KCBS-TV

History

Early years (1931–1948)

KCBS-TV is the oldest continuously operating television station in the Western United States. It was signed on by Don Lee Broadcasting, which owned a chain of radio stations on the Pacific coast, and was first licensed by the Federal Radio Commission (FRC), forerunner of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), as experimental television station W6XAO in June 1931. The station went on the air on December 23, 1931, and by March 1933 was broadcasting programming one hour each day on Mondays through Saturdays. The station used a mechanical camera, which broadcast only film footage in an 80-line image, but used all-electronic receivers as early as 1932. It went off the air in 1935, and then reappeared using an improved mechanical camera producing a 300-line image in June 1936. By August 1937, W6XAO had programming six days each week, with live programming starting in April 1938.

By 1939, the station used a fully electronic system and the image quality was improved to 441 lines. At the time, an optimistic estimate of the station's viewership was 1,500 people. Many of the receiver sets were built by television hobbyists, though commercially made sets were available in Los Angeles. The station's six-day weekly schedule consisted of live talent on four nights, and films on two nights. On March 28, 1940, W6XAO presented what contemporary newspapers called the first full-length play televised on the West Coast, The Ides of March by Wilfred Pettit, a Civil War drama about John Wilkes Booth directed by film director Steve Sekely and starring Shirley Thomas and John Barkley.

By 1942, there were an estimated 400–500 television sets in the Los Angeles area, with Don Lee Broadcasting placing television receivers at the following public places: Wilshire Brown Derby, Kiefer's Pine Knot Drive-In, Vine Street Brown Derby, Griffith Planetarium, Miramar Hotel (Santa Monica), Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel and The Town House on Wilshire Boulevard. During World War II, programming was reduced to three hours, every other Monday. The station's frequency was switched from Channel 1 to Channel 2 in March 1946 when the FCC decided to reserve Channel 1 for low-power community television stations, before eliminating it completely. The station was granted a commercial license (the second in California, behind KTLA) as KM2XBD, but calling it KTSL, on May 6, 1948 (and officially changed the call sign to KTSL on October 9, 1950), and was named for Thomas S. Lee, the son of Don Lee. The station became affiliated with the DuMont Television Network later that year. KTSL also launched Peter Potter's Jukebox Jury that year, a musical/quiz series that began to be broadcast nationally during the 1953–1954 season on ABC.

CBS acquisition (1949–1984)

Starting in 1949, CBS had been affiliated with KTTV (channel 11, now a Fox owned-and-operated station), a station in which the network held a 49% minority ownership stake.

Don Lee's broadcasting interests were placed for sale in 1950 following the death of Thomas S. Lee. General Tire and Rubber agreed to purchase all of Don Lee's stations, the centerpiece being KHJ radio, but chose to spin off KTSL to CBS. Subsequently, CBS sold its share in KTTV to the station's majority partner, the Los Angeles Times, and all CBS programming moved to KTSL on January 1, 1951. On October 28, 1951, KTSL changed its callsign to KNXT (presumably meaning "KNX Television") to coincide with CBS' Los Angeles radio outlet, KNX (1070 AM). The station also moved its transmitter from Mount Lee, where it had been located since its experimental days, to Mount Wilson.

As KCBS-TV (1984–present)

On April 2, 1984, at noon, KNXT changed its call letters to the present KCBS-TV. The former KNXT call letters were later used by an unrelated TV station (now KIFR) in Fresno from 1986 to 2021. In 1997, it adopted the "CBS2" moniker for its on-air image, following the lead of sister stations WBBM-TV in Chicago and WCBS-TV in New York City. For a time during the 1980s and 1990s, KNXT/KCBS-TV had several locally produced programs such as 2 on the Town, a local show similar to Evening Magazine and KABC-TV's Eye on L.A., and KidQuiz, a Saturday morning children's game show hosted by longtime weathercaster Maclovio Perez (for a time in the mid-2000s, its sister station KCAL-TV had broadcast a show called 9 on the Town).

In 2002, KCBS-TV became a sister station to KCAL-TV after the latter was purchased by Viacom from Young Broadcasting.

On April 21, 2007, KCBS and KCAL moved from the historic CBS Columbia Square in Hollywood to an all-digital facility at the CBS Studio Center in Studio City. With the move, KTLA became the only broadcast station (either in radio or television) in Los Angeles to be based in Hollywood.

KCBS-TV ended regular programming on its analog signal, over VHF channel 2, and switched to analog nightlight service at 1:10 p.m. on June 12, 2009, as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television. The nightlight service continued to run until July 12, 2009. The station moved its digital signal from its pre-transition UHF channel 60, which was among the high band UHF channels (52–69) that were removed from broadcasting use as a result of the transition, to UHF channel 43, using virtual channel 2.

On October 21, 2014, CBS and Weigel Broadcasting announced the launch of a new digital subchannel service called Decades, scheduled to launch on all CBS-owned stations in the second quarter of 2015, including on KCBS-TV on channel 2.2. On September 3, 2018, Decades was replaced on 2.2 by Start TV with Decades moving to Weigel's KAZA-TV.

On December 4, 2019, CBS Corporation and Viacom remerged into ViacomCBS (now Paramount Skydance Corporation).

