| San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose, California | |
|---|---|
| Branding | ABC 7 (general) ABC 7 News (newscasts) |
| Slogan | Discover ABC 7 |
| Channels | Digital: 7 (VHF) |
| Subchannels | (see article) |
| Translators | 35 (UHF) San Jose (construction permit) |
| Affiliations | ABC |
| Owner | Disney/ABC (KGO Television, Inc.) |
| First air date | May 5, 1949 |
| Call letters' meaning | General Electric Oakland (KGO radio's former owner) |
| Sister station(s) | KMKY |
| Former channel number(s) | Analog: 7 (VHF, 1949-2009) Digital: 24 (UHF, 1999-2009) |
| Transmitter power | 24 kW |
| Height | 509 m |
| Facility ID | 34470 |
| Website | www.abc7news.com |
KGO-TV, channel 7, is an owned-and-operated television station of the Walt Disney Company-owned American Broadcasting Company, based in San Francisco, California. Its studios are located in the ABC Broadcast Center on Front and Vallejo streets in downtown San Francisco, while its transmitter is atop the iconic Sutro Tower, located between Mount Sutro and the Twin Peaks in central San Francisco, along with the Bay Area's other major television stations.
Until April 18, 2011, the station was viewable in the Salinas/Santa Cruz/Monterey Bay area exclusively via cable and satellite.
For antenna viewers, KGO-DT was available over-the-air on RF channel 24 until the digital transition. It has since returned to RF channel 7.
In the few areas of the western United States where viewers cannot receive ABC programs over-the-air,
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The station signed on the air for the first time on May 5, 1949, as Northern California's second-oldest TV station, behind Associated Broadcasters' KPIX (channel 5, later sold to Westinghouse Broadcasting). In fact, KPIX had a hand in getting KGO-TV on the air, as the CBS-affiliated (and now CBS-owned) station produced informational programming on how to receive and view ABC's channel 7. KGO-TV's original studios were located in the renovated Sutro Mansion atop Mount Sutro in San Francisco, next to the transmitter tower it shared with KPIX.
Channel 7 was the fourth original ABC-owned and operated TV station to sign-on, after outlets in New York, Chicago and Detroit. KGO-TV is ABC's oldest O&O station in California, as its sister station KECA-TV (now KABC-TV) in Los Angeles did not sign on the air until September 1949. In addition, it is the only ABC station to keep its original call letters, which were inherited from KGO radio (810 AM and 103.7 FM, now KKSF). In addition to airing ABC programming, KGO-TV also aired syndicated programs from the Paramount Television Network. Among the Paramount programs aired were Time For Beany,[1] Hollywood Reel,[2] Sandy Dreams,[3] Hollywood Wrestling,[4] and Cowboy G-Men.[5]
Channel 7 had a limited broadcasting schedule during its first year on the air. It wasn't until September 1950 that the station announced, in the San Francisco Chronicle, that it would finally broadcast seven days a week.[6] For much of the 1950s, the station signed on late in the morning, especially on the weekends.
In 1954, KGO-TV moved to one of the most modern broadcasting facilities on the West Coast (at the time), at 277 Golden Gate Avenue.
For many years, Saturday programming began with King Norman's Kingdom of Toys, a popular children's program hosted by the owner of a San Francisco toy store, Norman Rosenberg.[7] Born in 1918, Rosenberg was a former naval officer when he began the program in 1954, joined by his wife Doris as Page Joy. It ran until 1961. The Rosenbergs eventually owned a chain of 21 stores in three states. Doris Rosenberg died from colon cancer on January 10, 2009, at the age of 85.[8]
As an ABC O&O station, KGO-TV originated some daytime network shows, including programs hosted by fitness advocate Jack La Lanne, singer Tennessee Ernie Ford, and entertainer Gypsy Rose Lee. Syndicated game shows Oh My Word and The Anniversary Game were produced at KGO-TV for Circle Seven Productions. In the mid-1950s, KGO-TV telecast live weeknight variety shows hosted by KSFO disc jockey Don Sherwood, until Sherwood was fired for making a political commentary in defiance of a warning from the station's management. Today, KGO-TV broadcasts from studios at 900 Front Street, which it has occupied since 1985. It shares the facility with KGO Radio (AM 810), KSFO and KMKY, although the former two are now owned by Cumulus Media.[9]
In September 1962, KGO began carrying ABC's first color program, the animated series The Jetsons, followed by The Flintstones. In the mid 1960s KGO became the first Bay Area station to transmit local programs in compatible color, including its newscasts.
