KTVU

KTVU

Oakland - San Francisco - San Jose, California
City of license	Oakland, California
Branding	KTVU Fox 2 (general) KTVU Channel 2 News (newscasts)
Slogan	Complete Bay Area News Coverage
Channels	Digital: 44 (UHF) Virtual: 2 (PSIP)
Subchannels	(see article)
Translators	Analog: K06FA 6 Hopland K39AG 39 Ukiah Digital: 48 (UHF) San Jose
Affiliations	Fox LATV (on DT2)
Owner	Cox Media Group (KTVU, LLC)
First air date	March 3, 1958 (1958-03-03)
Call letters' meaning	TeleVision for YoU
Sister station(s)	KICU-TV
Former channel number(s)	Analog: 2 (VHF, 1958–2009) Digital: 56 (UHF, 2000–2009)
Former affiliations	Independent (1958–1986)
Transmitter power	1000 kW
Height	433 m
Facility ID	35703
Transmitter coordinates	37°45′18.8″N 122°27′10.4″W
Licensing authority	FCC
Public license information:	Profile CDBS
Website	www.ktvu.com

KTVU, channel 2, is the Fox-affiliated television station serving the San Francisco Bay Area. Licensed to Oakland, California, the station is owned by the Cox Media Group subsidiary of Cox Enterprises, making it the largest Fox affiliate by market size that is not owned and operated by the network. It is a sister station to independent station KICU-TV (channel 36). The two stations share studio facilities located in Oakland at Jack London Square, and KTVU's transmitter is located at Sutro Tower in San Francisco.

In the few areas of the western United States where a Fox station is not receivable over-the-air or through cable television, KTVU is carried on the Dish Network satellite service as part of All American Direct's distant network package to qualifying subscribers (All American Direct began to lease space from Dish Network to distribute distant network signals following a court ruling that said Dish itself could not distribute the programming). Until the late 1990s, KTVU was seen nationally on satellite via C-Band systems and the now-defunct PrimeStar service.

History

As an independent station

Originally owned by a group of investors under the name San Francisco-Oakland Television, Inc., KTVU signed on the air as an independent station on March 3, 1958, with a special live telecast in its Oakland studios (the KTVU call letters had been previously used for a short-lived Stockton station on UHF channel 36 that operated from 1955 to 1956, the successor to which, KGSC-TV – which launched in 1967, and is now KICU-TV – came under common ownership with KTVU in 2000). Until the completion of the Sutro Tower, KTVU maintained transmitter facilities from a tower on San Bruno Mountain. In July 1963, the station was purchased by Atlanta-based Cox Broadcasting for $12 million.

For a brief time in the early 1980s, KTVU was uplinked to satellite as a national superstation, seen mostly on corporate parent Cox Enterprises's cable providers. However, the station was unable to compete with Atlanta's WTBS, Chicago's WGN-TV and New York City's WOR-TV; while KTVU remained a superstation for the remainder of its run as an independent, its cable coverage was reduced to providers within the Western United States, and was available on cable providers in northern California, Nevada, Oregon and to a lesser extent Utah.

Over the years, KTVU aired a schedule of cartoons, off-network sitcoms, old movies, drama series, talk shows, local newscasts, and religious programs. It was the leading independent station in the San Francisco television market for several years. It retained this status when more independents (on UHF) signed on the air over the years by reinventing the station's own image with its former longtime slogan: "There's Only One 2". As a VHF station competitor, KTVU aired The 8 O'Clock Movie as an independent alternative to network prime time programming seen on KRON-TV, KPIX and KGO-TV.

As a Fox affiliate

On October 9, 1986, KTVU became a charter affiliate of the newly-created Fox television network. KTVU launched a morning newscast called Mornings on 2 in 1991 (and, as such, became the fourth Fox affiliate or station to air weekday morning newscasts). It began to air an afternoon cartoon block supplied by the network, Fox Kids, when it debuted in 1991. It also added more syndicated talk shows, court shows, and reality shows over the years; the station still runs some off-network sitcoms. The station continued to run the Fox Kids block on weekdays until Fox ended weekday kids programming in January 2002, but still retained the Saturday morning lineup, which eventually became known as 4Kids TV until Fox discontinued its children's programming altogether on December 27, 2008.

