KDNL-TV

KDNL-TV (channel 30), branded as STL30, is an independent television station in St. Louis, Missouri, United States. Owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, the station maintains studios at the University Tower on South Brentwood Boulevard in the suburb of Richmond Heights and a transmitter in Shrewsbury. Channel 30 in St. Louis was sought on several occasions in the 1950s and early 1960s, though no station materialized. The fourth attempt to build the channel was originally spearheaded by a group of local investors as well as Washington attorney John Dean; after the construction permit for KDNL-TV was sold to Thomas Mellon Evans, the station began broadcasting on June 8, 1969. It served as the second independent station for the St. Louis area, airing syndicated reruns as well as financial news and sports. Cox Broadcasting purchased KDNL-TV in 1981, in part because it held a permit for over-the-air subscription television broadcasting. Cox launched this service in June 1982, but it was a business failure, and Cox shut it down in February 1983. The station continued to be an overall money-loser and a misfit in the Cox station portfolio, even though it became the first local affiliate of Fox in 1986. Barry Baker and Larry Marcus, former executives of rival independent KPLR-TV who were fired for trying to buy that station, purchased KDNL-TV from Cox in 1989. It became the first station in a St. Louis–based company eventually known as River City Broadcasting, which soon acquired other independent and Fox-affiliated stations. Ratings and revenue improved with the success of the Fox network, with total viewership approaching KPLR-TV, and led the station to start a local news department in January 1995. Under a deal announced in 1994 but carried out in August 1995, KDNL-TV lost its Fox affiliation and switched with KTVI to become the...