KGO-TV
KGO-TV is a television station licensed to San Francisco, California, United States, serving the San Francisco Bay Area. It has been owned and operated by the ABC television network through its ABC Owned Television Stations division since the station's inception. KGO-TV's studios are located at the ABC Broadcast Center immediately west of The Embarcadero in the city's North Waterfront district, and its transmitter is located atop Sutro Tower. In addition, KGO-TV leases part of its building to CW outlet KRON-TV, but with completely separate operations.
History
KGO-TV first signed on the air on May 5, 1949, as the San Francisco Bay Area's second-oldest television station, signing on five months after KPIX and the 50th in the United States. In fact, KPIX had a hand in getting KGO-TV on the air, as the CBS-affiliated station produced informational programming on how to receive and view ABC's channel 7. KGO-TV's original studios were located in the renovated Sutro Mansion near Mount Sutro in San Francisco, next to the transmitter tower it shared with KPIX.KGO-TV was the fourth of ABC's five original owned-and-operated stations to sign-on, after WABC-TV in New York City, WLS-TV in Chicago and WXYZ-TV in Detroit, and before KABC-TV in Los Angeles. The call letters were inherited from KGO radio. In addition to airing ABC programming, KGO-TV also aired syndicated programs from the Paramount Television Network; among the Paramount programs aired were Time For Beany, Hollywood Reel, Sandy Dreams, Hollywood Wrestling, and Cowboy G-Men.
Channel 7 had a limited broadcasting schedule during its first year on the air. It was not until September 1950 that the station announced, in the San Francisco Chronicle, that it would broadcast on all seven days of the week. For much of the 1950s, the station signed on late in the morning or early afternoon, especially on the weekends, because the ABC network did not offer many daytime programs then. For many years, Saturday programming began with King Norman's Kingdom of Toys, a popular children's program hosted by the owner of a San Francisco toy store, Norman Rosenberg, from 1954 until 1961. He died in December 2016 at the age of 98.
In 1954, KGO-TV moved to one of the most modern broadcasting facilities on the West Coast at the time at 277 Golden Gate Avenue, formerly known as the Eagle Building. The building was demolished between 2010 and 2011 to make way for apartments. As an ABC-owned station, KGO-TV originated a few network daytime shows, including programs hosted by fitness expert Jack La Lanne, singer Tennessee Ernie Ford, and entertainer Gypsy Rose Lee. Syndicated game shows Oh My Word and The Anniversary Game were produced at KGO-TV by Circle Seven Productions. In the mid-1950s, KGO-TV telecast live weeknight variety shows hosted by Don Sherwood, a disc jockey for KSFO, until Sherwood was fired for making a political comment in defiance of a warning from station management. In September 1962, KGO began carrying ABC's first color program, the animated series The Jetsons, followed by The Flintstones. In the mid 1960s, KGO became the first Bay Area station to broadcast local programs in color, including its newscasts. In 1985, KGO-TV began broadcasting from its current studios at 900 Front Street, sharing the facility with radio stations KGO, KSFO and KMKY.
By 2012, the radio stations had vacated 900 Front Street. In late 2014, KRON-TV moved its operations from 1001 Van Ness Avenue, a building it had occupied since 1967, to the ABC Broadcast Center, leasing from KGO-TV/ABC the space on the third floor that had been occupied by the radio stations. KRON-TV, which became a CW owned-and-operated station in 2023, also uses one of the two studios on the first floor for production of its news programming.
