KRON-TV
Encyclopedia
KRON-TV, virtual channel
4 (digital channel 38), is a television station
in San Francisco, California
, serving as the Bay Area
affiliate of the MyNetworkTV
programming service; the station is owned by Young Broadcasting
. The station's studios are located in the Western Addition
section of downtown San Francisco, and its transmitter antenna is located atop Sutro Tower
.
The station brands itself as KRON 4, keeping the station's previous branding while adding "My" to go with the network's naming conventions, only during MyNetworkTV programming. It is changed again to "KRON 4" during other programming. KRON can also be seen in Ukiah
on K41AF channel 41.
From its founding in 1949 until December 2001, KRON was affiliated full-time with NBC
, and was one of that network's strongest affiliates; since April 2010, KRON has an informal secondary affiliation with NBC, carrying network programs that are preempted by NBC O&O
KNTV
(channel 11) due to special programming. The station has the distinction of being the only MyNetworkTV affiliate in existence with a Big Three-style newscast schedule (i.e.; in that it carries morning, 4, 5, 6 and 11 p.m. newscasts), totaling around 60 hours each week. It is also one of the few television stations in the U.S. to carry a six-hour morning newscast, which airs from 4-10 a.m.
before that agency placed a moratorium on new television station licenses that would last the next four years) came open for bidding, it soon became obvious that the license would go to either NBC or the deYoung family, publishers of the San Francisco Chronicle
. NBC wanted an owned and operated station in the Bay Area alongside its West Coast flagship radio station
, KNBC (680 AM, now KNBR
). However, in an upset, the deYoungs won the license. They brought the station on the air on November 15, 1949 as NBC affiliate KRON-TV. The station's call letters
come from a modification of the paper's nickname in the Bay Area, "The Chron." KRON-TV originally broadcast from studios located in the basement of the Chronicle building at Fifth and Mission streets.
KRON-TV originally broadcast from transmitter facilities on San Bruno Mountain
; huge white letters "NBC" were placed near the summit of Radio Peak. In August 1959, the Chronicle reported that the tower was severely damaged by an unusually strong thunderstorm, requiring major repairs before KRON could return to the air. Newscasts benefited from the resources of the Chronicle and there was cooperation between KRON and the newspaper.
.
as Mayor Art. Bay area kids, known as the "City Council", joined Mayor Art in the studio each day. The show featured Popeye cartoons mixed with science demonstrations, a newsreel feature entitled "Mayor Art's Almanac," games, prizes, and a sock puppet named "Ring-A-Ding."
in the Western Addition neighborhood, where channel 4 is still headquartered today. It was the former site of the Roman Catholic cathedral of San Francisco. The television transmitter was moved to Sutro Tower on July 4, 1973. The FM transmitter remained on San Bruno Mountain.
Until the late 1970s, KRON-TV was infamous for being very San Francisco-centric in its news coverage and audience targeting, an approach that would become costly to the station as growth in areas outside San Francisco soared. Realizing this enabled KRON-TV to become the dominant station in the Bay Area. Some remember KRON's early morning news digests in the 1960s utilizing sign language
, as well as the "Newswatch Sign-Off Edition" airing (then) immediately after The Tonight Show
.
During the 1980s, KRON continued its dominance by airing top-rated syndicated programming, including the Merv Griffin
-produced game shows Jeopardy!
and Wheel of Fortune (the original NBC daytime versions of both Jeopardy and Wheel also aired on KRON), as well as Entertainment Tonight
, which has aired on the station for most of its run. The game show pair would move to ABC
-owned KGO-TV
(channel 7) permanently in 1992 after KRON-TV experimented with its "early prime time" schedule that year (see below).
In the late 1980s, KRON-TV was among the few local television stations in the United States that produced a game show. Claim to Fame was a weekly half-hour show hosted by Patrick Van Horn
that usually ran on Saturday evenings. In that era, KRON also produced a Saturday morning children's program called Buster and Me.
Several people often ask what piece of music played just before the station would sign off every night (from the '70's into the late '80's) with scenic rustic shots around the Bay Area? It was Gabriel Faure's "Pavane," Opus 50. A copy of it is accessible via Youtube.
KRON produced Bay Area Backroads from the mid-1980s to 2008. The half-hour program profiled places and people in the greater San Francisco Bay Area, and occasionally beyond. Hosts included Jerry Graham and Doug McConnell
; it generally aired on Sunday evenings.
During its time as an NBC affiliate, KRON-TV aired most games of the Oakland Raiders
(between 1965–81, and again from 1995–97), which were part of at first the American Football League
, which had a contract with NBC
from 1965–69, and then the American Football Conference
of the National Football League
, which inherited the AFL's deal with NBC from 1970-97. Between 1982 and 1994, the Raiders played in Los Angeles, and so KRON-TV was not the home station for the Raiders those years.
, decided to liquidate their assets. KRON-TV's longtime newspaper partner, the San Francisco Chronicle, would be sold to its current owner, Hearst Corporation
.
NBC, whose relationship with KRON-TV had been contentious at times over the previous half-century, had made many offers for channel 4 over the years, but the deYoungs turned them down each time. It finally saw a chance to get an owned and operated station in what was then the United States' fifth-largest television market and quickly jumped into the bidding war for channel 4. NBC was seen as the frontrunner until it was outbid at the last second by New York City
-based Young Broadcasting
, then-owner of KCAL-TV
in Los Angeles
and several medium-to-small market stations. Young's purchase price for the station ($
750 million at the outset, rising to $820 million by closing) was a record price for a single station that stands to this day. To help finance the down payment, Young was forced to sell WKBT
in La Crosse, Wisconsin
to Morgan Murphy Media.
In response to losing, NBC supplied Young with a list of demands that would have required Young to run the station under the conventions of an NBC-owned outlet. For example, NBC wanted Young to re-brand KRON-TV as NBC 4, and run the entire network schedule in pattern with no pre-emptions except for local news emergencies. Rather than give in to NBC's demands, Young decided not to renew channel 4's affiliation contract when it ran out in 2002. Granite Broadcasting's KNTV
(channel 11) in San Jose
-- at that time the market's WB affiliate, but prior to 2000 was an ABC affiliate primarily serving San Jose and the Santa Cruz-Monterey area—later approached NBC with a proposal to pay $37 million annually for the rights to broadcast its programming, and the network accepted the deal. In December 2001, however, NBC purchased KNTV for a fraction of KRON's sale price — $230 million. That makes NBC the only network in the Bay Area to switch from one local station to another.
The affiliation switch became official at the stroke of midnight on January 1, 2002, ending KRON-TV's 52-year affiliation with NBC. The last NBC program broadcast by channel 4 was Crossing Jordan
, which aired from 10:00 to 11:00 P.M. on December 31, 2001. On September 12, 2005, KNTV's transmitter was moved from Loma Prieta Peak
along the San Andreas Fault
south of San Jose, to Mount San Bruno south of San Francisco, former home to the city's TV stations that are now located on the Sutro Tower (ABC programming was carried in the Santa Cruz-Monterey area on cable via ABC-owned KGO-TV
in San Francisco and since April 18, 2011, NBC affiliate KSBW-TV's secondary digital channel).
's new MyNetworkTV
, and is currently the second largest MNTV station that was not previously an affiliate of either the WB or UPN
networks (the other is KDFI
in Dallas
).
When KRON-TV began carrying MyNetworkTV programming, it eliminated the hour-long 9 p.m. newscast. However, KRON-TV is not following the standard practice of airing MNTV programming from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. like most Pacific Time Zone affiliates. Instead, it airs "KRON 4 News" during the 8 p.m. hour, and MNTV programming from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m., one hour later than most affiliates. Oregon MNTV affiliates KPDX
in Portland
and KEVU in Eugene
also air MyNetworkTV programming in this slot. The MyNetworkTV affiliate in Seattle
, KMYQ, now KZJO, also deviated from the standard My Network TV programming schedule from 7-9 p.m. until September 13, 2010, when that station moved MyNetworkTV programming to 11pm-1am. KQCA-TV also aired MyNetworkTV programming from 7-9 p.m. but on September 21, 2009, KQCA reverted back to airing the MNTV lineup in its 8-10 p.m. timeslot.
. On February 13, 2008, Young made a filing to place the company under chapter 11 bankruptcy
protection. Debt incurred on the $820 million purchase price for KRON-TV was believed to be one key factor behind the company's cash problems. Young originally hoped to close the sale by the end of the first quarter of 2008, but no buyer emerged.
In January 2009, after failing to meet the minimum standards for being listed on NASDAQ, Young Broadcasting was dropped from the exchange. One month later, on February 13, 2009, the company declared Chapter 11
bankruptcy
. Young cancelled a planned auction of all 10 of its stations on July 14, 2009 at the last minute, a move believed to have been due to lack of suitable bids. Instead of the auction, Young and its secured lenders reached a deal where the lenders (among them Wachovia
and Credit Suisse
) would take control of the company, and Gray Television
would take over management of seven of Young's ten stations. KRON-TV was one of only three stations not included in the management deal; the other two, WATE-TV
and WLNS-TV
, compete with Gray-owned stations in their markets, but KRON does not.
In February 2010, Young discussed the possibility of entering into a shared services
agreement with NBC Universal
, the owner of KNTV.http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/449501-NBC_in_Talks_to_Partner_with_KRON.php At a station meeting in November 2011, it was announced there would be no shared services agreement, and that the station planned to move to a smaller, state-of-the-art facility within the next year to year and a half. Within a week, it was also learned the station's master control would be operated remotely from Atlanta, GA beginning in mid-January.
on April 2, 2010, KRON-TV began an informal secondary affiliation with NBC, bringing NBC programs back to KRON for the first time in eight years. KRON carries NBC programming that is preempted by San Francisco Giants baseball or other special programming airing on KNTV.
The Giants' contract with KNTV ended after the 2010 season. However, due to the common ownership between KNTV and Comcast SportsNet Bay Area (which produces the Giants' broadcasts), and also due to CSN Bay Area taking over the operations of KNTV's sports department, selected Giants games will continue to air on KNTV. Thus, KRON will continue to air NBC programming pre-empted by a Giants broadcast.
is used to display KRON's virtual channel
as 4 on digital television receivers.
was expected to launch as a digital subchannel
on KRON-DT2 as part of a test of the network by Young Broadcasting, along with sister stations WBAY-TV
in Green Bay
and WTEN
in Albany, New York
. However the network never came to KRON, and their HD signal has remained on 4.2 since the announcement, along with an intermittent traffic conditions channel on 4.3. RTV is currently carried in the market by KQSL of Fort Bragg
and KCNS
in San Francisco.
In late 2010 Young announced carriage of The Country Network on several of their stations, including KRON. However as in RTV's case, TCN never came to the station, and TCN was dropped by all New Young stations by November 2011.
++ Created by Mark Sowinski & Jim Swanson
Many of the locally-produced programs aired on KRON-TV from 2005–present, are a collaborative effort between Mark Sowinski, director of business development and Jim Swanson, executive producer.
aired on KRON when it debuted in 1981 and has been on the station's schedule ever since, with the exception of late 1988 to early 1992, when it aired on KGO-TV. Its airtime in fall 1981 was 6:30 p.m. By fall 1982, it had moved to the coveted "prime time access" slot at 7:30 p.m., where it remained until it moved to KGO-TV in fall 1988. In early 2011, Entertainment Tonight
aired on KRON-DT at 7:30 p.m. and 11:30 p.m.
Another World
, which would eventually re-air on the station in the early 1990s. Two NBC daytime game shows, 50 Grand Slam
and Just Men!
, were never seen in the Bay Area.
Also, the station did not air NBC soap operas in the traditional pattern. For example, KRON-TV aired Days of our Lives
after Another World instead of the standard network programming—at 2 p.m. or 3 p.m. depending on the season and time slot. Channel 4 also pre-empted some prime time programming. Similar to KCRA-TV
, a fellow NBC station in neighboring Sacramento
, KRON-TV stopped airing the T-NBC lineup on Saturday mornings in the early 1990s. Historically, NBC was far less tolerant of preemptions than the other networks, but has recently eased its standards. The network would resort to purchasing stations for the sole purpose of switching or upgrading them to NBC-owned status because of this (WTVJ
in Miami and KUTV in Salt Lake City are such examples) or find alternate independent stations to air NBC programs that the main affiliate did not air. However, despite losing valuable advertising in one of the nation's largest television markets, NBC was very satisfied with KRON-TV, which was one of its strongest affiliates.
