About KNLC

KNLC

KNLC is a television station licensed to St. Louis, Missouri, in the United States, broadcasting on virtual channel 24 with programming from MeTV, the classic television network. It is owned by Weigel Broadcasting through KNLC-TV LLC and brands itself as MeTV St. Louis. Its transmitter is located near Hillsboro-House Springs Road in House Springs, Missouri, southwest of the city.

For its first thirty-five years, KNLC was something quite different: a religious independent station founded and run by the Reverend Larry Rice's New Life Evangelistic Center, a ministry to St. Louis's homeless and poor. Its call sign still spells out that founding owner. The station became known nationally for its idiosyncratic scheduling, its stormy brief carriage of the Fox Kids programming block, and its refusal to air much of the UPN schedule it had agreed to carry. Weigel's purchase in 2017 turned it into a secular classic-television outlet, while the ministry that built it continued for a time on a subchannel.

Launch in 1982: the first new St. Louis station in thirteen years

KNLC first signed on the air on September 12, 1982. It was the first new television station in the St. Louis market since KDNL-TV, channel 30, had signed on in 1969. The founder was the Reverend Larry Rice, head of the New Life Evangelistic Center, known as NLEC, a St. Louis ministry whose work with homeless people was closely identified with Rice himself, who could frequently be seen on the station preaching. At launch, the schedule was religious around the clock, built from nationally syndicated evangelical programs such as The 700 Club and The PTL Club, programs by televangelists including Richard Roberts and Jimmy Swaggart, and locally produced religious shows. The station's studios were at the ministry's facilities on Locust Street in the Downtown West section of St. Louis.

The hybrid religious and classic-TV format

In September 1984, KNLC broadened its format into a hybrid modelled on the independent stations then owned by the Christian Broadcasting Network, mixing its religious programming with secular classic television series — sitcoms and westerns from the 1950s and early 1960s, many of which were not then airing in many other American markets. What made KNLC distinctive was not the mixture but the arrangement. Where comparable stations ran their secular shows in a single daily block, KNLC scattered them in short stretches through the day: a secular program at 7 a.m., religion again in the mid-morning, secular shows again in the early and late afternoon, and so on, between a 5 a.m. sign-on and a 1 a.m. sign-off. The result was a schedule that lacked continuity by design. By the late 1980s the pattern had become more consistent — cartoons in the early morning and late afternoon, mixed programming in the daytime, classic sitcoms in the early evening — and the station added barter cartoons and more recent sitcoms. In 1986, NLEC also launched a second religious station, KNLJ in New Bloomfield, serving the Columbia–Jefferson City market; the ministry sold that station to the Christian Television Network in 2007.

Turning down UPN, taking Fox Kids

KNLC's religious management repeatedly collided with the commercial networks of the 1990s. The United Paramount Network approached the station to become its St. Louis charter affiliate ahead of UPN's January 1995 launch; KNLC declined, a decision that left UPN without an over-the-air home in the market for its first seven months. In August 1995, however, KNLC took over the local rights to Fox Kids, the Fox network's children's block. The block was available because KTVI, channel 2, which had just switched to Fox, would not carry it, preferring to expand news and other programming, and outgoing Fox station KDNL could not keep it after taking the ABC affiliation; KPLR-TV had also turned the block down. KNLC carried Fox Kids on weekday mornings and afternoons and on Saturday mornings, in a market that had the largest Fox Kids Club in the country, with 251,000 members.

The Fox Kids dispute

The arrangement unravelled quickly. KNLC did not sell local advertising inside Fox Kids; instead, it filled the breaks with public service announcements and Christian ministry messages, and at one point urged young viewers to write to the governor of Missouri seeking clemency for death row prisoner Johnny Lee Wilson. Fox Kids president Margaret Loesch privately expressed concern about Rice's proselytizing during commercial breaks, and viewers complained about KNLC's poor signal, which was weak even on local cable systems. Fox credited the volume of mail from Fox Kids Club members with influencing its decision, and in September 1996 the network moved its children's programming to KTVI. The episode became the best-known illustration of the tension built into KNLC's model: a ministry station carrying a commercial network's most valuable children's franchise on the ministry's own terms.

