KFMB-TV

KFMB-TV

San Diego, California
Branding	CBS 8 (general) News 8 (newscasts)
Slogan	San Diego's #1 Choice for News...Again
Channels	Digital: 8 (VHF)
Subchannels	8.1 CBS 8.2 Me-TV
Affiliations	CBS
Owner	Midwest Television, Inc.
First air date	May 16, 1949
Call letters' meaning	For Mary and Burnham (son and daughter of KFMB-AM's founder)
Sister station(s)	KFMB (AM) KFMB-FM
Former channel number(s)	Analog: VHF 8 (1949-2009)
Former affiliations	All secondary: ABC / NBC / DuMont (1949-1956)
Transmitter power	14.87 kW
Height	227 m
Facility ID	42122
Transmitter coordinates	32°50′17.8″N 117°14′59.4″W
Website	www.cbs8.com

KFMB-TV is the local CBS television affiliate in San Diego, California. Its studios are located on Engineer Road in the Kearny Mesa area of San Diego along with its sister radio stations, AM 760 and FM 100.7. Its transmitter is located atop Mount Soledad above La Jolla, California and broadcasts over the air in digital on channel 8.

It is available to all of the San Diego area cable subscribers on Cox Communications, AT&T U-verse, and Time Warner Cable on standard definition cable channel 8. Cox and Time Warner Cable carry its high definition signal on cable channel 708, while U-verse carries it on channel 1008. The station is also available on its customary Channel 8 position (in both standard definition and in high definition) on both of DirecTV and Dish Network's local channels packages.

History

KFMB-TV went on the air on May 16, 1949, as San Diego's first television station. It was owned by Jack O. Gross along with KFMB radio. San Diego Mayor Harley E. Knox was present at its first broadcast. It has always been a CBS affiliate, and is the only station in the city to have never changed its affiliation. However, in the early years, it carried programs from ABC, NBC, and DuMont until other stations signed on.

KFMB signed an affiliation agreement with the short-lived Paramount Television Network in October 1949, and quickly became that network's strongest affiliate. The station received a network feed of Paramount programs which included Hollywood Opportunity, Meet Me in Hollywood, Magazine of the Week, Time For Beany, Your Old Buddy, and others; the station aired 6 hours of Paramount programs each week.

In 1953, Gross sold KFMB-AM-TV to Wrather-Alvarez Broadcasting. When the Wrather-Alvarez partnership broke up in 1957, Wrather kept KFMB-AM-FM-TV as part of Marietta Broadcasting. In 1959, Wrather sold Marietta Broadcasting to Transcontinent Broadcasting of Buffalo, New York. Transcontinent merged with the Taft Television and Radio Co., Inc. in 1964. However, the merger left Taft two television stations (since the company would have ended up with six VHF stations and three UHF stations) plus several radio stations over the FCC's ownership limit of the time. As a result, the KFMB stations were sold to their current owner, Midwest Television. In the 1990s, Midwest Television divested its original stations, WCIA in Champaign, Illinois and WMBD/WPBG/WMBD-TV in Peoria, Illinois, leaving only the KFMB cluster.

In 1998, KFMB-TV became the local home to San Diego Chargers regular season telecasts. KFMB airs all afternoon road games as part of the NFL on CBS, which covers the American Football Conference. They also air sold-out home games that are against an AFC opponent (those games against National Football Conference opponents are broadcast on KSWB).

In 2005, Midwest Television and CBS signed a 10-year extension for KFMB to remain a CBS affiliate. The station rebranded itself as News 8 on September 19, 2005 after a four year branding campaign as Local 8. In early 2007, KFMB began to rebrand itself as CBS8 with the launch of their new website. While it follows the CBS Mandate, channel 8 is not a CBS owned and operated station.

On January 28, 2007, KFMB became the first station in San Diego to broadcast its news in HD, and unveiled a new set to go with the switch. On February 17, 2009, KFMB-TV discontinued its analog signal in order to move its digital signal (temporarily on channel 7) to increased power on VHF channel 8.

