KCNC-TV


KCNC-TV, virtual channel 4, is a CBS owned-and-operated television station licensed to Denver, Colorado, United States. The station is owned by the CBS Television Stations subsidiary of ViacomCBS. KCNC's studios are located on Lincoln Street in downtown Denver, and its transmitter is based on Lookout Mountain, near Golden. On cable, the station is available on Comcast Xfinity in standard definition on channel 4, and in high definition on digital channel 654. It is also carried on CenturyLink Prism channels 4 and 1004.

History

As an NBC affiliate (1953–1995)

The station first signed on the air on December 24, 1953, as KOA-TV. Founded by Metropolitan TV Company, owners of KOA radio, channel 4 immediately assumed the NBC affiliation from KBTV, due to KOA radio's longtime affiliation with and ownership by the NBC Red Network.
In 1965, KOA-TV began carrying most of NBC's American Football League game telecasts as the network obtained the league's broadcast television rights ; however, Denver Broncos home games aired by the network had to be blacked out due to the team's inability to sell out tickets to the games, this partnership continues to this day with CBS. In 1967, KOA-TV ran an award-winning documentary The Acid Test, LSD; hosted by news editor Bob Palmer, the film took five months to produce with more than 5,000 feet of film shot. Photographers involved included Bill Baker, Medill Barnes, Jerry Curran, Sam Houston and Barry Trader.
In 1968, Metropolitan TV Company sold KOA-AM-TV to General Electric for $10 million. General Electric sold the KOA and KOAQ radio stations to A. H. Belo Corporation in 1983 for $22 million, as part of the company's overall exit from broadcasting. GE retained channel 4, but was required by FCC law at the time—which forbade TV and radio stations in the same city, but with different owners from sharing the same call letters—to change the station's call letters to KCNC-TV, which it officially adopted on August 12 of that year.
In 1986, General Electric acquired NBC, resulting in GE's return to broadcasting and KCNC becoming the first owned-and-operated station of a major network in the state of Colorado. By 1990, KCNC-TV devoted nearly all of its programming hours outside of network shows to locally produced news programs, broadcasting nearly 40 hours of newscasts each week. General manager Roger Ogden felt his station's money was better spent on local programming, rather than paying syndication distributors to acquire nationally syndicated shows. In 1990, KCNC paid $11,000 to KRMA-TV in Denver to carry the station's election coverage, in order to allow channel 4 to air NBC's Tuesday night lineup, including Matlock and In the Heat of the Night.
By early 1995, KCNC-TV was airing 41 hours of news a week, and the station programmed either local-interest programming or newscasts at times when NBC didn't have network programming, because the station didn't buy syndicated programming. This ended almost as soon as Group W/CBS took over after the affiliation switch.

Switch to CBS (1995–present)

On July 14, 1994, CBS and Westinghouse Electric Corporation agreed to a long-term affiliation deal that would result in three of Westinghouse's television stations become CBS affiliates, joining the company's two longtime CBS affiliates. The deal initially called for CBS to sell its owned-and-operated Philadelphia station WCAU; however, CBS later discovered that if it sold WCAU in order to affiliate with KYW-TV, it would have had to pay hefty capital gains taxes on the profit of the transaction. To alleviate this problem, in November 1994, NBC decided to swap ownership of KCNC-TV and KUTV in Salt Lake City, along with the VHF channel 4 allocation and transmitter in Miami to CBS in exchange for WCAU and the VHF channel 6 allocation and transmitter in Miami, which for legal purposes made the deal an even trade.
KCNC-TV became Denver's CBS affiliate at 12:07 a.m. on September 10, 1995 after a rerun of Saturday Night Live ended, as part of a three-way affiliation swap involving each of the market's "Big Three" network affiliates. Longtime CBS affiliate KMGH-TV switched its affiliation to ABC through a multi-station affiliation agreement with KMGH's owners at the time, McGraw-Hill; while longtime ABC affiliate KUSA took the NBC affiliation. Under the terms of the CBS/Westinghouse deal, CBS a sold controlling ownership interest in KCNC to Westinghouse's broadcasting division Group W. The previous month on August 1, Westinghouse had acquired CBS for $5.4 billion; once the merger was finalized on November 24, 1995, KCNC-TV became a CBS-owned-and-operated station, making it one of a handful of television stations that have been owned by two different networks at separate points in its history., KCNC is the only television station in the Denver market that is an owned-and-operated station of one of the five major English language broadcast networks.
In 1998, CBS acquired the broadcast rights to the American Football Conference of the National Football League, moving the conference's game telecasts to the network from NBC ; as a result, KCNC regained the local television rights to the Broncos. Ironically, KCNC would later carry the Broncos' win in Super Bowl 50, the last game of quarterback Peyton Manning before he retired.
In 2003, KCNC changed its on-air branding to "CBS 4" to comply with the network mandated branding conventions.
The station was featured in the 2007 film Blades of Glory; along with other Denver area stations, it has also been mentioned on the Colorado-set Comedy Central series South Park. In one episode, Ron Zappolo is referenced as still being with channel 4.
KCNC became the last of the "big 3" stations in Denver to start a digital subchannel, launching Decades on January 23, 2015. On July 24, 2018, CBS and Weigel Broadcasting announced the creation of the Start TV subchannel which launched on September 3, 2018.

