KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Chiefs and KSHB-TV announced a new six-year partnership on Tuesday which will make the local NBC affiliate the home for exclusively programming from the club including broadcasting the club's preseason games.
KSHB and sister station KMCI-TV will broadcast a variety of Chiefs programming, including, the Hy-Vee Chiefs Insider show produced by the club's 65 Toss Power Trap Productions group. That show begins airing this weekend. The agreement includes rights to the club's preseason games beginning in 2020 and running through the 2024 season.
KSHB/KMCI is thrilled to serve as the TV home for the Chiefs, according to Ed Fernandez, vice president of operations for The E.W. Scripps Company, which owns both stations.
“We’re proud to partner with such an iconic brand to provide avid Kansas City Chiefs fans with great content and additional opportunities across all of our broadcast and digital platforms,” Fernandez said in a statement.
Chiefs president Mark Donovan said the moves comes at a time of high expectations for the club and its fans.
“We are thrilled to begin our new partnership with KSHB and KMCI at this time, and we look forward to next year when they will begin serving as the flagship station of our Chiefs Preseason Television Network,” Donovan said in a statement.
The new agreement does not impact any regular season TV games for the Chiefs. Those games will still air on their regular network stations.
The new deal adds to an increasing amount of Chiefs content produced by KSHB. This year the channel added daily training camp reports to their 6 p.m. newscasts, and station also produces the “4th and 1” podcast hosted by Nick Jacobs and Tod Palmer. The station plans to further expand its coverage of the team under the new deal.
The new partnership with KSHB comes after the club declined to renew its previous partnership with KCTV-5 in Kansas City. The CBS affiliate came under criticism earlier this year when it aired an edited audio recording of conversation between wide receiver Tyreek Hill and his then fiancee Crystal Espinal. The airing of the audio tape led to the Chiefs and Hill agree to hold the player out of the club's offseason program.
The decision to part ways with KCTV, however, was not related to the airing of the audio recording, sources tell Chiefs Digest.