Programming

Sports programming

In 1956, CBS began broadcasting NFL games, and with it, the Los Angeles Rams had their games aired on Channel 2. This alliance would continue through the 1993 season, when Fox took over the rights to broadcast NFC games, which led to KTTV being the new home station for one season in 1994, before the Rams moved to St. Louis. With the Rams' return to Los Angeles in 2016, Channel 2 will air games in which the Rams play host to an AFC opponent, and any cross-flexed games aired by CBS; the station previously aired Rams preseason games from 2016 to 2019, and intermittently in past years during the team's first stay in greater Los Angeles. From 1982 to 1993, Channel 2 also aired all home inter-conference games of the Raiders during their time in Los Angeles including their win in Super Bowl XVIII. The station also gave coverage to Super Bowl XIV, which the Rams were runners-up in, and Super Bowl XXI, both of which were hosted at the Rose Bowl in nearby Pasadena. As the first Super Bowl was held at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, and was televised nationally on both CBS (the exclusive home of the pre-merger NFL at the time) and NBC (the home network of the American Football League), the game was blacked out locally on KNXT and KNBC (channel 4), due to home-game blackout policies that both leagues had at the time (and carried over into the leagues' merger in 1970) that did not allow home games to be shown locally regardless of whether the game was sold out, and this policy also extended to the host city of the Super Bowl game; starting with the 1973 season, the blackout rules were relaxed; home games were allowed to be televised in the local market, so long as the game sold out 72 hours in advance (the blackout rules were lifted completely in 2015).

In 2017, the station became the unofficial "home" station of the NFL's Chargers franchise, which announced on January 12, 2017, that it had exercised an option to leave its longtime home of San Diego and join the Rams in Los Angeles; the newly relocated and rechristened Los Angeles Chargers are part of the AFC, and therefore most of their games (the vast majority of road games, home games against AFC opponents and select games cross-flexed from Fox) are carried by CBS. Because Los Angeles was previously a secondary market of the Chargers during their time in San Diego, the station was already under requirement to carry the team's road games. KCBS was scheduled to resume carriage of Chargers preseason games starting with the 2020 season; however, with the COVID-19 pandemic affecting the United States, preseason games across the NFL were cancelled and not rescheduled; KCBS ended up broadcasting the Chargers' 2021 preseason games. The station previously televised Charger preseason games from 2002 to 2015.

News operation

KCBS-TV presently broadcasts 30 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with 4 hours, 35 minutes each weekday; 3 hours, 30 minutes on Saturdays; and 3 hours, 35 minutes on Sundays).

In 1961, KNXT created one of the nation's first "newshours". It began with 45 minutes of local news, The Big News, which featured Jerry Dunphy, along with legendary weatherman Bill Keene and sportscaster Gil Stratton. It aired from 6:30 to 7:15 p.m. weeknights, leading into the then-15-minute-long CBS Evening News, which completed the news hour. Also featured were special assignment reporter Maury Green and "Human Predicament" essayist Ralph Story. The team and format helped make KNXT the top-rated news station in Los Angeles. At times, a quarter of Los Angeles television sets were tuned to The Big News and its late-evening companion, Eleven O'Clock Report, the highest ratings ever for a television newscast in the area. The station eventually added reporters such as Howard Gingold and Saul Helpert, among others, and added news bureaus in Sacramento, San Francisco and Orange County, each with full-time correspondents and camera crews.

The Big News expanded to a full hour in September 1963, leading into the new half-hour-long CBS Evening News. Color broadcasts of The Big News and Eleven O'Clock Report began in August 1966. Eventually, KNXT expanded to 2+1⁄2 hours of local news programming, as well as a late night newscast. KNBC went head-to-head with KNXT with viewers during the 1960s. However, in the mid-1970s, rival KABC-TV began gaining ground in the local news ratings at KNXT's expense. In 1975, KNXT fired Dunphy (who was quickly hired by KABC) and was replaced by Patrick Emory, who had anchored at then-CBS owned-and-operated station KMOX-TV (now KMOV) in St. Louis. KNXT then adopted a format similar to KABC-TV's Eyewitness News with its "happy talk" between anchors. However, the change went nowhere. Just as most of its fellow CBS-owned stations were dominating their cities' ratings, KNXT rapidly fell into last place.

For most of the period from 1975 to 2006, KNXT/KCBS-TV was not a major competitor in the Los Angeles television ratings among the area's local television newscasts. During the period, Channel 2 had frequently changed newscast titles (from The Big News/Eleven O'Clock Report to Channel 2 News in 1973, then to Newsroom in 1976 and back to Channel 2 News by 1978) and formats to styles that often became unsuccessful and even controversial. In September 1986, Channel 2 implemented a news-wheel format for its 4–6:30 p.m. news block, with each hour of news beginning with a 20-minute newscast, followed by two 20-minute programs devoted to certain topics and themes (for example, there was entertainment and lifestyle news early on and harder news stories later in the program), concluding with a half-hour-long local news report; this format was heavily panned by critics and audiences alike, and was dropped after only a month in favor of standard newscasts.

Technical information

Subchannels

The station's signal is multiplexed:

Translators

K22NA-D Inyokern

K25QB-D Lucerne Valley

K30GU-D Morongo Valley

K10IX-D Newberry Springs

K15FC-D Twentynine Palms