KCAL-TV

KCAL-TV
Los Angeles, California
Branding	KCAL Los Angeles (general) KCAL News (newscasts) (pronounced "K-CAL")
Channels	Digital: 9 (VHF)
Translators	(see article)
Affiliations	Independent
Owner	CBS News and Stations (Paramount Global) (Los Angeles Television Station KCAL, LLC)
First air date	August 25, 1948
Call letters' meaning	CALifornia
Sister station(s)	KCBS-TV,
Former callsigns	KFI-TV (1948-1951) KHJ-TV (1951-1989)
Former channel number(s)	Analog: 9 (VHF, 1948-2009) Digital: 43 (UHF, 2001-2009)
Former affiliations	NBC (1948-1949) DuMont (1954-1956)
Transmitter power	25 kW
Height	977 m
Facility ID	21422
Transmitter coordinates	34°13′38″N 118°4′0″W
Website	www.cbsneews.com/losangeles

KCAL-TV, channel 9, is an independent television station in Los Angeles, California, USA, owned by the Paramount Global. KCAL-TV shares its studio facilities with KCBS-TV (channel 2) inside CBS Studio Center in the Studio City section of Los Angeles, and its transmitter is located atop Mount Wilson.

History[]

Early years[]

Channel 9 went on the air as KFI-TV on August 25, 1948, owned by Earle C. Anthony, along with KFI radio (640 AM). KFI had long been affiliated with NBC and KFI-TV served for a brief period as Los Angeles' first NBC television affiliate. Channel 9 lost its NBC affiliation in January 1949 when the network launched its own station, KNBH (now KNBC). KFI-TV then became anindependent station, a status it has retained to this day (though it carried DuMont programming from 1954 up to the network's demise in 1956).

Channel 9's engineers made noises about going on strike in 1951, leading Anthony to sell the station to the General Tire and Rubber Company. A few months earlier General Tire had purchased the Don Lee Broadcasting System, a regional West Coast radio network. Don Lee's flagship station was KHJ radio (930 AM), and General Tire changed its new TV station's call letters to KHJ-TV. The Don Lee name was so well respected in California broadcasting that KHJ-TV called itself "Don Lee Television" for a few years in the early 1950s, even though it had never been affiliated with KHJ radio until the 1951 deal. Most of Don Lee's television experiments had been conducted on what is now KCBS-TV – coincidentally, current sister station to channel 9.

In 1955 General Tire purchased RKO Radio Pictures, giving the company's TV stations access to RKO's film library, and soon after General Tire merged its broadcast interests as General Teleradio. In 1959, General Tire's broadcasting and film divisions were renamed as RKO General.

RKO ownership[]

By the mid 1960s, channel 9 offered a standard independent schedule of movies, off-network reruns, children's shows like "The Pancake Man" hosted by Hal Smith (actor) who showed educational shorts like The Space Explorers, syndicated fare, and locally-produced programs such as news, sports, and public-affairs shows. In the late 1960s KHJ embarked on a novel, groundbreaking (and inexpensive) experiment, called Tempo. Daytime programming was divided into 3 three-hour blocks, called Tempo I, Tempo II, and Tempo III. They borrowed heavily from the talk-radio craze on local radio stations and basically ported that format over to television. The middle of the three programs, Tempo II was perhaps the most active, controversial, and innovative. For the first couple of years the hosts were Stan Bohrman and Maria Cole (the wife of Nat King Cole). Guests ranged from William F. Buckley to Sammy Davis, Jr. and the political movers and shakers in Southern California. At one point Stan even quit the program after what he called censorship on the topic of Eldridge Cleaver. Bohrman came back to the program and was joined by a new co-host, Regis Philbin. They became a very popular fixture in Los Angeles television. In fact in his book about those days, Regis credits the chemistry with Stan and the format of the program as forerunners of much of what would become cable tv news 20 years later.

In the early-1970s, KHJ-TV sought a similar programming strategy to that of cross-town competitor KTLA, which focused more on talk shows, game shows, sports, films, and off-network dramas. The cartoons were phased out (some moving to KTTV and KCOP), and the station ran fewer off-network sitcoms. It did continue to have a weekday children's show called Froozles, which ran until the late 1980s. It also produced many 30 minute public affairs programs as well as a local talk show called Mid Morning L.A., first new host 1979-81 of Mid Morning LA were Kathy McKee & Sandy Baron ,hosted over the years by Bob Hilton, Meredith MacRae, Geoff Edwards and Regis Philbin, which ran well into the 1980s. Edwards and MacRae won Emmy Awards for their hosting duties during the early-1980s. Some other locally produced public affairs shows included the investigative show Camera 9 and The Changing Family, a program about family and social issues during the 1980s. Despite this, KHJ-TV was perceived as an also ran while KTLA was the leading independent with a similar format.

