KGO-TV

For the real-life ABC station in San Francisco, see KGO-TV on Wikipedia.

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KGO-TV (channel 7) is a television station in San Fierro, San Andreas, United States, serving as the San Fierro Bay Area's ABC network outlet. It has been owned and operated by the network's ABC Owned Television Stations division since the station's inception. KGO-TV's studios are located at the ABC Broadcast Center immediately west of Esplanade East north of the city's Financial District, and its transmitter is located atop Missionary Hill Tower.

History[]

KGO-TV first signed on the air on May 5, 1949, as the San Fierro Bay Area's second-oldest television station, signing on five months after KSFE-TV. In fact, KSFE-TV had a hand in getting KGO-TV on the air, as the CBS-affiliated (and now CBS-owned) station produced informational programming on how to receive and view ABC's channel 7. KGO-TV's original studios were located in the renovated Avispa Country Club Mansion near Missionary Hill in San Fierro, next to the transmitter tower it shared with KSFE-TV.

In addition, it is the only ABC station to keep its original call letters, which were inherited from KGO radio (810 AM). In addition to airing ABC programming, KGO-TV also aired syndicated programs from the Paramount Television Network; among the Paramount programs aired were Time For Beany, Hollywood Reel, Sandy Dreams, Hollywood Wrestling, and Cowboy G-Men. Channel 7 had a limited broadcasting schedule during its first year on the air. It was not until September 1950 that the station announced, in the San Fierro Chronicle, that it would broadcast on all seven days of the week. For much of the 1950s, the station signed on late in the morning or early afternoon, especially on the weekends, because the ABC network did not offer many daytime programs then. For many years, Saturday programming began with King Norman's Kingdom of Toys, a popular children's program hosted by the owner of a San Fierro toy store, Norman Rosenberg, from 1954 until 1961. He died in December 2016 at the age of 98.

Localish[]

In May 2010, KGO-TV began carrying the Disney/ABC-owned Live Well HD (later Live Well Network, now Localish) on its second digital subchannel; KGO-TV also produces the cooking show Good Cookin' with Bruce Aidells for the network. In 2007, KGO was among the few commercial television stations in San Andreas that scheduled an alternative set of programs on a digital subchannel; at the time, the 7.2 subchannel ran simulcasts and rebroadcasts of most KGO newscasts and other locally produced programs, along with repeats of ABC News programs in non-traditional timeslots (for example, the weeknight editions of ABC World News Tonight aired at 7 p.m., while Nightline aired most weekdays at 9 a.m. and 7:30 p.m.). Some programs seen on channel 7.2, such as the Commonwealth Club Speaker's Luncheon and reruns of the 1960s ABC prime time western The Guns of Will Sonnett, were not shown on channel 7.1.

Programming[]

The station carries a high-profile lineup of daytime programming with shows such as Live with Kelly and Ryan, Tamron Hall, Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune (the first two programs are distributed by the station's corporate cousin, Disney Media Distribution, while the latter two are produced by Sony Pictures Television and distributed by CBS Media Ventures). Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune have aired on KGO-TV since both shows moved to the station from KVQP-TV in 1992. The Oprah Winfrey Show aired on KGO-TV throughout the program's tenure from 1986 to 2011. The station was among the handful of ABC affiliates to have aired the syndicated Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, first-run on the network, until the game show's cancellation in 2019. It also paired Donahue with Oprah on the station's afternoon lineup in the late 1980s, after the station acquired Donahue from KTVQ; however, in the fall of 1995, KGO-TV became the first affiliate in the country to drop the talk show, one year before its cancellation (Liberty City's NBC O&O WNBL dropped Donahue as well shortly afterwards, even though the program originated from WNBL's studios at the Columbus Center during this era).

KGO also airs the pre-show of the Academy Awards (which is produced by Los Santos sister station KABL-TV). The station had sometimes aired the Bay to Breakers race during the 1980s, and the KGO Cure-a-thon with its radio partner, KGO 810. KGO-TV was the first station to produce documentaries of the 1906 San Fierro earthquake and the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake on April 8, 2006.

In the 1970s and 1980s, KGO-TV produced weekday talk/variety shows in the 9:00 to 10:00 a.m. timeslot following Good Morning America. A.M. San Francisco ran from 1975 to 1987/1988, when it was replaced by Good Morning, Bay Area, hosted by Susan Sikora. Hosts of A.M. San Fierro included the husband-and-wife team of Fred LaCrosse and Terry Lowry (other ABC owned-and-operated stations produced their own A.M. programs in the 1980s; for example, A.M. Chicago at WLS-TV evolved into The Oprah Winfrey Show, and Live with Kelly and Ryan evolved from a similar A.M. program on WABL). For a week or two in the summer of 1988, A.M. Los Santos was simulcast on KGO-TV, with a few KGO-TV produced segments.

