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KION-TV (channel 46) is a
television station A television station is a set of equipment managed by a business, organisation or other entity, such as an amateur television (ATV) operator, that transmits video content and audio content via radio waves directly from a transmitter on the earth ...
licensed to
Monterey, California Monterey (; es, Monterrey; Ohlone: ) is a city located in Monterey County on the southern edge of Monterey Bay on the U.S. state of California's Central Coast. Founded on June 3, 1770, it functioned as the capital of Alta California under bo ...
, United States, affiliated with
CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainmen ...
,
Fox Foxes are small to medium-sized, omnivorous mammals belonging to several genera of the family Canidae. They have a flattened skull, upright, triangular ears, a pointed, slightly upturned snout, and a long bushy tail (or ''brush''). Twelve sp ...
, and
Telemundo Telemundo (; formerly NetSpan) is an American Spanish-language Terrestrial television, terrestrial television network owned by NBCUniversal Television and Streaming#NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises, NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises, a divi ...
. Owned by the
News-Press & Gazette Company The News-Press & Gazette Company (NPG) is a media company based in St. Joseph, Missouri, wholly owned and operated by the Bradley family. It is presided by Brian Bradley and David R. Bradley, with Hank Bradley (retired), Eric Bradley and Kit Bra ...
, it serves the
Monterey Bay Monterey Bay is a bay of the Pacific Ocean located on the coast of the U.S. state of California, south of the San Francisco Bay Area and its major city at the south of the bay, San Jose. San Francisco itself is further north along the coast, by a ...
area from studios located on Moffett Street in Salinas, immediately south of
Salinas Municipal Airport Salinas Municipal Airport is an airport in Monterey County, California, Monterey County, California, United States, three miles (4.8 km) southeast of Downtown Salinas, California, Salinas. It is included in the 2017–21 National Plan of I ...
, and a transmitter on Mount Toro, about south of Salinas. The station is rebroadcast on
translator Translation is the communication of the Meaning (linguistic), meaning of a #Source and target languages, source-language text by means of an Dynamic and formal equivalence, equivalent #Source and target languages, target-language text. The ...
KMUV-LD KMUV-LD (channel 23) is a low-power television station licensed to Monterey, California, United States. It is a translator of CBS/Fox/Telemundo affiliate KION-TV (channel 46, also licensed to Monterey) which is owned by the News-Press & Gazette ...
(channel 21), with transmitter on
Fremont Peak Fremont Peak can refer to one of several peaks. In the United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in Nor ...
. This station was the second established in the Salinas–Monterey area proper, beginning broadcasts in 1969; it has been affiliated with CBS since it signed on. Traditionally a second- or even third-place operation in the market, its operations were merged with
KCBA KCBA (channel 35) is a television station in Salinas, California, United States, serving the Monterey Bay area as an affiliate of The CW Plus. It is owned by Seal Rock Broadcasters, which maintains a shared services agreement (SSA) with the News ...
(channel 35), then the region's Fox affiliate, between 1996 and 2013. The Fox subchannel on KION-TV, "Fox 35", represents the continuation of what was KCBA's programming after this station reacquired the Fox affiliation in 2021. KION produces English- and Spanish-language local newscasts covering the northern Central Coast.


