, '''''"CBS2 Los Angeles"''''' is the
CBS Owned And Operated Station in the
Los Angeles area, and is the
West Coast flagship station of the CBS network. The station is seen via satellite through
Dish Network and
DirecTV . Its transmitter is located atop Mount Wilson.
KCBS-TV is one of the oldest television stations in the world. It was created by
Don Lee Broadcasting , which owned a chain of radio stations on the
Pacific Coast , and was first licensed by the
Federal Radio Commission , forerunner of the
Federal Communications Commission as experimental television station in June 1931. On
December 23 ,
1931 it went on the air, and by March 1933 was broadcasting one hour daily except Sundays. The station used a mechanical camera which broadcast only film footage, but demonstrated all-electronic receivers as early as 1932. It went off the air in 1935, and then reappeared using an improved mechanical camera producing a 300-line image for a month-long demonstration in June 1936. By August 1937, W6XAO had programming on the air six days per week. Live programming started in April 1938.
By 1939, with the image improved to 441 lines, an optimistic estimate of the station's viewership was 1,500 people in a few hundred homes. Many of the receiver sets were built by television hobbyists, though commercially-made sets were available in Los Angeles. The station's six-day weekly schedule consisted of live talent four nights, and film two nights. During World War II, programming was reduced to three hours, every other Monday. The station's frequency was switched from Channel 1 to Channel 2 in 1945 when the FCC decided to reserve
Channel 1 for low-wattage
Community Television stations.
The station was granted a commercial license (the second in California, behind
KTLA-TV ) as on
May 6 ,
1948 , after
Thomas S. Lee , station owner and son of founder Don Lee. It affiliated with the
DuMont Television Network later that year.
On
January 1 ,
1951 , CBS gave up its 49 percent stake in KTSL's competitor KTTV and purchased KTSL. CBS programming moved to KTSL. In November of
1951 , KTSL changed its call letters to , to coincide with CBS' Los Angeles outlet,
KNX-AM 1070 , which was previously owned by a now-defunct newspaper the Los Angeles News-Express.
In
1960 , KNXT created the nation's first one-hour local newscast, "The Big News," which featured the late
Jerry Dunphy , one of Southern California's most beloved news icons, along with legendary weatherman
Bill Keene and sportscaster
Gil Stratton . This helped make KNXT the number-one news station in Los Angeles. At times, a quarter of Los Angeles televisions were tuned into the Big News, the highest ratings ever for a television newscast in the area. Eventually, KNXT expanded to two-and-a-half hours of live local news, as well as a late-night newscast. However, in the mid
1970s , rival
KABC-TV began gaining ratings at KNXT's expense. The station fired Dunphy (who was quickly hired by KABC) and adopted a format similar to KABC's
Eyewitness News . However, the change went nowhere. Just as most of its fellow CBS O&Os were dominating their cities' ratings, KNXT's ratings plummeted and have never recovered.
On
April 2 ,
1984 , at noon, KNXT changed its call letters to the present . In
1997 , it adopted the "CBS2" moniker for its on-air image, following the lead of its Chicago and New York sisters. In
2002 , KCBS-TV became sister stations with
KCAL-TV after the latter was purchased by
CBS Corporation .
For a time during the 1980's and 1990's, KCBS has several locally produced programs such as "
2 On The Town ," a local show similar to
Evening Magazine and
KABC-TV 's Eye On L.A., and KidQuiz, a Saturday Morning Children's Game show hosted by longtime weathercaster Maclovio Perez.
Aside from a brief period in the mid-1990s, when its 6 pm news managed to tie KABC for first place, KCBS has been an also-ran in the Los Angeles TV ratings for most of the last 30 years. KABC and
KNBC fight it out for first, with KCBS often trailing Spanish-language newscasts and sitcoms.
For much of this time, KCBS has been dead last in the ratings. However, in recent years the station's 11pm newscast has outdrawn that of
UPN affiliate
KCOP , which moved from 10pm. Still, that newscast remains in third place, behind KABC and KNBC. In
2000 , former KNBC "Today in L.A." anchor
Kent Shocknek joined KCBS to become its morning co-anchor. Then in
2001 the station hired Harold Greene, longtime anchor at KABC, as its 5 and 11 pm anchor. A year later, he was joined by his former partner at KABC, Laura Diaz. In
2004 ,
Paul Magers , longtime anchor at
KARE-TV in the
Twin Cities , replaced Greene on the 5 pm and 11 pm news, bumping Greene to the 4 pm and 6 pm newscasts. The 4 pm newscast moved to KCAL with the arrival of
Dr. Phil on KCBS. At the beginning of
2005 , longtime KABC-TV weatherman Johnny Mountain moved to KCBS, surprising many since it appeared that he was going to retire. Still, despite a few moderate gains, KCBS has yet to become a serious factor in the local ratings.
In
2006 , KCBS will leave its longtime studios on
Sunset Boulevard in
Hollywood ,
CBS Columbia Square . CBS Corporation has plans to relocate its Los Angeles television stations to a new office complex on the site of its
CBS Studio Center in Studio City in
2006 , located 5 miles away in the
San Fernando Valley . Groundbreaking of the new KCAL/KCBS-TV studios took place on
June 17 ,
2005 .
