Until the late 1970s, KRON-TV was known for being very San Francisco-centric in its news coverage and audience targeting, an approach that would become costly to the station as population growth in areas outside San Francisco soared. Realizing this and refocusing on the entire market enabled KRON-TV to become the dominant station in the Bay Area.
Syndicated programs As of September 2024, syndicated programming on KRON-TV includes
Inside Edition and
Entertainment Tonight which are distributed by
CBS Media Ventures, as well as
Judy Justice. During the 1980s, KRON continued its dominance by airing top-rated syndicated programs, including the
Merv Griffin-produced
game shows Jeopardy! and
Wheel of Fortune (the original NBC daytime versions of both series also aired on KRON), as well as
Entertainment Tonight. The game show pair was moved to ABC-owned KGO-TV in February 1992—seven months ahead of schedule—as a direct result of KRON's experiment with its
early prime time schedule that year.
Past programming preemptions and deferrals For most of its tenure with NBC, KRON was the network's second-largest affiliate (behind only KYW-TV in Philadelphia) and its largest on the West Coast. Despite this, KRON occasionally preempted NBC programming. One notable omission was
Another World, which would eventually air on the station in the early 1990s; KRON's decision to drop the daytime
soap opera in the summer of 1998 (leaving
Days of Our Lives and the struggling
Sunset Beach as the only network soaps on its schedule) is thought to have hastened NBC's decision to cancel it altogether a year later. Two NBC daytime game shows,
50 Grand Slam and
Just Men!, were never seen in the Bay Area. KRON also did not air NBC's soap operas in pattern (for example, KRON-TV aired
Days of Our Lives after
Another World, rather than the standard slot for NBC affiliates in the Pacific Time Zone—at 2 or 3 p.m. depending on the season and time slot). Channel 4 also preempted some of the network's prime time programs. Similar to fellow NBC station
KCRA-TV in neighboring
Sacramento, KRON-TV stopped airing the Saturday morning
TNBC lineup in the early 1990s. Historically, NBC was far less tolerant of preemptions than the other networks, but has recently eased its standards. The network would resort to purchasing stations for the sole purpose of switching or upgrading them to O&O status because of this (
Miami's
WTVJ and
Salt Lake City's
KUTV are two such examples) or would find independent stations to air NBC programs that the main affiliate did not air. In the case of KRON, many of the shows it preempted ended up on independent
KICU-TV. NBC had a somewhat contentious relationship with KRON, especially since it often lost valuable advertising in one of the nation's largest markets. However, it had little reason to complain about its ratings performance in the Bay Area, as channel 4 was one of NBC's strongest affiliates for the better part of a half-century. A shuffle of network affiliations around the country (and NBC's acquisition of some stations in markets larger than San Francisco) in the mid-1990s made channel 4 NBC's largest affiliate.
Early prime time scheduling experiment From February 1992 to September 1993, KRON-TV, along with KCRA-TV, participated in the "Early Prime" experiment in which prime time programs aired one hour earlier (mirroring the scheduling of the network's prime time lineup in the
Central and
Mountain time zones), the half-hour late evening newscast also moved from 11 to 10 p.m. as a result. While KRON moved NBC's prime time programming back to the 8–11 p.m. timeslot in September 1993,
CBS affiliate KPIX, who adopted the early prime time schedule at the same time as KRON, continued with the experiment until 1998—well after it had become owned by the network through CBS's 1994 acquisition by KPIX's then-owner
Westinghouse. Though both KRON and KPIX initially ran hour-long newscasts at 10p.m. (KRON switched to a half-hour within months), neither were able to beat Fox affiliate KTVU, due to that station's longtime dominance in the 10 o'clock hour that continues to this day.