Meanwhile, a behind-the-scenes battle was underway with serious implications on the station's future – and that of its owner. In 1965, RKO General faced a threat to its license for KHJ-TV from a group called Fidelity Television. At first, Fidelity's claim focused on channel 9's programming quality. Later, and more seriously, Fidelity claimed that KHJ-TV was involved in reciprocal trade practices. Fidelity alleged that RKO's parent company, General Tire, forced its retailers to purchase advertising on KHJ-TV and other RKO stations as a condition of their contracts with General Tire. An administrative law judge found in favor of Fidelity, but RKO appealed. In 1972, the FCC allowed RKO to keep the license for KHJ-TV, but two years later conditioned future renewals on the renewal of sister station WNAC-TV (now WHDH-TV) in Boston. Six years later, the FCC stripped WNAC-TV of its license for numerous reasons, but largely because RKO had misled the FCC about corporate misconduct at General Tire. The decision meant KHJ-TV and sister station WOR-TV (now WWOR-TV) in New York City lost their licenses as well. However, an appeals court ruled that the FCC had erred when it tied channel 9's renewal to that of WNAC-TV and ordered new hearings for KHJ-TV and WOR-TV.

The hearings dragged on until 1987. That year, an administrative law judge found RKO unfit to be a broadcast licensee due to numerous cases of dishonesty by RKO, including fraudulent billing and lying about its ratings. The FCC advised RKO that it would almost certainly deny any appeals, and persuaded RKO to sell its stations to avoid the indignity of having their licenses taken away.

Joining the House of Mouse[]

Finally, in 1989, RKO agreed to sell KHJ-TV to Fidelity Television, the group that originally challenged the license in 1965. Fidelity then sold the license to the Walt Disney Company. As a result of the sale, many, if not all, of KHJ-TV's staffers were dismissed or left the station, including notably longtime KHJ-TV general manager Charles Velona.

Even though Channel 9's longtime radio sisters had changed their calls to KRTH some years before, Disney wanted to make a clean start. Accordingly, it changed the calls to KCAL-TV, and briefly branded the station as California 9 before settling on K-CAL 9. The station also overhauled its format in the wake of its ownership change, adding many children's programs, including cartoons from the Walt Disney library (especially in 1990, when The Disney Afternoon transferred from KTTV after Fox's launch of Fox Kids). The station also ran a greater number of family based off-network sitcoms and syndicated programs.

KCAL former logo until 2003

Cartoons continued to be a big part of KCAL's schedule in the 1990s, with blocks of children's programming on weekday mornings and afternoons, that lasted well into 1997. In the early 1990s, the family sitcoms were gradually phased out and KCAL added more first-run syndicated talk, reality, court, and newsmagazine shows.

In 1995, Disney purchased Capital Cities/ABC, which owned KABC-TV. Due to FCC regulations at the time, Disney was not allowed to keep both KABC-TV and KCAL. Disney chose to divest KCAL, which was purchased by Young Broadcasting in 1996.

The afternoon kids block would remain until 1998, when the Disney kids block moved to KCOP. In 2000, the children's shows in the morning were gone as well under the ownership of Young Broadcasting. The station also added more weekday daytime newscasts at 2 and 3 p.m., and the 6:30 p.m. newscast was discontinued. It would also be the last station in the Los Angeles area to air a half-hour local newscast at 6:30 p.m., until January 2009 when KTLA launched its 6:30 p.m. local newscast, a decade after KCAL ended.

CBS purchase[]

As a result of massive debt acquired from purchasing KRON-TV in San Francisco, Young Broadcasting put KCAL up for sale in 2002, and the station was purchased by CBS, then a subsidiary of Viacom, on June 1, 2002. KCAL's operations were merged with those of KCBS-TV, and channel 9 moved from its longtime headquarters at the Viacom-owned Paramount Studios on Melrose Avenue in Hollywood to the historicCBS Columbia Square, located one mile away.

