For years, KFMB-TV has chosen to air
The Bold and the Beautiful outside of the network's recommended 12:30 p.m. timeslot in the
Pacific Time Zone. This stemmed from when the station had an hour-long noon newscast, as the station aired the program at 9:30 a.m. (the midday newscast has since moved to 11 a.m.).
The Bold and the Beautiful had aired at 11:30 a.m. from 2009 to 2013, when it moved to 12:30 p.m. as the lead-in to
The Young and the Restless (which itself normally airs at 11 a.m. in the Pacific Time Zone). It also airs
CBS Saturday Morning two hours earlier than most CBS stations (aligning it with the program's recommended timeslot in the
Eastern Time Zone).
Sports programming KFMB-TV has served three stints as the broadcast television partner of
San Diego Padres baseball, with the first running from
1980 through
1983, the second covering the
1995 and
1996 campaigns, and a third stint beginning in the
2025 season (in addition to
CBS' national coverage of MLB games from
1990 to
1993). Channel 8 is the latest San Diego over-the-air station to regularly televise Padres games locally; with the exception of
games carried by Fox, the team was cable-exclusive from
1997 through
2024. In
1998, KFMB-TV was awarded the local broadcast rights to
San Diego Chargers preseason game telecasts; that same year,
CBS acquired the rights to the
American Football Conference (the
NFL conference of which the Chargers are a member), making channel 8 the station of record for the team, succeeding KNSD in that capacity (the station had previously aired Chargers home interconference games from 1970 to 1993). This would remain so until
2017, when the team returned to Los Angeles after 55 years, thus ending channel 8's status as the team's unofficial home station (despite the move, the station still airs a majority of their games as San Diego is still a secondary market for the team and therefore road games are contractually required to be aired in the market). Channel 8 also simulcast the Chargers' appearances on
NFL Network's
Thursday Night Football and
ESPN's
Monday Night Football, as per NFL rules which require games aired on cable networks to be simulcast on a local broadcast station in the team's home market. KFMB-TV also airs select
San Diego State Aztecs men's basketball games as part of
College Basketball on CBS; this included the team's appearance in the
2023 NCAA Division I men's basketball championship game.
News operation As of January 2024, KFMB presently broadcasts 39 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with seven hours each weekday and two hours each on Saturdays and Sundays), and also produces an additional 23 hours a week of local newscasts for KFMB-DT2 (with four hours each weekday, hours on Saturdays and a half hour on Sundays). KFMB runs an hour-long local newscast at 6 p.m. on weekdays. Unlike most CBS affiliates in the Pacific Time Zone, KFMB runs a half-hour local newscast at 6:30 p.m. on weekends. KFMB operates the only news helicopter in the San Diego market; its "Chopper 8" helicopter provides aerial video to most of the market's news-producing television stations through
Local News Service agreements. Some famous KFMB alumni include former weather anchor Raquel Tejada (who eventually became a successful actress as
Raquel Welch), talk show host
Regis Philbin, television host
Sarah Purcell,
CNN and former CBS anchor
Paula Zahn, original
Access Hollywood host
Larry Mendte, and eventual NBC correspondents Don Teague (later at
KRIV in
Houston) and Dawn Fratangelo. KFMB has led in newscast viewership in the San Diego market for most of its history, dating back to the 1950s when Ray Wilson was the popular anchor of the city's first half-hour newscast. When Wilson stepped down in 1973, KFMB slipped to a distant second behind KGTV, rebounding only in the late 1970s and early 1980s when former KGTV producer Jim Holtzman was hired by the station as its
news director. Holtzman formed a popular and acclaimed news team consisting of anchors Michael Tuck and Allison Ross, weather anchor Clark Anthony, and sports anchor Ted Leitner. By the end of 1979, KFMB had risen back to the #1 position, remaining there until 1984 when Tuck suddenly moved to KGTV and helped that station overtake KFMB for the remainder of the decade. Holtzman tried in vain to compete by experimenting with a different format for the 11 p.m. newscast called
This Day which emphasized a softer, humanized format and attempted to find a common thread within the newscast. There was no regular anchor; instead Hal Clement, Loren Nancarrow (now deceased), Dawn Fratangelo (now with NBC) and Susan Lichtman (now known as Susan Taylor and with KNSD) formed an ensemble of anchor/reporters who alternated between anchoring, filing detailed reports and giving live interviews. Computer graphics were used heavily, and Dave Grusin's "Night Lines" served as the newscast's theme music. Although it was innovative for its time,
This Day proved to be a dismal failure as viewers responded negatively to the awkward format; within nine months, KFMB reverted to a more traditional late evening newscast. However, the news ratings for KFMB went into a deep decline for more than a decade as popular mainstays like Marty Levin and Allison Ross (both of whom reappeared in the market on KNSD) either left voluntarily or were fired and were replaced by younger staffers like Stan Miller and
Susan Roesgen. Eventually by the 1990s, Hal Clement would assume early evening anchor duties alongside Susan Peters and later, Denise Yamada to mixed results as the station continued to battle KGTV and KNSD, primarily in the 11 p.m. timeslot where the CBS lead-in at the time was particularly weaker. By the early 2000s, Michael Tuck's brief return following Clement's departure for KGTV and CBS's resurgence at the start of the decade helped bring KFMB back to first place in the early evenings. By October 2020, KFMB, which had become the most watched television station in San Diego (based on
Nielsen ratings share data) from sign-on to sign-off, finished in first place in the noon, and afternoon and evening news timeslots (at 4 p.m., 5 p.m., 6 p.m. and at 11 p.m. weekdays). During coverage of the
California wildfires of October 2007, reporter Larry Himmel took viewers on a walkthrough of his own home, which had been destroyed in the fires. Audio of the station's news programming was also simulcast on KFMB (AM) and KFMB-FM for an extended period of time. On January 28, 2007, KFMB became the first television station in the San Diego market to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition; with the upgrade, the station unveiled a new set for its newscasts.
Notable former on-air staff •
Jerry G. Bishop – co-host of
Sun Up San Diego (1978–1990) •
Marc Brown (1987–1989) •
Rebecca Gomez – morning/noon anchor and reporter (?–1996 and 2001–2002) •
Jim Laslavic – sports anchor (1983–1989) •
Ted Leitner – sports anchor (1978–2003) •
Sandra Maas – anchor/medical reporter (1990–2001) •
Larry Mendte – weather anchor (1988–1991) •
Susan Peters – anchor (1991–1995) •
Sarah Purcell – talk show host (1970s) •
Susan Roesgen – anchor (1989–1991) •
Danuta Rylko – co-host of
Sun Up San Diego (1976–1983) •
Michael Tuck – anchor (1978–1984 and 1999–2004) •
Raquel Welch – weather (early 1960s) •
Paula Zahn – (1979–1981) ==Subchannels==