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* [[Jess Marlow]] moved to LA and joined [[KNBC]] in 1966, KNXT/[[KCBS-TV|KCBS]] in 1980, rejoined [[KNBC]] in 1986, retired with [[KCET]]
* [[Jess Marlow]] moved to LA and joined [[KNBC]] in 1966, KNXT/[[KCBS-TV|KCBS]] in 1980, rejoined [[KNBC]] in 1986, retired with [[KCET]]
* [[Marla Miller]] morning news anchor/entertainment reporter, now writer at NBC11 News
* [[Marla Miller]] morning news anchor/entertainment reporter, now writer at NBC11 News
* [[Byron Miranda]], Freelance Meteorologist (early 2007-June 2008), now at [[KTVU]]
* [[Byron Miranda]], Freelance Meteorologist (early 2007-June 2008), later at [[KTVU]] and [[KIRO-TV]], now weekend morning anchor at [[KCRA-TV]] Sacramento
* [[Doug Moore]] (1987-2001)
* [[Doug Moore]] (1987-2001)
* [[Penny Nakamura]] reporter (1991-1994)
* [[Penny Nakamura]] reporter (1991-1994)

Revision as of 23:12, 3 February 2009

{{Infobox broadcast}} may refer to:

{{Template disambiguation}} should never be transcluded in the main namespace.

This article is about the television station. For the educational television programme, see The KNTV Show.

KNTV, Channel 11, is the NBC owned-and-operated television station in the San Francisco Bay Area market. It is licensed to San Jose, with its transmitter located on San Bruno Mountain, just north of San Francisco International Airport. It shares facilities in San Jose with NBC Universal sister station KSTS, the Telemundo station for the San Francisco Bay Area, and CNBC's Silicon Valley Bureau. The all-new digital facilities were constructed in San Jose by NBC in 2004. The master control center and local commercial insertion for KNTV and KSTS are located at NBC Universal's West Coast headquarters in Burbank, California. It is also the largest -- and perhaps only -- local television station in the nation, where only women anchor all of the evening newscasts.

In the few areas of the western United States where viewers cannot receive NBC programs over-the-air, KNTV is available to Dish Network customers through National Programming Service.

History

1950s-1990s

KNTV signed on the air on September 12, 1955. It was the first television station in San Jose and the South Bay, originally owned by Sunlite Bakery. KNTV was originally an independent station, intended to cover the California coastal area from Monterey north to San Francisco. Its transmitter was located on Loma Prieta Peak, some 60 miles (100 km) south of San Francisco. It often aired CBS, DuMont and NBC shows that were turned down by San Francisco's KPIX-TV and KRON-TV, as well as some ABC shows that also aired on KGO-TV.

However, the station was not viable as an independent, and the going got even more difficult when Oakland-based KTVU signed on in 1958. However, due to its transmitter location, its signal could be received fairly well in the nearby Monterey Bay area (Monterey and Salinas). Taking advantage of this, KNTV sought and was granted the ABC affiliation for the Monterey Bay area, on condition that it reduce its power so as not to overlap with KGO-TV; NBC affiliate KSBW dropped the secondary ABC affiliation around the same time. KNTV thus became one of the few stations located outside the market it served.

It was then purchased by Gill Cable, the local cable operator for San Jose. Even as an ABC affiliate, KNTV occasionally preempted a few ABC programs. KGO-TV, as an ABC O&O, cleared the entire ABC schedule, so this often gave San Jose and South Bay Area residents a second choice for viewing preempted ABC programming.

Gill Cable sold KNTV to Landmark Communications in 1978. Twelve years later, Landmark sold the station to the Granite Broadcasting Corporation, a minority-owned firm.

