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KTVU
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| KTVU | |
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| Oakland / San Francisco, California | |
| Branding | KTVU Fox 2 (general) KTVU Channel 2 News HD (news) |
| Slogan | Complete Bay Area News Coverage |
| Channels | Analog: 2 (VHF) Digital: 56 (UHF) |
| Affiliations | Fox |
| Owner | Cox Enterprises |
| Founded | March 3, 1958 |
| Call letters meaning | K TeleVision for YoU (though original owner claimed calls were randomly selected) |
| Sister station(s) | KICU-TV |
| Former affiliations | independent (1958-1986) |
| Transmitter Power | 100 kW (analog) 1000 kW (digital) |
| Height | 479 m (analog) 433 m (digital) |
| Facility ID | 35703 |
| Transmitter Coordinates | |
| Website | www.ktvu.com |
KTVU (Channel 2) is the San Francisco Bay Area's Fox affiliate. Its studio facilities are located in Oakland, California at Jack London Square, and its transmitter is located at Sutro Tower in San Francisco. It has been owned by Cox Enterprises since 1964, making it the largest Fox affiliate through market size not owned and operated by the network. KTVU is also co-owned with KICU which was bought out by Cox in 2000, and as such KICU moved from the original San Jose studios to Oakland where KTVU now shares its studio facilities with KICU. It is also the second largest Cox-owned station (with only Cox sister station WSB-TV in Atlanta in front of it).
KTVU signed on the air as an independent station on March 3, 1958. It was the third station in the Bay Area - after KQED and KNTV - since the FCC lifted the VHF permit freeze. Until the completion of the Mount Sutro television tower, KTVU transmitted from a tower on San Bruno Mountain.
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Over the years, KTVU aired a schedule of cartoons, off-network sitcoms, old movies, drama shows, talk shows, local news, and religious shows. It was the leading independent station in the San Francisco television market for 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 by KRON, KPIX and KGO-TV.
The station has been well known in the Bay Area for its locally-produced news, public affairs and children's programming, especially The Ten O'Clock News, which for years had been the only television news broadcast in the Bay Area at that hour. Throughout the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, The Ten O'Clock News 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 in 2002 after having no luck competing with KTVU.
When KRON-TV became an independent station, it also scheduled its new prime time newscast at 9 p.m. so as to not compete directly with KTVU. In the early 1990s, KRON, along with KPIX (throughout the 1990s), did have 10 p.m. newscasts, which have since been moved back up 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 KTVU's long-time news director Fred Zehnder brought changes to the newsroom but in 2000 it was ranked as the highest quality local newscast in the nation by the Project for Excellence in Journalism under his immediate successor 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 syndicated local news shows in the United States. It also airs on co-owned KRXI-TV, the Fox affiliate in Reno, Nevada, and also airs on KRVU-LP, the MyNetworkTV affiliate for the Chico/Redding market, and KEMY, the My Network TV affiliate for the Eureka/Arcata market. KRVU and KEMY are not owned by KTVU parent company Cox. Some of the stations also carry KTVU's earlier newscasts and Mornings on 2.
Today, the station has newscasts at noon, 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. as well, in addition its morning and 10 p.m. broadcasts. Before its current station status, Channel 2 had only the 10 o'clock newscast; this was common of most independent-turned Fox affiliates back then to have more syndicated programming and children's programming than it did news. That changed when the station decided to go head-to-head with competitors KRON, KPIX, KGO-TV and KNTV by leaning more towards a news-intensive format which took years to take effect.
The noon newscast, originally called 2 at Noon, was added in 1986, displacing syndicated game shows. The original morning newscast, Mornings on 2, debuted in January 1991 in the 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. slot. Now Fox has no network newscasts, but it still motivated its affiliates to air more local news, including KTVU. An additional morning newscast was added in 1996, which would later expand to two hours from one hour, then a 6:00 p.m. newscast would be added in 2000, and finally in 2005, an hour-long 5:00 p.m. newscast. As a result, KTVU now airs 40 hours of local news a week -- the most local news coverage of any counterpart Fox station in the West Coast.
Since November 1, 2007, Los Angeles local station KCAL weekend anchor Dave Clark has joined KTVU, anchors KTVU Morning News with Pam Cook.[1]
For many years KTVU regularly ran reruns of classic, filmed television series from the 1950s and 1960s. An early favorite on the station was the syndicated Topper series with Leo G. Carroll and Lee Patrick.
