KBCW (TV)
KBCW (channel 44) is a television station licensed to San Francisco, California, United States, broadcasting CW programming to the San Francisco Bay Area. It is owned and operated by the CBS News and Stations group alongside CBS outlet KPIX-TV (channel 5), also licensed to San Francisco. Both stations share studios at Broadway and Battery Street, just north of San Francisco's Financial District, while KBCW's transmitter is located atop Sutro Tower. As KBHK, channel 44 was one of the UHF stations built by Kaiser Broadcasting and one of just two commercial UHF stations in the Bay  Area to survive a boom-and-bust cycle of new stations in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It was acquired by United Television in 1982 and was one of the launch owned-and-operated stations for the United Paramount Network in 1995. The station has been under its present ownership since 2001 and part of The CW since its 2006 launch. The station was one of the first UHF stations to explicitly market its cable channel position (channel 12 on most Bay Area cable systems) back to the early 1980s on an equal level with its over-the-air  channel. History. As an independent station. On November 14, 1962, Kaiser Broadcasting, a division of Oakland-based Kaiser Industries and owner of San Francisco radio station KFOG (104.5 FM), obtained a construction permit to build channel 44 in San Francisco. Before the construction permit bore the call letters KBHK, it was originally KFOG-TV and then KHJK-TV, in honor of Kaiser Industries founder Henry J. Kaiser. KBHK-TV debuted January 2, 1968. It had been intended that Kaiser sign on two stations at once, with WKBF-TV in Cleveland also planned to launch the same day (weather delays in  Cleveland pushed back its launch). Channel 44's flagship local program was "Tonight in San Francisco". The studios at 420 Taylor Street had a broadcasting heritage that predated channel 44 by decades; the facility was built for NBC and its San Francisco station, KPO/KNBC/KNBR, and was also used for a time by KGO. KGO moved to new radio and television quarters in the 1950s and KNBR to Fox Plaza in 1967, leaving the facility vacant. With channel 44, Kaiser became the latest broadcaster to enter what was then a crowded, meager existence on the UHF dial in the  Bay Area. By 1968, three other UHF stations operated in San Francisco itself alongside one in San Jose (KGSC) and one educational outlet in San Mateo, the underpowered KCSM-TV. In 1965, Concord's KCFT-TV channel 42 had existed for all of seven months. With signals that were often hindered by the region's hilly terrain, ratings were low, and all but children and sports fans were hard gets for the stations. KBHK-TV was no exception; three live entertainment programs had failed by 1969, as had a live 10 p.m. newscast, but ratings were increasing. However, as channels  20, 32 and 38 all sank under the weight of financial losses, it was Kaiser's station that remained afloat and operating. Originally broadcasting from San Bruno Mountain, KBHK-TV moved to Sutro Tower upon its completion, with the San Bruno mast used to broadcast KDTV on channel 60 when it started in 1975. Kaiser Broadcasting merged with Chicago-based Field Communications in 1973 as part of a joint venture between the companies. In 1977, Kaiser sold its interest in the stations to Field for $42.625 million, making Field the sole owner of KBHK. Field also retained the headquarters  of its broadcast division in San Francisco. After Field put its stations up for sale in 1982, KBHK was sold to United Television, a division of Chris-Craft Industries, in 1983. United offered $50 million to KQED to switch channel 9 and 44, moving the commercial station to VHF, in 1984; the offer was rejected as too low. After nearly 25 years at 420 Taylor Street, KBHK moved to 650 California Street in 1992. The station had been looking to move out for some time; in 1988, it had reached a deal with KQED to purchase its former studios  when it relocated, but it changed its mind and opted to default on the purchase. As a UPN affiliate. In 1993, Chris-Craft/United Television partnered with Paramount Pictures (which would merge with Viacom in 1994) to launch the United Paramount Network (UPN), with the United Television independent stations becoming charter outlets of the network