KFMB-TV


KFMB-TV, virtual and VHF digital channel 8, is a dual CBS/CW-affiliated television station licensed to San Diego, California, United States. The station is owned by Tegna Inc. KFMB-TV's studios are located on Engineer Road in the Kearny Mesa section of San Diego, and its transmitter is located on Mount Soledad in La Jolla.

History

The station first signed on the air on May 16, 1949; it was the first television station to sign on in the San Diego market. The station was founded by Jack O. Gross, who also owned local radio station KFMB. San Diego Mayor Harley E. Knox was present at the station's first broadcast. The station cost Gross $300,000 to build. KFMB-TV has been a primary CBS affiliate since its sign-on, however in its early years, channel 8 also maintained secondary affiliations with ABC, NBC and the DuMont Television Network.
In October 1949, KFMB-TV signed an affiliation agreement with the short-lived Paramount Television Network; upon affiliating with Paramount, channel 8 quickly became that network's strongest affiliate. The station received a network feed of Paramount programs that included among others, Hollywood Opportunity, Meet Me in Hollywood, Magazine of the Week, Time For Beany and Your Old Buddy; the station aired six hours of Paramount programs each week. Since there was no technical transmission network to distribute Paramount programs to its affiliates, KFMB instead carried the network's programming via a transmitter link from the broadcast tower of Paramount's Los Angeles affiliate KTLA atop Mount Wilson, from the KFMB-TV transmitter site on Mount Soledad.
In November 1950, Gross sold the KFMB stations to John A. Kennedy, a former publisher of the San Diego Daily Journal newspaper. Three years later, Kennedy divested KFMB to a partnership of television producer Jack Wrather and industry executive Helen Alvarez. That same year, channel 8 lost its television monopoly in San Diego when the market received two new stations, Tijuana-based XETV and San Diego-licensed KFSD-TV, the latter of which assumed the NBC affiliation from channel 8. KFMB-TV continued to air ABC programs until 1956, when XETV was granted permission to take the ABC affiliation under a special agreement between the FCC and Mexican authorities, most notably the Secretariat of Communications and Public Works.
After the Wrather-Alvarez partnership broke up in 1957, Wrather kept the San Diego outlets and KERO-TV in upstate Bakersfield for his renamed broadcasting company, Marietta Broadcasting. In 1959, Wrather merged Marietta Broadcasting with Buffalo, New York-based Transcontinent Television Corporation. In 1964, as part of Transcontinent's exit from broadcasting, the KFMB stations were sold to Midwest Television, controlled by the family of Champaign, Illinois banker August Meyer. In 1999, Midwest Television divested its other outlets, WCIA in Champaign and WMBD-AM-TV and WPBG in Peoria, Illinois, leaving the KFMB stations as the company's only remaining properties.
In 2005, Midwest Television signed a ten-year affiliation contract extension for KFMB-TV to remain a CBS affiliate through 2015. The station restored its on-air branding to News 8 on September 19, 2005, after four years of using the "Local 8" brand. In early 2007, the station began to phase in a new branding as CBS 8, although newscasts maintained their previous title until 2013, when the station introduced a new logo similar to Miami's CBS O&O WFOR-TV and renamed its newscasts CBS News 8.
KFMB-TV shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 8, on February 17, 2009, the original target date in which full-power television stations in the United States were to transition from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition UHF channel 55, which was among the high band UHF channels that were removed from broadcasting use as a result of the transition, to its analog-era VHF channel 8.
On December 18, 2017, Tegna Inc. announced that it would acquire the KFMB stations for $325 million. The sale was completed on February 15, 2018, ending the Meyer family's stewardship of the stations after 53 years. KFMB-TV was separated from its radio sisters on March 17, 2020, when Tegna sold KFMB and KFMB-FM to Local Media San Diego, which in turn spun KFMB to iHeartMedia. Under the terms of the deal, Tegna retained exclusive control of the KFMB call sign for KFMB-TV, with the radio stations required to change their call letters within 30 days of the sale; LMSD changed KFMB-FM to KFBG that April, while iHeartMedia changed KFMB to KGB on July 4.

KFMB-DT2

KFMB-DT2, branded on-air as The CW San Diego, is the CW-affiliated second digital subchannel of KFMB-TV, broadcasting in 720p high definition on virtual and VHF channel 8.2. On cable and satellite, KFMB-DT2 is available on Cox Communications and AT&T U-Verse channel 6 and 1006, Spectrum channel 6 and digital channel 1212, and DirecTV channel 9.