Sports programming In 1965, KRON-TV began broadcasting most Oakland Raiders games, which were at first part of the
American Football League, which had a
contract with NBC from 1965 to 1969, and then the
National Football League's
American Football Conference, which inherited the AFL's deal with NBC from 1970 to 1997 (the Raiders relocated to Los Angeles in
1982, stripping KRON of its status as the team's home station until they returned to Oakland in
1995; the station then served as the unofficial home station until
1997). KRON aired coverage of the Raiders' victories in
Super Bowl XI and
Super Bowl XV. In
2021, KRON-TV became the now
Las Vegas Raiders' official Bay Area home station for pre-season games and special programming. In addition, during those same years (1970–1997), KRON-TV also aired select
San Francisco 49ers games whenever they played host to an AFC opponent at
Candlestick Park (the station aired the team's victory in
Super Bowl XXIII in
January 1989). In
1993, Channel 4 became the
flagship station of the
Oakland Athletics, after acquiring broadcast rights to the
Major League Baseball team's games. This caused a problem in
1996, when the final day of the
U.S. Olympic track and field trials conflicted with a scheduled Athletics broadcast. Since KRON-TV was contractually obligated to show the baseball game live, it rebroadcast the trials at midnight. KRON lost the Athletics' television rights following the team's
1998 season. Both select Oakland A's and
San Francisco Giants games were aired as part of
NBC's broadcast contract with Major League Baseball from 1957 to 1989, including the A's string of three consecutive
World Series victories in
1972,
1973, and
1974.
''New Year's Live'' From 1989 until January 2008, KRON-TV produced a countdown program called ''New Year's Live'', which aired on New Year's Eve (sometimes beginning at 11p.m.) and continued into
New Year's Day (sometimes ending at 1a.m.). Events in San Francisco were the focal point of KRON's coverage, especially the midnight
fireworks show near the Ferry Building. Other West Coast television stations joined KRON in some years (including KCAL-TV in Los Angeles,
KING-TV in
Seattle,
KCRA in Sacramento,
KNSD in
San Diego and
KLAS-TV in
Las Vegas in December 1990), featuring midnight countdown events in other cities, such as Las Vegas casinos and at the Seattle
Space Needle. Former KRON weather anchor Mark Thompson served as the host during the program's early years. ''New Year's Live'' returned to KRON in December 2010 as an hour-long broadcast, hosted by Catherine Heenan and George Rask in-studio, with live reports from Henry Tenenbaum at
Pier 39 and Vicki Liviakis at Waterbar on the
Embarcadero. Starting in 2011, Gary Radnich joined Heenan as host at various locations in San Francisco each year.
Other local programming KRON-TV also produces two locally produced programs outside of local newscasts:
Bay Area Living – Home Improvement Edition and LIVE! in the Bay. Past local programs include
Bay Area Backroads,
Bay Cafe, ''Henry's Home & Garden
, Latin Eyes
, Pacific Fusion
, Bay Area Bargains
, The Silver Lining
; and several series and featured news segments that were developed by Jim Swanson, executive producer including Bay Area Bargains – Green Edition
; Bay Area Living – Seniors Edition
; KRON 4's Body Beautiful
; KRON 4's Casino Adventures
; Don't Invest and Forget
; Health and Beauty with Dr Sonia
; Living Green with Petersen Dean
; KRON 4's Medical Mondays
; KRON 4's Peninsula Beauty
; KRON 4's Sizzling Hot Auto Deals
and KRON 4's Spa Spectacular''. In the 1950s and 1960s, local programs produced by KRON-TV included the award-winning documentary series
Assignment Four,
Fireman Frank with George Lemont (died October 1985 at the age of 63) and his
puppets (including a rooster named
Rhode Island Red), and a live children's program hosted by
Art Finley as
Mayor Art. Bay Area kids, known as the "City Council," joined Mayor Art in the studio each day. The show featured
Popeye cartoons mixed with science demonstrations, a
newsreel feature entitled "Mayor Art's Almanac", games, prizes, and a sock puppet named "Ring-A-Ding."