For most of its existence, KGO-TV was the only network-owned-and-operated station in the Bay Area, even throughout the time when ABC was going through ownership changes when Capital Cities Communications bought out ABC and merged with the network in 1985 before being sold to Disney in 1996. As such, the station did not heavily pre-empt network programming unlike its local competitors or its sister stations—such as Philadelphia's WPVI-TV, Houston's KTRK-TV and Fresno's KFSN-TV -- which were known for doing so in those days. The distinction ended in 1995 when several other stations over the next ten years became network-owned stations—notably KBHK (today's KBCW) becoming a charter member of UPN (which the station's then-owner was a partner in), KPIX becoming a CBS O&O and KNTV becoming an NBC O&O, in that order. (As of 2007, some exceptions to this policy may be made when breaking news events or selected ABC Sports programs warrant exclusive coverage, in which case Granite Broadcasting Corporation's independent station, KOFY, may pick up the pre-empted ABC programming scheduled for the time period.)
KSBW, the NBC affiliate for the Monterey-Salinas market, announced on December 20, 2010, that the station will carry ABC programming on its second digital subchannel beginning in Spring 2011,[10] which means that KGO will no longer serve Monterey. The new channel, identified as Central Coast ABC on the air, began broadcasting on April 18, 2011, using the 720p format like most ABC stations. KSBW now owns the rights as the ABC affiliate for that market, and is carried on digital subchannel 8.2, as well as channel 7 on Comcast cable systems and channel 16 on Dish Network, with Charter cable, DirecTV, and AT&T U-verse. In that process, it replaced KGO-TV as the area's ABC affiliate in that market.
KGO-TV was one of the earliest ABC stations to use the original Circle 7 logo (along with sister station WBKB in Chicago). When it was rebranded from "Channel 7" to "ABC7" (temporarily branded "Channel 7 ABC" 1996-1997), the ABC logo was just simply attached to the Circle 7 on this station, its sister stations and others across the country.
The station's digital channel is multiplexed:
Digital channels
| Channel | Programming |
|---|---|
| 7.1 | main KGO programming / ABC |
| 7.2 | Live Well Network HD |
| 7.3 | Live Well Network SD |
KGO-TV shut down its analog signal on June 12, 2009 as part of the DTV transition,[11] it moved back to channel 7.[12] Now KGO-TV is the only station to retain the same channel allocation in the Bay Area post-transition and the only other station alongside KNTV to remain on the VHF dial.
KGO has a construction permit for a fill-in translator on UHF Channel 35, serving the southern portion of the viewing area, including San Jose.[13]
As of May 2010, Channel 7.2 ran Live Well HD network programming. In 2007, KGO was among the few commercial television stations in California that scheduled an alternative set of programs on a digital channel. Channel 7.2 then simulcast most KGO-TV-produced programs, but also re-ran them throughout the day. Channel 7.2 also re-ran ABC News programming at non-traditional times, such as World News at 7 pm on weeknights and Nightline at 9 am and 7:30 pm on many weekdays. Some programs on channel 7.2, such as Commonwealth Club Speaker's Luncheon and reruns of the 1960s ABC primetime western The Guns of Will Sonnett, were not shown on Channel 7. As of now, most programming aired on 7.2 is programming from the Live Well Network.
