KODE was a CBS station

Sometimes when you go from memory, you make mistakes.
So when a reader said KODE has always been an ABC station, my initial reaction was no, that's not the way it was. My memories are vivid from those days.
Fortunately, everything is on the internet these days, including a site which has TV Guide listings throughout the years and it was exactly as I remembered it.
On May 2, 1964, the nearest ABC station was KTUL in Tulsa. That meant that in the Joplin/Pittsburg area and Springfield, the two competing station in each market could buy the programs from ABC. Usually KYTV in Springfield and KOAM in Pittsburg would show NBC programming, while KODE in Joplin and KTTS (now KOLR) in Springfield would show CBS programming.
The stations were listed in the TV Guide as 12-KODE-CBS, ABC. Since there was no completely ABC station in Joplin, I can recall my sister Vicki and I going to Anita and Danny Hilton's home to watch the music program "Shindig" on KTTS at 6:30 p.m. on Thursdays. It was one of the programs that KTTS picked up from ABC, but no Joplin station carried.
I can still remember watching a few of the CBS programs that KODE carried during that time period, such as the appearances of the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show in January 1964 and the first televised murder, Jack Ruby's killing of Lee Harvey Oswald in November 1963, a murder which was shown live on only one network, CBS.
Technically, though, the reader was right. KODE did carry some ABC programming, but it was far being from an ABC station. My guess would be that more than 80 percent of the programming was either CBS or local.
The listings for Oct. 2, 1958, are the same as the 1964 listings.