when it launched on January 16, 1995. In 2000, Viacom bought Chris-Craft's 50% ownership interest in UPN (which Chris-Craft had wholly owned, until Viacom acquired a stake in the network in 1996). On August 12 of that year, Chris-Craft sold its  UPN stations to the Fox Television Stations subsidiary of News Corporation for $5.5 billion; the deal was finalized on July 31, 2001. The deal created immediate ownership cap problems for Fox, which sought to have duopolies in markets where it already owned Fox stations; further, Fox could not convert KBHK to the Fox network because KTVU had a long-term affiliation agreement. Similarly, Viacom, which had purchased CBS and KPIX a year earlier, wanted to have duopolies in more markets. As a result, Fox traded KBHK-TV to Viacom in exchange for KTXH in Houston and WDCA in Washington , D.C., which gave Fox duopolies in those markets. The FCC approved the deal in August 2001 on the condition that Viacom sell one of its San Francisco radio stations. After the sale was consummated, KBHK moved from California Street to Grey Rock, the KPIX studios on Battery Street. As a CW affiliate. On January 24, 2006, the Warner Bros. unit of Time Warner and CBS Corporation (which had been created as a result of the split of Viacom at the start of the year) announced that the two companies would shut down The WB and UPN and combine the networks ' respective programming to create a new "fifth" network called The CW; the day of the announcement, it was revealed that 11 of CBS Corporation's 15 UPN affiliates, including KBHK, would become CW stations. To reflect the new affiliation, the call letters were changed from KBHK to KBCW on July 1, 2006. On December 4, 2019, CBS Corporation and Viacom remerged into ViacomCBS (now Paramount Global). Programming. In addition to the CW network schedule, syndicated programming on KBCW includes "The Goldbergs", "The People's Court", "2 Broke Girls", "Two and a Half Men" and "Family Feud" among others. The station  is considered an alternate CBS affiliate, and as such, KBCW may air CBS network programs as time permits in the event that KPIX is unable to in the event of extended breaking news coverage or special event programming, such as San Francisco 49ers preseason games; the "CBS Dream Team" Saturday morning children's block, for example, at one time occasionally aired on KBCW due to live CBS Sports coverage on KPIX that airs on the network in the early afternoon in the Eastern Time Zone (the "Dream Team" block would itself preempt The CW's "One Magnificent Morning" block). KBCW  also used to air rebroadcasts of CBS News programs "Face the Nation" and "CBS Sunday Morning", and local programs produced by KPIX such as "Eye on the Bay" and the "Last Honest Sports Show". Sports. When channel 44 launched, it was the home of the Golden State Warriors and Oakland Athletics. The A's aired on KBHK from 1968 to 1972 and again from 1982 to 1984, while the Warriors broadcast on channel 44 from 1968 to and again from 1981 to 1984. The station also aired three televised games in the last season of the National Hockey League's  California Golden Seals in 1976 preseason games from the NFL's San Francisco 49ers in 1973, and the United States Football League's Oakland Invaders. Newscasts. KBHK briefly produced a nightly newscast in the late 1960s, which was canceled due to low ratings. On March 3, 2008, KPIX began producing a nightly half-hour primetime newscast at 10:00 p.m. for KBCW; this program competed against KTVU's longer-established, hour-long newscast. In July 2014, the weeknight newscasts were renamed "Bay Area Nightbeat". While the newscast came to an end on December 6, 2019, the station provided an hour of  CBSN Bay Area weeknights at 10 until cancelling it in June 2020. In January 2012, KPIX-TV started a short-lived hour-long extension of its weekend morning newscast for KBCW airing on Sundays at 8:30 a.m., which ended in 2015. Technical information. Subchannels. The station's digital signal is multiplexed: Analog-to-digital conversion. KBHK-DT began broadcasting on channel 45 on April 15, 1999. KBCW shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 44, on June 12, 2009, as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television. In 2019, KBCW relocated to digital channel 28  as part of the FCC's spectrum reallocation.