When Viacom/CBS bought KCAL-TV, many in the broadcasting industry speculated that they would move its UPN affiliation from Fox-owned KCOP to KCAL. Chris-Craft Industries, KCOP's previous owners, had co-founded UPN with Viacom in 1995, and owned 50 percent of the network before selling out to Viacom in 2000. Fox's parent company, the News Corporation, purchased KCOP and the other Chris-Craft TV stations in 2001. However, CBS Corporation decided to leave channel 9 as an independent, as Fox renewed its affiliation agreement for its UPN-affiliated stations. It is widely believed that Fox used KCOP as leverage to keep UPN on Fox-owned stations in New York (WWOR-TV, KCAL's former sister station) and Chicago, threatening to drop the network in those markets should Viacom move UPN to KCAL. This issue became moot with the announcement of the merger of UPN and the WB Television Network into the CW Television Network, in January 2006. The new network launched in September 2006, with former WB affiliate KTLA (coincidentally founded by Paramount in 1947) affiliating with the CW.

KCAL-TV is still an independent, and is now one of three independent stations owned by CBS. The other two stations are both former UPN affiliates, KTXA in Fort Worth, Texas and WSBK-TV in Boston. Channel 9 currently offers first-run syndicated programs such as Dr. Phil (one week-old reruns from KCBS), Inside Edition, The People's Court (the original version with Judge Joseph Wapner also aired on Channel 9 during various points of the '80s and '90s), reruns of South Park, The George Lopez Show, and Scrubs, among others. KCAL is the Southern California home of the annual Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon, which it has carried since 1997.

On April 21, 2007, KCBS-TV and KCAL-TV moved from Columbia Square to an all-digital facility at the CBS Studio Center in Studio City. The move allowed both stations to begin broadcasting all local programming in High Definition. In addition, KCBS-TV and KCAL-TV now operate in a completely tapeless newsroom. This newsroom is named after veteran newscaster Jerry Dunphy, who worked at both stations during his career. With the move to Studio City, KTLA and KCET are the only stations (either in radio or television) in Los Angeles to broadcast from Hollywood.

Although KCAL-TV is an independent station, it has aired programming from the CBS network on at least two occasions. On August 30, 2007, it aired an elimination episode of Big Brother 8 and a rerun of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation because KCBS carried a National Football League preseason game between the San Francisco 49ers and the San Diego Chargers at the same time. In 2005, an episode ofBig Brother 6 was bumped to KCAL, as KCBS-TV aired an Oakland Raiders preseason game.

Digital television[]

The station's digital channel:

Digital channels

Channel	Name	Programming
9.1	KCAL-DT1	Main KCAL-TV Programming
9.2	KCAL-DT2	Stadium
9.3	KCAl-DT3	Circle
9.4	KCAL-DT4	HSN
9.5	KCAL-DT5	QVC

Analog-to-digital conversion[]

KCAL-TV shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 9, on June 12, 2009 at 1:10 p.m.,^[1]^[2] as part of the DTV transition in the United States. The station had been broadcasting its pre-transition digital signal over UHF channel 43, but returned to channel 9 for its post-transition operations.^[3] KCAL broadcasts in 1080i high definition on virtual channel 9.1.

Programming[]

"Thames on 9"[]

For a week in June 1979, KHJ-TV aired "Thames on 9," in which each night's lineup of programs was turned over to Great Britain's Thames Television. Shows included Man About the House (a forerunner of Three's Company) and The Benny Hill Show. A similar stunt had run two years earlier on WOR-TV in New York City, which was KHJ-TV's sister station.

Sports programming[]

KCAL-TV currently holds broadcast television rights to MLB's Los Angeles Dodgers and the NBA's Los Angeles Lakers.

Channel 9 has carried the Lakers twice, first from 1961 to 1964 (as KHJ-TV), and every year since the 1977-78 season -- the longest current consecutive station-team broadcast partnership in the NBA. KCAL-TV carries a minimum of 35 road games per season, with Fox Sports West given the rights to home games. However, the channel 9/Lakers partnership is scheduled to end at the conclusion of the 2011-12 NBA season, after which the Lakers will move to a new cable channel co-owned by the team and Time Warner Cable.^[4] KCAL-TV has broadcast Dodgers games since 2006, televising at least 50 games a year. Currently, channel 9 broadcasts all Lakers and Dodgers games in High Definition.

For much of its history, sports have been a part of Channel 9's identity. From 1961 to 1963, KHJ-TV was the first television home of the Los Angeles Angels. The baseball team moved to KTLA starting in 1964, when then-Angels owner Gene Autry purchased that station. In 1996, KCAL-TV once again became the broadcast home of the Angels (Disney's ownership interest in the Angels briefly overlapped its stewardship of the station), and added more basketball coverage that same year with the Los Angeles Clippers, in addition to its Lakers telecasts. The station and the Clippers parted ways in 2001, as they eventually moved their over-the-air telecasts to KTLA. The Angels departed KCAL after the 2005 season, moving to KCOP.