For the 1992-1993 season, KRON-TV participated in the "Early Prime" experiment, along with KCRA-TV, in which prime time programs were aired an hour earlier, with the 30-minute late night newscast moved from 11:00 to 10:00 P.M.. When KRON moved prime time NBC programming back to its normal time, then-Westinghouse
-owned CBS
affiliate KPIX, who also adopted the schedule at the same time, continued with its experiment until 1998
. Though both KRON and KPIX ran hour-long newscasts at 10:00, they each could not out-rate Cox Enterprises
-owned Fox
affiliate KTVU
, who has dominated the 10:00 news hour for decades and continues to do so to this day.
Channel 4 was at one time the flagship station of the Oakland Athletics
baseball team from 1993
through 1998
. This caused a problem in 1996
, when the final day of the USA Olympic
track and field trials conflicted with a scheduled Athletics broadcast. Since KRON-TV was contractually obligated to show the baseball game live, it rebroadcast the trials at midnight.
cable news
and local television programming channel, BayTV. BayTV, on channel 35, was co-operated with then AT&T Broadband
, now Comcast
. BayTV ceased operations in 2001
. KRON-TV's NewsCenter 4 newsroom also offered news updates on MSNBC
and CNN Headline News
on the cable systems around the Bay Area. KRON 4 News at 9 actually started on BayTV in the 1990s and when BayTV went off the air and KRON became an independent, the newscast officially went to channel 4 in 2002
and stayed there until September 5, 2006. The channel's daily Silicon Valley
news recap New Media News also aired nationally on Jones Media Group
cable channel Mind Extension University/Knowledge TV until that channel ended broadcasting in 2000
.
in Tampa, Florida
, which carries 60 hours of local news per week) and the second most of any television station in North America (behind independent station CHCH in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
, which carries 76.5 hours of local news per week).
building at Fifth & Mission streets. The KRON-TV news department was located thirty feet from the Chronicle city desk. "Liaison is close, effective and fast," said a KRON-TV promotional film from the era. KRON-TV produced six daily newscasts at the time. The 6 p.m. newscast was "Shell News," sponsored by "your neighborhood Shell dealer." Tom Franklin was "Shell News reporter" from the studio at the Chronicle and in filmed field reports. Franklin began the broadcast standing next to a San Francisco Bay Area map. Franklin announced, "Greetings from your neighborhood Shell dealer." Lights were illuminated on the map next to the various cities that were to be featured in the newscast. Franklin anchored most of the program from behind a desk that had a large Shell logo next to a "Tom Franklin" name plate. A Shell "X-100" oil can sat atop the desk throughout the newscast. Live portions were used for late bulletins from the Chronicle city desk or for local and regional stories not suitable for film treatment. John Philip Sousa
's "Semper Fidelis" was the theme music for "Shell News." The voice over at the close stated that "Shell News" had been "brought to you by the combined facilities of the KRON-TV News Department and the San Francisco Chronicle." Some of the stories covered by KRON-TV's "Shell News" in 1957 included the end of the "pedestrian scramble" system at downtown San Francisco street intersections, the end of the San Francisco-Oakland Southern Pacific railroad passenger ferry and the final game of the San Francisco Seals baseball team (to be replaced by the San Francisco Giants in 1958).
As an NBC affiliate, KRON-TV branded its newscasts using the NewsCenter 4 name from the 1970s until it adopted the KRON 4 News branding scheme in early 2001
. Appropriately for a station owned by the Chronicle, KRON-TV was a very news-intensive station. For example, its 6 p.m. newscast was called NewsCenter 4 at 6. However, KRON-TV also had other names for its newscasts. Before KRON 4 Morning News was used for the entire 4-11 a.m. slot on weekday mornings, the 5-7 a.m. newscast was called Daybreak. Its 11:30 a.m. weekday newscast was called NewsCenter 4 Midday. When it began in March 1981, the 4 p.m. broadcast was "Live on 4," later to become "T.G.I.4.," a mostly-talk program with some news content. For much of the 1980s, the 5 p.m. weekday newscast was Live at Five; Bob Jimenez anchored in the studio with Evan White in the KRON Newsroom. Its weeknight 11 p.m. newscast was called NewsCenter 4 Update. All the evening newscasts featured a variety of anchors, until settling down with the successful duo of Roz Abrams and Jim Paymar
. Later after Abrams left for New York
's WABC-TV
in 1986
, Paymar and Sylvia Chase (who had been a correspondent for the ABC-TV
newsmagazine
20/20) anchored. In the 1990s, the station branded itself as 24 Hour News
, with 30 to 60 second news updates every hour. The station adopted the slogan The Bay Area's News Station in 2001
.
Daybreak debuted as a half-hour program (6:30-7 a.m.) on Labor Day, 1986, leading in to NBC's Today program. The first anchors were Lloyd Patterson and Lila Petersen. It was then the only local early morning newscast in the San Francisco television market, aside from local cut-ins to network news programming. KRON's five-minute newscasts at 6:45, 7:25 and 8:25 a.m. previously had been called Daybreak, too. KRON may have had a half-hour early morning news program as early as spring 1981.
KRON-TV newscasts in the early- to late-1980s ran commentaries by Wayne Shannon
in a segment called "Just 4 You." Shannon's name received billing in newscast introductions along with the anchors and weather and sports presenters. Many of Shannon's commentaries had a humorous tone.
Another staple of KRON-TV newscasts in the 1980s was live traffic reports and news coverage from the station's helicopter "Telecopter 4." Bob McCarthy, Rita Cohen, and Janice Huff
were among the personalities who reported from Telecopter 4. Their traffic reports appeared regularly in Daybreak, during Today and Live at Five. Evocative of his folksy, down-to-earth style, McCarthy had a catchphrase, "hunky snarky," that he often used to characterize roads on which traffic was flowing smoothly. Will Prater was the main pilot of Telecopter 4 in its early years and Lou Calderon was the main photographer.
Also during this era, KRON-TV broadcast from remote locations (e.g., Super Bowl venues) via a satellite up-link that it dubbed "Newstar 4." These segments often began with an animation depicting a signal originating from the up-link location, bouncing off of a satellite and ending at a satellite dish next to the words "San Francisco." The phrase "NEWSTAR 4 LIVE" was placed on the screen for long durations during these segments. KRON-TV regarded the satellite truck as a major competitive advantage over rival television stations, featuring it in a mid-1980s promotional spot which declared, "We got a mobile satellite up-link. They don't."
In the 1980s, KRON-TV produced lengthy analysis pieces for the "Cover Story" segment of its 6 p.m. newscast, many with an investigative journalism focus and sometimes produced by the 10-person "Target 4" investigative unit. The station re-ran some of these segments in an occasional program called Cover Story Magazine. KRON-TV also produced a half-hour public affairs program on Sunday mornings called Weekend Extra, which was hosted by Belva Davis and Rollin Post. This program frequently presented features from KRON-TV's news bureaus in Washington, D.C.
and Sacramento
, the only Bay Area station to maintain bureaus (deemed to be too expensive and disbanded by the end of the decade). During this time, KRON news grew rapidly in viewership and collected a large number of awards, including two DuPont Columbia awards, a Peabody
, and more than 100 local Emmys.
"San Francisco Minutes" and "Bay Area Minutes" were KRON-TV productions in the mid-1980s. They were series of one-minute documentaries featuring people, places and events in San Francisco and Bay Area history. They usually featured narrations by KRON-TV personalities set to soaring music (e.g., Mark Thompson on San Francisco's cables cars, Lloyd Patterson on the San Mateo County coastline).
On September 17, 2007, KRON began to broadcast its local newscasts in the 16:9
widescreen
standard definition format, making it the third station to do so behind KGO and KTVU. As of September 2010, among all stations that broadcasts local news in widescreen, KRON-TV remains the only local station in the Bay Area producing its local newscasts in-house that does not broadcast its newscasts in true high definition
.
In September 2008, KRON moved the syndicated daytime talk show Dr. Phil
to 5 p.m.; Dr. Phil had been broadcast on KRON-TV at 8 p.m. since its premiere in 2002. As a result of the move, the station eliminated its 5 p.m. newscast and started an 8 p.m. newscast. In September 2009, KRON dropped the 8 p.m. newscast and replaced it with Dr. Phil and as a result, a 5:30 p.m. newscast was reinstated on the schedule. KRON now has news blocks from 4-11 a.m. on weekday mornings and 4-7 p.m. on weekday evenings.
, on Sather Tower
at UC Berkeley and on the San Jose Museum of Art
/1890s post office building) chiming four o'clock. Jan Rasmussen and Patrick Van Horn
were co-hosts. In the mid-1980s, KRON-TV produced and aired a talk program called Bay City Limits, which ran in the afternoon. (Rival TV stations also produced talk programs in that era: A.M. San Francisco at KGO, and People Are Talking at KPIX.)
in Los Angeles, KING-TV
in Seattle, KCRA in Sacramento, KNSD
in San Diego and KLAS-TV
in Las Vegas in December 1990), featuring midnight countdown events in other cities, such as Las Vegas casinos and at the Seattle Space Needle. KRON-TV weatherman Mark Thompson was the host in the early years. KRON revived "New Year's Live" in December 2010, a one-hour broadcast hosted by Catherine Heenan and George Rask in the studio, with live reports from Henry Tenenbaum at Pier 39 and Vicki Liviakis at Waterbar on the Embarcadero.
. The vertical component is a bridge tower, the horizontal component is a portion of the bridge deck, and the curve is a portion of a suspension cable. (This logo was used as early as April 1974, during coverage of a Symbionese Liberation Army
bank robbery.) By about 1990-1991, this evolved into the "circle 4" logo in use to this day, with the 4 keeping the bridge-like design. Notably absent from KRON's on-air identity was the NBC Peacock logo, even during its days as an NBC
affiliate (the station would use the peacock logo sparingly in select on-air promotions, notably in the late 1980s and 1990s to promote NBC Sports
coverage of local teams such as the San Francisco Giants
as well as joint news promo spots featuring NBC Nightly News
anchor Tom Brokaw
and local anchors Jim Paymar and Sylvia Chase).
Also in the 1970s, KRON used a logo for NewsWatch 4. At the top of this logo was the "Golden Gate Bridge 4" logo (the "4" was superimposed over the famous Golden Gate Bridge
), and on the bottom was the text in a stylized font in capital letters, which read NEWSWATCH. They also used Fred Weinberg's NBC Newspulse as its music theme for NewsCenter 4. Later, in 1978, the newscast title was changed to NewsCenter 4 and KRON's news logo was changed to feature the word NewsCenter in Helvetica font next to the "4" logo (similar to the NewsCenter 4 branding pioneered by NBC's owned-and-operated stations such as WNBC
and KNBC
). This lasted until June 1984, when the NewsCenter text's font was changed.
A 3D animated Golden Gate ID was introduced in June 1984
, where some station IDs and newscast openings included animations wherein the "4" logo was superimposed upon a section of the bridge. There were two versions of this station ID: daytime and nighttime. In the early days of this station ID, the same music cue used for the early '80s' C Channel
station was used. Later that year, a new music cue was used on the ID and was used until 1987. When KRON overhauled their set and debuted the foghorn music package in June 1987, a new updated music cue was used on the ID until 1989.
In addition, when "DayBreak" was changed on September 1, 1986, the DayBreak Sun (which mirrored that of NBC's Today Show) was used in the news openings/closings of the program with the Golden Gate Bridge being put on the other side of the sun.
The NewsCenter 4 logo was changed in 1978. The "4" was placed in a square and the bolder NewsCenter text appeared next to it. In 1984, the logo was changed again to feature the word NewsCenter in a new font (same as the font used for NBC News
programming in the early-to-mid 1980s). The "4" was italicized and the square was removed. This logo was used until 1988.
Virtual channel
In telecommunications, a logical channel number , also known as virtual channel, is a channel designation which differs from that of the actual radio channel on which the signal travels....
4 (digital channel 38), is a television station
Television station
A television station is a business, organisation or other such as an amateur television operator that transmits content over terrestrial television. A television transmission can be by analog television signals or, more recently, by digital television. Broadcast television systems standards are...
in San Francisco, California
San Francisco, California
San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...