The end of the ABC era

In 1999, KGO-TV agreed to pay Granite a substantial fee to stop the station from running ABC programming when its affiliation contract expired. ABC's parent, The Walt Disney Company, saw the need to expand KGO-TV's exclusive advertising market share to San Jose for this reason, and it felt KNTV was taking away from the share. So on July 3, 2000, KNTV terminated its ABC affiliation, and temporarily carried WB programming (simulcast with then co-owned KBWB-TV, now KOFY-TV). It cost the Monterey Bay area an ABC affiliate, so to compensate for the loss, KGO-TV was then added to cable systems in that market, but certain syndicated shows only meant for Bay Area viewers had to be SyndEx-ed out.

The NBC era

2001

In March 2001, the FCC ruled that KNTV was officially part of the San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose designated market area as Nielsen Media Research had reclassified KNTV as part of the then fifth-largest market in September 2000 and KNTV had fulfilled FCC regulatory requirements to be considered part of the market by doubling its signal power to better cover the Bay Area.

In 2000, the deYoung family, owners of longtime affiliate KRON-TV, had put all of its properties up for sale. NBC, which had been in the midst of renewing its affiliation agreement with KRON, jumped into the bidding, but narrowly lost to Young Broadcasting. NBC responded by trying to impose O&O-style conditions on KRON as a condition of keeping its programming on channel 4. The network also made the unprecedented demand that Young pay the network $10 million a year to remain affiliated with NBC. Young refused, and announced that it would end KRON's 52-year affiliation with NBC at the end of 2001.

Soon afterward, Granite contacted NBC and offered to pay an average of $37 million annually (totalling roughly $362 million over 10 years) for the rights to broadcast NBC programs on KNTV. This agreement was ground-breaking and notable, as it reversed the long-standing model whereby networks paid affiliates to carry their programming. NBC accepted the deal, and KNTV officially joined NBC at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Day 2002. Jay Leno officially welcomed NBC's newest station in a ceremony on The Tonight Show. KNTV became the first major market affiliate to pay a network for programming. With KRON's loss of the affiliation, NBC was the only major network in the Bay Area to switch from one station to another. KNTV is the third Bay Area station to affiliate with NBC as primary CBS affiliate KPIX had the affiliation first (as a secondary) in 1948 upon its launch until KRON was launched the year after.

Local news coverage of San José, California was cut and the stations news coverage rebuilt to target the larger San Francisco Bay area audience. For Granite Broadcasting, the deal was expensive; the company showed a net loss of $44 million for the first three quarters of 2001, more than double their same-period losses one year previous. In an attempt to reduce debts, Granite started looking for a buyer for Detroit WB affiliate WDWB in October 2001.[1]

In December 2001, NBC announced another twist on the deal: this time to purchase the station from cash-strapped Granite for $230 million. The network already owned Telemundo station KSTS-TV in San Jose and wanted to create a duopoly in the Bay Area. The transaction was finalized in April 2002. To date, KNTV is the only Bay Area network O&O which is based outside San Francisco.

2002-04

KNTV's logo from September 2002 to July 2008.

After the switch to NBC affiliation, KNTV was rebranded as "NBC3" to reflect its position on cable channel 3 on nearly every cable system in the Bay Area. The "NBC3" branding was Granite's idea, but backfired due to confusion with Sacramento's longtime NBC affiliate KCRA-TV, which is viewable over the air and on cable in parts of the North Bay and East Bay. NBC was moreover unimpressed with the "virtual channel" approach, and rebranded the station to "NBC11" in fall 2002. While KNTV is the only VHF station in the region not to have a cable channel match the analog, the station contracted with cable provider AT&T Broadband (now Comcast) for the cable 3 allocation, previously unused by any other local station. It has always been on channel 3 on cable in San Jose, dating back to its first days. The marketing mishap meant that cities that carried KNTV on cable channel 11 had to move it down to channel 3 within months of the switch. During the 2004 summer Olympic games, the station heavily promoted channel 11 through its "i11uminating" marketing campaign (with the number "11" used in place of the "L" letters).