In addition, KCAL broadcast selected weekend Mighty Ducks of Anaheim games from the NHL team's first season in 1993 (both entities were Disney properties until 1996) until 2005, when the Ducks moved their over-the-air broadcasts to Anaheim-based independent station KDOC-TV. KCAL was also home to the NHL's Los Angeles Kings in the early 1980s and again during the mid-to-late 1990s. Also, KCAL also carried selected games from the Los Angeles Galaxy of Major League Soccer until 2005, when the games became cable-exclusive to Fox Sports West.

In 1997 KCAL premiered the first fifteen-minute weekday sports report Final Quarter. The show was an expansion of the typical five minute sports report seen towards the end of a newscast. Several years later the show was renamed KCAL 9 Sports News and with the purchase by CBS, joined KCBS-TV and was renamed Sports Central. The show was recently expanded to a full half-hour on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights. With the termination of the Southern California Sports Report on Fox Sports West/Prime Ticket, this is the only nightly detailed sports highlights show on local television.

Channel 9 ran preseason coverage of the NFL's San Diego Chargers in 2005, and aired contests of the Chargers' AFC West rival, theOakland Raiders, in 2006. The station also aired preseason Raiders during the middle 1990s. Also of note, KCAL-TV simulcasted the ESPNand TNT feeds of Sunday night football games featuring the then-Los Angeles Raiders and then-Los Angeles Rams (now the St. Louis Rams) from 1990 until 1993.

Since its founding in 1994 until 2008 KCAL was the originating station of the annual John R. Wooden college basketball classic at Anaheim'sHonda Center. Channel 9's coverage was syndicated nationally to stations across the country, including on WGN America. Since 2009 the Wooden Classic has aired nationally on Fox Sports Net.

News programming[]

In the 1970s, KHJ-TV had a 10 p.m. newscast. It was moved to 9 p.m. during the 1980s, and the station later added a half-hour 8 p.m. newscast during the late 1980s. Some of its most notable personalities included anchors George Putnam, Jerry Dunphy, Pat Harvey, Tom Lawrence, Nathan Roberts, Lonnie Lardner, Linda Edwards, and weather personality Andrew Amador. By 1989, Disney implemented the concept of a prime time news block, with "Prime 9 News" between 8 and 11 p.m. The 3-hour news block is still seen on KCAL-TV to this day. A few years later, channel 9 added a short-lived half-hour newscast at 6:30 p.m.

KCAL is notable for airing newscasts during unconventional time blocks. Along with newscasts at 10 p.m. (where it competes against KTLA and KTTV), noon (competes against KTTV), and 4 p.m. (competes against KABC), it also airs news at 2 p.m., 3 p.m., 8 p.m., and 9 p.m. Combined with its sister station KCBS-TV the two stations air just over 11 hours of news programming every weekday. However, unlike KCBS-TV, KCAL has no morning newscast, but had a morning newscast in the early 1990s.

KCAL's newscasts run the gamut in tone. Its 8 p.m. newscast is generally an update on the day's news, which are much of the stories devoted to California and local news, and was previously branded California Report. Its 9 p.m. newscast is generally the most serious newscast and was branded in previous years as the Prime 9 News World Report. The 9 p.m. newscast prominently features political, business, and international news. The noon newscast, on the other hand, features lighter stories, including features on food, health, and entertainment news. The 4 p.m. newscast was essentially a repurposed KCBS-TV newscast and was done with former channel 2 anchorsHarold Greene and Ann Martin, who did not appear recently elsewhere on KCAL.

The 4 p.m. newscast was moved to KCAL from KCBS-TV to make room for Dr. Phil, which by contract is not allowed to air opposite The Oprah Winfrey Show, which in Los Angeles airs on KABC-TV at 3 p.m. Its 10 p.m. newscast is simply more of an update of the 8 p.m. news, as it competes with KTTV and KTLA, and in the past KCOP, though in recent years, it has been shortened to 30 minutes, in order to make way for Sports Central, the only comprehensive local sports news program in Southern California (since the demise of the Southern California Sports Report on Fox Sports Net). The 6:30 p.m. newscast, which ran in the early 1990s was called First 9 News focused primarily on local news and competed against the national network newscasts aired on KCBS-TV, KNBC-TV and KABC-TV. However, KCBS did air a 6:30 p.m. local newscast in the mid to late 1990s, while the CBS Evening News aired at 5:30 p.m.