History

On November 1, 2011, KFMB launched KFMB-DT2, an affiliate of MeTV, by way of an agreement between the network's owner, Weigel Broadcasting, and Midwest Television that was announced two months earlier on September 6.
On January 18, 2017, Midwest Television and network co-parent CBS Corporation announced that KFMB would become the San Diego affiliate of The CW, which would be carried on one of the station's digital subchannels; the station would replace Tijuana, Baja California-licensed XETV-TDT, which had been affiliated with the network since 2008. The move stemmed from a failure between CBS and XETV owner Grupo Televisa, during negotiations to renew an affiliation contract set to expire that September, to reach an agreement to keep the affiliation with XETV. KFMB-TV digital subchannel 8.2 was originally scheduled to take over the CW affiliation on September 1, 2017. However, these plans changed on January 26, 2017, when Televisa announced that it would drop all English-language programming from XETV on May 31, at the completion of a phased wind down of the station's San Diego operations ; KFMB consequently moved up the date of the switch to May 31, in order to align with XETV's planned conversion into a repeater of one of Televisa's Spanish-language networks.
In preparation, Midwest sold the local rights to the MeTV affiliation to the E. W. Scripps Company, owner of ABC affiliate KGTV; MeTV moved from KFMB-DT2 to the second digital subchannel of KGTV–which was also simulcast on KZSD-LP, which lost its Azteca affiliation to a subchannel of MyNetworkTV affiliate XHDTV-TDT, in preparation for the network's July 1 move to XHAS-TDT, which also lost its Telemundo affiliation to a subchannel of NBC affiliate KNSD –on May 1. KFMB-DT2's signal resolution was subsequently converted to 720p high-definition on May 21.
KFMB-DT2 added programming from The CW on May 31, 2017. The subchannel–which was rebranded as "The CW San Diego"–concurrently adopted a general entertainment schedule featuring a mix of syndicated shows not carried by other San Diego stations, repeat airings of certain programs seen on KFMB's main channel, and many first-run and off-network syndicated programs that previously aired on XETV prior to the switch to fill timeslots not occupied by CW network programs. It also launched a two-hour extension of KFMB's weekday morning newscast, along with separate, weeknight-only 7 and 10 p.m. newscasts produced for KFMB-DT2. The subchannel also took over XETV's slot on channel 6 on Cox, Spectrum and U-verse.
KFMB became the third television station in San Diego to affiliate with The CW: the network was originally affiliated with KSWB-TV beginning at The CW's launch on September 18, 2006, before moving to XETV on August 1, 2008, after Tribune Broadcasting agreed to switch KSWB to Fox, reportedly due to that network's concerns about having its programming airing on a Mexican-licensed station, even though XETV had operated as an English-language station since its 1953 sign-on. The switch resulted in KFMB-DT2 becoming the largest CW station by market size that is carried over a digital subchannel, and San Diego becoming the largest market with a subchannel-only CW affiliate as well as the largest overall in which any of the five major networks maintains a subchannel-only affiliation.
In September 2018, after XHDTV-TDT dropped MyNetworkTV to join Milenio Television, KFMB-DT2 added the programming service as a secondary affiliation, making it the fourth dual CW/MyNetworkTV station at the time, after WKTC in Columbia, South Carolina, WPWR-TV in Chicago, and WUAB in Cleveland. MyNetworkTV programming is carried as part of the subchannel's late night schedule.
On January 29, 2019, WUAB dropped MyNetworkTV to become a full-time CW affiliate, while WPWR-TV and WKTC became full-time MyNetworkTV affiliates in the fall of 2019 when their CW affiliations moved respectively to WCIU-TV and the DT2 subchannel of NBC affiliate WIS, leaving KFMB-DT2 as the only dual CW/MyNetworkTV affiliate in the country.

Digital channels

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:
ChannelVideoAspectPSIP Short NameProgramming
8.11080iKFMB-HDMain KFMB-TV programming / CBS
8.2720pKFMB-CWThe CW / MyNetworkTV
8.3480iGrit TVGrit
8.4480i16:9True CrimeTrue Crime Network
8.5480i16:9QuestQuest

Programming

For years, KFMB-TV has chosen to air The Bold and the Beautiful outside of the network's recommended 12:30 p.m. timeslot in the Pacific Time Zone. This stemmed from when the station had an hour-long noon newscast, as the station aired the program at 9:30 a.m. ; The Bold and the Beautiful had aired at 11:30 a.m. from 2009 to 2013, when it moved to 12:30 p.m. as the lead-in to The Young and the Restless. It also airs the Saturday edition of CBS This Morning two hours earlier than most CBS stations.
Due to requirements mandated by the FCC to broadcast educational and informational programs aimed at children, KFMB is required to show E/I-compliant programs supplied by CBS through the network's CBS Dream Team block; as a result, the station does not air live sporting events until 10 a.m. local time on Saturday mornings, even if coverage from CBS Sports has already started by that time elsewhere, though this may change in the fall of 2017 with the augmenting of The CW's One Magnificent Morning holding six hours of E/I programming. This requirement has not prevented other Pacific Time Zone affiliates of CBS from airing live sporting events that begin at 9 a.m. or earlier.
Syndicated programs broadcast by KFMB include Entertainment Tonight, Dr. Phil, The Insider, Criminal Minds and Judge Judy. Syndicated programs broadcast by KFMB-DT2 include Maury, Seinfeld, Rules of Engagement, The Doctors and 2 Broke Girls.