KTVU frequently showed classic movies, especially week nights from 8 to 10 p.m. and on Sunday afternoons. In the early 1960s KTVU began televising Warner Brothers films, mostly from the 1950s and mostly in color, on Sundays at 7 p.m. They were the first Bay Area television station to present such films as A Star Is Born (1954) with Judy Garland and James Mason, East of Eden (1955) with James Dean and Julie Harris, and Rebel Without A Cause with James Dean and Natalie Wood. KTVU exercised discretion and limited commercial interruptions during the movies, and often offered interesting comments, 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.
During the 1960s and 1970s the station aired an afternoon children's show called Captain Satellite. The show's host was Bob March.
Up until the 1980s, the station produced a series of classic children's public service shorts under the title Bits and Pieces. Bits and Pieces often featured a number of talking puppets, Charley and Humphrey, and were aimed at delivering positive messages to children. Pat McCormick, had brought his puppets from KGO. The shorts often aired during children's programming. Shots of KTVU children's programming appear in the movie Mrs. Doubtfire, portions of which were shot in the KTVU studios and film library. It was also the Bay Area origination of Romper Room, a children's television show which was franchised, instead of syndicated. In 1989, the classic Nickelodeon game show Think Fast was taped here. The show relocated to the newly opened Nickelodeon Studios in Orlando, Florida for the second season, where the set received a makeover.
Other programs 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
San Francisco Giants baseball games were televised by KTVU from 1958 – when the team moved to San Francisco from New York City – to 2007. On November 1, 2007, it was announced that KNTV will broadcast Giants games beginning with the 2008 MLB season.[2] Beginning in 1996, some Giants Saturday afternoon games have been carried via the Fox Network, which had won broadcast rights to Major League Baseball. KTVU has also been the home of most San Francisco 49ers games since 1994 when Fox won the contract to carry the National Football Conference games.
For a brief time in the early-1980s, KTVU was a nationwide superstation, seen mostly on parent Cox's cable systems. However, unable to compete with WTBS, WGN and WOR, KTVU left the national scene and merely became a regional superstation, seen on cable systems in northern California, Nevada and Oregon.
On October 9, 1986, the station became a charter Fox affiliate serving the Bay Area. It launched a morning newscast called Mornings on 2 in 1990 (and, as such, became the fourth Fox affiliate or station to air weekday morning newscasts). It began to air an afternoon cartoon block known as Fox Kids by 1991. It also added more syndicated talk shows, court shows, and reality shows over the years. It still runs some off-network sitcoms. The station continued to run the Fox Kids block on weekdays until Fox ended weekday kids programming in early 2002, but still retained the Saturday lineup, of which is now 4Kids TV.
In the early years as a Fox affiliate, KTVU still referenced itself as Channel 2 and rarely called itself Fox 2 as other Fox affiliates did and still do, but it has done Fox promos as Fox Channel 2. In recent years since the late 1990s, the Fox logo was encrypted into the longtime Circle Laser 2 logo (used since 1975), and when the network tightened its station standardizations, the station branded itself as KTVU Fox 2 today -- only to revert to KTVU Channel 2 during newscasts.
Generally, from the jumpstart Fox airs relatively few hours of network programming, and KTVU has always aired the entire Fox lineup with no pre-emptions. The exception to the rule is sports programming (Giants) which results in the pre-emptions; in some cases it pre-empts one network-aired NFC football game, but airs the other during the fall. At first KTVU delayed programming to the weekends, but due to viewership demand the station later on aired the delayed primetime block following The Ten O'Clock News. Albeit the Bay Area has been one of many huge Nielsen markets for a long time, Fox was looking to have a network owned and operated station here. Through the network's parent, News Corporation, it tried several times to buy KTVU, but Cox turned down the offer every time. Otherwise, Fox's ownership would have meant that KTVU could not carry Giants baseball anymore if it conflicted with the Fox primetime schedule, and it would have been another generic TV station "clone". The primetime pre-emption has been remedied since, and thanks to a duopoly, KICU airs Fox prime time in place of syndicated shows when KTVU is not able to. Aside from that, Fox has been satisfied with KTVU as it is one of the high-ranking Fox affiliates.
On October 10, 2006 KTVU debuted a new state-of-the-art high definition (HD) studio for production of their newscasts in HD. This follows sister stations WSB-TV in Atlanta, Georgia and WFTV in Orlando, Florida which were already airing their newscasts in HD.
Until the late 1990s, KTVU was seen nationally on PrimeStar and C-Band satellite systems.
