WATCH: KY3 will air "Star Spangled Banner" during broadcast day

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. -- KY3 and the Ozarks CW is joining with our sister Gray Television stations across the nation to air the "The Star-Spangled Banner" during the broadcast day. KY3 will air the national anthem at 4:58 a.m. each day beginning June 13.

Up until television stations went to 24-hour operations in the 1980s, playing the national anthem was traditionally how American television stations went off the air and returned back to the airwaves the following morning. Inspired by the American flag flying over Fort McHenry the morning after a bombardment, Francis Scott Key wrote the initial verse of the anthem on the back of a letter. He later completed the four verses, which a Baltimore newspaper first published, according to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.