KTVU has generally aired the entire Fox lineup with no preemptions, except for San Francisco Giants baseball games during its contractual tenure with the team, as the network airs fewer hours of network programming than CBS, NBC and ABC. At first, KTVU delayed preempted programming to weekends, but with the growth of Fox and viewer demand, the station eventually aired the delayed primetime shows following the station's 10 p.m. newscast. The Bay Area has always been one of the ten largest Nielsen media markets and Fox naturally wanted to have a owned-and-operated station in the area. Through the network's parent company, News Corporation, it made several offers to buy KTVU, but Cox turned down their offers each. When Cox purchased KICU, the preempted Fox programming would be moved to that station to air in its normal timeslot in lieu of KTVU. The issue over Giants baseball and pre-emptions became moot when the team announced that NBC owned-and-operated KNTV would be the flagship station for the Giants beginning with the 2008 season. This is also due to in part to the fact that KICU, which had broadcast Oakland Athletics baseball games until 2009, when CSN California took over as a result of an exclusive contract, ending the broadcasts on KICU. Despite this, Fox has been very satisfied with KTVU, as the station is one of the network's strongest affiliates.

In 2000, Cox Enterprises acquired KICU, creating the Bay Area market's first television station duopoly with KTVU; KICU moved its operations from its original studios in San Jose and consolidated them into KTVU's Oakland studios. Both stations now share several programming and cross promotion functions as well. On March 3, 2008, KTVU celebrated its 50th anniversary of broadcasting. In honor of the anniversary, a series of fifteen promos were produced for which included those honoring former KTVU programs such as Romper Room and Captain Satellite, as well as the station's sports programming.

Station branding

In its early years as a Fox affiliate, KTVU still referenced itself as "Channel 2" and rarely called itself "Fox 2" under the branding conventions used by Fox for its other affiliates, although some promos for Fox network programs did refer to the station as "Fox Channel 2". In 1996, the Fox logo was added into the longtime "Circle Laser 2" logo (which has been used since 1974), and when the network tightened its branding standardizations for its stations, the station began branding itself as KTVU Fox 2 – although it continues to brand itself as "KTVU Channel 2" during its newscasts. At the same time, it incorporated the KTVU calls into its branding full-time to maintain a local presence. KTVU also used the slogan "There's Only One 2" in its marketing and on-air promos, including a musical jingle, during the 1970s and 1980s.

Digital television

This station's digital signal is multiplexed:

Channel	PSIP Short Name	Video	Aspect	Programming
2.1	KTVU-TV	720p	16:9	Main KTVU programming / Fox
2.2	KTVU-DT2	480i	4:3	LATV

KTVU also has a Mobile DTV feed of subchannel 2.1, labelled "KTVU MB", broadcasting at 1.83 Mbit/s on KICU-TV's digital signal, though it has plans to move it to its own signal.

Analog-to-digital conversion

KTVU shut down its analog signal on June 12, 2009 as part of the digital television transition, its digital signal moved from UHF channel 56 (due to the high UHF band of channels 52-69 being discontinued for broadcasting use after the transition) to channel 44, the allocation previously occupied by KBCW's analog signal during the pre-transition era. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display KTVU's virtual channel as its former VHF analog channel 2.

KTVU also operates a digital fill-in translator on UHF channel 48. This translator serves the southern part of the viewing area, including San Jose.

Programming

Syndicated programs seen on KTVU currently include Maury, Seinfeld, The Wendy Williams Show, Right This Minute, TMZ, The Dr. Oz Show and The Big Bang Theory.

Classic television series and movies

For many years, KTVU regularly ran reruns of classic television series from the 1950s and 1960s; an early favorite on the station was the syndicated Topper series. In fall 1981, KTVU ran Laverne & Shirley, Odd Couple, M*A*S*H and Barney Miller in a two-hour weeknight block from 6-8 p.m. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, KTVU aired comedy series such as I Love Lucy (which aired back-to-back episodes in the morning hours), Three's Company and Too Close for Comfort (which aired in the early afternoon).

KTVU frequently showed classic movies, especially weeknights from 8 to 10 p.m. and on Sunday afternoons. In the early 1960s, KTVU began televising films from Warner Bros. Pictures, mostly from the 1950s and mostly in color, on Sundays at 7 p.m. Channel 2 was the first Bay Area station to present such films as A Star Is Born, East of Eden and Rebel Without a Cause. KTVU exercised discretion and limited commercial interruptions during the movies, and often offered them uncensored and with commentary, either by a studio host or via slides. The station even televised MGM's Hollywood Revue of 1929 with some of the original two-strip Technicolor sequences.