History


Early years

On November 4, 1966, the
Federal Communications Commission The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisdiction ...
(FCC) granted a construction permit to Monterey–Salinas Television, Inc., to build a new commercial television station on channel 46 in Monterey. The company was led by Stoddard P. Johnston, owner of KMBY AM and FM radio in Monterey, and also featured William H. Schuyler. Schuyler had been the president of
KTVU KTVU (channel 2) is a television station licensed to Oakland, California, United States, serving as the San Francisco Bay Area's Fox network outlet. It is owned and operated by the network's Fox Television Stations division alongside San Jose†...
in
Oakland, California Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast of the United States, West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third ...
, and Johnston chaired its board of directors before it was sold to
Cox Broadcasting CMG Media Corporation (doing business as Cox Media Group) is an American media conglomerate principally owned by Apollo Global Management in conjunction with Cox Enterprises, which maintains a 29% minority stake in the company. The company prim ...
. In 1968, a planned start date of September 1 was announced for the new KMBY-TV, which Johnston said would benefit from the recent addition of UHF tuning to all new televisions and from the widespread use of cable TV systems in Salinas, Monterey, and Santa Cruz. On June 1, 1968, the unbuilt station changed its call sign to KMST, and though the September start was missed, construction moved along and the station picked up the CBS affiliation; at the time,
KSBW KSBW (channel 8) is a television station licensed to Salinas, California, United States, serving the Monterey Bay area as an affiliate of NBC and American Broadcasting Company, ABC. Owned by Hearst Television, the station has studios on John ...
(channel 8) in Salinas, a primary NBC affiliate, aired some CBS programs. Schuyler would later note that one of the reasons the Central Coast was picked was because CBS had an interest in adding an affiliate in the area, with NBC already spoken for and
KNTV KNTV (channel 11), branded as NBC Bay Area, is a television station licensed to San Jose, California, United States, serving as the San Francisco Bay Area's NBC network outlet. It is owned and operated by the network's NBC Owned Television Sta ...
in San Jose then serving the Salinas and Monterey area with ABC programming but no CBS outlet between
KPIX-TV KPIX-TV (channel 5) is a television station licensed to San Francisco, California, United States, serving as the San Francisco Bay Area's CBS network outlet. It is owned and operated by the network's CBS News and Stations division alongside CW ...
San Francisco and
KCOY-TV KCOY-TV (channel 12) is a television station licensed to Santa Maria, California, United States, serving the Central Coast (California), Central Coast of California as an affiliate of the digital multicast network Dabl. It is owned by VistaWest M ...
in Santa Maria. KMST would remain on cable in San Jose until 1993, when the TCI system there demoted it and then dropped it altogether. KMST intended to begin broadcasting on January 25, 1969, but bad weather kept the station off the air; the microwave link to receive KPIX-TV and CBS programming had not yet been installed. KMST made its debut on February 1, a week later than planned. Leased quarters off the Monterey–Salinas highway were used as an interim studio site, but the acoustics were poor; eventually, the station relocated to a purpose-built site near the Monterey Peninsular Airport. In December 1973, the Johnston-led group filed to sell KMST to a new company, also named Monterey–Salinas Television, which featured Johnston and other new owners. The new owners were brought in to provide additional needed capital for equipment improvements.
Retlaw Enterprises Retlaw Enterprises, originally Walt Disney Miniature Railroad, then Walt Disney, Inc. (WDI), and then WED Enterprises (WED), was a privately held company owned by the heirs of entertainment mogul Walt Disney. Disney formed the company to control ...
, a company owned by relatives of
Walt Disney Walter Elias Disney (; December 5, 1901December 15, 1966) was an American animator, film producer and entrepreneur. A pioneer of the American animation industry, he introduced several developments in the production of cartoons. As a film p ...
, purchased KMST for $8.25 million in 1979. The sale offer was chosen because it was all-cash; five different groups had sought to purchase the station. KMST was traditionally a training ground for broadcasters; one former reporter, Kathryn Pratt, noted that many staffers called it the "KMST School of Broadcasting". The late 1980s and early 1990s would prove to be turbulent times for the station. Citing poor working conditions, KMST employees voted 43–2 to unionize with the
American Federation of Television and Radio Artists The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) was a performers' union that represented a wide variety of talent, including actors in radio and television, radio and television announcers and newspersons, singers and recording ar ...
in 1989. Retlaw constantly fought the unionization effort; when it fired a production director who had been active in the organizing effort, the
National Labor Relations Board The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is an independent agency of the federal government of the United States with responsibilities for enforcing U.S. labor law in relation to collective bargaining and unfair labor practices. Under the Natio ...
filed a complaint against ownership. The news department struggled; newscasts were cut, and six staffers defected to
KCBA KCBA (channel 35) is a television station in Salinas, California, United States, serving the Monterey Bay area as an affiliate of The CW Plus. It is owned by Seal Rock Broadcasters, which maintains a shared services agreement (SSA) with the News ...
(channel 35), which started a news department in 1990. Union negotiations remained incomplete in 1991, with AFTRA blaming station management for stalling and stating that the two-year turnover rate at KMST had reached 80 percent. Meanwhile, the station experimented with an early prime schedule, airing prime time from 7 to 10 p.m. instead of from 8 to 11, for a year in 1992; other Northern California stations also tried out the time change.