Even in the early years as the new NBC affiliate, KNTV aired NBC's soap lineup much later in the afternoon than most affiliates. KRON had done this for years as an NBC affiliate. Soon enough by August 2004, KNTV fell in line with the network's recommended time slot and now airs Days of our Lives (NBC's remaining afternoon soap) at the recommended 1pm timeslot.

On December 13, 2004, NBC converted vacant North San Jose office space into a state-of-the-art, all-digital facility for KNTV and KSTS. After 49 years, the station moved from its cramped, original studios on Park Avenue in downtown San Jose to the new location.

KNTV/KSTS/CNBC Silicon Valley's studios located 2450 N. First St. in San Jose

2005

In the early years as an NBC station, KNTV still broadcast from its longtime transmitter location on Loma Prieta Peak (located between San Jose and Santa Cruz), but did not increase its power to improve its coverage in San Francisco and Oakland. This caused two problems. First, the signal could not be seen over the air in much of the San Francisco Bay Area north of San Mateo County, including much of San Francisco itself. Second, because of the affiliation and market switches, it was dropped from or had NBC programming blocked in many cable systems in the Monterey Bay Area (Salinas/Monterey DMA) under SyndEx guidelines; even so, the signal was still overlapping with nearby Salinas's KSBW, another NBC affiliate.

That all changed on September 12, 2005, when KNTV was able to finally move its transmitter to San Bruno Mountain, giving it a signal comparable to the other major Bay Area stations. The move came after years of objection from Young Broadcasting, owner of KRON, which in its filings alleged that KNTV would cease to serve thousands of San Jose residents by moving closer to San Francisco. [1]

KNTV's news desk.

2006

With a signal that finally reached nearly all of the San Francisco Bay Area, and operating from a state-of-the-art digital broadcast facility, KNTV was able to become a factor in the Bay Area ratings for the first time since the network switch.[citation needed]

Some San Francisco residents, especially in the Sunset and Richmond districts of San Francisco, still found it difficult to receive an adequate off-air signal, because KNTV broadcasts its signal from San Bruno Mountain, giving it a shadow in these particular areas. Most of their competitors' signals originated from the Sutro Tower, which has a better overall view of San Francisco proper, although at the expense of those in northern San Mateo County, where San Bruno Mountain acts as a shield. However, most of the Bay Area is covered with a strong signal from all of the stations.

The year closed, however, with a devastating fire at the retired transmitting facility on Loma Prieta Peak. The fire was quickly extinguished on the afternoon of December 31. However, the fire re-ignited after firefighters had left the scene, and destroyed the formerly-primary analog and digital transmitters, which had only been retired a few months earlier and were in backup status, as well as a variety of other communications gear.

2007

In January 2007 CNBC moved its Silicon Valley bureau, formerly located at the Wall Street Journal in Palo Alto, into the NBC11/T48 San Jose studios. Jim Goldman (a former reporter at the pre-NBC KNTV and then-NBC KRON) is the bureau chief, and the main CNBC reporter covering the financial aspects of Silicon Valley. Their set, seen daily, nationally on CNBC, occupies a portion of the KNTV newsroom.

In May 2007, Rich Cerussi, Executive Vice President of the NBC Station Group's national sales organization in New York was named KNTV President and General Manager, succeeding Linda Sullivan, who was named President and General Manager of KNBC in Los Angeles. Cerussi had previously served as KNTV's general sales manager under both Granite and NBC ownership.

On June 17, 2007, KNTV introduced former ABC7 anchor Jessica Aguirre to the new 5 PM Newscast which is a stand-up interactive newscast where viewers were able to chat live online during the newscast. In addition a Fast Feedback on the days news was introduced to the station as well in which viewers can comment on what they think of the issue. In late April, 2008, the format changed as the anchors were no longer standing up throughout the newscast due to the control room undergoing messy construction in the background of the studio, Which is due to the station receiving an HD upgrade. Also, Lisa Kim started anchoring the 5 PM broadcast while Jessica switched over to 6 PM however, the interactive live chat/discussion along with the fast feedback still remains to the newscast.