, serving as the Bay Area
San Francisco Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a populated region that surrounds the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California. The region encompasses metropolitan areas of San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, along with smaller urban and rural areas...
affiliate of the MyNetworkTV
MyNetworkTV
MyNetworkTV is a television broadcast syndication service in the United States, owned by the Fox Entertainment Group, a division of News Corporation...
programming service; the station is owned by Young Broadcasting
Young Broadcasting
New Young Broadcasting Holding Co, Inc. is an owner of 14 television stations in 11 United States media markets. The company was formerly known as Young Broadcasting Inc. and was the outgrowth of the ad representation/invest firm Adam Young, Inc. which was founded in 1944 by Adam Young and is...
. The station's studios are located in the Western Addition
Western Addition, San Francisco, California
The Western Addition is a neighborhood in San Francisco, California, United States.-Location:The Western Addition is sandwiched between Van Ness Avenue, Golden Gate Park, the Upper and Lower Haight neighborhoods, and Pacific Heights....
section of downtown San Francisco, and its transmitter antenna is located atop Sutro Tower
Sutro Tower
Sutro Tower is a three-pronged antenna tower near Clarendon Heights in San Francisco, California. Rising from a hill between Twin Peaks and Mount Sutro, it is a prominent part of the city skyline and a landmark for city residents and visitors...
.
The station brands itself as KRON 4, keeping the station's previous branding while adding "My" to go with the network's naming conventions, only during MyNetworkTV programming. It is changed again to "KRON 4" during other programming. KRON can also be seen in Ukiah
Ukiah, California
The average high temperature is 73.5 °F . Average low temperature is 46.1 °F . Temperatures reach 90 °F on an average of 65.6 days annually and 100 °F on an average of 14.4 days annually. Due to frequent low humidity, summer temperatures normally drop into the fifties at night. Freezing...
on K41AF channel 41.
From its founding in 1949 until December 2001, KRON was affiliated full-time with NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
, and was one of that network's strongest affiliates; since April 2010, KRON has an informal secondary affiliation with NBC, carrying network programs that are preempted by NBC O&O
Owned-and-operated station
In the broadcasting industry , an owned-and-operated station usually refers to a television station or radio station that is owned by the network with which it is associated...
KNTV
KNTV
KNTV, channel 11, is the NBC owned-and-operated television station in the Bay Area market. It is licensed to San Jose, with its transmitter located on San Bruno Mountain, just south of San Francisco. It shares facilities in San Jose with NBC Universal sister station KSTS and CNBC's Silicon...
(channel 11) due to special programming. The station has the distinction of being the only MyNetworkTV affiliate in existence with a Big Three-style newscast schedule (i.e.; in that it carries morning, 4, 5, 6 and 11 p.m. newscasts), totaling around 60 hours each week. It is also one of the few television stations in the U.S. to carry a six-hour morning newscast, which airs from 4-10 a.m.
Origins
When the channel 4 allocation in the Bay Area (the third and final one licensed by the Federal Communications CommissionFederal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, created, Congressional statute , and with the majority of its commissioners appointed by the current President. The FCC works towards six goals in the areas of broadband, competition, the spectrum, the...
before that agency placed a moratorium on new television station licenses that would last the next four years) came open for bidding, it soon became obvious that the license would go to either NBC or the deYoung family, publishers of the San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
. NBC wanted an owned and operated station in the Bay Area alongside its West Coast flagship radio station
NBC Red Network
The NBC Red Network was one of the two original radio networks of the National Broadcasting Company. After NBC was required to divest itself of its Blue Network , the Red Network continued as the NBC Radio Network.It, along with the Blue Network, were the first two commercial radio networks in the...
, KNBC (680 AM, now KNBR
KNBR
KNBR, The Sports Leader, is the on-air branding used by two AM radio stations in the San Francisco, California, area broadcasting a sports radio format, owned by Cumulus Media....
). However, in an upset, the deYoungs won the license. They brought the station on the air on November 15, 1949 as NBC affiliate KRON-TV. The station's call letters
Call sign
In broadcasting and radio communications, a call sign is a unique designation for a transmitting station. In North America they are used as names for broadcasting stations...
come from a modification of the paper's nickname in the Bay Area, "The Chron." KRON-TV originally broadcast from studios located in the basement of the Chronicle building at Fifth and Mission streets.
KRON-TV originally broadcast from transmitter facilities on San Bruno Mountain
San Bruno Mountain
San Bruno Mountain in northern San Mateo County, California is the northernmost part of the Santa Cruz Mountains. Most of the mountain lies within the San Bruno Mountain State Park, a unique open-space island in the midst of the San Francisco Peninsula's urbanization. Next to the state park is the...
; huge white letters "NBC" were placed near the summit of Radio Peak. In August 1959, the Chronicle reported that the tower was severely damaged by an unusually strong thunderstorm, requiring major repairs before KRON could return to the air. Newscasts benefited from the resources of the Chronicle and there was cooperation between KRON and the newspaper.
KRON-FM
For many years, the Chronicle had a non-commercial classical music FM station, KRON-FM, at 96.5 on the FM dial, which had a limited broadcasting schedule (evenings only). It first broadcast from July 1947 to December 31, 1954, then it was off the air until 1957. In the 1960s, programming was devoted primarily to classical music and an hour (7 to 8 p.m.) featuring an entire Broadway show album. Since the station had no commercials, no underwriters, and no on-air fund drives, the Chronicle operated the station as a public service. Staff announcers delivered short newscasts on the station's evening broadcasts. In December 1970, KRON-FM began simulcasting a Spanish language newscast from KRON-TV by Terry Lowry. Then, the station was sold in 1975 to Bonneville International and renamed KOIT-FMKOIT-FM
KOIT-FM is an Lite Rock-formatted radio station in the San Francisco Bay Area of the United States. Its slogan is "Lite Rock, Less Talk". The station's programming was also simulcast for many years on 1260 AM...
.
Early local programming
In the 1950s and 1960s, local programs produced by KRON-TV included the award-winning documentary series Assignment Four, Fireman Frank with George Lemont and his puppets (including Scat the Cat and Carl the Carrot), and a live children's program hosted by Art FinleyArt Finley
Art Finley is a former North American television and radio personality, mostly in San Francisco and Vancouver, until his retirement in 1995....
as Mayor Art. Bay area kids, known as the "City Council", joined Mayor Art in the studio each day. The show featured Popeye cartoons mixed with science demonstrations, a newsreel feature entitled "Mayor Art's Almanac," games, prizes, and a sock puppet named "Ring-A-Ding."
New studios
In 1967, KRON-FM-TV moved to a new studio at 1001 Van Ness AvenueVan Ness Avenue (San Francisco)
Van Ness Avenue is a north-south thoroughfare in San Francisco, California, running from Market St north to the Bay. Originally named Marlette Street, the street was renamed Van Ness Avenue in honor of the city's seventh mayor, James Van Ness. Van Ness Avenue begins at Market Street near the Civic...
in the Western Addition neighborhood, where channel 4 is still headquartered today. It was the former site of the Roman Catholic cathedral of San Francisco. The television transmitter was moved to Sutro Tower on July 4, 1973. The FM transmitter remained on San Bruno Mountain.
A market leader
In the 1960s, KRON-TV had anchors Art Brown and Jerry Jensen (who later moved to KGO), and Linda Richard, who wrote backwards on sliding glass panels for viewers to see the weather forecast. Ed Hart, and later Frank Dill, reported sports with a focus on only the area's professional teams.Until the late 1970s, KRON-TV was infamous for being very San Francisco-centric in its news coverage and audience targeting, an approach that would become costly to the station as growth in areas outside San Francisco soared. Realizing this enabled KRON-TV to become the dominant station in the Bay Area. Some remember KRON's early morning news digests in the 1960s utilizing sign language
Sign language
A sign language is a language which, instead of acoustically conveyed sound patterns, uses visually transmitted sign patterns to convey meaning—simultaneously combining hand shapes, orientation and movement of the hands, arms or body, and facial expressions to fluidly express a speaker's...
, as well as the "Newswatch Sign-Off Edition" airing (then) immediately after The Tonight Show
The Tonight Show
The Tonight Show is an American late-night talk show that has aired on NBC since 1954. It is the longest currently running regularly scheduled entertainment program in the United States, and the third longest-running show on NBC, after Meet the Press and Today.The Tonight Show has been hosted by...
.
During the 1980s, KRON continued its dominance by airing top-rated syndicated programming, including the Merv Griffin
Merv Griffin
Mervyn Edward "Merv" Griffin, Jr. was an American television host, musician, actor, and media mogul. He began his career as a radio and big band singer who went on to appear in movies and on Broadway. From 1965 to 1986 Griffin hosted his own talk show, The Merv Griffin Show on Group W Broadcasting...
-produced game shows Jeopardy!
Jeopardy!
Griffin's first conception of the game used a board comprising ten categories with ten clues each, but after finding that this board could not be shown on camera easily, he reduced it to two rounds of thirty clues each, with five clues in each of six categories...
and Wheel of Fortune (the original NBC daytime versions of both Jeopardy and Wheel also aired on KRON), as well as Entertainment Tonight
Entertainment Tonight
Entertainment Tonight is a daily tabloid television entertainment television news show that is syndicated by CBS Television Distribution throughout the United States, Canada and in many countries around the world. Linda Bell Blue is currently the program's executive producer...
, which has aired on the station for most of its run. The game show pair would move to ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
-owned KGO-TV
KGO-TV
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...
(channel 7) permanently in 1992 after KRON-TV experimented with its "early prime time" schedule that year (see below).
In the late 1980s, KRON-TV was among the few local television stations in the United States that produced a game show. Claim to Fame was a weekly half-hour show hosted by Patrick Van Horn
Patrick Van Horn
Patrick Van Horn is an American actor. He is best known for his role as Sue in the 1996 film Swingers, starring alongside real-life friends Jon Favreau, Vince Vaughn and Ron Livingston...
that usually ran on Saturday evenings. In that era, KRON also produced a Saturday morning children's program called Buster and Me.
Several people often ask what piece of music played just before the station would sign off every night (from the '70's into the late '80's) with scenic rustic shots around the Bay Area? It was Gabriel Faure's "Pavane," Opus 50. A copy of it is accessible via Youtube.
KRON produced Bay Area Backroads from the mid-1980s to 2008. The half-hour program profiled places and people in the greater San Francisco Bay Area, and occasionally beyond. Hosts included Jerry Graham and Doug McConnell
Doug McConnell
Doug McConnell is a television journalist who has focused on environmental issues, with programs on the air continuously since 1982. He has created, produced and hosted many series, special programs, and news projects for local, national and international distribution...
; it generally aired on Sunday evenings.
During its time as an NBC affiliate, KRON-TV aired most games of the Oakland Raiders
Oakland Raiders
The Oakland Raiders are a professional American football team based in Oakland, California. They currently play in the Western Division of the American Football Conference in the National Football League...
(between 1965–81, and again from 1995–97), which were part of at first the American Football League
American Football League
The American Football League was a major American Professional Football league that operated from 1960 until 1969, when the established National Football League merged with it. The upstart AFL operated in direct competition with the more established NFL throughout its existence...
, which had a contract with NBC
NFL on NBC
NFL on NBC is the brand given to NBC Sports coverage of National Football League games until 1998, when NBC lost the NFL American Football Conference rights to CBS...
from 1965–69, and then the American Football Conference
American Football Conference
The American Football Conference is one of the two conferences of the National Football League . This conference and its counterpart, the National Football Conference , currently contain 16 teams each, making up the 32 teams of the NFL....
of the National Football League
National Football League
The National Football League is the highest level of professional American football in the United States, and is considered the top professional American football league in the world. It was formed by eleven teams in 1920 as the American Professional Football Association, with the league changing...
, which inherited the AFL's deal with NBC from 1970-97. Between 1982 and 1994, the Raiders played in Los Angeles, and so KRON-TV was not the home station for the Raiders those years.
The end of the NBC era
In 1999, the deYoung family, owners of the parent corporation Chronicle PublishingChronicle Publishing Company
The Chronicle Publishing Company was a print and broadcast media corporation headquartered in San Francisco, California that was in operation from 1865 until 2000...
, decided to liquidate their assets. KRON-TV's longtime newspaper partner, the San Francisco Chronicle, would be sold to its current owner, Hearst Corporation
Hearst Corporation
The Hearst Corporation is an American media conglomerate based in the Hearst Tower, Manhattan in New York City, New York, United States. Founded by William Randolph Hearst as an owner of newspapers, the company's holdings now include a wide variety of media...
.
