The San Francisco Bay Area is currently defined by Nielsen Media Research as the tenth-largest television market in the United States,[1] with all of the major U.S. television networks having affiliates serving the region. All but one of the major network affiliates are directly owned by the networks; the one exception is secondary MyNetworkTV affiliate KRON-TV (now The CW), which is owned by Nexstar Media Group.
Despite the fact that Philo Farnsworth first demonstrated fully electronic television in San Francisco in 1928, there were no experimental prewar television stations broadcasting in the Bay Area. KPIX, California's first television station, started broadcasts in 1948, with KRON and KGO soon following suit. Until 1952, the FCC had allocated only 6 television channels to the Bay Area, but in 1954 KSAN [2] began transmitting on UHF channel 32 and KQED began educational programming on channel 9. By 1956, the Sacramento area had KCRA, KBET KOVR, and KCCC on the air, the San Jose area had KSBW and KNTV, and San Francisco had KRON, KPIX, KGO, KQED, and KSAN broadcasting. The ownership and programming of these stations has changed significantly over the decades, but most of these channel assignments and call signs remain the same. With the conversion from analog NTSC to digital ATSC broadcast modulation in 2009 and the subsequent "repacking" of the frequency assignments, only KSBW and KMTP (originally KSAN) have kept their original RF channel. For branding and audience-familiarity reasons, most broadcasters have kept their virtual channel numbers through all the transitions.
Thanks to the sub-channels that are enabled by ATSC modulation, over 350 channels broadcast on the 33 RF frequencies allocated for digital television may be received within the Bay Area (UHF channels 16 and 17 are allocated for T-band business radio). Television stations whose terrestrial broadcast signals can be received in the San Francisco Bay Area include:[3] [4] [5]
KBKF-LD additionally transmits with an experimental analog FM radio subcarrier that is accessible at 87.7 MHz.[6]