Assignment Four was a documentary series that generally aired Monday evenings at 7 p.m. through much of the 1960s (beginning in February 1960). A promotional brochure declared, "each
Assignment Four story is concerned with cultural and ethnic activities or perhaps some fascinating phase of life and living in the Greater San Francisco Bay Area." Subjects ranged from 'Skid Row' to 'The Single Girl,' the 'Green Intricate Country of Napa Valley' to 'No Deposit, No Return' (a study of garbage disposal that won a 1966
Emmy Award and Silver Medal Award in the 1966
New York International Film Festival). The documentary 'Not to Have Lived' (aired January 31, 1966) about mechanized society featured no dialogue or narration. In the late 1980s, KRON-TV was among the few local television stations in the United States that produced a
game show:
Claim to Fame, a weekly half-hour program hosted by
Patrick Van Horn that usually ran on Saturday evenings. During that timeframe, KRON also produced a Saturday morning children's program called
Buster and Me. From the 1970s into the late 1980s, the station used
Gabriel Fauré's
Pavane, Opus 50 as the music played during its nightly sign-off, alongside scenic rustic shots from around the Bay Area. KRON also produced
Bay Area Backroads, a half-hour program (which ran from the mid-1980s to 2008) that profiled places and people in the greater San Francisco Bay Area, and occasionally beyond. The program, which generally aired on Sunday evenings, featured hosts such as Jerry Graham and
Doug McConnell.
News operation As of 2024, KRON broadcasts hours of local newscasts each week (with hours each weekday, hours on Saturdays, and hours on Sundays); it has the highest newscast output of any television station in the San Francisco Bay Area. KRON was one of only three MyNetworkTV affiliates that aired and produced their own newscasts, alongside WPHL-TV in Philadelphia (though only a morning newscast, while its 10p.m. newscast is produced by
WPVI-TV) and
WJMN-TV in
Marquette, Michigan (which maintained a news department when it was a CBS affiliate), after the service's owned-and-operated station
WWOR-TV in
Secaucus, New Jersey (whose news department operated separately from Fox-owned sister station
WNYW stemming from license requirements imposed by WWOR's 1983 license transfer from New York City to New Jersey), closed theirs in July 2013. KRON's news operations were handled by the
Chronicle until it launched its own news department in September 1957. It operated from a studio inside the
Chronicle building at Fifth & Mission streets (the station's news department was located 30 feet from the
Chronicle city desk). Appropriately for a station once owned by the
Chronicle, KRON-TV has long been a very news-intensive station. it produced six daily newscasts at the time, including the
Shell-sponsored 6p.m. newscast
Shell News, with Tom Franklin reporting from the studio at the
Chronicle and in filmed field reports. Franklin began the broadcast standing next to a map of the San Francisco Bay Area, with lights illuminated on the map next to the various cities that the newscast was to feature stories from. Franklin anchored most of the program from behind a desk that had a large Shell logo next to a "Tom Franklin" nameplate, with a Shell "X-100" oil can that sat atop the desk. Live segments were used for late bulletins from the
Chronicle city desk or for local and regional stories not suitable for film treatment. Some of the stories covered by
Shell News in 1957 included the end of the "pedestrian scramble" system at downtown San Francisco street intersections, the end of the San Francisco-Oakland Southern Pacific railroad passenger ferry and the final game of the
San Francisco Seals baseball team (to be replaced by the San Francisco Giants in 1958). In the 1960s, KRON-TV had anchors Art Brown and Jerry Jensen (who later moved to KGO-TV), and Linda Richards, who wrote predicted temperatures backwards on sliding glass panels with maps drawn on them, for viewers to see the weather forecast. Ed Hart, and later Frank Dill, reported sports with a focus on only the area's professional teams. KRON's early morning news digests in the 1960s utilized
sign language by Peter Wechsberg and Jane Norman. KRON-TV eventually branded its newscasts as
Newswatch 4 in the early 1970s. By early 1972, the station ran newscasts at noon, 5:30, 6:30 and 11p.m. on weekdays and 6 and 11p.m. on weekends; it also ran a late newscast that aired (then) immediately after
The Tonight Show called the
Newswatch Sign-Off Edition. Presenters then included Terry Lowry, Phil Wilson, Karna Small, Bob Marsden, Paul Ryan, Art Brown and Dave Valentine. The station's newscasts were branded as
NewsCenter 4 from 1977 until 2001, when it was changed to the current
KRON 4 News. A major change in KRON-TV's evening news broadcasts occurred on April 6, 1981, when the station launched the 90-minute newscast "Live on 4" (from 4 to 5:30 p.m.).