Sports programming

KFMB-TV has served two stints as the broadcast television partner of San Diego Padres baseball, with the first running from 1980 through 1983 and the second covering the 1995 and 1996 campaigns. Channel 8 is the last San Diego over-the-air station to regularly televise Padres games locally; with the exception of games carried by Fox, the team has been cable-exclusive since 1997.
In 1998, KFMB-TV was awarded the local broadcast rights to San Diego Chargers preseason game telecasts; that same year, CBS acquired the rights to the American Football Conference, making channel 8 the station of record for the team, succeeding KNSD in that capacity. This would remain so until 2017, when the team returned to Los Angeles after 55 years, thus ending channel 8's status as the team's unofficial home station. Channel 8 also simulcast the Chargers' appearances on NFL Network's Thursday Night Football and ESPN's Monday Night Football, as per NFL rules which require games aired on cable networks to be simulcast on a local broadcast station in the team's home market.

News operation

KFMB presently broadcasts 31½ hours of locally produced newscasts each week, and also produces an additional 15 hours a week of local newscasts for KFMB-DT2. Unlike most CBS affiliates, KFMB does not run a local newscast in the 6:00 p.m. half-hour, with the station airing its secondary early evening newscast at 6:30 p.m. instead. KFMB operates the only news helicopter in the San Diego market; its "Chopper 8" helicopter provides aerial video to most of the market's news-producing television stations through Local News Service agreements.
Some famous KFMB alumni include former weather anchor Raquel Tejada, talk show host Regis Philbin, television host Sarah Purcell, CNN and former CBS anchor Paula Zahn, original Access Hollywood host Larry Mendte, and eventual NBC correspondents Don Teague and Dawn Fratangelo. KFMB has led in newscast viewership in the San Diego market for most of its history, dating back to the 1950s when Ray Wilson was the popular anchor of the city's first half-hour newscast. When Wilson stepped down in 1973, KFMB slipped to a distant second behind KGTV, rebounding only in the late 1970s and early 1980s when former KGTV producer Jim Holtzman was hired by the station as its news director. Holtzman formed a popular and acclaimed news team consisting of anchors Michael Tuck and Allison Ross, weather anchor Clark Anthony and sports anchor Ted Leitner. By the end of 1979, KFMB had risen back to the #1 position, remaining there until 1984 when Tuck suddenly moved to KGTV and helped that station overtake KFMB for the remainder of the decade.
Holtzman tried in vain to compete by experimenting with a different format for the 11:00 p.m. newscast called This Day which emphasized a softer, humanized format and attempted to find a common thread within the newscast. There was no regular anchor; instead Hal Clement, Loren Nancarrow, Dawn Fratangelo and Susan Lichtman formed an ensemble of anchor/reporters who alternated between anchoring, filing detailed reports and giving live interviews. Computer graphics were used heavily, and Dave Grusin's "Night Lines" served as the newscast's theme music.
Although it was innovative for its time, This Day proved to be a dismal failure as viewers responded negatively to the awkward format; within nine months, KFMB reverted to a more traditional late evening newscast. However, the news ratings for KFMB went into a deep decline for more than a decade as popular mainstays like Marty Levin and Allison Ross either left voluntarily or were fired and were replaced by younger staffers like Stan Miller and Susan Roesgen.
Eventually by the 1990s, Hal Clement would assume early evening anchor duties alongside Susan Peters and later, Denise Yamada to mixed results as the station continued to battle KGTV and KNSD, primarily in the 11:00 p.m. timeslot where the CBS lead-in at the time was particularly weaker. By the early 2000s, Michael Tuck's brief return following Clement's departure for KGTV and CBS's resurgence at the start of the decade helped bring KFMB back to first place in the early evenings. By 2006, KFMB, which had become the most watched television station in San Diego from sign-on to sign-off, finished in first place in the noon and evening news timeslots.
During coverage of the California wildfires of October 2007, reporter Larry Himmel took viewers on a walkthrough of his own home, which had been destroyed in the fires. Audio of the station's news programming was also simulcast on KFMB and KFMB-FM for an extended period of time. On January 28, 2007, KFMB became the first television station in the San Diego market to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition; with the upgrade, the station unveiled a new set for its newscasts.

Notable former on-air staff