WKCV-TV

WKCV-TV is the NBC-affiliated television station for South Iowa and North Missouri. Licensed to Ottumwa, it broadcasts a high definition digital signal on UHF channel 27 (or virtual channel 27.1 via PSIP) from a transmitter shared downtown Ottumwa. Owned by Tegna, WKCV-TV has sales and administrative offices in downtown Ottumwa.

Overview
WKCV-TV primarily serves much of the Kirksville/Ottumwa market. In the Borderlands, the station's official coverage area consists of several counties of South and Southeastern Iowa and much of North and Northeastern Missouri, formerly a covered by Quincy, IL/Hannibal, MO/Keokuk, IA and in some counties, Kansas City, MO-KS. Additional viewership comes from surrounding counties in Quincy, KC, Des Moines, Columbia/Jefferson City, Peoria and as far as Omaha.

History
During its early years, WHO-TV (channel 13) in Des Moines launched an Ottumwa translator on K27CV in the summer of 1956. It was upgraded to a full-time satellite on January 1, 1960 and subsequently changed its call letters to KCV-TV, making it one of the last three-letter broadcast callsigns for a television station in the Midwest. In 1974, upon KTVO's loss of the remaining CBS (most of which moved to KMOI-TV, channel 23 since 1968) and NBC programming, channel 27 was sold to local ownership (particularly, the Ottumwa Courier) and became a separate station, becoming the last of the Main Three network-affiliated stations in the market. It eventually added a "W" in the beginning, marking an end to the three-letter callsign era and marking one of the stations whose callsigns begin with "W" west of the Mississippi River, among those of WFAA-TV (channel 8) in Dallas/Fort Worth. TX.

In 1987, A.H. Belo Corporation (which was later renamed Belo Corporation in 2002), owner of WFAA-TV acquired WKCV from the Ottumwa Courier in a fair trade agreement to help the station rival KTVO and KMOI-TV in the ratings.

On June 13, 2013, the Gannett Company, owner of fellow NBC affiliate KSDK (channel 5) in St. Louis, announced that it would acquire Belo. As a result, WKCV was a charter station by Gannett and later, by its spin-off broadcast media company, TEGNA.