NBC Nightly News also moved from 7 to 5:30 p.m. (KPIX and KGO would follow this move with their national newscasts during the following decade). From late 1981 to late 1988, the 5p.m. weekday newscast was
Live at Five; Bob Jimenez anchored in the studio with Evan White in the newsroom.
Live on 4 was replaced in 1983 with
T.G.I.4, an hour-long light local news and interview program co-hosted by Jan Rasmussen and Patrick Van Horn. In the mid-1980s, KRON-TV produced and aired an afternoon talk program called
Bay City Limits. In 1981, KRON launched its first morning newscast with a seven-minute program (at 6:53 a.m.); the program was canceled by late 1982. All the evening newscasts featured a variety of anchors, until settling down with the successful duo of
Roz Abrams and
Jim Paymar. After Abrams left for New York City's
WABC-TV in
1986, Paymar co-anchored alongside Sylvia Chase (who had been a correspondent for
CBS News and later for the ABC
newsmagazine 20/20). The station debuted what was then the only local early morning newscast in the San Francisco television market on September 1, 1986, with the launch of
Daybreak (which ran from 6:30 to 7a.m., leading into
Today). The first anchors were Lloyd Patterson and Lila Petersen. KRON's newscasts during the 1980s regularly featured commentaries by
Wayne Shannon in a segment called "Just 4 You", many of which had a humorous tone. Shannon received billing in newscast introductions along with the anchors, and weather and sports presenters. Another staple of KRON-TV newscasts in the 1980s was live traffic reports and news coverage from the station's helicopter "Telecopter 4". Bob McCarthy, Rita Cohen and
Janice Huff were among the personalities who reported from Telecopter 4. Their traffic reports appeared regularly on
Daybreak, during
Today and
Live at Five. Evocative of his folksy, down-to-earth style, McCarthy had a catchphrase, "hunky snarky", that he often used to characterize roads on which traffic was flowing smoothly. Will Prater was the main pilot of Telecopter 4 in its early years and Lou Calderon was the main photographer. KRON also broadcast from remote locations during this era (e.g.,
Super Bowl venues) via a satellite uplink unit dubbed "Newstar 4". These segments often began with an animation depicting a signal originating from the uplink location, bouncing off a satellite and ending at a satellite dish next to the words "San Francisco." KRON-TV regarded the satellite truck as a major competitive advantage over rival television stations, featuring it in a mid-1980s promotional spot which declared, "We got a mobile satellite up-link. They don't." In the 1980s, KRON-TV produced lengthy analysis pieces for the "Cover Story" segment on its 6p.m. newscast, many with an investigative journalism focus and sometimes produced by the 10-person "Target 4" investigative unit. The station reran some of these segments in an occasional program called
Cover Story Magazine. The station also produced a half-hour
public affairs program on Sunday mornings called
Weekend Extra, which was hosted by
Belva Davis and Rollin Post. This program frequently presented features from KRON's news bureaus in
Washington, D.C., and Sacramento, the only Bay Area station to maintain bureaus (which were later deemed to be too expensive and were shut down by the end of the decade). During this time, KRON news grew rapidly in viewership and collected a large number of awards, including two DuPont Columbia awards, a
Peabody, and more than 100 local Emmys. The station also produced a series of one-minute documentaries during the mid-1980s,
San Francisco Minutes and
Bay Area Minutes, which featured people, places and events in San Francisco and Bay Area history and usually featured narrations by KRON-TV personalities set to soaring music (e.g., Mark Thompson on San Francisco's cable cars, Lloyd Patterson on the
San Mateo County coastline). In the 1990s, the station utilized a "24 Hour News" format, with 30- to 60-second news updates each hour outside of regular newscasts. During the May 2001 sweeps period – its last as an NBC affiliate – KRON's newscasts beat KGO-TV's in the 5 and 6p.m. timeslots by a very close margin, ending KGO's domination in those timeslots. When KRON lost NBC to KNTV and became an independent station in January 2002, the station expanded its news programming by adding two hours to its weekday morning newscast (from 7 to 9a.m.), and extending its 5p.m. newscast to one hour to fill timeslots vacated by the departures of