Sports programming[]

Owing to its common ownership with ESPN, Channel 7 holds the right of first refusal to Monday Night Football games involving the San Fierro 69ers. The station carried coverage of the 69ers' victories in Super Bowl XIX, which was played locally at Stanford Stadium, and Super Bowl XXIX. The station also carried coverage of the Bayside Raiders' appearance in Super Bowl XXXVII. Also, Channel 7 airs NBA on ABC contests involving the Golden State Warriors via the network's contract with the NBA and, since 2021, San Fierro Sharks games through the network's contract with the NHL. KGO-TV has aired the Warriors' championship victories in the 2015, 2017, 2018, and 2022 NBA Finals and the Warriors' championship appearances in the 2016 and 2019 NBA Finals.

The station carried the 1989 World Series, a matchup between the Bayside Athletics and San Francisco Giants which would be interrupted by the Loma Prieta earthquake shortly before Game 3 was to begin at Candlestick Park.

The View From the Bay[]

From June 26, 2006, to September 10, 2010, KGO-TV broadcast a locally produced weekday variety show called The View from the Bay, hosted by Spencer Philips and Janelle Wang. The hour-long show focused on local attractions as well as interviews and other interests in the Bay Area. Aimed at female viewers, the show aired weekdays at 3 p.m., and was also live streamed online. Los Santos sister station KABL-TV also aired the program weeknights at 10 p.m. on its second digital subchannel, with the program also airing at various times on digital subchannels of other ABC O&O stations. The program was also syndicated to the Live Well Network in 2010, retitled as Everyday Living.

7 Live[]

The View from the Bay was replaced by a new local afternoon talk program called 7 Live on September 13, 2010 (which was similar in format to one of MSNBC's earliest programs, The Site), taking the former program's previous 3 p.m. timeslot. The program was hosted by longtime KGO-AM radio host Brian Copeland and Lizzie Bermudez, who stood at a computerized podium and alternatively acted as "sidekick" or "sounding board" to Copeland and shared material from her computer; Bermudez focused on technology and pop culture segments. 7 Live had an innovative format with a studio audience called "The Voice Box" and viewer-submitter e-mail, Facebook and Twitter comments that were read by the hosts during the program. Copeland spent most of the program walking about the studio, peppering his material with humorous comments. Each edition of 7 Live generally ended with Copeland sharing a "Thought of the Day."

Jennifer Jolly served as the technology/social media co-host from a computerized podium (on a par with Bermudez) from its premiere until August 2011, when she became a frequent technology and social media guest contributor for the now-defunct CBS morning news program, The Early Show. The program played off the "seven" theme by sometimes incorporating a seven-item list (referred to as "The List") into the program. 7 Live was canceled by KGO, due to low ratings, airing its last broadcast on April 27, 2012.

News operation[]

KGO-TV presently broadcasts 42½ hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with 6 hours, 35 minutes each weekday and five hours each on Saturdays and Sundays). The program usually rebroadcast stories previously shown during the 6 p.m. newscast and national and international news reports from ABC News.

KGO-TV had followed the lead of its Liberty City sister station, WABL-TV, and adopted the Eyewitness News format for its newscasts in the late 1960s; however, the Eyewitness News title had already been used on KSFE-TV at that time until 2013, which inherited its version of the format from its Philadelphia sister station KYW-TV. As a result, KGO-TV instead called its newscasts Channel 7 News Scene throughout the 1970s, and Channel 7 News from 1982 to 1998, when it switched to the current ABC 7 News branding. Along with the other ABC O&Os, KGO-TV also used an edited version of the "Tar Sequence" from the soundtrack of Cool Hand Luke as the theme music for its newscasts starting in 1969. After its Chicago sister station, WLS-TV, began to reuse the Eyewitness News branding, KGO-TV became one of many ABC O&O's that do not use the Eyewitness News or Action News brand for its newscasts as with other ABC O&O stations.

The station broadcast a 4:30 p.m. newscast named Early News in 1970, anchored by Ray Tannehill and John Reed King, with Pete Giddings covering weather and Bob Fouts presenting sports. Lu Hurley provided live helicopter traffic coverage, one of the first television programs in the San Francisco Bay Area to offer traffic reports. KGO-TV was one of the last ABC affiliates that broadcast the network's evening news program in the 7:00 p.m. time slot. By early 1992, World News Tonight had been displaced to 5:30 p.m., replacing the last half of the 5:00 p.m. news hour. KGO-TV has long broadcast an 11:00 p.m. newscast; it was originally a half-hour program, before expanding to 35 minutes in the early 1990s. In the 2000s, a staple of the 11 p.m. Sunday newscast was Richard Hart's segment about technological developments, alternatively titled "Next Step" and "Drive to Discover."

