“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the first telecast from KFEQ-TV in St. Joseph.”
Those were the words of announcer Wally Johnson at 2:30 p.m. on September 27, 1953.
Throughout the next 70 years, KFEQ-TV would continue to expand and grow. The 1960s would see the addition of network color and an ABC affiliation. The station changed its call letters from KFEQ to KQTV in 1969 when it and KFEQ radio were separated. In 2016, the station was sold from Nexstar Broadcasting Group to Heartland Media.
News-Press and Gazette began as a Newspaper publication, first as The St. Joseph Gazette in 1845. Henry D. Bradley purchased “The Gazette” and merged it with the St. Joseph News-Press in 1951, creating “NPG”. The company acquired its first television station in 1965 and now owns multiple TV stations across the Midwest and Western U.S.
NPG’s St. Joseph station, News-Press NOW, provided news for FOX, CBS and NBC affiliates for the Northwest Missouri and Northeast Kansas regions.
NPG entered a Shared Services Agreement with Heartland in November 2025, building a stronger news and sales team to better serve the communities that matter most.
Today, KQTV reaches more than 50,000 households in 32 counties throughout northwest Missouri, northeast Kansas and the southeast tip of Nebraska.
With a broadcast radius of 50 miles and more than one million page views each month, KQ2.com, in addition to our News and Weather mobile apps, offers a variety of ways to access local news, weather, sports, school closings, coupons, community events and much more.