In 1992, KTVU edited a version of the 1984 science fiction film Dune, combining the Allen Smithee television cut with the original theatrical release (and thereby restoring all the violence of the latter cut, while eliminating some of the objectionable edits that caused director David Lynch to take his name off the credits of the TV print).

Children's programming

During the 1960s and 1970s, KTVU aired an afternoon children's show called Captain Satellite, that was hosted by Bob March; The Space Explorers was shown on the show. Up until the 1980s, the station produced a series of classic children's public service shorts under the title Bits and Pieces, which often featured a two talking puppets, Charley and Humphrey, which Pat McCormick had brought from KGO-TV; the shorts, which often aired during children's programming, were aimed at delivering positive and educational messages to children. It was also the Bay Area's originating station for Romper Room, a children's television show which was franchised, instead of syndicated; the program aired at 8:30 a.m. during the 1980s.

Talk shows

In the 1980s, KTVU aired nationally-syndicated talk shows that later moved to other stations. Donahue aired at 11 a.m. on KTVU in the early 1980s, before moving to KGO-TV. Live! with Regis and Kathie Lee debuted in the San Francisco Bay Area in September 1988 at 11 a.m. on KTVU. It also later moved to KGO-TV. The one-hour daily program by television evangelist James Bakker aired at 6 a.m. on KTVU in the early 1980s.

Other locally produced programming

Programs that were formerly seen on KTVU during its run as an independent station included: Creature Features, hosted by Bob Wilkins from 1971 to 1979 and was replaced by John Stanley from 1979 until 1984; Dialing for Dollars, hosted by Pat McCormick, the voice of Charley and Humphrey and later the station's weatherman; National All-Star Wrestling, telecast on Friday nights during the early and mid-1960s from the KTVU studios or San Francisco's Cow Palace, hosted by Walt Harris; and Roller Derby Walt Harris also hosted for many years The San Francisco Bay Bombers Roller Derby games till the demise of the IRDL in 1973.

In the early 2000s, KTVU broadcast San Francisco's Chinese New Year Parade each winter; sister station KICU generally rebroadcast the parade on the evening of its broadcast (KTSF broadcast its own Chinese-language version using "pool" cameras).

Sports

San Francisco Giants baseball games were televised by KTVU from 1961, three years after the team arrived from New York, to 2007. Until 1965, KTVU only televised the team's road games against the Los Angeles Dodgers. On November 1, 2007, it was announced that KNTV would obtain the broadcast rights for Giants games beginning with the 2008 Major League Baseball season. The Giants remain a presence on KTVU, as since 1996, some Saturday afternoon games have been carried as part of Fox's national baseball coverage.

KTVU has also been the home of most San Francisco 49ers games since 1994, when Fox won the contract to carry National Football Conference games. KTVU also airs most Oakland Raiders games when they are hosting an NFC team. Both KTVU and sister station KICU-TV also carry Raiders preseason games. The San Francisco/Golden State Warriors also aired many of their games on KTVU through the years, on several occasions from 1962 to 1963, 1965 to 1968, 1969 to 1983, and the late 1990s to 2001.

News operation

KTVU presently broadcasts 47 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (eight hours on weekdays and 3½ hours on Saturdays and Sundays); in regards to the number of hours devoted to news programming, it is the second-highest local newscast output of any television station in the San Francisco Bay Area (behind MyNetworkTV affiliate KRON-TV, which carries 60 hours each week); KTVU's Saturday 6 p.m. and Sunday 5 p.m. newscasts are subject to preemption or delay due to network sports coverage as is common with Fox stations that carry early evening weekend newscasts. KTVU is the largest Fox station not owned by the network without a newscast in the traditional 11 p.m. timeslot, and the fifth-largest Fox station in the United States without an 11 p.m. newscast. KTVU also produces a half-hour 7 p.m. newscast that is seen weeknights on sister station KICU-TV, which also rebroadcasts The Ten O'Clock News at 11:30 p.m. KTVU has been the #1 rated local newscast among the Bay Area's television stations for several years; for the month of August 2010, KTVU's newscasts ranked #1 in viewers 25-54, beating KPIX, KGO, KNTV, and KRON.