The station carries a high profile lineup of daytime programming with shows such as Live with Regis and Kelly), Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, The Oprah Winfrey Show, Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune. The former two programs are produced by the station's corporate cousin, Buena Vista Television, while the latter three are produced by the now-defunct King World Productions. Jeopardy! and the Wheel have aired on the station permanently since 1992 after moving from KRON. Only The Oprah Winfrey Show has always aired on KGO-TV throughout the program's tenure (1986–2011). At one point, it also ran Donahue since the 1980s to complement Oprah in the afternoon lineup after Donahue relocated from KTVU. But in the fall of 1995 KGO-TV became the first affiliate in the country to drop the talk show, one year before its cancellation. (NBC-owned WNBC in New York City was the only other affiliate to drop Donahue as well shortly afterwards.) The station also airs the pre-show of the Academy Awards (produced by sister station KABC-TV in Los Angeles). The station sometimes aired the Bay to Breakers race in the 1980s and the KGO Cure-a-thon with its radio partner, KGO-AM 810. KGO-TV was the first station to produce earthquake documentaries of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake on April 8, 2006.
In the 1970s and 1980s, KGO-TV produced weekday talk/variety shows in the 9:00 to 10:00 a.m. timeslot, after the national Good Morning America broadcast ended each day. A.M. San Francisco was the name from about 1975 until late 1987 or early 1988, when it was replaced with Good Morning, Bay Area, hosted by Susan Sikora. Hosts of A.M. San Francisco included the husband-and-wife team of Fred LaCosse and Terry Lowry. (Other ABC owned-and-operated stations produced their own A.M. programs in the 1980s. For example, A.M. Chicago at WLS-TV evolved into the Oprah Winfrey Show, and Live with Regis and Kelly evolved from the similar A.M. program on WABC. For a week or two in the summer of 1988, A.M. Los Angeles was simulcast on KGO-TV, with a few KGO-TV produced segments.)
From June 26, 2006 to September 10, 2010, KGO-TV broadcast a locally-produced weekday variety show called The View From The Bay, hosted by Spencer Christian and Janelle Wang. The hour-long show focused on hot spots as well as interviews and other interests in the Bay Area. Aimed toward female viewers, the show aired Mondays-Fridays at 3 p.m., and was available to watch online while the show was on the air.[1] The View From the Bay also aired nightly on weekdays in Los Angeles on KABC-TV digital subchannel 7.2 at 10 p.m. and at various times on digital subchannels of other ABC O&O stations. On Live Well HD, though, it was aired as "Everyday Living", which was aired on all ABC O&O stations as of July 2010. [2]
On September 13, 2010, "7 Live" debuted in the 3 p.m. weekday time slot. It is a KGO-TV production hosted by Brian Copeland, a longtime KGO-AM radio host, former contributor to KTVU's "Mornings on Two" and playwright of the autobiographical "Not a Genuine Black Man" one-man show. Copeland is aided by Lizzie Bermudez, who stands at a computerized podium and alternatively act as "sidekick" or "sounding board" to Copeland and shares material from her computer. Bermudez focuses on "tech" &"culture"/"pop" matters. "7 Live" has an innovative format with a studio audience called "The Voice Box" and continuous written commentary from viewers conveyed by e-mail, Facebook and Twitter and read aloud by Copeland and Bermudez during the program. Copeland spends most of the program walking about the studio, peppering his material with humorous comments. "7 Live" ends with Copeland sharing a "Thought of the Day."
The premiere focused on the 2010 San Bruno pipeline explosion (that occurred four days earlier), an offer of bail to an American detainee in Iran and germ contamination on supermarket grocery cart handles. Jennifer Jolly was the technology/social media co-host from a computerized podium (on a par with Bermudez) from the first broadcast until August, 2011, when she became a frequent technology and social media guest contributor for the nationally televised morning program, CBS Early Show.
The "7" in its logo is not the familiar "Circle 7," but instead a modification of a northeastward-pointing arrow. The program's moniker is "tv_with_attitude." The program plays off the "seven" theme by sometimes incorporating a seven-item list (referred to as "The List") into the program. "7 Live" is reminiscent of "The Site," a program on the MSNBC cable network in 1996.
KGO-TV had followed the lead of its sister station in New York City, WABC-TV, and adopted the Eyewitness News format for its newscasts in the late 1960s. However, the Eyewitness News name was already used on KPIX-TV, which inherited the version of it from its then-sister station KYW-TV in Philadelphia. As a result, KGO-TV instead called its newscasts Channel 7 News Scene throughout the 1970s, and Channel 7 News during the 1980s (beginning in 1982) and much of the 1990s before switching to ABC 7 News. Also, along with the other ABC O&O's, KGO-TV used an edited version of the "Tar Sequence" from the soundtrack of "Cool Hand Luke" as the opening/closing theme of news broadcasts starting in 1969.
