ST. LOUIS — For 77 years, KSDK-TV has been on your side.
On Feb. 8, 1947, Channel 5, then known by the call letters KSD-TV, became the first television station to broadcast in St. Louis.
It was one of just 12 television stations in the entire country.
KSDK wasn’t the first station west of the Mississippi River.
That honor goes to KTLA-TV in Los Angeles. It began broadcasting commercial television just a few weeks earlier, on Jan. 22, 1947.
But the birth of St. Louis television had been years in the making and can be traced back to the efforts of one man.
Come in and see television
George Burbach was a radio executive with big ideas.
The general manager of KSD radio, and the advertising manager of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch at the time, said it was a family vacation abroad that inspired him to bring television to St. Louis.
With his wife along for the trip, he spotted a sign that would eventually change the way St. Louisans got their daily news. It read, "Come in and see television."
The pictures were fuzzy and the sound was scratchy, but Burbach saw unlimited possibilities.
When he returned to St. Louis, he started a campaign to bring television to our town.
As World War II raged, Burbach wrote a letter to RCA, inviting executives to come to St. Louis to discuss bringing a television station here.
Eventually, RCA built the first post-war transmitter for the Pulitzer Publishing Company. Then, the FCC granted KSD-TV a license for a television channel.
Burbach would forever be known by the nickname "Mr. Television."
The station's call letters wouldn’t change to KSDK until 1979 when an FCC regulation required TV and radio stations with the same call letters in the same market—but with different ownership—to use different call letters.
Broadcasting to only four television sets
The day KSD-TV signed on the air, there were only four television sets in the entire city at the time.
That’s not surprising, considering a television set cost $625.
St. Louisans would crowd around television sets at Union Electric and in department store windows to get their first look at television.
Programming that first day consisted of news, interviews, dancing and a sports show featuring a young Cardinals catcher named Joe Garagiola.
We’ve been bringing you local programs ever since.
Founder George Burbach retired from KSD-TV in 1958.
He died the following year, but will forever be remembered as the man who brought television to St. Louis.