Harron, Ackerley, and Clear Channel ownership

In 1993, Retlaw sold KMST for $8.2 million to Harron-Smith Television Partnership, a joint venture of Harron Communications and Smith Broadcasting. Amid a major retooling of the station, the call letters were changed in October to KCCN-TV, representing the new title of its newscasts, "Central Coast News". The call letters were shared with two stations in
Honolulu Honolulu (; ) is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Hawaii, which is in the Pacific Ocean. It is an unincorporated county seat of the consolidated City and County of Honolulu, situated along the southeast coast of the island ...
, Hawaii, KCCN AM and
KCCN-FM KCCN-FM "FM100" is a Hawaiian Contemporary hits station. The SummitMedia outlet broadcasts at 100.3 MHz with ERP of 100 kW. The station's studios are located in Downtown Honolulu and its transmitter is located near Akupu. It also trans ...
. A year into the partnership, Smith sold its half back to Harron; the next year, it bought KSBW-TV, channel 46's longtime competitor. Meanwhile, Harron began to realize it was in over its head with the task it confronted at KCCN-TV, having underestimated the dimensions of the challenge posed by turning it around. In late 1995, Harron began to shop KCCN-TV—or its assets—for sale. Smith then looked at buying back KCCN-TV's assets and programming the station under a
local marketing agreement In North American broadcasting, a local marketing agreement (LMA), or local management agreement, is a contract in which one company agrees to operate a radio or television station owned by another party. In essence, it is a sort of lease or tim ...
(LMA). A deal with Smith was far along enough that it was reported as confirmed by the ''
Santa Cruz Sentinel The ''Santa Cruz Sentinel'' is a daily newspaper published in Santa Cruz, California, covering Santa Cruz County, California, and owned by Media News Group. Ottaway Community Newspapers, a division of Dow Jones & Company bought the paper in 1982 ...
'' newspaper. However, negotiations then stalled, and Harron sought another buyer. At 3 p.m. on the afternoon of April 24, 1996, KCBA owner Ackerley Communications took over the operations of KCCN-TV. Harron immediately laid off 70 employees and shut the channel 46 newsroom down, though 25 employees would then be hired back by KCBA. News director Adrienne Laurent popped up three hours later as a fill-in anchor on KSBW's 6 p.m. newscast. KCBA promised to restore news to KCCN-TV on June 3 in what was just the second LMA of its type involving two news-producing stations. With the agreement, KCCN-TV operations moved from Monterey to Salinas. The move drew fire from the city councils of Salinas and Monterey and the
Monterey County Monterey County ( ), officially the County of Monterey, is a county located on the Pacific coast in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, its population was 439,035. The county's largest city and county seat is Salinas. Montere ...
Board of Supervisors, as well as several private petitions to the FCC. The first KCCN-TV local newscasts from KCBA in Salinas were picketed by some of the employees that were not rehired. On February 23, 1997, KCCN changed its call letters again, this time to KION, after the rise of the
World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web se ...
brought new complaints from the Honolulu radio stations, who wanted to restrict channel 46 from using their call sign on their website. Late in 1998, Ackerley bought KION outright from Harron and sold KCBA to Seal Rock Broadcasters, though Ackerley would continue to operate that station on Seal Rock's behalf. It took more than a year for this transaction to receive FCC approval, due to the then-pending license renewals for both stations; the deal was completed on January 12, 2000. Ackerley instituted three master control hubs in its group in 2000, one of them in Salinas and the others at
KGET-TV KGET-TV (channel 17) is a television station in Bakersfield, California, United States, affiliated with NBC and The CW Plus. It is owned by Nexstar Media Group alongside Low-power broadcasting#Television, low-power Telemundo affiliate KKEY-LP (ch ...
in
Bakersfield Bakersfield is a city in Kern County, California, United States. It is the county seat and largest city of Kern County. The city covers about near the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley and the Central Valley region. Bakersfield's populat ...
and WIXT in
Syracuse, New York Syracuse ( ) is a City (New York), city in and the county seat of Onondaga County, New York, Onondaga County, New York, United States. It is the fifth-most populous city in the state of New York following New York City, Buffalo, New York, Buffa ...
. The Salinas hub served KION and KCBA as well as KFTY in
Santa Rosa Santa Rosa is the Italian, Portuguese and Spanish name for Saint Rose. Santa Rosa may also refer to: Places Argentina *Santa Rosa, Mendoza, a city * Santa Rosa, Tinogasta, Catamarca * Santa Rosa, Valle Viejo, Catamarca *Santa Rosa, La Pampa * Sa ...
, KVIQ-TV in
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, and
KMTR KMTR (channel 16) is a television station in Eugene, Oregon, United States, affiliated with NBC and The CW Plus. It is owned by Roberts Media, LLC, which maintains a shared services agreement (SSA) with Sinclair Broadcast Group, owner of CBS ...
in
Eugene, Oregon Eugene ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Oregon. It is located at the southern end of the Willamette Valley, near the confluence of the McKenzie and Willamette rivers, about east of the Oregon Coast. As of the 2020 United States Census, Eu ...
. Two years later, Ackerley merged with
Clear Channel Communications iHeartMedia, Inc., formerly CC Media Holdings, Inc., is an American mass media corporation headquartered in San Antonio, Texas. It is the holding company of iHeartCommunications, Inc. (formerly Clear Channel Communications, Inc.), a company fou ...
. Clear Channel already owned radio stations on the Central Coast, and one of them began to share KION's call sign: news/talk-formatted KTXX (1460 AM) became KION as part of a partnership that saw collaboration between the radio station and the TV newsroom.