Some famous KFMB alumni include former weather girl Raquel Tejada (later known as Raquel Welch), talk-show host Regis Philbin, TV host Sarah Purcell, CNN and former CBS anchor Paula Zahn, the first host of Access Hollywood Larry Mendte, and NBC correspondents Don Teague and Dawn Fratangelo.

California fires of 2007

Main article: California wildfires of October 2007

Reporter Larry Himmel took viewers on a walkthrough of his own destroyed home during the coverage of the California Wildfires Of 2007. The audio of the TV station's news feed was also simulcasted on KFMB-FM & KFMB 760 AM for an extended period of time.

Digital television

Channel	Video	Aspect	Programming
8.1	1080i	16:9	Main KFMB programming / CBS
8.2	480i	4:3	Me-TV

Analog-to-digital conversion

KFMB-TV discontinued analog service on February 17, 2009, moving the ATSC digital signal from pre-transition channel 55 to KFMB's traditional channel 8.

Programming

The station is a typical CBS affiliate running just about the entire CBS schedule. It also runs many local news and first-run talk and reality shows. Due to the fact the noon newscast airs an entire hour, KFMB airs Bold and the Beautiful on a delay at 9:30 a.m. instead of the recommended time slot of 12:30 p.m. for the majority of CBS affiliates. Recently, their noon newscast moved to 11 a.m. with Young and the Restless moving to noon and the revival of Let's Make a Deal airing at 2 p.m.

Syndicated programming on KFMB includes Live with Kelly, Dr. Phil, Entertainment Tonight, and The Insider.

Sports programming

Through its CBS affiliation, KFMB is the de facto television home of the San Diego Chargers. The station airs all Chargers games, including preseason games with the exception of the two NFC road teams visiting the Chargers during the regular season. Those games are shown on Fox via KSWB. KFMB also airs Chargers telecasts that were produced by ESPN and NFL Network. By doing so this satisfies the NFL's requirement of making the game available to people who don't have access to the aforementioned networks in each team's primary market.

Due to a FCC regulation, KFMB is required to show E/I programs supplied by CBS, thus KFMB does not air live sporting events on Saturdays until 10 a.m. local time, even if coverage from CBS Sports has already begun by then.

News operation

KFMB has been the news leader in San Diego for most of its history, dating back to the 1950s when Ray Wilson was the popular anchorman of the city's first half-hour newscast. When Wilson stepped down in 1973, KFMB slipped to a distant second behind KGTV, rebounding only in the late 1970s and early 1980s when former KGTV producer Jim Holtzman was hired by the station as news director. Holtzman formed a popular and acclaimed news team consisting of anchors Michael Tuck and Allison Ross, weatherman Clark Anthony and sportscaster Ted Leitner. By the end of 1979, KFMB had risen back to the #1 position, remaining there until 1984 when Tuck suddenly moved to KGTV and helped that station overtake KFMB for the remainder of the decade.

Holtzman tried in vain to compete by experimenting with a different format for the 11 p.m. news called This Day which emphasized a softer, humanized format and attempted to find a common thread within the newscast. There was no regular anchor; instead Hal Clement, Loren Nancarrow, Dawn Fratangelo (now with NBC) and Susan Lichtman (now known as Susan Taylor at KNSD) formed an ensemble of anchor/reporters who alternated between anchoring, filing detailed reports and giving live interviews. Computer graphics were used heavily, and Dave Grusin's "Night Lines" served as the newscast's theme music.

Although it was innovative for its time, This Day proved to be a dismal failure as viewers responded negatively to the awkward format, and within nine months KFMB reverted back to a regular newscast. However, the news ratings for KFMB went into a deep decline which would not end for more than a decade as popular mainstays like Marty Levin and Allison Ross (both of whom reappeared on KNSD) either left voluntarily or were fired and were replaced by younger faces like Stan Miller and Susan Roesgen.