Digital television

Digital channels

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:
ChannelVideoAspectPSIP Short NameProgramming
4.11080iKCNC-TVMain KCNC-TV programming / CBS
4.2480iStart TV
4.3480iDabl

Analog-to-digital conversion

KCNC-TV shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 4, on June 12, 2009, the official date in which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 35. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former VHF analog channel 4.
As part of the SAFER Act, KCNC kept its analog signal on the air until July 12 to inform viewers of the digital television transition through a loop of public service announcements from the National Association of Broadcasters.

Programming

As an owned-and-operated station, KCNC-TV clears the entire CBS network schedule; however, it is one of the few CBS stations that airs the Saturday and Sunday editions of the CBS Evening News a half-hour earlier than most affiliates due to its hour-long 5:00 p.m. newscast and the Saturday edition of CBS This Morning two hours earlier than most CBS stations. Syndicated programs broadcast by KCNC include Hot Bench, Rachael Ray, Blue Bloods and Dr. Phil all of which are produced by corporate cousin CBS Television Distribution.

News operation

KCNC-TV presently broadcasts 30 hours of locally produced newscasts each week ; in addition, the station produces the public affairs program Together with Karen Leigh and sports highlight/discussion programs Saturday Sports Extra and AutoNation All Access.
In 1969, Bob Palmer, who served as anchor of the 10:00 p.m. newscast, left channel 4 for KLZ-TV, to replace John Rayburn, who left for an anchor job at a station in Kansas City. In the 1970s, the station ran its late evening newscasts on weekends at 11:00 p.m.. In 1981, KBTV news director Roger Ogden was hired by KOA-TV as its general manager; during his tenure, Ogden hired Marv Rockford and John Haralson, who had both worked alongside Ogden at channel 9, to join the station's news staff. Ogden named George Caldwell, Sam Allred and Ron Zappolo as its main anchor team. Janet Zappala and Alan Berg joined the station as well that year. In 1983, Marv Rockford was promoted to the news director position; while Peter Rogot was named the station's weekend anchor and Marty Aarons joined Bob Palmer and Janet Zappala as anchors; other staffers that joined channel 4 during 1983 included Wendy Bergen, Karen Layton, Marcia Neville, Tom Raponi and Mike Silva.
In 1982, KMGH-TV anchor Bill Stuart left to join KOA-TV, joining several other new hires such as Linda Farrell, Sylvia Cordy, Jeff Hullinger, Stephanie White, Merrie Lynn, Tom Martino and Tom Baer. That June, KOA-TV debuted a half-hour 4:30 p.m. newscast titled First News, which was co-anchored by Larry Green and Linda Farrell, with Suzanne McCarroll as the featured reporter on the new show; the program would eventually expand to an hour-long broadcast beginning at 4:00 p.m., and remained on the station until it was cancelled on May 26, 2006, in order to air The Oprah Winfrey Show in the timeslot. Also that year, the station's news helicopter crashed into a snowy stand of pine trees near Larkspur, while en route to the crash site of a commuter airplane, killing KOA-TV pilot/reporter Karen Key and mechanic Larry Zane; autopsy results later reported that Key had a blood alcohol content at the time of the crash at 0.09.
On the evening of June 18, 1984, Alan Berg—an attorney who hosted programs on both KOA radio and KOA-TV and was known for taking a largely liberal stand on issues, using an abrasive and combative demeanor to callers and guests with opposing views at times—was shot and killed in the driveway of his home by members of a White Nationalist group called The Order. The incident was adapted into Steven Dietz's 1988 play God's Country and the 1988 film Betrayed, as well as the film Brotherhood of Murder. Oliver Stone's 1988 film of Eric Bogosian's play Talk Radio drew inspiration from Berg's plight.
In 2002, Marv Rockford was forced out as general manager of KCNC and replaced by Walt DeHaven. Meanwhile, Tony Lopez moved from San Antonio to join channel 4. In 2003, Molly Hughes and Bill Stuart served as KCNC's primary evening news team for its 10:00 p.m. newscast, with Brian Maass and Rick Sallinger as reporters. On April 21, 2008, Karen Leigh replaced Molly Hughes as co-anchor of the weeknight newscasts. KCNC also began broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition on that date, becoming the second television station in the Denver market to make the conversion and the market's third station to broadcast all of its programming, including syndicated programs, in the format.
On May 27, 2010, KCNC implemented a new standardized graphics package for the CBS-owned stations, with the CBS Eye logo featured prominently in the package. KCNC retained 615 Music's "Newstime" as the theme music for its newscasts until October 6, 2011, when the station began using Gari Media Group's "CBS Enforcer News Music Collection" as most of CBS' other owned-and-operated stations did upon or before adopting the standardized graphics.
The 4:00 p.m. newscast returned to the schedule on June 13, 2011, only lasting less than three months before it was dropped a second time after the September 2, 2011, broadcast and replaced three days later by Dr. Phil. On February 3, 2013, KCNC debuted a "Mobile Weather Lab," a technologically equipped Chevrolet Suburban that is used for storm tracking and is equipped with a weather station that provides live data. On January 13, 2014, KCNC expanded its weekday morning newscast to 2½ hours, with the addition of a half-hour at 4:30 a.m.
KCNC-TV launched a streaming news service, CBSN Denver on February 19, 2020, as part of a rollout of similar services across the CBS-owned stations.

Notable former on-air staff

KCNC is carried on one of the largest translator networks in the country, which serves large portions of Colorado, Nebraska and Wyoming. All translators are located in Colorado unless otherwise listed.