The station broadcast a 4:30 p.m. newscast named Early News in 1970, anchored by Ray Tannehill and John Reed King, with Pete Giddings covering weather and Bob Fouts presenting sports. Lu Hurley provided live helicopter traffic coverage, one the first television programs in the San Francisco Bay Area to offer that feature. KGO-TV was one of the last ABC affiliates that broadcast the network evening news program in the 7:00 p.m. time slot. By early 1992, ABC World News Tonight had been displaced to 5:30 p.m, replacing the last half of the 5:00 p.m. news hour.
KGO-TV also produces an hour-long 9 p.m. newscast for independent station KOFY (channel 20); the only other ABC O&O to do this is WTVD in North Carolina. It usually re-airs stories prepared for the 6 p.m. newscast and ABC News material. Dan Ashley often serves as the solo anchor.
KGO-TV has long broadcast an 11:00 p.m. newscast. It was a half-hour program known as "Channel Seven News Scene Tonight" in 1980 and "Channel 7 News Tonight" in the late 1980s. It expanded to 35 minutes in the early 1990s. Today it is called "ABC 7 News at 11 p.m." Occasionally it has been re-broadcast overnight, Tuesday through Saturday. In the 2000s, a staple of the 11 p.m. Sunday newscast was Richard Hart's segment about technological developments, alternatively titled "Next Step and "Drive to Discover."
The station did, however, follow other aspects of news branding at the other ABC O&Os. The station currently utilizes the market's first helicopter equipped to shoot and transmit high definition video. The helicopter branded "Sky 7HD" made its on-air debut in February 2006. Due to current logistical and equipment limitations, video from Sky 7HD at times is only available in standard definition television 4:3 aspect ratio. When this occurs, the helicopter is branded simply "Sky 7". Also following the leads of its sister stations, KGO began broadcasting its newscasts in high definition on February 17, 2007, becoming the second news operation in the Bay Area to make this transition (after KTVU). It should be noted that the KGO-TV cable-relay channel in the Monterey/Salinas area does not transmit a high definition signal.
As of August 2010, KGO is currently one of the very few ABC O&O stations that carries a 4:30 a.m. newscast. However, ABC does not air America This Morning live on KGO, as it normally airs in that timeslot, so the station currently broadcasts it on a tape-delay at 4 a.m. Since mid-2008, KGO is the second station to start its early morning newscast before 5 a.m., as KNTV added its 4:30 a.m. newscasts a few months later as a result of its 11 a.m. newscast being canceled. With that, KGO is the only station remaining in the San Francisco Bay Area to air an 11 a.m. newscast. On May 26, 2011, immediately following the end of The Oprah Winfrey Show which lasted for 25 years, KGO debuted a 4 p.m. newscast, anchored by Carolyn Johnson and Larry Beil.[14] On September 10, 2011, KGO-TV will expand its weekend 11 p.m. newscasts to one hour.[15]
On July 20, 2007 long-time main news anchor and KGO radio talk show host Pete Wilson died following a massive heart attack suffered during a hip replacement procedure at Stanford University Medical Center in Palo Alto, California. He was 62 years old. The station aired extensive tributes to Wilson when his death was publicly announced the following day. His final newscast and radio show were on Wednesday July 18, 2007.
Buoyed by a sluggish economy and conversion to the "Ignite" automated control room system, KGO-TV briefly operated under what was—by all accounts—a failed experiment in having one person anchor an entire primary or "main" newscast. During this ill-fated experiment, Cheryl Jennings anchored the 5:00 p.m. weekday news by herself, and Dan Ashley anchored the 11:00 p.m. news solo. Research and ratings later proved both shows had suffered dramatically during the experiment, though Ashley still anchors an additional KGO-TV newscast produced for the independent station in San Francisco, KOFY, Channel 20.
Anchors
Weather team
Sports team
Reporters
7Live
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