Anchors
- Tori Campbell - Mornings on Two and noon
- Pam Cook - Early Edition and Morning News
- Dave Clark - Early Edition and Morning News
- Julie Haener - 6 and 10 p.m. weeknights
- Gasia Mikaelian Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays 5 p.m. and weekend newscasts
- Ross McGowan - Mornings on Two
- Dennis Richmond - 6 and 10 p.m. weeknights
- Sara Sidner - Thursday, Fridays 5 p.m. newscasts
- Frank Somerville - Mornings on Two and 5 p.m. weekdays
- Ken Wayne - Weekends
Weather
- Bill Martin - weeknights
- Steve Paulson - mornings, Thursdays and Fridays noon
- Julia Sandstrom - Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays noon & weekends
- Byron Miranda - Fill-in anchor
Sports
- Joe Fonzi - weekend anchor
- Mark Ibáñez - sports director
- Fred Inglis - reporter/fill-in anchor
Reporters
- Sal Castaneda - traffic
- Rosy Chu - Community Affairs director/Bay Area People host
- Priya David (primarily seen mornings)
- Kraig Debro (also fill-in anchor)
- John Fowler - health/science editor
- Robert Handa - San Jose Bureau
- Craig Heaps
- Heather Holmes - also fill-in anchor
- Renee Kemp - freelance
- Jana Katsuyama - freelance
- Lloyd LaCuesta - South Bay Bureau chief
- Amber Lee (primarily seen evenings)
- Bob MacKenzie - feature reporter
- Mike Mibach
- Mark Curtis
- Rob Roth - San Francisco Bureau
- John Sasaki
- Randy Shandobil - political editor
- Bob Shaw - movie critic/entertainment reporter
- David Stevenson
- Tom Vacar - consumer editor
- Rita Williams
- Claudine Wong (primarily seen mornings and noon)
- Marilyn Baker - Reporter
- Brian Banmiller - Business editor for KTVU, former host of Banmiller on Business
- Larry Beil - Now at KGO-TV and KBWB on ABC7 News at 11pm
- Marcia Brandwynne - Anchor
- Brian Copeland - Feature AM reporter, currently on KGO-AM
- Elaine Corral - 10 O'Clock News anchor
- Ysobel Duran - Reporter
- Diane Dwyer - Anchor/reporter, now at KNTV
- Faith Fancher - Reporter (deceased)
- Ron Fortner - co-anchor on The Tuck and Fortner Report (deceased)
- Eric Greene - 2 at Noon host and Mornings on 2 anchor
- Leslie Griffith - 10 O'Clock News anchor
- Judd Hambrick - Anchor
- Walt Harris - Staff announcer and host of live Friday night wrestling from KTVU's studios
- Kim Hunter - Reporter
- Greg Liggins - Reporter
- Terry Lowry - Morning and noon anchor
- Pat McCormick - Host of Dialing for Dollars, Charlie and Humphrey children's show
- Lee McEachern - Reporter
- Steve Physioc - Sports director, now with Fox Sports
- Gary Park - Sports director
- George Redding - Anchor
- Ted Rowlands Reporter, now at CNN
- Don Sherwood - Talk show host, late 1950s (deceased)
- John Stanley - Final host of Creature Features
- Dan Springer - Morning reporter/fill-in anchor, now at Fox News
- Thuy Vu - Anchor/reporter, left to anchor at KGO-TV, now at KPIX
- Steve McPartlin
- Mark Pitta
- Michael Tuck - co-anchor on The Tuck and Fortner Report; later worked at KUSI
- George Watson - Reporter and anchor
- Bob Wilkins - Original host of Creature Features, Captain Cosmic children's show
- Kevin Wing - Reporter now at KRON-TV
- ^ Dave Clark heads north. Retrieved on 2007-09-29.
- ^ Giants sign deal with KNTV, will leave KTVU, the team's flagship station since 1958. Retrieved on 2007-11-01.
- KTVU Website
- Station History KTVU.com
- Project for Excellence in Journalism reference
- KTVU Mention at TVParty.com
- Query the FCC's TV station database for KTVU
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KTVU 2 (Oakland / San Francisco) - XETV 6 (Tijuana / San Diego) - KECY 9 (El Centro) - KTTV 11 (Los Angeles) - KKFX 24 (Santa Maria) - KMPH 26 / 17 (Visalia / Merced) - KBVU 29 (Eureka) - KCVU 30 (Chico) - KDFX 33 / KESQ-DT 42.2 (Indio / Palm Springs) - KCBA 35 (Salinas) - KTXL 40 (Sacramento) - KBFX 58 (Bakersfield) |
| See also: ABC, CBS, CW, MyNetworkTV, NBC, PBS, Telefutura, Telemundo, Univision, Independent, Other Spanish Network, Religious, Home Shopping and Other stations in California |