Cowles and NPG ownership

On April 20, 2007, Clear Channel entered into an agreement to spin off its entire television stations group to Newport Television, a broadcasting holding company established by the private equity firm
Providence Equity Partners Providence Equity Partners L.L.C. is a specialist private equity firm, private equity investment firm focused on media, communications, education, technology investments across North America and Europe. The firm specializes in growth-oriented pri ...
. (Clear Channel retained KION radio.) However, Newport Television could not keep KION or Telemundo affiliate KMUV-LP; Providence Equity Partners owned a stake in
Univision Univision () is an American Spanish-language free-to-air television network owned by TelevisaUnivision. It is the United States' largest provider of Spanish-language content. The network's programming is aimed at the Latino public and includes ...
, whose radio division owned several overlapping radio stations in the San Jose area. Instead, KION and KMUV-LP, along with KCOY-TV and KKFX-CA, the Clear Channel TV stations on the southern Central Coast, were sold to the
Cowles Publishing Company The Cowles Company is a diversified media company in Spokane, Washington, in the US. The company owns and operates ''The Spokesman-Review'' in Spokane, founded in 1894, and owned the ''Spokane Daily Chronicle'' until it was shut down in 1992. B ...
of
Spokane, Washington Spokane ( ) is the largest city and county seat of Spokane County, Washington, United States. It is in eastern Washington, along the Spokane River, adjacent to the Selkirk Mountains, and west of the Rocky Mountain foothills, south of the Canada ...
, for $41 million. On September 20, 2013,
News-Press & Gazette Company The News-Press & Gazette Company (NPG) is a media company based in St. Joseph, Missouri, wholly owned and operated by the Bradley family. It is presided by Brian Bradley and David R. Bradley, with Hank Bradley (retired), Eric Bradley and Kit Bra ...
(NPG) announced that it would purchase KION-TV and KMUV-LP, as well as KKFX-CA; NPG would also take over some of the operations of KCOY-TV, which it could not own directly as NPG's holdings in that area already included
KEYT-TV KEYT-TV (channel 3) is a television station licensed to Santa Barbara, California, United States, serving the Central Coast of California as an affiliate of ABC, CBS, and MyNetworkTV. It is owned by the News-Press & Gazette Company (NPG) alongsi ...
in Santa Barbara. The sale was completed on December 13. The existing LMA for KCBA was terminated on December 1, 2013, as Seal Rock entered into a new joint sales agreement with
Entravision Communications Entravision Communications Corporation is an American media company based in Santa Monica, California. Entravision primarily caters to the Spanish-speaking Hispanic community and owns television and radio stations and outdoor media, in several of ...
; as a consequence, KION's 10 p.m. newscast moved from KCBA to its second subchannel, which was affiliated with
