KOMU-TV

KOMU-TV (channel 8) is a television station licensed to Columbia, Missouri, United States, serving the Columbia–Jefferson City market as an affiliate of NBC and The CW Plus. The station's studios and transmitter are located on US 63 southeast of downtown Columbia. Owned by the University of Missouri and operated by the Missouri School of Journalism, KOMU-TV is one of only two commercial television stations in the United States to be operated by a public university, alongside the University of Alabama's WVUA-CD; all other such stations are non-profit PBS member stations.

KOMU-TV was the brainchild of Edward C. Lambert, a longtime journalism professor at the University of Missouri, and Lester E. Cox, chairman of the Television Committee of the Board of Curators, who wanted to give journalism students a hands-on experience by working at a full-fledged commercial station. Cox presented a request to the FCC, earning a grant for commercial operation in January 1953. The station began airing an analog signal on VHF channel 8 on December 21, 1953, and carried programming from all four major networks at the time, but was a primary NBC affiliate. It lost both DuMont and CBS in 1955 when KRCG (channel 13) began operations from nearby Jefferson City. The two then shared ABC until 1971 when KCBJ-TV (channel 17, now KMIZ) launched, leaving KOMU as a full-time NBC station. From January 22 through April 23, 1955, KOMU temporarily originated a live prime time ABC network show, Ozark Jubilee.

On March 11, 1969, the original studios of KOMU were heavily damaged by an explosion and a fire (caused by an air conditioner failure), forcing the station to go off the air during NBC's Tuesday Night at the Movies. Nobody was reported injured when the blast occurred. The station returned to the air the following week after the fire was extinguished.^{[citation needed]}

On August 8, 1982, ABC moved its affiliation to the station, since the network was the highest-rated at the time and wanted a stronger outlet. However, KOMU would not be an ABC affiliate for very long. By 1985, KOMU was one of several ABC affiliates nationwide that were underwhelmed by the network's ratings and programming in its 3+1⁄2 seasons with them. Meanwhile, NBC had regained the ratings lead. Accordingly, KOMU rejoined NBC on December 30, 1985 (reversing the 1982 swap with channel 17, which would become KMIZ concurrent to this). In 2002, KOMU took over operation of cable-only WB affiliate "KJWB" as part of The WB 100+. KMIZ had previously operated it, but relinquished control over it to KOMU after its parent company went bankrupt. This service was known on-air as "Mid-Missouri's WB 5" after its cable channel location and, as a result, had a fictional callsign (as did most cable-only WB affiliates).

In 2002, KOMU won the Payne Award for Ethics in Journalism for maintaining its longstanding policy banning political symbols on air. The station had come under considerable government and popular pressure to allow its anchors and reporters to wear American flag lapels on air in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks. ^{[citation needed]} In December 2005, the station added NBC Weather Plus to a new second digital subchannel and live streaming video on its website. This was added to Mediacom digital systems on January 12, 2007. After the national service shut down on December 1, 2008, it was replaced with Universal Sports but was not added to other digital cable systems. In 2011, Universal Sports was dropped from subchannel 8.2.

It was announced on April 12, 2006, that "KJWB" would become part of The CW and be added as a new third digital subchannel of KOMU to offer non-cable viewers access to the new network. "KJWB" joined The CW at the network's launch on September 18 and began to use the KOMU-DT3 call sign in an official manner. As a result, the station became the first and only educational institution-owned channel in the United States to affiliate with that network. Since KMIZ operated the area's cable-exclusive UPN station "KZOU", that station joined the other new network known as MyNetworkTV that was created to compete against The CW.

In late 2020, KOMU-TV submitted an application to the FCC to allow the construction of a new transmission tower roughly 600 feet (183 m) away from the current tower. The new tower would be almost 100 feet (30 m) higher and would broadcast with about 74 times more power than the current tower. This would coincide with KOMU-TV changing its RF channel from VHF channel 8 to UHF channel 27. The application was approved sometime in early 2021. The new tower's construction and testing was completed on January 5, 2023, and it began broadcasting four days later. The old tower was torn down in July of the same year as it was no longer in service when the signal switched to the new tower.

KOMU presently airs 31 hours of locally-produced newscasts each week (with five hours each weekday, 3+1⁄2 hours on Saturdays and 2+1⁄2 hours on Sundays). Unusual for its market size, KOMU begins its weekday morning show at 4:30, reflecting a recent trend of television stations airing a pre-5 a.m. broadcast (most stations ranked #75 and above in the Nielsen rank usually air morning newscasts at 5:30 or 6 a.m.). KOMU used to be the only station in the area that begins its early-morning newscast this early, but this changed with KRCG having launched a 4:30 a.m. newscast in 2020.