NBC, whose relationship with KRON-TV had been contentious at times over the previous half-century, had made many offers for channel 4 over the years, but the deYoungs turned them down each time. It finally saw a chance to get an owned and operated station in what was then the United States' fifth-largest television market and quickly jumped into the bidding war for channel 4. NBC was seen as the frontrunner until it was outbid at the last second by New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
-based Young Broadcasting
Young Broadcasting
New Young Broadcasting Holding Co, Inc. is an owner of 14 television stations in 11 United States media markets. The company was formerly known as Young Broadcasting Inc. and was the outgrowth of the ad representation/invest firm Adam Young, Inc. which was founded in 1944 by Adam Young and is...
, then-owner of KCAL-TV
KCAL-TV
KCAL-TV, channel 9, is an independent television station in Los Angeles, California, USA, owned by the CBS Corporation. KCAL-TV shares its studio facilities with KCBS-TV inside CBS Studio Center in the Studio City section of Los Angeles, and its transmitter is located atop Mount Wilson.-Digital...
in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
and several medium-to-small market stations. Young's purchase price for the station ($
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
750 million at the outset, rising to $820 million by closing) was a record price for a single station that stands to this day. To help finance the down payment, Young was forced to sell WKBT
WKBT
WKBT-DT is a television station owned and operated by Morgan Murphy Media and serving West Central Wisconsin, including La Crosse and Eau Claire. The station is primarily affiliated with CBS and airs programming from MyNetworkTV on its digital subchannel.-History:WKBT launched on August 8, 1954...
in La Crosse, Wisconsin
La Crosse, Wisconsin
La Crosse is a city in and the county seat of La Crosse County, Wisconsin, United States. The city lies alongside the Mississippi River.The 2011 Census Bureau estimates the city had a population of 52,485...
to Morgan Murphy Media.
In response to losing, NBC supplied Young with a list of demands that would have required Young to run the station under the conventions of an NBC-owned outlet. For example, NBC wanted Young to re-brand KRON-TV as NBC 4, and run the entire network schedule in pattern with no pre-emptions except for local news emergencies. Rather than give in to NBC's demands, Young decided not to renew channel 4's affiliation contract when it ran out in 2002. Granite Broadcasting's KNTV
KNTV
KNTV, channel 11, is the NBC owned-and-operated television station in the Bay Area market. It is licensed to San Jose, with its transmitter located on San Bruno Mountain, just south of San Francisco. It shares facilities in San Jose with NBC Universal sister station KSTS and CNBC's Silicon...
(channel 11) in San Jose
San Jose, California
San Jose is the third-largest city in California, the tenth-largest in the U.S., and the county seat of Santa Clara County which is located at the southern end of San Francisco Bay...
-- at that time the market's WB affiliate, but prior to 2000 was an ABC affiliate primarily serving San Jose and the Santa Cruz-Monterey area—later approached NBC with a proposal to pay $37 million annually for the rights to broadcast its programming, and the network accepted the deal. In December 2001, however, NBC purchased KNTV for a fraction of KRON's sale price — $230 million. That makes NBC the only network in the Bay Area to switch from one local station to another.
The affiliation switch became official at the stroke of midnight on January 1, 2002, ending KRON-TV's 52-year affiliation with NBC. The last NBC program broadcast by channel 4 was Crossing Jordan
Crossing Jordan
Crossing Jordan is an American television crime/drama series that aired on NBC from September 24, 2001 to May 16, 2007. It stars Jill Hennessy as Jordan Cavanaugh, M.D., a crime-solving forensic pathologist employed in the Suffolk County, Massachusetts, Medical Examiner's Office...
, which aired from 10:00 to 11:00 P.M. on December 31, 2001. On September 12, 2005, KNTV's transmitter was moved from Loma Prieta Peak
Loma Prieta
Loma Prieta is a Northern California mountain located in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The peak is located on private property, about west of Morgan Hill and within the boundaries of Santa Clara County...
along the San Andreas Fault
San Andreas Fault
The San Andreas Fault is a continental strike-slip fault that runs a length of roughly through California in the United States. The fault's motion is right-lateral strike-slip...
south of San Jose, to Mount San Bruno south of San Francisco, former home to the city's TV stations that are now located on the Sutro Tower (ABC programming was carried in the Santa Cruz-Monterey area on cable via ABC-owned KGO-TV
KGO-TV
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...
in San Francisco and since April 18, 2011, NBC affiliate KSBW-TV's secondary digital channel).
Independence
KRON-TV became an independent station at the start of 2002. In the fall of 2006 the station joined the News CorporationNews Corporation
News Corporation or News Corp. is an American multinational media conglomerate. It is the world's second-largest media conglomerate as of 2011 in terms of revenue, and the world's third largest in entertainment as of 2009, although the BBC remains the world's largest broadcaster...
's new MyNetworkTV
MyNetworkTV
MyNetworkTV is a television broadcast syndication service in the United States, owned by the Fox Entertainment Group, a division of News Corporation...
, and is currently the second largest MNTV station that was not previously an affiliate of either the WB or UPN
UPN
United Paramount Network was a television network that was broadcast in over 200 markets in the United States from 1995 to 2006. UPN was originally owned by Viacom/Paramount and Chris-Craft Industries, the former of which, through the Paramount Television Group, produced most of the network's...
networks (the other is KDFI
KDFI
KDFI-TV, virtual channel 27, is a MyNetworkTV-affiliated station serving the Dallas/Fort Worth area. The station is licensed to Dallas and owned by Fox Television Stations, a division of the News Corporation, and is a sister station to Fox network outlet KDFW . Its transmitter is located in Cedar...
in Dallas
Dallas, Texas
Dallas is the third-largest city in Texas and the ninth-largest in the United States. The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex is the largest metropolitan area in the South and fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States...
).
When KRON-TV began carrying MyNetworkTV programming, it eliminated the hour-long 9 p.m. newscast. However, KRON-TV is not following the standard practice of airing MNTV programming from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. like most Pacific Time Zone affiliates. Instead, it airs "KRON 4 News" during the 8 p.m. hour, and MNTV programming from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m., one hour later than most affiliates. Oregon MNTV affiliates KPDX
KPDX
KPDX is the MyNetworkTV-affiliate serving the Portland, Oregon metropolitan area. It broadcasts its digital signal on UHF channel 30. In addition, it is seen on channel 13 on most local cable TV systems....
in Portland
Portland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...
and KEVU in Eugene
Eugene, Oregon
Eugene is the second largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon and the seat of Lane County. It is located at the south end of the Willamette Valley, at the confluence of the McKenzie and Willamette rivers, about east of the Oregon Coast.As of the 2010 U.S...
also air MyNetworkTV programming in this slot. The MyNetworkTV affiliate in Seattle
Seattle, Washington
Seattle is the county seat of King County, Washington. With 608,660 residents as of the 2010 Census, Seattle is the largest city in the Northwestern United States. The Seattle metropolitan area of about 3.4 million inhabitants is the 15th largest metropolitan area in the country...
, KMYQ, now KZJO, also deviated from the standard My Network TV programming schedule from 7-9 p.m. until September 13, 2010, when that station moved MyNetworkTV programming to 11pm-1am. KQCA-TV also aired MyNetworkTV programming from 7-9 p.m. but on September 21, 2009, KQCA reverted back to airing the MNTV lineup in its 8-10 p.m. timeslot.
Sale of KRON and possible return of NBC
On January 10, 2008, Young Broadcasting announced it would sell KRON-TV. Young had been encountering difficulty meeting interest payments on its outstanding debt and its stock, which had been trading for a few cents, was to be de-listed from NASDAQNASDAQ
The NASDAQ Stock Market, also known as the NASDAQ, is an American stock exchange. "NASDAQ" originally stood for "National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations". It is the second-largest stock exchange by market capitalization in the world, after the New York Stock Exchange. As of...
. On February 13, 2008, Young made a filing to place the company under chapter 11 bankruptcy
Bankruptcy
Bankruptcy is a legal status of an insolvent person or an organisation, that is, one that cannot repay the debts owed to creditors. In most jurisdictions bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor....
protection. Debt incurred on the $820 million purchase price for KRON-TV was believed to be one key factor behind the company's cash problems. Young originally hoped to close the sale by the end of the first quarter of 2008, but no buyer emerged.
In January 2009, after failing to meet the minimum standards for being listed on NASDAQ, Young Broadcasting was dropped from the exchange. One month later, on February 13, 2009, the company declared Chapter 11
Chapter 11, Title 11, United States Code
Chapter 11 is a chapter of the United States Bankruptcy Code, which permits reorganization under the bankruptcy laws of the United States. Chapter 11 bankruptcy is available to every business, whether organized as a corporation or sole proprietorship, and to individuals, although it is most...
bankruptcy
Bankruptcy
Bankruptcy is a legal status of an insolvent person or an organisation, that is, one that cannot repay the debts owed to creditors. In most jurisdictions bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor....
. Young cancelled a planned auction of all 10 of its stations on July 14, 2009 at the last minute, a move believed to have been due to lack of suitable bids. Instead of the auction, Young and its secured lenders reached a deal where the lenders (among them Wachovia
Wachovia
Wachovia was a diversified financial services company based in Charlotte, North Carolina. Before its acquisition by Wells Fargo in 2008, Wachovia was the fourth-largest bank holding company in the United States based on total assets...
and Credit Suisse
Credit Suisse
The Credit Suisse Group AG is a Swiss multinational financial services company headquartered in Zurich, with more than 250 branches in Switzerland and operations in more than 50 countries.-History:...
) would take control of the company, and Gray Television
Gray Television
Gray Television, Inc. is a communications company headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, with administrative offices in Albany, Georgia.Established in 1946 by James H...
would take over management of seven of Young's ten stations. KRON-TV was one of only three stations not included in the management deal; the other two, WATE-TV
WATE-TV
WATE-TV is the ABC-affiliated television station for Eastern Tennessee licensed to Knoxville. It broadcasts a high definition digital signal on UHF channel 26 from a transmitter on Sharp's Ridge in North Knoxville. The station can also be seen on Charter channel 6 as well as Comcast and Knology...
and WLNS-TV
WLNS-TV
WLNS-TV is the CBS-affiliated television station for Central Michigan licensed to Lansing. It broadcasts a high definition digital signal on UHF channel 36 from a transmitter on Van Atta Road in Meridian. The station can also be seen on Comcast channel 6 and Broadstripe channel 13...
, compete with Gray-owned stations in their markets, but KRON does not.
In February 2010, Young discussed the possibility of entering into a shared services
Shared services
Shared services refers to the provision of a service by one part of an organization or group where that service had previously been found in more than one part of the organization or group. Thus the funding and resourcing of the service is shared and the providing department effectively becomes an...
agreement with NBC Universal
NBC Universal
NBCUniversal Media, LLC is a media and entertainment company engaged in the production and marketing of entertainment, news, and information products and services to a global customer base...
, the owner of KNTV.http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/449501-NBC_in_Talks_to_Partner_with_KRON.php At a station meeting in November 2011, it was announced there would be no shared services agreement, and that the station planned to move to a smaller, state-of-the-art facility within the next year to year and a half. Within a week, it was also learned the station's master control would be operated remotely from Atlanta, GA beginning in mid-January.
Return of NBC as a secondary affiliation
With a prime time airing of Dateline NBCDateline NBC
Dateline NBC, or Dateline, is a U.S. weekly television newsmagazine broadcast by NBC. It previously was NBC's flagship news magazine, but now focuses on true crime stories. It airs Friday at 9 p.m. EST and after football season on Sunday at 7 p.m. EST.-History:Dateline is historically notable for...
on April 2, 2010, KRON-TV began an informal secondary affiliation with NBC, bringing NBC programs back to KRON for the first time in eight years. KRON carries NBC programming that is preempted by San Francisco Giants baseball or other special programming airing on KNTV.
The Giants' contract with KNTV ended after the 2010 season. However, due to the common ownership between KNTV and Comcast SportsNet Bay Area (which produces the Giants' broadcasts), and also due to CSN Bay Area taking over the operations of KNTV's sports department, selected Giants games will continue to air on KNTV. Thus, KRON will continue to air NBC programming pre-empted by a Giants broadcast.
