KRON-TV (channel 4) is a television station licensed to San Francisco, California, United States, serving as the CW network outlet for the San Francisco Bay Area. Owned by Nexstar Media Group, KRON-TV maintains studios at the ABC Broadcast Center on Front Street in the city's historic Northeast Waterfront district, immediately west of The Embarcadero, in the same building as ABC owned-and-operated station KGO-TV, channel 7 (but with completely separate operations from that station). The transmitting antenna is located atop Sutro Tower in San Francisco.
History
NBC affiliation (1949–2001)
In 1948, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) authorized a construction permit by the Chronicle Publishing Company, publishers of the San Francisco Chronicle daily newspaper, for a new television station in San Francisco, KRON-TV. Chronicle Publishing was founded by brothers Charles and Michael de Young. The company already owned radio station KRON-FM. Managed by Michael de Young's grandson Charles de Young Thieriot, KRON signed on the air on November 15, 1949, as a full-time NBC affiliate. Its opening night program schedule included a special about San Francisco entertainment followed by the usual NBC prime time lineup of the Texaco Star Theater with Milton Berle, The Life of Riley, Mohawk Showroom, and The Chesterfield Supper Club. KRON-TV was the third television outlet in the Bay Area behind KGO-TV (channel 7) and KPIX-TV (channel 5), all going on the air within a year, and the last license before the FCC placed a moratorium on new television station licenses that would last the next four years. KRON-TV originally broadcast from studios located in the basement of the Chronicle Building at Fifth and Mission Streets. Newscasts benefited from the resources of the Chronicle and there was cooperation between KRON-TV and the newspaper. It originally maintained transmitter facilities, master control and a small insert studio on San Bruno Mountain. In August 1959, the Chronicle reported that the tower was severely damaged by an unusually strong thunderstorm, requiring major repairs before KRON-TV could return to the air. In 1960, NBC attempted to purchase its own station in the Bay Area, when they attempted to buy KTVU. The sale was canceled that October due to pre-existing concerns over the sale cited by the FCC that were related to NBC's ownership of radio and television stations in Philadelphia; as a result, NBC stayed with KRON-TV. In the early 1960s, KRON's profits were keeping the Chronicle Publishing Company financially solvent at a time when the San Francisco Chronicle was losing money, around $3 million from 1958 to 1965. In 1967, KRON-FM-TV moved to a new studio at 1001 Van Ness Avenue in the Western Addition neighborhood (a location that formerly served as the site of the Roman Catholic cathedral of San Francisco). The television transmitter was moved to Sutro Tower on July 4, 1973, while the FM transmitter remained on San Bruno Mountain. Since the 1970s, KRON's logo has incorporated a stylized number "4" design that is based on the Golden Gate Bridge. The vertical component is a bridge tower, the horizontal component is a portion of the bridge deck, and the curve is a portion of a suspension cable. This logo was used as early as April 1974, during coverage of a Symbionese Liberation Army bank robbery. By about 1991, this evolved into the "circle 4" logo in use to this day, with the "4" using a simpler bridge design. In 1982, the deYoung family's Chronicle Publishing Company unit discussed a possible trade of KRON-TV to the Gannett Company (whose broadcasting division is now part of Tegna) in exchange for acquiring Gannett's Oklahoma City station KOCO-TV, plus an additional $100 million. The proposal ultimately fell apart by September 1983.
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