A part-time UPN affiliation, on KNLC's terms

In May 1999, despite having rebuffed the network before, KNLC took on a part-time affiliation with UPN, returning the network's programs to St. Louis airwaves for the first time in sixteen months, since KDNL had dropped its secondary UPN affiliation in January 1998. The partnership was limited by the station's standards from the start: channel 24 refused to clear as much as 75 percent of UPN's output, with management judging much of the network's programming and advertising offensive. UPN moved its programming to WB affiliate KPLR-TV in September 2000, which carried the prime time schedule in late-night hours; St. Louis did not get a full-time UPN affiliate until April 2003, when WRBU took the network. KNLC also declined an offer from Paxson Communications to affiliate with Pax TV after that network lost its local outlet in 2004. Through the 2000s, as popular classic shows migrated to cable and children's broadcast programming declined, the station steadily reduced what it spent on secular programming.

The DT2 subchannel: renewable energy and NLEC TV

KNLC launched its first notable digital subchannel, virtual channel 24.2, on February 4, 2009, carrying Renewable Energy Satellite, known as RES, a round-the-clock channel of programs about renewable energy methods. The service was operated by Missouri Renewable Energy, a non-profit environmental advocacy group associated with the New Life Evangelistic Center — an unusual pairing of evangelical ministry and environmental advocacy under one roof. When Weigel Broadcasting bought the station, NLEC programming moved from the main channel to 24.2 under the name NLEC TV, displacing RES to overnight hours. In May 2024, NLEC TV began announcing that its over-the-air carriage on 24.2 would end on June 24, ahead of Weigel's launch of MeTV Toons the following day; the ministry indicated it would continue the service through its online feed, and losing the subchannel's non-compete restrictions meant its online version could again carry some of the classic sitcoms and westerns it had been barred from airing.

Sale to Weigel and the arrival of MeTV

On September 7, 2017, it was announced that KNLC would be sold to Weigel Broadcasting for 3.75 million dollars, with Weigel planning to convert it to a secular independent station. The sale was completed on December 14, 2017. New Life retained control of one subchannel for its programming, but the main channel was remade. On February 1, 2018, MeTV moved from KMOV's 4.2 subchannel to KNLC 24.1. The move gave St. Louis viewers an over-the-air high-definition feed of MeTV for the first time and brought the network to satellite providers Dish Network and DirecTV in the market for the first time. The station's remaining syndication contracts were nullified the same day, under a non-compete clause NLEC had accepted as a condition of keeping its subchannel. Channel 24's identity was transformed: the longtime religious independent became the St. Louis home of classic television.

Subchannels and technical information

Under Weigel, KNLC's multiplex has grown into a ten-stream showcase of its owner's networks. Channel 24.1 carries MeTV in 720p. Channel 24.2 carries MeTV Toons, the classic-animation network launched in June 2024. Channels 24.3 through 24.10 carry, in order, Heroes & Icons, Movies!, Catchy Comedy, Start TV, WEST, Story Television, Dabl and MeTV+. The Federal Communications Commission lists the station under facility ID 48525, with an effective radiated power of 900 kilowatts and an antenna height of 394 metres, or 1,293 feet, above average terrain at its House Springs transmitter site, at approximately 38 degrees 21 minutes north and 90 degrees 32 minutes west. The station transmits digitally on UHF channel 14 while receivers display it as channel 24.

An early analog shutdown

KNLC switched off its analog signal on UHF channel 24 on January 19, 2009, more than five months before the national June 12 deadline for full-power stations. The early shutdown was cooperative: ending analog service freed channel 24 to become the permanent digital home of CBS affiliate KMOV, channel 4, whose digital signal had been assigned to UHF channel 56, in the part of the band being withdrawn from broadcasting. KNLC's own digital signal continued on its pre-transition channel 14, displayed as virtual channel 24. In connection with the conversion, the New Life Evangelistic Center partnered with KMOV to raise funds to buy digital converter boxes for low-income viewers in the area — a final instance of the ministry using its station, to the end of the analog era, as an instrument of its work with the poor.