Digital television
The station's digital channel is multiplexed, broadcasting on digital channel 38:| Channel | Video | Aspect Aspect ratio The aspect ratio of a shape is the ratio of its longer dimension to its shorter dimension. It may be applied to two characteristic dimensions of a three-dimensional shape, such as the ratio of the longest and shortest axis, or for symmetrical objects that are described by just two measurements,... |
Programming |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4.1 | 720p 720p 720p is the shorthand name for 1280x720, a category of High-definition television video modes having a resolution of 1080 or 720p and a progressive scan... |
16:9 16:9 16:9 is an aspect ratio with a width of 16 units and height of 9. Since 2009, it has become the most common aspect ratio for sold televisions and computer monitors and is also the international standard format of HDTV, Full HD, non-HD digital television and analog widescreen television ... |
Main KRON programming / MyNetworkTV |
| 4.2 | 480i 480i 480i is the shorthand name for a video mode, namely the US NTSC television system or digital television systems with the same characteristics. The i, which is sometimes uppercase, stands for interlaced, the 480 for a vertical frame resolution of 480 lines containing picture information; while NTSC... |
4:3 |
Analog-to-digital conversion
KRON-TV shut down its analog signal on June 12, 2009 as part of the DTV transition, it moved to channel 38 PSIPProgram and System Information Protocol
The Program and System Information Protocol is the protocol used in the ATSC digital television system for carrying metadata about each channel in the broadcast MPEG transport stream of a TV station and for publishing information about television programs so that viewers can select what to watch...
is used to display KRON's virtual channel
Virtual channel
In telecommunications, a logical channel number , also known as virtual channel, is a channel designation which differs from that of the actual radio channel on which the signal travels....
as 4 on digital television receivers.
Proposed subchannel affiliations
In October 2007, Retro Television NetworkRetro Television Network
The Retro Television Network is a system of television stations that airs classic television shows as well as more recently produced programs...
was expected to launch as a digital subchannel
Digital subchannel
In broadcasting, digital subchannels are a means to transmit more than one independent program at the same time from the same digital radio or digital television station on the same radio frequency channel. This is done by using data compression techniques to reduce the size of each individual...
on KRON-DT2 as part of a test of the network by Young Broadcasting, along with sister stations WBAY-TV
WBAY-TV
WBAY-TV is the ABC television affiliate in Green Bay, Wisconsin, broadcasting on UHF digital channel 23 from a transmitter located in the town of Ledgeview, Wisconsin, and master control based in its building in downtown Green Bay...
in Green Bay
Green Bay, Wisconsin
Green Bay is a city in and the county seat of Brown County in the U.S. state of Wisconsin, located at the head of Green Bay, a sub-basin of Lake Michigan, at the mouth of the Fox River. It has an elevation of above sea level and is located north of Milwaukee. As of the 2010 United States Census,...
and WTEN
WTEN
WTEN is the ABC-affiliated television station for the Capital District of New York State and Western New England that is licensed to Albany. It broadcasts a high definition digital signal on UHF channel 26 from a transmitter southwest of the Voorheesville section of New Scotland...
in Albany, New York
Albany, New York
Albany is the capital city of the U.S. state of New York, the seat of Albany County, and the central city of New York's Capital District. Roughly north of New York City, Albany sits on the west bank of the Hudson River, about south of its confluence with the Mohawk River...
. However the network never came to KRON, and their HD signal has remained on 4.2 since the announcement, along with an intermittent traffic conditions channel on 4.3. RTV is currently carried in the market by KQSL of Fort Bragg
Fort Bragg, California
Fort Bragg is a city located in coastal Mendocino County, California along State Route 1, the major north-south highway along the Pacific Coast. Fort Bragg is located west of Willits, at an elevation of 85 feet...
and KCNS
KCNS
KCNS is a digital television station in San Francisco, California, in the United States, owned by NRJ TV, LLC. It carries programming from the Retro Television Network on its main channel, and programming from Sino TV and Saigon TV on its subchannels. The station operates on 39 digital, covering...
in San Francisco.
In late 2010 Young announced carriage of The Country Network on several of their stations, including KRON. However as in RTV's case, TCN never came to the station, and TCN was dropped by all New Young stations by November 2011.
Locally-produced programs
- Bay Area BackroadsDoug McConnellDoug McConnell is a television journalist who has focused on environmental issues, with programs on the air continuously since 1982. He has created, produced and hosted many series, special programs, and news projects for local, national and international distribution...
- Bay Cafe
- Henry's Home & Garden
- KRON 4's Bay Area Bargains ++
- KRON 4's Bay Area Bargains - Green Edition ++
- KRON 4's Bay Area Living ++
- KRON 4's Bay Area Living - Home Improvement Edition ++
- KRON 4's Bay Area Living - Seniors Edition ++
- KRON 4's Body Beautiful ++
- KRON 4's Casino Adventures ++
- KRON 4's Don't Invest and Forget ++
- KRON 4's Health and Beauty with Dr Sonia ++
- KRON 4's Living Green with Petersen Dean ++
- KRON 4's Medical Mondays ++
- KRON 4's Peninsula Beauty ++
- KRON 4's Sizzling Hot Auto Deals ++
- KRON 4's Spa Spectacular ++
- Latin Eyes
- Pacific Fusion
- The Silver Lining
++ Created by Mark Sowinski & Jim Swanson
Many of the locally-produced programs aired on KRON-TV from 2005–present, are a collaborative effort between Mark Sowinski, director of business development and Jim Swanson, executive producer.
Syndicated programs
Entertainment TonightEntertainment Tonight
Entertainment Tonight is a daily tabloid television entertainment television news show that is syndicated by CBS Television Distribution throughout the United States, Canada and in many countries around the world. Linda Bell Blue is currently the program's executive producer...
aired on KRON when it debuted in 1981 and has been on the station's schedule ever since, with the exception of late 1988 to early 1992, when it aired on KGO-TV. Its airtime in fall 1981 was 6:30 p.m. By fall 1982, it had moved to the coveted "prime time access" slot at 7:30 p.m., where it remained until it moved to KGO-TV in fall 1988. In early 2011, Entertainment Tonight
Entertainment Tonight
Entertainment Tonight is a daily tabloid television entertainment television news show that is syndicated by CBS Television Distribution throughout the United States, Canada and in many countries around the world. Linda Bell Blue is currently the program's executive producer...
aired on KRON-DT at 7:30 p.m. and 11:30 p.m.
Scheduling oddities
For most of its run as an NBC affiliate, KRON-TV was NBC's second-largest affiliate, and its largest affiliate on the West Coast. However, it occasionally pre-empted NBC programming. One such notable omission was the daytime soap operaSoap opera
A soap opera, sometimes called "soap" for short, is an ongoing, episodic work of dramatic fiction presented in serial format on radio or as television programming. The name soap opera stems from the original dramatic serials broadcast on radio that had soap manufacturers, such as Procter & Gamble,...
Another World
Another World (TV series)
Another World is an American television soap opera that ran on NBC from May 4, 1964 to June 25, 1999. It ran for a total of 35 years. It was created by Irna Phillips along with William J...
, which would eventually re-air on the station in the early 1990s. Two NBC daytime game shows, 50 Grand Slam
50 Grand Slam
50 Grand Slam is a game show from Ralph Andrews Productions that aired on NBC from October 4 to December 31, 1976. Tom Kennedy hosted the show, with John Harlan as the announcer....
and Just Men!
Just Men!
Just Men! was a game show that aired on NBC Daytime from January 3 to April 1, 1983. The show starred Betty White, who won an Emmy award for her work on the show, with Steve Day announcing.-Gameplay:...
, were never seen in the Bay Area.
Also, the station did not air NBC soap operas in the traditional pattern. For example, KRON-TV aired Days of our Lives
Days of our Lives
Days of our Lives is a long running daytime soap opera broadcast on the NBC television network. It is one of the longest-running scripted television programs in the world, airing nearly every weekday in the United States since November 8, 1965. It has since been syndicated to many countries around...
after Another World instead of the standard network programming—at 2 p.m. or 3 p.m. depending on the season and time slot. Channel 4 also pre-empted some prime time programming. Similar to KCRA-TV
KCRA-TV
KCRA-TV, channel 3, is a television station in Sacramento, California, United States. KCRA-TV is owned by Hearst Television, a subsidiary of the Hearst Corporation, and is an affiliate of the NBC television network...
, a fellow NBC station in neighboring Sacramento
Sacramento
Sacramento is the capital of the state of California, in the United States of America.Sacramento may also refer to:- United States :*Sacramento County, California*Sacramento, Kentucky*Sacramento – San Joaquin River Delta...
, KRON-TV stopped airing the T-NBC lineup on Saturday mornings in the early 1990s. Historically, NBC was far less tolerant of preemptions than the other networks, but has recently eased its standards. The network would resort to purchasing stations for the sole purpose of switching or upgrading them to NBC-owned status because of this (WTVJ
WTVJ
WTVJ, virtual channel 6 , is an owned-and-operated television station of the NBC television network, located in Broward County. WTVJ shares its TV studio and office facility with co-owned Telemundo station WSCV in Miramar, Florida, and its transmitter is located near Sun Life Stadium in north...
in Miami and KUTV in Salt Lake City are such examples) or find alternate independent stations to air NBC programs that the main affiliate did not air. However, despite losing valuable advertising in one of the nation's largest television markets, NBC was very satisfied with KRON-TV, which was one of its strongest affiliates.
For the 1992-1993 season, KRON-TV participated in the "Early Prime" experiment, along with KCRA-TV, in which prime time programs were aired an hour earlier, with the 30-minute late night newscast moved from 11:00 to 10:00 P.M.. When KRON moved prime time NBC programming back to its normal time, then-Westinghouse
Westinghouse Broadcasting
The Westinghouse Broadcasting Company, also known as Group W, was the broadcasting division of Westinghouse Electric Corporation. It owned several radio and television stations across the United States and distributed television shows for syndication....
-owned CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
affiliate KPIX, who also adopted the schedule at the same time, continued with its experiment until 1998
1998 in television
The year 1998 in television involved some significant events.Below is a list of television-related events in 1998.For the American TV schedule, see: 1998–99 United States network television schedule.-Events:-Debuts:-1950s:...
. Though both KRON and KPIX ran hour-long newscasts at 10:00, they each could not out-rate Cox Enterprises
Cox Enterprises
Cox Enterprises is the successor to the publishing company founded in Dayton, Ohio, United States, by James Middleton Cox, who began with the Dayton Daily News. He was the Democratic candidate for the President of the United States in the election of 1920...
-owned Fox
Fox Broadcasting Company
Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly referred to as Fox Network or simply Fox , is an American commercial broadcasting television network owned by Fox Entertainment Group, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Launched on October 9, 1986, Fox was the highest-rated broadcast network in the...
affiliate KTVU
KTVU
KTVU, virtual channel 2 , is the Fox-affiliated television station serving the San Francisco Bay Area. Licensed to Oakland, California, the station has been owned by Atlanta-based Cox Enterprises since 1964, making it the largest Fox affiliate by market size that is not owned and operated by the...
, who has dominated the 10:00 news hour for decades and continues to do so to this day.
Channel 4 was at one time the flagship station of the Oakland Athletics
Oakland Athletics
The Oakland Athletics are a Major League Baseball team based in Oakland, California. The Athletics are a member of the Western Division of Major League Baseball's American League. From to the present, the Athletics have played in the O.co Coliseum....
baseball team from 1993
1993 Oakland Athletics season
The Oakland Athletics' 1993 season involved the A's finishing 7th in the American League West with a record of 68 wins and 94 losses.-Offseason:* October 27, 1992: Jamie Quirk was released by the Athletics....
through 1998
1998 Oakland Athletics season
The Oakland Athletics' 1998 season involved the A's finishing 4th in the American League West with a record of 74 wins and 88 losses.-Offseason:* October 29, 1997: Dane Johnson was selected off waivers from the Athletics by the Toronto Blue Jays....
. This caused a problem in 1996
1996 Oakland Athletics season
The Oakland Athletics' 1996 season involved the A's finishing 3rd in the American League West with a record of 78 wins and 84 losses.-Offseason:*November 27, 1995: Buddy Groom was signed as a Free Agent with the Oakland Athletics....
, when the final day of the USA Olympic
1996 Summer Olympics
The 1996 Summer Olympics of Atlanta, officially known as the Games of the XXVI Olympiad and unofficially known as the Centennial Olympics, was an international multi-sport event which was celebrated in 1996 in Atlanta, Georgia, United States....
track and field trials conflicted with a scheduled Athletics broadcast. Since KRON-TV was contractually obligated to show the baseball game live, it rebroadcast the trials at midnight.