The CW Plus The CW Plus is a secondary national programming service feed of The CW that is fully controlled and 75% owned by Nexstar Media Group, with Paramount Global and Warner Bros. Discovery each owning a 12.5% stake in the network. It is intended primar ...
. After Entravision opted not to exercise an existing option to purchase KCBA's non-license assets from Seal Rock, that company entered into a new shared services agreement with NPG in September 2021. NPG purchased the Fox affiliation and program stream, which moved to KION's 46.2 subchannel on January 1, 2022; simultaneously, the CW affiliation agreement was assigned to Seal Rock for use on KCBA. There was no change for cable or satellite viewers.


News operation

The first local newscasts on channel 46 launched with the station; for the first several years, KMST had no color cameras, so the programs aired in black and white. However, channel 46's local news consistently was a distant second to KSBW-TV's offerings. The later Retlaw years were marked by major changes in staffing and news offerings. After noon and 5 p.m. newscasts were axed in 1989 and 1990, the station was down to producing one hour of news a day; further, it lost six staffers to the upstart KCBA. The 11 p.m. newscast was dropped in 1991 in favor of reviving the earlier newscasts. As part of the KCCN-TV relaunch in 1993, the station returned to producing three daily newscasts. Ratings were very low; 3,000 to 4,000 households nightly watched its local newscast, a far cry from the 23,000 to 36,000 households watching KSBW, the 7,000 viewers KCBA accrued at 10 p.m., or even the Spanish-language newscast on
KSMS-TV KSMS-TV (channel 67) is a television station licensed to Monterey, California, United States, serving the Monterey Bay area as an affiliate of the Spanish-language Univision network. It is owned by Entravision Communications alongside Class A Un ...
, with 11,000 viewers at 6 p.m. After taking over in 1996, Ackerley rehired the main presenters of KCCN-TV's news—Ed Bradford, Karina Rusk, and Hunter Finnell—for its retooled newscast, investing in a new news set. It then proceeded to add a morning newscast, originally titled ''Eye on This Morning'', in early 1997 when the call letters changed to KION-TV. The morning show ceased production in 2001 due to a soft economy. Presently, KION airs a two-hour weekday morning newscast as well as half-hour programs at 5, 6, and 11 p.m. and a 10 p.m. newscast for the CW subchannel (now KCBA 35.1). The Fox subchannel, in lieu of airing local news from the Monterey–Salinas area, airs 42 hours a week of news simulcasts from KTVU in the Bay Area. On January 6, 2012, sister stations KCOY and KKFX announced a round of
layoff A layoff or downsizing is the temporary suspension or permanent termination of employment of an employee or, more commonly, a group of employees (collective layoff) for business reasons, such as personnel management or downsizing (reducing the ...
s in an effort to cut costs, including eliminating the sports department, cutting the morning show produced at the Santa Maria studios to only one hour on weekdays, and having the evening newscasts based at the KION/KCBA studios. News production for those stations moved to Santa Barbara upon the NPG purchase.