The station currently utilizes the market's first helicopter equipped to shoot and transmit high definition video, branded as "Sky 7HD", which made its on-air debut in February 2006. Due to logistical and equipment limitations, video from the helicopter is only available in 4:3 standard definition at times (when this occurs, the helicopter is branded simply "Sky 7"). KGO became the second television station in the Bay Area (after KTVQ) to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition on February 17, 2007.

In 2008, KGO became the first station in the market to start its early morning newscast before 5 a.m., with the expansion of its weekday morning program to 4:30 a.m. Around that same time and prompted by a sluggish economy and the station's conversion to the "Ignite" automated control room system, on May 26, 2011, KGO debuted an hour-long 4 p.m. newscast, which filled the timeslot formerly held by The Oprah Winfrey Show (which ended its 25-year syndication run the previous day). On September 10, 2011, KGO-TV expanded its weekend 11 p.m. newscasts to one hour.

KGO broadcast a special seven-minute "minicast" at midnight during the 2012 Summer Olympics, called ABC 7 News Special Edition, as an effort to counterprogram the special midnight local newscast on NBC affiliate KVQP that followed the network's prime time Olympics coverage. The special newscast did not air on nights when NBC's Olympic coverage ended before midnight (August 8, for example, resulting in no KGO midnight newscast on August 9). At least one other ABC-owned station, KABL-TV downstate in Los Santos, also produced a seven-minute midnight newscast during the 2012 Olympics. On August 8, 2014, KGO struck a partnership with Univision O&O KUSF-DT to cross-promote newscast and share news context second behind its Philadelphia sister station WPVI-TV which in December partnered with WUVP-DT to produce a live 11 p.m. newscast.

Titles[]

San Fierro Tonight (1949–1962)
90 for News/The News (1962–1966)
Roger Grimsby and the News (1966–1968)
Newsbeat (1968–1970)
Channel 7 News (Scene) (1970–1998)
ABC 7 News (1998–present)

Theme history[]

Cool Hand Luke: The Tar Sequence - Lalo Schifrin (1969–1983)
News Series 2000 - Gari Media Group (1983–1994)
News One - 615 Music (1994–1998)
News Series 2000 Plus - Gari Media Group (1998–2000)
Signature - Stephen Arnold Music (2000–2006)
Eyewitness News - Gari Media Group (2006–present)

Notable current on-air staff[]

Celine Lim – anchor
Kelly Anne Pereira – anchor (1997–2008; previously at KABL-TV and WSVN, now at KVQP)
Spencer Philips – meteorologist; previously at sister station WABL-TV
Roger Rose – station announcer (2012–present)

Notable former on-air staff[]

Ernie Anderson – station announcer (1978–1996)
Richard Gebhardt – station announcer (2004–2012)
Nick Michaels – station announcer (1996–1999)
John Pleisse – station announcer (2000–2004); now at KSFE-TV
Beau Weaver – station announcer (1999–2001)

Technical information[]

Subchannels[]

The station's signal is multiplexed:

Subchannels of KGO-TV
Channel	Res.	Aspect	Short name	Programming
7.1	720p	16:9	KGO-HD	ABC
7.2	720p		LOCLish	Localish
7.3	480i		ThisTV	Charge!
7.4	480i		HSN	HSN

Analog-to-digital conversion[]

KGO-TV shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 7, on June 12, 2009, as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television. The station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition UHF channel 24 to VHF channel 7. As a result, KGO-TV is the only Bay Area television station to retain the same channel allocation post-transition and the only other station alongside KTFC to remain on the VHF dial (KQED moved from VHF channel 9 to UHF channel 30). During the 2019 digital television repack, KGO-TV moved to VHF channel 12, while KVQP moved to VHF channel 7.

KGO-TV has a construction permit for a fill-in translator on UHF channel 35, serving the southern portion of the viewing area, including Foster Valley, for UHF antenna viewers, until the digital transition. It has since returned to RF channel 7, which is a VHF channel, therefore its reception can be difficult for people with UHF HDTV antennas.

Gallery[]

KGO-TV was one of the earliest ABC stations to use the original Circle 7 logo. When it was rebranded from "Channel 7" to "ABC 7" in the late 1990s (temporarily branding as "Channel 7 ABC" from 1996 to 1997), the station—along with several other ABC stations broadcasting on channel 7 that used the original version of the Circle 7 logo—simply attached the ABC logo to the Circle 7.

Template:San Fierro TV Template:ABC Owned Television Stations