BayTV
Also from July 4, 1994 until August 30, 2001 KRON-TV operated a 24-hour24-hour news cycle
The 24-hour news cycle arrived with the advent of television channels dedicated to news, and brought about a much faster pace of news production with increased demand for stories that can be presented as news, as opposed to the day-by-day pace of the news cycle of printed daily newspapers...
cable news
United States cable news
Cable news refers to television channels devoted to television news broadcasts, with the name deriving from the proliferation of such networks during the 1980s with the advent of cable television. In the United States, early networks included CNN in 1980, Financial News Network in 1981, and CNN2 ...
and local television programming channel, BayTV. BayTV, on channel 35, was co-operated with then AT&T Broadband
AT&T Broadband
AT&T Broadband was the name of AT&T's cable operations, which were composed of the assets of TCI and MediaOne, Prime Cable, as well as two Comcast cable systems AT&T acquired later in a system swap. Formed in 1999, AT&T Broadband was the largest provider of cable television services...
, now Comcast
Comcast
Comcast Corporation is the largest cable operator, home Internet service provider, and fourth largest home telephone service provider in the United States, providing cable television, broadband Internet, and telephone service to both residential and commercial customers in 39 states and the...
. BayTV ceased operations in 2001
2001 in television
The year 2001 in television involved some significant events.Below is a list of television-related events in 2001.-Events:-Debuts:-1940s:*Meet the Press .*Candid Camera .*CBS Evening News ....
. KRON-TV's NewsCenter 4 newsroom also offered news updates on MSNBC
MSNBC
MSNBC is a cable news channel based in the United States available in the US, Germany , South Africa, the Middle East and Canada...
and CNN Headline News
CNN Headline News
HLN, formerly known as CNN Headline News and CNN2, is a cable television news channel based in the United States and a spinoff of the cable news television channel, CNN. Initially airing tightly-formatted 30-minute newscasts around the clock, since 2005, the channel has increasingly aired long-form...
on the cable systems around the Bay Area. KRON 4 News at 9 actually started on BayTV in the 1990s and when BayTV went off the air and KRON became an independent, the newscast officially went to channel 4 in 2002
2002 in television
The year 2002 in television involved some significant events.Below is a list of television-related events in 2002.For the American TV schedule, see: 2002–03 United States network television schedule.-Events:-Debuts:-1940s:...
and stayed there until September 5, 2006. The channel's daily Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is a term which refers to the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California in the United States. The region is home to many of the world's largest technology corporations...
news recap New Media News also aired nationally on Jones Media Group
Jones Radio Networks
Jones Radio Networks & Jones Media Group were branches of Jones International before being sold to Triton Media Group. JRN and JMN provide local radio stations with satellite-delivered formats. They also offer other services to local radio such as news and talk programs, syndicated radio shows,...
cable channel Mind Extension University/Knowledge TV until that channel ended broadcasting in 2000
2000 in television
The year 2000 in television involved some significant events.Below is a list of television-related events in 2000.For the American TV schedule, see: 2000-01 United States network television schedule.-Event:-Debuts:-1940s:...
.
News operation
In total (as of June 2010), KRON presently broadcasts a total of 60½ hours of local news each week (10½ hours on weekdays, 4½ hours on Saturdays and 3½ hours on Sundays), the most of any local television station in the state of California, as well as currently the most of any television station in the United States (just ahead of Fox station WTVTWTVT
WTVT, channel 13, is a television station in Tampa, Florida. It is an owned and operated station of the Fox Broadcasting Company, a subsidiary of the News Corporation...
in Tampa, Florida
Tampa, Florida
Tampa is a city in the U.S. state of Florida. It serves as the county seat for Hillsborough County. Tampa is located on the west coast of Florida. The population of Tampa in 2010 was 335,709....
, which carries 60 hours of local news per week) and the second most of any television station in North America (behind independent station CHCH in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Hamilton, Ontario
Hamilton is a port city in the Canadian province of Ontario. Conceived by George Hamilton when he purchased the Durand farm shortly after the War of 1812, Hamilton has become the centre of a densely populated and industrialized region at the west end of Lake Ontario known as the Golden Horseshoe...
, which carries 76.5 hours of local news per week).
Newscast history
KRON-TV's news operation began in September 1957, from a studio in the San Francisco ChronicleSan Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
building at Fifth & Mission streets. The KRON-TV news department was located thirty feet from the Chronicle city desk. "Liaison is close, effective and fast," said a KRON-TV promotional film from the era. KRON-TV produced six daily newscasts at the time. The 6 p.m. newscast was "Shell News," sponsored by "your neighborhood Shell dealer." Tom Franklin was "Shell News reporter" from the studio at the Chronicle and in filmed field reports. Franklin began the broadcast standing next to a San Francisco Bay Area map. Franklin announced, "Greetings from your neighborhood Shell dealer." Lights were illuminated on the map next to the various cities that were to be featured in the newscast. Franklin anchored most of the program from behind a desk that had a large Shell logo next to a "Tom Franklin" name plate. A Shell "X-100" oil can sat atop the desk throughout the newscast. Live portions were used for late bulletins from the Chronicle city desk or for local and regional stories not suitable for film treatment. John Philip Sousa
John Philip Sousa
John Philip Sousa was an American composer and conductor of the late Romantic era, known particularly for American military and patriotic marches. Because of his mastery of march composition, he is known as "The March King" or the "American March King" due to his British counterpart Kenneth J....
's "Semper Fidelis" was the theme music for "Shell News." The voice over at the close stated that "Shell News" had been "brought to you by the combined facilities of the KRON-TV News Department and the San Francisco Chronicle." Some of the stories covered by KRON-TV's "Shell News" in 1957 included the end of the "pedestrian scramble" system at downtown San Francisco street intersections, the end of the San Francisco-Oakland Southern Pacific railroad passenger ferry and the final game of the San Francisco Seals baseball team (to be replaced by the San Francisco Giants in 1958).
As an NBC affiliate, KRON-TV branded its newscasts using the NewsCenter 4 name from the 1970s until it adopted the KRON 4 News branding scheme in early 2001
2001 in television
The year 2001 in television involved some significant events.Below is a list of television-related events in 2001.-Events:-Debuts:-1940s:*Meet the Press .*Candid Camera .*CBS Evening News ....
. Appropriately for a station owned by the Chronicle, KRON-TV was a very news-intensive station. For example, its 6 p.m. newscast was called NewsCenter 4 at 6. However, KRON-TV also had other names for its newscasts. Before KRON 4 Morning News was used for the entire 4-11 a.m. slot on weekday mornings, the 5-7 a.m. newscast was called Daybreak. Its 11:30 a.m. weekday newscast was called NewsCenter 4 Midday. When it began in March 1981, the 4 p.m. broadcast was "Live on 4," later to become "T.G.I.4.," a mostly-talk program with some news content. For much of the 1980s, the 5 p.m. weekday newscast was Live at Five; Bob Jimenez anchored in the studio with Evan White in the KRON Newsroom. Its weeknight 11 p.m. newscast was called NewsCenter 4 Update. All the evening newscasts featured a variety of anchors, until settling down with the successful duo of Roz Abrams and Jim Paymar
Jim Paymar
James "Jim" Paymar is an American journalist and communications specialist. He has worked as a financial correspondent and anchor for CNBC in New York, Business Week, and general manager of KCNS-TV in San Francisco...
. Later after Abrams left for New York
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
's WABC-TV
WABC-TV
WABC-TV, channel 7, is the flagship station of the Disney-owned American Broadcasting Company located in New York City. The station's studios and offices are located on the Upper West Side section of Manhattan, adjacent to ABC's corporate headquarters, and its transmitter is atop the Empire State...
in 1986
1986 in television
The year 1986 in television involved some significant events.Below is a list of television-related events in 1986.For the American network television schedule, please see 1986-87 American network television schedule.-Events:-Debuts:*September 6 –...
, Paymar and Sylvia Chase (who had been a correspondent for the ABC-TV
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
newsmagazine
Newsmagazine
A news magazine is a typed, printed, and published piece of paper, magazine or a radio or television program, usually weekly, featuring articles or segments on current events...
20/20) anchored. In the 1990s, the station branded itself as 24 Hour News
24 Hour News Source
The 24 Hour News Source brand was a common name used by American television stations starting in the early 1990s for brief hourly news updates, usually running 30 seconds to a minute in length. At its peak, dozens of stations across the U.S. were producing these brief news updates...
, with 30 to 60 second news updates every hour. The station adopted the slogan The Bay Area's News Station in 2001
2001 in television
The year 2001 in television involved some significant events.Below is a list of television-related events in 2001.-Events:-Debuts:-1940s:*Meet the Press .*Candid Camera .*CBS Evening News ....
.
Daybreak debuted as a half-hour program (6:30-7 a.m.) on Labor Day, 1986, leading in to NBC's Today program. The first anchors were Lloyd Patterson and Lila Petersen. It was then the only local early morning newscast in the San Francisco television market, aside from local cut-ins to network news programming. KRON's five-minute newscasts at 6:45, 7:25 and 8:25 a.m. previously had been called Daybreak, too. KRON may have had a half-hour early morning news program as early as spring 1981.
KRON-TV newscasts in the early- to late-1980s ran commentaries by Wayne Shannon
Wayne Shannon
Wayne Shannon is a veteran news commentator and humorist. Shannon became popular with San Francisco viewers from 1982 through 1988 for his nightly "Just 4 You" segments on KRON-TV, where his name received billing in newscast introductions along with the anchors and weather and sports presenters...
in a segment called "Just 4 You." Shannon's name received billing in newscast introductions along with the anchors and weather and sports presenters. Many of Shannon's commentaries had a humorous tone.
Another staple of KRON-TV newscasts in the 1980s was live traffic reports and news coverage from the station's helicopter "Telecopter 4." Bob McCarthy, Rita Cohen, and Janice Huff
Janice Huff
Janice Huff is chief meteorologist for WNBC in New York City.-Early years:As she has sometimes noted on her newscast, though born in New York City, at an early age she moved to her grandparents in Columbia, South Carolina, and graduated from Eau Claire High School with honors, where she was a...
were among the personalities who reported from Telecopter 4. Their traffic reports appeared regularly in Daybreak, during Today and Live at Five. Evocative of his folksy, down-to-earth style, McCarthy had a catchphrase, "hunky snarky," that he often used to characterize roads on which traffic was flowing smoothly. Will Prater was the main pilot of Telecopter 4 in its early years and Lou Calderon was the main photographer.
Also during this era, KRON-TV broadcast from remote locations (e.g., Super Bowl venues) via a satellite up-link that it dubbed "Newstar 4." These segments often began with an animation depicting a signal originating from the up-link location, bouncing off of a satellite and ending at a satellite dish next to the words "San Francisco." The phrase "NEWSTAR 4 LIVE" was placed on the screen for long durations during these segments. KRON-TV regarded the satellite truck as a major competitive advantage over rival television stations, featuring it in a mid-1980s promotional spot which declared, "We got a mobile satellite up-link. They don't."
In the 1980s, KRON-TV produced lengthy analysis pieces for the "Cover Story" segment of its 6 p.m. newscast, many with an investigative journalism focus and sometimes produced by the 10-person "Target 4" investigative unit. The station re-ran some of these segments in an occasional program called Cover Story Magazine. KRON-TV also produced a half-hour public affairs program on Sunday mornings called Weekend Extra, which was hosted by Belva Davis and Rollin Post. This program frequently presented features from KRON-TV's news bureaus in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
and Sacramento
Sacramento
Sacramento is the capital of the state of California, in the United States of America.Sacramento may also refer to:- United States :*Sacramento County, California*Sacramento, Kentucky*Sacramento – San Joaquin River Delta...
, the only Bay Area station to maintain bureaus (deemed to be too expensive and disbanded by the end of the decade). During this time, KRON news grew rapidly in viewership and collected a large number of awards, including two DuPont Columbia awards, a Peabody
Peabody
-Places:United States* Peabody, Indiana* Peabody, Kansas** Peabody Downtown Historic District, in Peabody, Kansas* Peabody, Massachusetts* Peabody, Cambridge, Massachusetts, a neighborhood* Peabody River, in New Hampshire-Institutions:...
, and more than 100 local Emmys.