KGO in the Salinas–Monterey–Santa Cruz market
In 1999, KGO-TV—seeking to gain advertising revenue in the South Bay—reached an agreement with the Granite Broadcasting Corporation, then-owner of San Jose's ABC affiliate KNTV to pay Granite to drop KNTV's ABC affiliation, resulting in KGO-TV becoming the network's exclusive Bay Area outlet. This resulted in the Salinas–Monterey–Santa Cruz market losing over-the-air reception of ABC programs since KNTV had also served those communities. In response, a cable-only ABC affiliate was set up for the areas affected, that simulcast KGO-TV's programming, with the exception of programs that channel 7 was only allowed to show within the San Francisco market under syndication exclusivity rules. On December 20, 2010, Hearst Television, owners of NBC affiliate KSBW, signed an affiliation agreement with ABC to bring the network's programming to KSBW's second digital subchannel. The new subchannel debuted on April 18, 2011, and took the pay-TV channel slots of KGO's market-only feed throughout California's Central Coast, with the latter wound down at the same time.Logos
KGO-TV was the first ABC station to use the Circle 7 logo. According to Broadcasting magazine, KGO unveiled this logo, created by San Francisco design consultant G. Dean Smith, on August 27, 1962. When the station incorporated ABC into its branding in the late 1990s, the station—along with several other ABC stations broadcasting on channel 7 that used the original version of the Circle 7 logo—simply attached the ABC logo to the Circle 7.Programming
The station carries a high-profile lineup of daytime programming with shows such as Live with Kelly and Mark, Tamron Hall, Jeopardy!, and Wheel of Fortune. Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune have aired on KGO-TV since both shows moved to the station from KRON-TV in 1992. The Oprah Winfrey Show aired on KGO-TV throughout the program's tenure from 1986 to 2011. The station was among the handful of ABC affiliates to have aired the syndicated Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, first-run on the network, until the game show's cancellation in 2019. It also paired Donahue with Oprah on the station's afternoon lineup in the late 1980s, after the station acquired Donahue from KTVU; however, in January 1995, KGO-TV became the first affiliate in the country to drop the talk show, sixteen months before its cancellation in May 1996.KGO also airs the pre-show of the Academy Awards. The station had sometimes aired the Bay to Breakers race during the 1980s, and the KGO Cure-a-thon with its radio partner, KGO-AM 810. KGO-TV was the first station to produce documentaries of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake on April 8, 2006.
In the 1970s and 1980s, KGO-TV produced weekday talk/variety shows in the 9:00 to 10:00 a.m. timeslot following Good Morning America. A.M. San Francisco ran from 1975 to 1987/1988, when it was replaced by Good Morning, Bay Area, hosted by Susan Sikora. Hosts of A.M. San Francisco included the husband-and-wife team of Fred LaCosse and Terry Lowry. For a week or two in the summer of 1988, A.M. Los Angeles was simulcast on KGO-TV, with a few KGO-TV produced segments.
For most of its existence, KGO-TV was the only network-owned television station in the Bay Area, even throughout the time when ABC underwent ownership changes: Capital Cities Communications bought out ABC and merged with the network in 1985, the combined company Capital Cities/ABC was then sold to The Walt Disney Company in 1996. As such, the station did not heavily preempt network programming unlike its local competitors or its sister stations—such as Philadelphia's WPVI-TV, Houston's KTRK-TV and Fresno's KFSN-TV—which were known for doing so in those days. The distinction of being the Bay Area's only O&O station ended in 1995 when several other stations in the San Francisco-Oakland market became network-owned stations over the next twenty years—including KBHK-TV becoming a charter member of UPN in 1995, KPIX becoming a CBS O&O with the network's 1995 merger with Westinghouse, KNTV becoming an NBC O&O in 2002 after being bought by the network after it disaffiliated from KRON-TV, KTVU becoming a Fox O&O in 2015 after being acquired by the network alongside sister station KICU-TV a year prior, and KRON-TV becoming a CW O&O after picking up the affiliation in 2024 following KBCW and seven other CBS-owned stations disaffiliating with The CW. After ABC sold Detroit's WXYZ-TV to Scripps–Howard Broadcasting in 1986 as part of the Capital Cities/ABC merger, KGO-TV went on to be the longest-serving ABC O&O outside of New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.
Sports programming
Owing to its common ownership with ESPN, Channel 7 holds the right of first refusal to Monday Night Football games involving the San Francisco 49ers. The station carried coverage of the 49ers' victories in Super Bowl XIX, which was played locally at Stanford Stadium, and Super Bowl XXIX. The station also carried coverage of the Oakland Raiders' appearance in Super Bowl XXXVII. Also, Channel 7 airs NBA on ABC contests involving the Golden State Warriors via the network's contract with the NBA and, since 2021, San Jose Sharks games through the network's contract with the NHL. KGO-TV has aired the Warriors' championship victories in the 2015, 2017, 2018, and 2022 NBA Finals and the Warriors' championship appearances in the 2016 and 2019 NBA Finals.The station carried the 1989 World Series, a matchup between the Oakland Athletics and San Francisco Giants which would be interrupted by the Loma Prieta earthquake shortly before Game 3 was to begin at Candlestick Park.