Notable former on-air staff

*
Lois Hart Lois Hackbert Hart Walker (born February 5, 1950, in Atlanta, Georgia) is a retired journalist. She co-anchored the evening news in Sacramento on KCRA-TV with her husband, Dave Walker, from 1990 through 2008. Lois first joined KCRA in the 1970s and ...
(future first anchor for
CNN CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by the M ...
, anchor for
KCRA-TV KCRA-TV (channel 3) is a television station in Sacramento, California, United States, affiliated with NBC. It is owned by Hearst Television alongside Stockton, California, Stockton-licensed MyNetworkTV affiliate KQCA (channel 58). Both stations ...
in
Sacramento ) , image_map = Sacramento County California Incorporated and Unincorporated areas Sacramento Highlighted.svg , mapsize = 250x200px , map_caption = Location within Sacramento ...
) *
Pedram Javaheri Pedram "P.J." Javaheri (born May 24, 1983) is an Iranian-American meteorologist for CNN International based at CNN World Headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. He can be seen regularly on editions of ''CNN Newsroom'' and '' World Business Today''. He ...
, also known as P.J. Javaheri, weekend meteorologist; now at
CNN International CNN International (CNNI, simply branded on-air as CNN) is an international television channel that is owned by CNN Global. CNN International carries news-related programming worldwide; it cooperates with sister network CNN's national and inter ...
*
Sharon Tay Sharon Tay (born October 15, 1966) is an American journalist and former host of two programs on the MSNBC network and formerly a news reporter for KCBS-TV and KCAL-TV in Los Angeles before being laid off in 2020 after 13 years with the networks.
, reporter (1990–1992)


Technical information


Subchannels

The station's digital signal is
multiplexed In telecommunications and computer networking, multiplexing (sometimes contracted to muxing) is a method by which multiple analog or digital signals are combined into one signal over a shared medium. The aim is to share a scarce resource - a ...
:


Analog-to-digital conversion

KION-TV shut down its analog signal, over
UHF Ultra high frequency (UHF) is the ITU designation for radio frequencies in the range between 300 megahertz (MHz) and 3 gigahertz (GHz), also known as the decimetre band as the wavelengths range from one meter to one tenth of a meter (on ...
channel 46, on February 17, 2009, the original target date by which full-power television in the United States was to transition from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate (which was later pushed back to June 12, 2009). The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 32.


See also

*
Channel 5 branded TV stations in the United States The following television stations in the United States brand as channel 5 (though neither using virtual channel 5 nor broadcasting on physical RF channel 5): * KCWQ-LD in Palm Springs, California * KECY-DT2 in El Centro, California * KION-TV in Sa ...
*
Channel 32 digital TV stations in the United States The following television stations broadcast on Digital television, digital channel 32 in the United States: * K32AB-D in Yuma, Colorado, on virtual channel 4, which rebroadcasts KCNC-TV * K32AG-D in Parowan, Enoch, etc., Utah * K32CA-D in Battle Mo ...
*
Channel 46 virtual TV stations in the United States The following television stations operate on virtual channel 46 in the United States: * K04SB-D in Bakersfield, California * K12LU-D in West Glacier, etc., Montana * K15KO-D in Redding, California * K17NF-D in Brookings, South Dakota * K21MV-D in F ...


References


External links

* *
KION-TV/KMUV-LP/KKFX-CA Asset Purchase agreement
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kion-Tv ION-TV CBS network affiliates Fox network affiliates Telemundo network affiliates Ion Television affiliates Television channels and stations established in 1969 1969 establishments in California News-Press & Gazette Company ION-TV