The station has been well known in the Bay Area for its local news programming; KTVU's news department began operations along with the station on March 3, 1958, with the launch of The Ten O'Clock News, which for years had been the only television news broadcast in the Bay Area in that timeslot. Throughout the 1980s into the 2000s, the 10 p.m. newscast was often referred to as "the number one prime time newscast in the country", which was true based on the number of viewers at that hour. KTVU's 10 p.m. newscast was such a force to be reckoned with that KBWB cancelled its own 10 p.m. news broadcast in 2002, after having no luck competing with KTVU in the ratings (KBCW debuted a half-hour primetime newscast at 10 p.m. in March 2008 that is produced by KPIX, and competes against KTVU's hour-long newscast).

When KRON-TV became an independent station in January 2002, it scheduled its new primetime newscast at 9 p.m. so as to not compete directly with KTVU, a stark contrast to the early 1990s, when KRON – along with KPIX – moved its 11 p.m. newscast to 10 p.m. as part of the "Early Prime" network scheduling experiment, though both have since moved their late newscasts back to the 11 p.m. time slot. During the period, KTVU branded its late newscast as The Original Ten O'Clock News. The retirement of longtime news director Fred Zehnder brought changes to the newsroom, but in 2000 KTVU was ranked as the highest quality local newscast in the nation by the Project for Excellence in Journalism under his immediate successor, Andrew Finlayson, while maintaining number one ratings at ten and throughout the noon and morning newscasts. Varying prime time numbers and improvements at competitors have since lead to a decline in the once dominant news operation's ratings.

The Ten O'Clock News is also one of the few local newscasts in the United States to be syndicated to other television stations. It also airs on Reno, Nevada Fox affiliate KRXI-TV (which was co-owned with KTVU from 1997 to 2013, and also carries KTVU's morning and noon newscasts), and MyNetworkTV affiliates KRVU-LD in Chico and KEMY in Eureka, California (both of which are not owned by KTVU parent company Cox). KTVU had used the "KTVU News Theme" by Michael Randall as its news theme starting in 1987, until it was replaced on June 23, 2010 by a new theme composed by 615 Music called "Icon News". KTVU was the last Bay Area news station at one point not to use a news helicopter; In the 2000s, the station began to utilize a news helicopter called News Chopper 2.

Throughout its run as an independent station, KTVU's only news program was the 10 p.m. newscast. The noon newscast (which was originally called 2 at Noon) made its debut in 1986, displacing syndicated game shows in that slot. In the late 1980s, the station ran a half-hour 6 p.m. newscast, which was cancelled by the early 1990s. The station eventually decided to move towards a news-intensive format to go head-to-head with competitors KRON, KPIX, KGO-TV and KNTV that took the course of several years to take effect; Fox has never ran any national network newscasts (aside from news updates produced out of its New York City station WNYW that aired in primetime during the network's early years), but it still motivated its affiliates, including KTVU, to air more local news programming. The station's original morning newscast, Mornings on 2, debuted in January 1991 in the 7 to 9 a.m. slot; this was followed by an additional morning newscast at 6 a.m. that debuted in 1996 (which would later expand to two hours, expanding one hour earlier to 5 a.m., from one hour). Early evening newscasts later returned in March 2000, with the debut of a new half-hour 6 p.m. newscast, and finally in 2005, the addition of an hour-long newscast at 5 p.m.

On October 10, 2006, KTVU became the first station in the Bay Area to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition and debuted a new state-of-the-art studio designed for HD newscast production (it was also the third station owned by Cox to upgrade their newscasts to high definition, following Atlanta's WSB-TV and Orlando's WFTV); video shot from remote and field equipment was still limited to 480p standard definition following the transition. On January 22, 2011, KTVU launched two-hour weekend morning newscasts on Saturdays and Sundays from 7 to 9 a.m., making KTVU the largest Fox affiliate and the second-largest Fox station – behind Fox-owned KDFW in Dallas-Ft. Worth – to carry a weekend morning newscast. On January 24, KTVU expanded its weekday morning newscast to 4½ hours, with a half-hour extension of the newscast at 4:30 a.m.