"San Francisco Minutes" and "Bay Area Minutes" were KRON-TV productions in the mid-1980s. They were series of one-minute documentaries featuring people, places and events in San Francisco and Bay Area history. They usually featured narrations by KRON-TV personalities set to soaring music (e.g., Mark Thompson on San Francisco's cables cars, Lloyd Patterson on the San Mateo County coastline).
On September 17, 2007, KRON began to broadcast its local newscasts in the 16:9
16:9
16:9 is an aspect ratio with a width of 16 units and height of 9. Since 2009, it has become the most common aspect ratio for sold televisions and computer monitors and is also the international standard format of HDTV, Full HD, non-HD digital television and analog widescreen television ...
widescreen
Widescreen
Widescreen images are a variety of aspect ratios used in film, television and computer screens. In film, a widescreen film is any film image with a width-to-height aspect ratio greater than the standard 1.37:1 Academy aspect ratio provided by 35mm film....
standard definition format, making it the third station to do so behind KGO and KTVU. As of September 2010, among all stations that broadcasts local news in widescreen, KRON-TV remains the only local station in the Bay Area producing its local newscasts in-house that does not broadcast its newscasts in true high definition
High-definition television
High-definition television is video that has resolution substantially higher than that of traditional television systems . HDTV has one or two million pixels per frame, roughly five times that of SD...
.
In September 2008, KRON moved the syndicated daytime talk show Dr. Phil
Dr. Phil (TV series)
Dr. Phil is a reality/talk television show hosted by Phil McGraw. After McGraw's success with his segments on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Dr. Phil debuted on September 16, 2002...
to 5 p.m.; Dr. Phil had been broadcast on KRON-TV at 8 p.m. since its premiere in 2002. As a result of the move, the station eliminated its 5 p.m. newscast and started an 8 p.m. newscast. In September 2009, KRON dropped the 8 p.m. newscast and replaced it with Dr. Phil and as a result, a 5:30 p.m. newscast was reinstated on the schedule. KRON now has news blocks from 4-11 a.m. on weekday mornings and 4-7 p.m. on weekday evenings.
T.G.I.4
T.G.I.4 was a one-hour light local news and interview program which replaced "Live on 4" in 1983. It began with shots of various landmark Bay Area clocks (such as on the San Francisco Ferry BuildingFerry Building
The San Francisco Ferry Building is a terminal for ferries that travel across the San Francisco Bay and a shopping center located on The Embarcadero in San Francisco, California. On top of the building is a large clock tower, which can be seen from Market Street, a main thoroughfare of the city...
, on Sather Tower
Sather Tower
Sather Tower is a campanile on the University of California, Berkeley campus. It is more commonly known as The Campanile due to its resemblance to the Campanile di San Marco in Venice, and serves as UC Berkeley's most recognizable symbol. It was completed in 1914 and first opened to the public in...
at UC Berkeley and on the San Jose Museum of Art
San Jose Museum of Art
The San Jose Museum of Art is an art museum in Downtown San Jose, California, USA. Founded in 1969, the museum hosts a large permanent collection emphasizing West Coast artists of the 20th- and 21st-century. It is located next to the Circle of Palms Plaza and Plaza de César Chávez...
/1890s post office building) chiming four o'clock. Jan Rasmussen and Patrick Van Horn
Patrick Van Horn
Patrick Van Horn is an American actor. He is best known for his role as Sue in the 1996 film Swingers, starring alongside real-life friends Jon Favreau, Vince Vaughn and Ron Livingston...
were co-hosts. In the mid-1980s, KRON-TV produced and aired a talk program called Bay City Limits, which ran in the afternoon. (Rival TV stations also produced talk programs in that era: A.M. San Francisco at KGO, and People Are Talking at KPIX.)
New Year's Live
From circa 1989 until January 2008, KRON produced a program called "New Year's Live." It aired on New Year's Eve (sometimes beginning at 11 p.m.) and continued into New Year's Day (sometimes ending at 1 a.m.). Events in San Francisco were the focal point of KRON's coverage, especially the midnight firework show near the Ferry Building. Other West Coast television stations joined KRON in some years (including KCAL-TVKCAL-TV
KCAL-TV, channel 9, is an independent television station in Los Angeles, California, USA, owned by the CBS Corporation. KCAL-TV shares its studio facilities with KCBS-TV inside CBS Studio Center in the Studio City section of Los Angeles, and its transmitter is located atop Mount Wilson.-Digital...
in Los Angeles, KING-TV
KING-TV
KING-TV, virtual channel 5, is a television station in Seattle, Washington, affiliated with the NBC network. Owned by Belo Corporation, it broadcasts on UHF digital channel 48. Its offices and broadcasting center are located just east of Seattle Center...
in Seattle, KCRA in Sacramento, KNSD
KNSD
KNSD is the NBC television station based in San Diego, California. It is owned by a joint venture of NBCUniversal and LIN TV . However, because NBCUniversal has majority control, KNSD is run as an NBC owned and operated station...
in San Diego and KLAS-TV
KLAS-TV
KLAS-TV, virtual channel 8 , is the CBS-affiliated television station serving the Las Vegas, Nevada market; it is owned and operated by Landmark Media Enterprises...
in Las Vegas in December 1990), featuring midnight countdown events in other cities, such as Las Vegas casinos and at the Seattle Space Needle. KRON-TV weatherman Mark Thompson was the host in the early years. KRON revived "New Year's Live" in December 2010, a one-hour broadcast hosted by Catherine Heenan and George Rask in the studio, with live reports from Henry Tenenbaum at Pier 39 and Vicki Liviakis at Waterbar on the Embarcadero.
Ratings
During the May 2001 sweeps period, KRON beat KGO-TV in the 5 and 6 p.m. timeslots by a very close margin, ending KGO-TV's domination in that timeslot. As an independent station, KRON's newscasts still performed relatively well in the ratings, though the ratings were lower than they were before the station lost the NBC affiliation; during the February 2004 sweeps period, the station placed second in the ratings behind KTVU. However, the station's ratings have gradually fallen; also in 2004, the station posted an 8.7% market share down from the 21% share it had as an NBC affiliate, with the 9 p.m. newscast created after becoming independent eventually fell to fourth place by 2005.Newscast titles
- Chronicle News (1949–1962)
- Shell News (1957-?)
- KRON-TV News/The San Francisco Report (1962–1966)
- The Sixth Hour Report/The Eleventh Hour ReportThe Eleventh Hour (branding)The Eleventh Hour and The Sixth Hour were brand names given to the eleven P.M. and six P.M. local newscasts on NBC owned-and-operated television stations from the mid-1960's until about 1974, when the NewsCenter branding began to be used...
(1966–1974) - NewsWatch 4 (1974–1977)
- NewsCenter 4 (1977–2001)
- NewsCenter 4 Update (11 p.m. newscast; 1977–1989)
- NewsCenter 4 Nightbeat (11 p.m. newscast; 1993–2001)
- KRON 4 News (2001–present)
- KRON 4 News Nightbeat (11 p.m. newscast; 2001–2006)
Station slogans
- We're The Best, And Getting Better! (early 1970s)
- Watch The News, on Newswatch 4 (mid 1970s)
- We're Friends 4 You (1977–1979; the jingle music was also used on WKYC in Cleveland)
- KRON is Coming Home (1980)
- The NewsCenter for Northern California (1982–2001)
- Your 24-Hour News Service (1991–1995)
- More News, More Often (1993–1995)
- 24 Hour News. Every Day. Every Hour. (1995–1999)
- The 24-Hour News Station (1999–2001)
- KRON 4: The Bay Area's News Station (2001–present)
- KRON 4: The Bay Area's News and Weather Station (2001–present)
- Proud to be Independent (slogan used in KRON promos during the loss of NBC affiliation from January 1, 2002 – September 4, 2006)
Anchors
- Mark Danon - weekday mornings "KRON 4 Morning News" (6-10 a.m.)
- Ysabel Duron - weekend mornings "KRON 4 Morning News"
- James Fletcher - weekday mornings "KRON 4 Early News" (4-6 a.m.); also weekday morning meteorologist
- Darya Folsom - weekday mornings "KRON 4 Morning News" (6-10 a.m.)
- Marty Gonzalez - weekend mornings "KRON 4 Morning News"
- Catherine HeenanCatherine HeenanCatherine Heenan is a television news anchor and reporter at KRON-TV in San Francisco. Currently she co-anchors the station's hour-long newscast from four to five PM. Born in Indiana, she spent many summers growing up in Northern Ireland and England...
- weeknights, "KRON 4 Evening News"; fill in - Vicki Liviakis - weekends at 9 and 11 p.m.; general assignment reporter and weekday fill in
- Pam Moore - weeknights, "KRON 4 Evening News", "KRON 4 News at 8pm, and "KRON 4 News at 11pm"
- Justine Waldman - weekday mornings "KRON 4 Early News" (4-6 a.m.); fill in
StormTracker 4 Weather
- Jacqueline Bennett - chief meteorologist; weeknights, "KRON 4 Evening News," "KRON 4 News at 8pm," and "KRON 4 News at 11pm"
- Louisa HodgeLouisa HodgeLouisa Hodge is an award winning Emmy winner and two-time Emmy nominee general assignment reporter for KCBS-2/KCAL-9 at CBS Studio Center in Studio City, Los Angeles, California...
- meteorologist; weekday mornings "KRON 4 Morning News" (4-6 a.m.; 9-10am); morning reporter - James Fletcher - weekday morning anchor, "KRON 4 Early News"; weekday morning meteorologist, "KRON 4 Morning News: (6-9am)
- Brian Van Aken (AMSAmerican Meteorological SocietyThe American Meteorological Society promotes the development and dissemination of information and education on the atmospheric and related oceanic and hydrologic sciences and the advancement of their professional applications. Founded in 1919, the American Meteorological Society has a membership...
Seal of Approval) - meteorologist; weekends at 9 and 11 p.m. - Erica Kato - weekday fill in; weekday morning traffic anchor and reporter
Sports team
- Gary RadnichGary RadnichGary Radnich is the host of the 9 a.m. to noon slot on KNBR radio in San Francisco, California, and is also the lead sports anchor on KRON television.-Early life:...
- sports director; weeknights at 6 and 11 p.m. - Vernon Glenn - fill-in sports anchor
Traffic anchors
- George Rask - weekday mornings "KRON 4 Morning News" (6-10 a.m.)
- Erica Kato - weekday mornings "KRON 4 Early News" (4-6 a.m.); fill in meteorologist
Reporters
- Yoli Aceves - general assignment reporter/video photographer
- Rob Black - business expert (appears weeknights on "KRON 4 Evening News")
- Jeff Bush - general assignment reporter
- Terisa Estacio - general assignment reporter
- Rob Fladeboe - general assignment reporter and fill in anchor
- Maureen Kelly - real estate and general assignment reporter
- Dan Kerman - general assignment reporter
- Reggie Kumar - general assignment reporter and fill in anchor
- Da Lin - general assignment reporter
- Grant Lodes - general assignment reporter
- Haaziq Maadyun - general assignment reporter
- Jeff Pierce - general assignment reporter
- Stanley Roberts - "People Behaving Badly" reporter
- Kimberlee Sakamoto - internet reporter
- Jackie Sissel - general assignment reporter/video photographer
- Craig Sklar - general assignment reporter
- Gabriel Slate - technology and general assignment reporter
- J.R. Stone - general assignment reporter and fill in anchor
- Henry Tenenbaum - entertainment reporter; also host of "Henry's Home & Garden"
- Kate Thompson - general assignment reporter (currently on maternity leave)
- Will Tran - general assignment reporter
- Daniel Villareal - general assignment reporter
Notable former on-air staff
- Roz Abrams - anchor (1982–1985)
- Dick AlbertDick AlbertDick Albert was the co-chief meteorologist on WCVB-TV, channel 5, in Boston, Massachusetts along with Harvey Leonard. He was with the station from 1978–2009, delivering the evening and nighttime forecasts. He presented the 5:00 and 6:00 weather reports on NewsCenter 5, while Leonard worked on the...
- weather anchor (1975–1976; now retired from WCVB-TVWCVB-TVWCVB-TV, channel 5, is a television station located in Boston, Massachusetts, owned by Hearst Television and affiliated with the ABC Television Network. WCVB-TV's studios and transmitter are co-located in Needham, Massachusetts. WCVB is also one of six Boston television stations seen in Canada by...
in Boston) - Jonathan Bloom - general assignment reporter and political reporter (2008–2011; now at KGO-TV)
- Cheryl CasoneCheryl CasoneCheryl Cecile Casone is an American anchor on the Fox Business Network. She is also a Fox News business correspondent and the host of Cashin' In...