Eventually by the 1990s, Hal Clement would assume the early-evening anchor duties alongside Susan Peters and later Denise Yamada to mixed results as the station continued to battle KGTV and KNSD, primarily in the 11 p.m. period where the CBS lead-in at the time was particularly weaker. Then, Michael Tuck's brief return following Clement's departure for KGTV and CBS's resurgence at the start of the Millennium helped bring KFMB back to first place in the early evenings. KFMB provides video feed from Chopper 8 to KUSI and XETV. As of August 2006, News 8 is the only television station in San Diego to have its chopper covering breaking news at 11 p.m.

Ratings

As of 2006, KFMB was San Diego's most watched television station, based on Nielsen share sign-on to sign-off. The station's newscasts are #1 at noon, 5, 6:30 and 11 p.m. weekdays, and at 5 and 6:30 p.m. weekends.

Personalities

Current on-air staff

Anchors

• Carlo Cecchetto - weeknights at 5, 6:30 and 11p.m
• Dan Cohen- weekday mornings 4:30-7 a.m. and 11 a.m.
• Barbara-Lee Edwards- weeknights at 5, 6:30 and 11 p.m.; also health reporter
• Marcella Lee - weekends at 5, 6:30 and 11 p.m.
• Craig McKee- weekends at 5, 6:30 and 11 p.m.
• Nichelle Medina- weekday mornings 4:30-7 a.m. and 11 a.m.

Weather Team

• Matt Baylow - Chief Meteorologist; weeknights at 5, 6:30 and 11 p.m.
• Kimberly King - weekday mornings 4:30-7 a.m. and 11 a.m.
• Shawn Styles (AMS Seal of Approval) - Meteorologist; weekends at 5, 6:30 and 11 p.m.

Sports Team

• Kyle Kraska - Sports Director; weeknights at 5, 6:30 and 11 p.m.
• John Howard- Sports Anchor; weekends at 5, 6:30 and 11 p.m.
• Steve Quis- fill-in and sports reporter for San Diego ch.4

Reporters

• Richard Allyn- general assignment reporter
• Phil Blauer- general assignment reporter also fill-in anchor
• Larry Himmel - feature reporter; also occasional fill-in weather anchor
• Doug Kolk-general assignment reporter
• Alexis Christoforus- NYSE reporter
• Angie Lee- general assignment reporter
• Adrienne Moore-general assignment reporter also fill-in anchor
• Rekha Muddaraj-general assignment reporter also fill-in anchor
• Steve Price - general assignment reporter also fill-in anchor
• Jeff Zevely- general assignment reporter

Notable former on-air staff

• Marc Brown (1987–1989, now at KABC-TV in Los Angeles)
• Bob Dale - show host (1960s-70's "Zoorama", "PayDay 3 O'clock Movie", "Sun Up San Diego")
• Pamela Davis - weekend anchor/reporter (2001–2005) now at KPBS radio
• Rebecca Gomez - morning/noon anchor and reporter (?-1996 and 2001–2002, now with Fox News Channel)
• Greg Hurst - reporter/anchor (1982–1989, now at KHOU-TV in Houston)
• Jim Laslavic - sports anchor (1983–1989, now at KNSD)
• Ted Leitner - sports anchor (1978–2003)
• Larry Mendte - weather anchor (1988–1991, last at KYW-TV in Philadelphia, now with WPIX-TV in New York)
• Susan Peters - anchor (1991–1995, now at KAKE-TV in Wichita, Kansas)
• Sarah Purcell - talk show host (1970s)
• Susan Roesgen - anchor (1989–1991, formerly at CNN)
• Aloha Taylor (2001–2005, now at KSWB-TV)

Station personnel

• Ed Trimble - station general manager
• Dean Elwood - news director
• Barbara Richards - daytime executive producer
• Les Waldron - assignment editor

See also

• KFMB (AM)
• KFMB-FM

External links

• KFMB-TV 8
• Query the FCC's TV station database for KFMB-TV
• BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on KFMB-TV