Because of the amount of news on the station, channel 9 is known as the station showing the most police chases. Often regular news programming is dropped to cover a police chase, and programming following the news is sometimes pre-empted to show the chase's conclusion.

On April 1, 2008, CBS' owned-and-operated television stations division ordered widespread budget cuts and staff layoffs from its stations. As a result of the budget cuts, roughly 10 to 15 staffers were released from KCBS-TV and KCAL-TV, including reporters Jennifer Sabih, Greg Phillips, and Jennifer Davis. Harold Greene and Ann Martin, who were then the 4:00 p.m co-anchors on channel 9 and 6:00 p.m. on sister station, Channel 2, were also said to have been on the layoff list, but have both decided to retire from television when their contracts expired in June.

On April 23, 2009, it was announced that Emmy winner and Los Angeles native Rick Garcia, formerly with KTTV Channel 11, had joined KCAL and would be paired with Pat Harvey as co-anchors for the station's weeknight 8 and 10 p.m. newscasts. He is now paired with Sharon Tay, since Pat Harvey moved to sister station KCBS-TV to co-anchor the 5 & 11 p.m. newscasts.

NewsCentral era[]

KCAL 9 NewsCentral Logo

On December 10, 2009, CBS brought in Steve Mauldin to replace Patrick McClenahan as president and general manager of the duopoly. That week, the duopoly ultimately rescinded the NewsCentral branding, reverting to the "CBS2" and "KCAL9" news identities. The NewsCentral graphics, mic flags and logos remained in the interim, though on-air talent no longer used the NewsCentral identity.^[7]^[8]On September 19, 2009, KCBS and KCAL rebranded to the NewsCentral brand (unrelated toSinclair Broadcasting Group's former "News Central" brand; coincidentally, CBS also owns former Sinclair station KOVR in Sacramento). The slogan was changed to News That's Central To Your Life and Covering Stories That Hit Home! and was refocused to cover on more community news, including news from outlying communities.

Local news headlines from the Los Angeles Newspaper Group and other MediaNews Group newspapers were displayed on a ticker, "street team" submissions of video and photos from viewers were featured, reporters ended stories with NewsCentral rather than the individual station names, and mic flags and news vehicles were branded to show both stations at once (previously the KCBS logo was displayed on half the sides and the KCAL logo on the other half). NewsCentralclaimed they produced more local news than any other television station in the country, with reporters in Ventura County, the Inland Empire, and Orange County, and the only Los Angeles television station with two helicopters (subcontracted to Angel City Air, owned by reporter Larry Welk). Ed Asner was used to introduce the new newscast.^[5] CBS denies this move was made in response to other stations pooling newsgathering resources.^[6]

News/Station presentation[]

Newscast titles[]

Don Lee News (1948–1961)
Channel 9 News (1961–1990)
The Ten O'Clock News (1972–1983)
The Nine O'Clock News (1983–1989)
Prime 9 News (1990–1995)
KCAL 9 News (1995-2009 & 2010-2023)
KCAL 9 NewsCentral (2009-2010)
KCAL News (2023-present)

Station slogans[]

America's Best Local News (1994–1998)
Live. Local. Late-Breaking. (1998–2009; news slogan)
Always On (2007–2009; general slogan)
News That's Central to Your Life (2009–present)

Movie umbrella titles[]

The Million Dollar Movie (1957–1989)
Saturday Night Showcase (1970s-1980s)
3:30 Movie (1981–1986)
Frandsen's Feature hosted by Tom Frandsen (1960s-early 1980s)
Fright Night (1970–1981)
Elvira's Movie Macabre (Fall 1981-1991)
Channel 9 Evening Movie (1980s)
California 9 Cinema (1990–1995)
K-CAL 9 Cinema (1995–present)

News team[]

Current on-air staff[]

Anchors[]

Serene Branson - anchor
Juan Fernandez - weekdays at 4 p.m. and weeknights at 9 p.m.
Chauncy Glover - weeknights at 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. (2023-present)
Pat Harvey - weeknights at 9 p.m. (1989-present)
Amy Johnson - weekdays at noon (2005-present)
Rachel Kim - weekend mornings; also weekday reporter (2009-present)
Lesley Marin - weekends at 8 p.m., 9 p.m. and 10 p.m.; also weekday reporter (2019-present)
Rudabeh Shahbazi - weekday mornings (6-10 a.m.) (2023-present)
Suzie Suh - weeknights at 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. (2006-present)
Sheba Turk - anchor/reporter
Jamie Yuccas - weekday mornings (7-10 a.m.) (2023-present)