- reporter (2002–2004; now at Fox News) - Steve CentanniSteve CentanniSteven James Centanni is an American news reporter for Fox News Channel.-Journalism career:Centanni joined FNC in 1996. He is currently based in Washington D.C. as a national correspondent....
- reporter (1989–1996; now at Fox News) - Claudia CowanClaudia CowanClaudia Cowan born July 31, 1963, USA, is an American news reporter for the Fox News Channel. She began her career at KTTV-TV in Los Angeles, where she worked her way up from being a messenger to an on-air reporter, then moved to KMST-TV in Monterey where she began as a desk assistant, worked her...
- reporter (1995–1998; now at Fox News) - Julie DurdaJulie DurdaJulie Durda is a former cheerleader for the San Francisco 49ers, contestant on "The Bachelor", and current Miami weather anchor for WSVN. Before Julie joined the San Francisco 49ers, she was a featured member of the Comedy Central television show "BattleBots" and as a model for the EA Sports Tiger...
- traffic reporter (now weather anchor at WSVNWSVNWSVN, channel 7, is a television station located in Miami, Florida, USA. WSVN is owned by Sunbeam Television, and is an affiliate of the Fox Broadcasting Company. The station has its studio facilities located in North Bay Village and transmitter based in north Miami-Dade County.WSVN operates a Key...
in Miami) - Leila FeinsteinLeila FeinsteinLeila Feinstein is an American television news anchor based in Los Angeles working for Tribune-owned KTLA.- Biography :...
- sports anchor/reporter (2000–2003; now anchor at KTLAKTLAKTLA, virtual channel 5, is a television station in Los Angeles, California, USA. Owned by the Tribune Company, KTLA is an affiliate of the CW Television Network. KTLA's studios are on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, and its transmitter is located atop Mount Wilson...
in Los Angeles) - Art FinleyArt FinleyArt Finley is a former North American television and radio personality, mostly in San Francisco and Vancouver, until his retirement in 1995....
- children's show host (as "Mayor Art")/host of "Pick A Show" c. 1966/reporter (1959–1968) - Pat FinnPat FinnPatrick Joseph "Pat" Finn is the former host of several game shows. He is the owner of the production company Rubicon Entertainment.Finn first hosted the 1990 remake of the classic Jack Barry show The Joker's Wild...
- weatherman and host of Claim to Fame (1985–1989; later host of California Lottery's The Big SpinThe Big SpinThe Big Spin is the California Lottery's first television game show. Originally a Fred Tatashore production, it was later an Alexander Media Services production, followed by a production of Cal Image, and then finally a Jonathan Goodson Production....
) - Michelle FranzenMichelle FranzenMichelle Franzen is a national correspondent for NBC News. She has reported on a wide range of issues and events for various television stations, as well as MSNBC, The Today Show, and NBC Nightly News...
- reporter and fill-in anchor (1998–2001; now at NBC NewsChannel in New York) - Emil GuillermoEmil GuillermoEmil Guillermo is a print and broadcast journalist, commentator and humorist. He writes a column, "Emil Amok," for AsianWeek- the most widely read and largest circulating Asian American newsweekly in the U.S....
- reporter (1982–1989) - John HambrickJohn HambrickJohn Hambrick is an American broadcast journalist, reporter, actor, and voice over announcer.-Broadcast journalist:Hambrick began his television career in 1963, at a station in Abilene, Texas. By 1967 he was working at WCPO-TV in Cincinnati when he was recruited by its sister station in...
- (1975–1980) - Janice HuffJanice HuffJanice Huff is chief meteorologist for WNBC in New York City.-Early years:As she has sometimes noted on her newscast, though born in New York City, at an early age she moved to her grandparents in Columbia, South Carolina, and graduated from Eau Claire High School with honors, where she was a...
- meteorologist (1990–1994; now chief meteorologist at WNBC-TV in New York) - Vic Lee - reporter (1972–2006; now reporter at KGO-TVKGO-TVKGO-TV, channel 7, is an owned-and-operated television station of the Walt Disney Company-owned American Broadcasting Company, based in San Francisco, California...
) - Sam Chu LinSam Chu LinSam Chu Lin was an American journalist. Born in Greenville, Mississippi, Lin died, at the age of 67, in Burbank, California on March 5, 2006. In the 1960s, he was one of the first Asian Americans to appear on both radio and television, eventually working for all four major broadcast networks...
- reporter (1981–1984), deceased - Dave MalkoffDave MalkoffDave Malkoff is an American television journalist working for KTLA in Los Angeles. He has covered some of the most destructive hurricanes in US history and reported from several parts of Iraq at the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2010...
- reporter (2003–2004; now reporter at KTLAKTLAKTLA, virtual channel 5, is a television station in Los Angeles, California, USA. Owned by the Tribune Company, KTLA is an affiliate of the CW Television Network. KTLA's studios are on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, and its transmitter is located atop Mount Wilson...
in Los Angeles) - Mark MullenMark MullenMark Edward Mullen is an Emmy Award-winning TV journalist and the anchorman for NBC affiliate KNSD-TV in San Diego. He joined the station in June, 2010 from ABC News, where he served as a Los Angeles-based correspondent...
- morning anchor (1991–1995 and 2002–2003; now anchor at KNSD-TV in San Diego) - Soledad O'BrienSoledad O'BrienMaría de la Soledad Teresa O'Brien is an American Broadcast journalist. She is currently the host of the "In America" documentary unit on CNN, and is best known for anchoring the CNN marquee morning newscast American Morning from July 2003 to April 2007, with Miles O'Brien...
- reporter (1993–1996; now anchor at CNNCNNCable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
) - Ross PalomboRoss PalomboRoss Palombo is an American journalist and television news anchor.-Early life and education:Palombo was born in Chicago, Illinois and was raised in the Northwest suburbs...
- anchor/reporter (2000–2005; now at CBS NewsCBS NewsCBS News is the news division of American television and radio network CBS. The current chairman is Jeff Fager who is also the executive producer of 60 Minutes, while the current president of CBS News is David Rhodes. CBS News' flagship program is the CBS Evening News, hosted by the network's main...
) - Jim PaymarJim PaymarJames "Jim" Paymar is an American journalist and communications specialist. He has worked as a financial correspondent and anchor for CNBC in New York, Business Week, and general manager of KCNS-TV in San Francisco...
- anchor (1982–1987; now runs a media consulting firm) - Wayne ShannonWayne ShannonWayne Shannon is a veteran news commentator and humorist. Shannon became popular with San Francisco viewers from 1982 through 1988 for his nightly "Just 4 You" segments on KRON-TV, where his name received billing in newscast introductions along with the anchors and weather and sports presenters...
- commentator (1982–1988) - Ray TaliaferroRay TaliaferroRafael "Ray" Taliaferro is an American radio host and liberal political commentator. His early-morning talk show, simply called The Early Show, airs on KGO News Talk 810 in the San Francisco Bay Area.-Broadcast career:...
- anchor (1972–1977; now at KGO-AM) - Mark ThompsonMark Thompson (TV)Mark Thompson is a two-time Emmy award winner for writing, hosting and producing specials for the Fox Television stations.-Career as television host:...
- chief weather anchor (1984–1990)
Station logos
Since the 1970s, KRON-TV has used a logo with the design of the number four based upon the Golden Gate BridgeGolden Gate Bridge
The Golden Gate Bridge is a suspension bridge spanning the Golden Gate, the opening of the San Francisco Bay into the Pacific Ocean. As part of both U.S. Route 101 and California State Route 1, the structure links the city of San Francisco, on the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula, to...
. The vertical component is a bridge tower, the horizontal component is a portion of the bridge deck, and the curve is a portion of a suspension cable. (This logo was used as early as April 1974, during coverage of a Symbionese Liberation Army
Symbionese Liberation Army
The Symbionese Liberation Army was an American self-styled left-wing urban militant group active between 1973 and 1975 that considered itself a revolutionary vanguard army...
bank robbery.) By about 1990-1991, this evolved into the "circle 4" logo in use to this day, with the 4 keeping the bridge-like design. Notably absent from KRON's on-air identity was the NBC Peacock logo, even during its days as an NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
affiliate (the station would use the peacock logo sparingly in select on-air promotions, notably in the late 1980s and 1990s to promote NBC Sports
NBC Sports
NBC Sports is the sports division of the NBC television network. Formerly "a service of NBC News," it broadcasts a diverse array of programs, including the Olympic Games, the NFL, the NHL, MLS, Notre Dame football, the PGA Tour, the Triple Crown, and the French Open, among others...
coverage of local teams such as the San Francisco Giants
San Francisco Giants
The San Francisco Giants are a Major League Baseball team based in San Francisco, California, playing in the National League West Division....
as well as joint news promo spots featuring NBC Nightly News
NBC Nightly News
NBC Nightly News is the flagship daily evening television news program for NBC News and broadcasts. NBC Nightly News has aired from Studio 3B, located on floors 3 of the NBC Studios is the headquarters of the GE Building forms the centerpiece of 30th Rockefeller Center it is located in the center...
anchor Tom Brokaw
Tom Brokaw
Thomas John "Tom" Brokaw is an American television journalist and author best known as the anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News from 1982 to 2004. He is the author of The Greatest Generation and other books and the recipient of numerous awards and honors...
and local anchors Jim Paymar and Sylvia Chase).
Also in the 1970s, KRON used a logo for NewsWatch 4. At the top of this logo was the "Golden Gate Bridge 4" logo (the "4" was superimposed over the famous Golden Gate Bridge
Golden Gate Bridge
The Golden Gate Bridge is a suspension bridge spanning the Golden Gate, the opening of the San Francisco Bay into the Pacific Ocean. As part of both U.S. Route 101 and California State Route 1, the structure links the city of San Francisco, on the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula, to...
), and on the bottom was the text in a stylized font in capital letters, which read NEWSWATCH. They also used Fred Weinberg's NBC Newspulse as its music theme for NewsCenter 4. Later, in 1978, the newscast title was changed to NewsCenter 4 and KRON's news logo was changed to feature the word NewsCenter in Helvetica font next to the "4" logo (similar to the NewsCenter 4 branding pioneered by NBC's owned-and-operated stations such as WNBC
WNBC
WNBC, virtual channel 4 , is the flagship station of the NBC television network, located in New York City. WNBC's studios are co-located with NBC corporate headquarters at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in midtown Manhattan...
and KNBC
KNBC
KNBC, channel 4, is an owned-and-operated television station of the NBC Television Network, licensed to Los Angeles, California, USA. KNBC's studios and offices are located within the NBC Studios complex in Burbank, California, and its transmitter is located on Mount Wilson...
). This lasted until June 1984, when the NewsCenter text's font was changed.
A 3D animated Golden Gate ID was introduced in June 1984
1984 in television
This article is a list of television-related events in 1984.-Events:*January 9 – Wendy's "Fluffy Bun" ad first airs, which propels Clara Peller and her "Where's the beef?" catchphrase to national prominence....
, where some station IDs and newscast openings included animations wherein the "4" logo was superimposed upon a section of the bridge. There were two versions of this station ID: daytime and nighttime. In the early days of this station ID, the same music cue used for the early '80s' C Channel
C Channel
C Channel was a Canadian premium television service specialising in arts programming. It was one of Canada's first licensed "pay TV" channels when it began in 1983 but it ended in failure within months.- History :...
station was used. Later that year, a new music cue was used on the ID and was used until 1987. When KRON overhauled their set and debuted the foghorn music package in June 1987, a new updated music cue was used on the ID until 1989.
In addition, when "DayBreak" was changed on September 1, 1986, the DayBreak Sun (which mirrored that of NBC's Today Show) was used in the news openings/closings of the program with the Golden Gate Bridge being put on the other side of the sun.
The NewsCenter 4 logo was changed in 1978. The "4" was placed in a square and the bolder NewsCenter text appeared next to it. In 1984, the logo was changed again to feature the word NewsCenter in a new font (same as the font used for NBC News
NBC News
NBC News is the news division of American television network NBC. It first started broadcasting in February 21, 1940. NBC Nightly News has aired from Studio 3B, located on floors 3 of the NBC Studios is the headquarters of the GE Building forms the centerpiece of 30th Rockefeller Center it is...
programming in the early-to-mid 1980s). The "4" was italicized and the square was removed. This logo was used until 1988.