sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day S ...
football and
basketball
Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular court, compete with the primary objective of shooting a basketball (approximately in diameter) through the defender's h ...
) and weatherman Bob Welti from KCPX-TV and teamed them with anchor
Dick Nourse
Dick Nourse is a retired Salt Lake City, Utah television news anchor. He most recently worked for KSL 5 Television. Nourse joined the KSL news team in 1964 as the station's weekend anchor/reporter. Six months later, he was named the station's we ...
. Within a few months, channel 5 had rocketed into first place. It would be the dominant news station in Utah for most of the next 45 years, garnering some of the highest ratings in the country. Nourse, James and Welti would remain together until 1991, with Nourse staying on as top anchorman until 2007. In 2008, KSL-TV became the second television station in the Salt Lake City market (after KUTV, which converted in April of that year) to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in
high definition. For a long time, the station's newscasts were branded as ''Eyewitness News''; the name was scrapped in 2009 in favor of ''KSL 5 News'', and is now known simply as ''KSL News''.
In November 2010, KUTV, long a distant runner-up, unseated KSL-TV in most timeslots, though channel 5 remained ahead at 10 p.m. However, in February 2011, KSL-TV lost the lead at 10 p.m. for the first time in recent memory. In December 2011, KSL-TV restored its lead in every time slot in the Nielsen ratings except one—the early morning news slot on weekdays (in the 25- to 54-year-old demographic), where the station finished in third place. Since then, however, KSL-TV has dropped back to a distant runner-up behind KUTV in most time slots. According to media observers, channel 5's ratings slumped after Mark Willes became president of
Deseret Management Corporation
The Deseret Management Corporation (DMC) () is a global operating company, managing for-profit entities affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). It was established in 1966 by church president David O. McKay to ...
, the for-profit arm of the LDS Church and Bonneville's parent company, and abandoned the station's longtime focus on hard news in favor of "values-based" reporting. Willes was fired in 2012, but the station's ratings have yet to recover.
It has used the slogan, "News Specialists" or "The News Specialists" in some variation or form since at least the 1980s, while still affiliated with CBS.
Notable former on-air staff
*
Craig Bolerjack
Bolerjack in 2009.
Kyle Craig Bolerjack (born May 16, 1958) is an American sportscaster. He is currently calling Utah Jazz telecasts on AT&T SportsNet Rocky Mountain with Thurl Bailey. He also calls games for CBS, ESPN, and CBS College Sports ...
– sports anchor (presently a play-by-play announcer with the
Utah Jazz
The Utah Jazz are an American professional basketball team based in Salt Lake City. The Jazz compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the league's Western Conference (NBA), Western Conference, Northwest Division (NBA), ...
in addition to play-by-play for
college
A college (Latin: ''collegium'') is an educational institution or a constituent part of one. A college may be a degree-awarding tertiary educational institution, a part of a collegiate or federal university, an institution offerin ...
and
NFL football broadcasts by
CBS Sports
CBS Sports is the sports division of the American television network CBS. Its headquarters are in the CBS Building on W 52nd Street in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, with programs produced out of Studio 43 at the CBS Broadcast Center on W ...
)
*
Jane Clayson – weekend anchor (later co-host of CBS' ''The Early Show'')
*
Paul James – sports anchor (1965–1991, retired; part of Nourse/Welti/James team)
* Whit Johnson – weekday anchor and reporter (later working for KNBC in Los Angeles; now at ABC News)
* Bruce Lindsay (broadcaster), Bruce Lindsay – weeknight 5, 6 and 10 p.m. anchor (retired May 23, 2012 after 38 years with KSL)
* Dave McCann (sportscaster), Dave McCann – anchor (retired 2021)
* Jim Nantz – sports anchor (now the lead announcer for
CBS Sports
CBS Sports is the sports division of the American television network CBS. Its headquarters are in the CBS Building on W 52nd Street in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, with programs produced out of Studio 43 at the CBS Broadcast Center on W ...
)
*
Dick Nourse
Dick Nourse is a retired Salt Lake City, Utah television news anchor. He most recently worked for KSL 5 Television. Nourse joined the KSL news team in 1964 as the station's weekend anchor/reporter. Six months later, he was named the station's we ...
– weeknight 10 p.m. anchor (part of Nourse/Welti/James team; retired November 27, 2007 after 43 years with KSL)
Technical information
Subchannels
The station's digital signal is Multiplex (TV), multiplexed:
On New Year's Day, January 1, 2009, KSL ended its affiliation with NBC Weather Plus on its 5.3 subchannel due to the service's discontinuation by NBC, and relaunched the subchannel as a locally compiled automated weather channel, the ''Live 5 Weather Channel'', which was one of the first local digital weather subchannels in the country to be presented in 480i widescreen. KSL-TV also carried Universal Sports on its 5.2 subchannel until it began to be exclusively distributed through cable and satellite television in January 2012; it was replaced by Live Well Network in 2013. On January 1, 2014, KSL replaced Live Well Network with Cozi TV on digital subchannel 5.2.
Analog-to-digital conversion
KSL-TV shut down its analog signal, over Very high frequency, VHF channel 5, on June 12, 2009, as part of the Digital television transition in the United States, federally mandated transition from analog to digital television.
[List of Digital Full-Power Stations](_blank)
The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 38,
using Program and System Information Protocol, PSIP to display KSL-TV's virtual channel as 5 on digital television receivers. Effective September 17, 2018, the station moved its digital signal from channel 38 to channel 23, as part of the broadcast spectrum repacking.
Translators
References
External links
*
G. Donald Gale collection of KSL editorials, MSS 8013a
L. Tom Perry Special Collections Brigham Young University. Contains copies of televised video editorials from 1978 to 1997.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ksl-Tv
Television stations in Utah, SL-TV
Mass media in Salt Lake City
NBC network affiliates
Cozi TV affiliates
This TV affiliates
Bonneville International
Deseret Management Corporation
Television channels and stations established in 1949
1949 establishments in Utah
2002 Winter Olympics