On-air staff

Current on-air staff

KTVU's primary news anchors include Tori Campbell (weekday mornings on Mornings on 2 from 7-9 a.m., and weekdays at noon); Pam Cook (weekday mornings from 4:30-7 a.m.; also business reporter); Dave Clark (weekday mornings from 4:30-7 a.m. and Mornings on 2 from 7-9 a.m.); Julie Haener (weeknights at 6 and 10 p.m.); Heather Holmes (weekend evenings; also weekday reporter and fill-in anchor); Mike Mibach (weekend mornings on Mornings on 2 from 7-10 a.m.; also weekday reporter and fill-in anchor); Gasia Mikaelian (weeknights at 5 on KTVU and 7 p.m. on KICU); Frank Somerville (weeknights at 5, 6 and 10 p.m.); Ken Wayne (weekend evenings; also weekday reporter and fill-in anchor); and Claudine Wong (weekend mornings on Mornings on 2 (7-10 a.m.); also weekday reporter and fill-in anchor).

The Storm Tracker 2 Weather team includes chief meteorologist Bill Martin (AMS Certified Broadcast Meteorologist and NWA Seals of Approval; weeknights at 5, 6 and 10 p.m.); and meteorologists Rosemary Orozco (weekend mornings on Mornings on 2 (7-10 a.m.) and Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays at noon on KTVU and 7 p.m. on KICU; also weekday fill-in); Steve Paulson (weekday mornings (4:30-9 a.m.); and Mark Tamayo (AMS Certified Broadcast Meteorologist and NWA Seals of Approval; Wednesdays and Thursdays at noon and 7 p.m. (KICU), and weekend evenings; also weekday fill-in).

The station's sports team includes sports director Mark Ibáñez (weeknights at 6 and 10 p.m. on KTVU, and 7 p.m. on KICU); sports anchor Joe Fonzi (weekend evenings); and sports reporter Fred Inglis (also fill-in sports anchor).

The station's general assignment reporters are Kraig Debro (also fill-in anchor); John Fowler (also health and science editor); Diane Guerrazzi; Robert Handa; Craig Heaps; Jade Hernandez; Jana Katsuyama (also fill-in anchor); Amber Lee; Patti Lee; Bob MacKenzie; Maureen Naylor; Ken Pritchett; Allie Rasmus; Rob Roth; John Sasaki (also fill-in anchor); Alex Savage; David Stevenson; and Rita Williams. Specialty reporters include Sal Castaneda (weekday morning traffic anchor, and weeknight 5 and 6 p.m. reporter); Eric Rasmussen (special assignment reporter); and Tom Vacar (consumer editor; also occasional general assignment reporter). Cox Media Group's Washington D.C. Bureau reporters are Allison Burns, Carol Han and Scott MacFarlane. Rosy Chu (also community affairs director) serves as host of the station's local program Bay Area People.

Notable former on-air staff

• Larry Beil (now at KGO-TV/KOFY)
• Brian Copeland - morning feature reporter (currently on KGO-AM)
• Mark Curtis - anchor/reporter (now an anchor/reporter, author and political analyst at WLNE-TV/Providence, Rhode Island)
• Faith Fancher - reporter (died of breast cancer in October 2003)
• Ron Fortner - co-anchor on The Tuck and Fortner Report (deceased)
• Leslie Griffith - 10 p.m. anchor
• Judd Hambrick - anchor
• Walt Harris - sports, roller derby and wrestling
• Kim Hunter - reporter
• Ray Jacobs - original anchor and station manager (deceased)
• Lloyd LaCuesta - South Bay bureau chief
• Pat McCormick - host of Dialing for Dollars and children's show Charlie and Humphrey
• Steve Physioc - sports director (now with Fox Sports)
• Dennis Richmond - 6 and 10 p.m. anchor (retired May 21, 2008)
• Ted Rowlands - reporter (now at CNN)
• Don Sherwood - talk show host (late 1950s; deceased)
• Barbara Simpson - anchor (now host of Babe in the Bunker on KSFO)
• Thuy Vu - anchor/reporter (left to anchor at KGO-TV, now at KPIX)
• Bob Wilkins - original host of Creature Features and the children's show Captain Cosmic (deceased)

External links

• KTVU.com - Official website for KTVU
• KICU.com - Official website for KICU-TV
• Station History KTVU.com
• Project for Excellence in Journalism reference
• KTVU Mention at TVParty.com
• IMDB - Elaine Corral-Kendal
• Query the FCC's TV station database for KTVU
  • Query the FCC's TV station database for K06FA
  • Query the FCC's TV station database for K39AG
• BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on KTVU-TV