On November 1, 2007, KNTV announced that it would become the new flagship station for the San Francisco Giants' for the next three years, through 2010. The Giants had aired their games on KTVU since moving to the Bay Area in 1958. The debut on KNTV was on April 1, 2008.

2008

Falling in line with many of the NBC Universal job layoffs of the past two years, on June 29, KNTV trimmed the jobs of San Francisco/Oakland Reporters Noelle Walker, Ethan Harp, Christien Kafton, and San Jose reporter Daniel Garza. Other behind-the-scenes jobs were cut involving production, engineering, clerical staff and Control Room Operations.

On July 20, 2008, the first day KNTV broadcast in HD, KNTV changed its on-air branding from "NBC11" to "NBC Bay Area". Graphics, style and music were changed on air, similar to other NBC owned-and-operated stations (ie. KNBC in Los Angeles & WNBC in New York). The "NBC 11" digital on-screen graphic is retained on their syndicated and local programs; additionally the station's website continued to be branded as "NBC 11" until October 16, when it was also renamed to "NBC Bay Area" (though this is part of a larger relaunch of the NBC O&O stations' websites and is not related to the on-air rebrand[2]). For the 11:00 p.m. news broadcast, the station retained the "11@11" moniker for the 11:00 p.m. news broadcast, but de-emphasized it. The station also retained the "top stories in the first eleven minutes" saying at the beginning of the 11:00 p.m. newscast, but no longer ran non-stop news and a weather summary during the first eleven minutes.

Digital television

Digital channels
Subchannel Programming
11.1 main KNTV/NBC programming
11.2 NBC Weather Plus
11.3 Universal Sports

NBC Weather Plus was carried as subchannel 11.2; the national network is defunct as of December 2008; however, a computer-updated loop of satellite/radar images, current weather conditions and temperatures, and daily forecasts for major regions of the country are still being shown. The "L" Bar still updates weather conditions in the Bay Area and still gives a five day forecast.

After the analog television shutdown scheduled for February 17, 2009 [3], KNTV-DT will remain on channel 12 [4] using PSIP to display KNTV's virtual channel as 11 on digital television receivers.

Newscasts

In the days as an ABC affiliate, KNTV billed itself as "The San Jose News Channel" because its news reports primarily catered to Silicon Valley viewers almost exclusively as the reports were South Bay-centric. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the KNTV news theme was based on the 1968 hit song "Do You Know the Way to San José." KNTV then competed with KSBW and KMST/KCCN (now KION-TV) which were both located in the immediate part of Monterey Bay. Today, the station produces live newscasts at 4:30 a.m., 5 a.m., 6 a.m., 5 p.m., 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. each weekday; 7 a.m., 5 p.m., 6 and 11 p.m. on weekends (except during football season when the 5 and 6 p.m. Sunday newscasts are pre-empted for NBC's "Football Night in America." Upon the affiliation and market switch, KNTV was added to the competition with KTVU, KRON-TV, KPIX and KGO-TV.

News / Station Presentation

Newscast titles

List of personalities

Current

Anchors

Reporters

Weather

Sports

KNTV alumni

KNTV/NBC Bay Area General Manager & Studio location

Rich Cerussi, President/General Manager, KNTV

  • San Jose Main Office and Studios: 2450 North First Street, San Jose, CA 95131
  • San Francisco Sales/News Bureau: 848 Battery Street, San Francisco, CA 94111

References

  1. ^ The Story At 11: KNTV is set to become the Bay Area's NBC affiliate--but can it play with the big boys?, Jeff Kearns, Metroactive, December 6, 2001
  2. ^ "NBC O&Os Relaunch as 'Locals Only' Sites". TVnewsday. 2008-10-13. Retrieved 2008-10-17.
  3. ^ http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-06-1082A2.pdf
  4. ^ CDBS Print
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