KNSD

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KNSD-TV (Channel 39) is an owned and operated station of NBC, and it is based in San Diego, California. KNSD is the first (and currently the only) network-owned TV station in the San Diego area. It's identified on the air as NBC 7/39 (7 is its official cable channel designation on all of the San Diego area cable systems).

KNSD sign-on the air on November 16, 1965, as KAAR-TV, San Diego's first UHF independent station. The station at the time was based in the building once occupied by the National Pen Company, located in suburban Kearny Mesa, ten miles north of downtown San Diego. However, in 1966, a fire destroyed the KAAR building, and the station was off the air for more than year. Channel 39 was sold to Bass Broadcasting, a Texas-based broadcaster, and returned to the air in 1968 as KCST. For a three to four year period in the late 1960s to the early 1970s, Bass began an attempt to steal the ABC network affilliation from XETV Channel 6, a Mexican-licensed television station based in San Diego. In 1972, KCST successfully won its battle and took over the ABC affilliation, and XETV became an independent station until it became a charter member of the Fox television network in 1987.

Storer Broadcasting, owner of major network stations in the East and Midwest, bought KCST on September 30, 1974. In 1977, in the wake of ABC's new found success as America's number one television network, ABC switched its network affilliation from KCST to KGTV, mostly due to the fact that KGTV was on a VHF signal (Channel 10). Channel 39 thereafter became the NBC station for the San Diego market.

In 1987, KCST (along with the other Storer stations) was sold to Gillette Communications, and the station changed its call letters to the current KNSD (NBC San Diego). The Gillette stations were sold to New World Communications in the early 1990s, and New World entered a deal into a deal with News Corporation in which the New World stations (mostly CBS affiliates, with a few ABC and NBC stations mixed in) would convert to the Fox network. However, New World, because of ownership limits at the time, sold off a few stations, which included KNSD and its Birmingham, Alabama sister station, WVTM-TV. KNSD and WVTM were both sold to NBC in November 1996. That following January, KNSD adopted the current "NBC 7/39" moniker for its on-air image.

In spring 2001, KNSD moved its studios and offices into a redeveloped office buidling in downtown San Diego, which includes a street-level news studio that resembles The Today Show in New York City's Rockefeller Center.

External links

• KNSD's website