KCNS

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KCNS
San Francisco, California
Channels	38 (UHF) analog, 39 (UHF) digital
Affiliations	Shop at Home Jewelry Television
Owner	The E.W. Scripps Company (WRAY, Inc.) (Sale to Multicultural Television pending)
Founded	1968 (KUDO/KVOF) August 19, 1985 (current license/incarnation)
Call letters meaning	K California's Network for Shopping
Former callsigns	KWBB (1987-88)
Former affiliations	Independent (general) (1968-71, 1987-88) Independent (religious) (1970s-80s) Chinese (1988-98)
Transmitter Power	5,000 kW Analog LIC 1,000 kW Digital LIC 468 kW Digital STA

KCNS is also the call letters for the closed-circuit student run TV station at Pacific Lutheran University in Parkland, Washington.

KCNS is a home shopping television station in San Francisco, California, in the United States. It is owned by The E.W. Scripps Company, and carries both the Shop at Home and Jewelry Television home shopping networks. The station operates on Channel 38 analog and 39 digital, covering the entire San Francisco Bay Area.

[edit] History

Channel 38 originally signed on the air in December 1968 as KUDO-TV. The station initially broadcast financial programming in the mornings and early afternoons. The station also aired movies at night, most of them black and white from the 1930s and 1940s. The station went dark in 1971. In the early 1970's, the Faith Center (owned by Eugene Scott) acquired the station for a cheap price and retruned it to the air as KVOF-TV. However, the station, along with sister stations KHOF-FM (now KKLA) in Los Angeles and KHOF-TV (now KPXN) in San Bernardino, California, lost it's FCC license after Faith Center refused to give financial records to the FCC. KVOF-TV thus went off the air on or around December 30, 1985.

The current KCNS license began broadcasting in January of 1986 as KWBB (its call letters were assigned on August 19, 1985), and was located on San Bruno Mountain. It shared a building on Radio Road with KTSF, and commenced operations by entering into an agreement with televangelist Dr. Gene Scott and the successors to Faith Center to use the lease the existing broadcast facitities owned by Faith Center. In effect allowing West Coast United Broadcasting to have a transmitter site for "free" by simply selling some air-time back to Dr. Gene Scott! Thus it ran infomercials and other programming during the day, retaining Dr. Gene Scott's programming from the old channel 38 at night.

In May of 1988, the station was sold to Global Broadcasting Systems and changed its call sign to KCNS. The station switched to Chinese & Filipino programming, with studios at the Hamms Building in San Francisco. In addition, the power was increased to 5 megawatts and the transmitter moved to Sutro Tower in August 1989, becoming the last analog television station to move there.

In 1998, Global Broadcasting went into bankruptcy and sold KCNS to Shop at Home, who switched the station to their home shopping programming.

On May 16, 2006, parent company E.W. Scripps announced that Shop at Home would be suspending operations, effective June 22, 2006. [1] However, the network temporarily ceased operations on June 21, and KCNS switched to Jewelry Television (and, on June 23, a mixture of both networks), which will remain on the station until a buyer for the station is found.

On September 26, 2006, Scripps announced that it was selling its Shop at Home stations, including KCNS, to Multicultural Television of New York City for $170 million. [2]

[edit] See also

• Eugene Scott

[edit] External links

• KCNS Pacific Lutheran TV
• Query the FCC's TV station database for KCNS