Today and
Nightly News. Unlike most news-producing stations that have become independent after losing a network affiliation or that have switched to one of the post-1986 broadcast networks, KRON originally kept its late newscast in the 11p.m. timeslot instead of moving it to or adding one at 10p.m. (avoiding direct competition with KTVU's long-dominant prime time newscast, though KRON's late news remained in competition against KGO, KNTV and KPIX's late evening newscasts); the station also added a prime time newscast at 9p.m. To this day, KRON maintains a newscast schedule similar to the one it had as an NBC affiliate. It is the only MyNetworkTV affiliate that has ever maintained a news schedule mirroring that of a
Big Three affiliate (as it carries morning, 5p.m., and 6p.m. newscasts, and previously an 11p.m. newscast). Several of KRON's veteran anchors and reporters left the station after the loss of the NBC affiliation; KRON also began incorporating
video journalists (many of which were newer hires) to report, tape and edit news stories. Despite the overall decline of KRON as an independent, its newscasts initially pulled in respectable ratings though viewership was lower than it was before the station lost its NBC affiliation. During the February 2004 sweeps period, the station placed second in the ratings behind KTVU. However, KRON's news viewership has gradually fallen since that point; also in 2004, the station posted an 8.7% market share, down from the 21% share it had as an NBC affiliate. The 9p.m. newscast created after becoming independent eventually fell to fourth place by 2005. In March 2006, KRON's morning newscast posted an average viewership of approximately 28,000 viewers. By 2009, overall viewership for the station's newscasts had fallen to fifth place among the Bay Area's news-producing
English-language television stations. On September 17, 2007, KRON-TV became the third station in the Bay Area (behind KGO and KTVU) to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in
16:9 widescreen—albeit in
standard definition. In September 2008, KRON dropped its 5p.m. newscast after the syndicated daytime talk show
Dr. Phil was moved to the slot, the program's former 8p.m. timeslot (which
Dr. Phil held locally since the show's 2002 premiere) was replaced by an hour-long prime time newscast; this would be undone in September 2009, with the cancellation of the 8p.m. newscast and
Dr. Phils return to the 8p.m. slot, along with the reinstatement of a 5:30 p.m. newscast (which expanded back to 5p.m. by 2010). The 8p.m. newscast returned on May 30, 2011, concurrent with the replacement of the 4p.m. news with
Dr. Phil. KRON quietly upgraded its newscasts to
high definition in April 2012, with the debut of new graphics. As of September 2013, only studio segments and on-air graphics are presented in HD, footage from field cameras and other news sources continue to be broadcast in widescreen SD until July 2016. KRON launched a new 10p.m. newscast on May 16, 2016, that competes with newscasts on KTVU and, at that time, KBCW. However, also at that time, KRON's 11p.m. news was shortened to 15 minutes until it was dropped when KRON launched a new 9p.m. newscast on August 21, 2017, which competed with KGO's 9p.m. newscast for KOFY-TV until KGO canceled it. On September 14, 2020, KRON launched an afternoon newscast at 3p.m. In February 2019, KRON launched a 24-hour online news stream and app called KRONOn. On January 10, 2022, KRON launched a noon newscast that competes with KTVU and KPIX. On May 9, 2023, KRON-TV announced that the 4 a.m. hour of
KRON 4 Morning News would be dropped, making 5 a.m. the start of the program, and the launch of the 10 a.m. hour on May 22, 2023. KRON-TV launched a 2 p.m. newscast and readded its 11 p.m. newscast on September 1, 2023, while ending its 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. newscasts due to the CW affiliation. On June 3, 2024 (after 13 years), KRON-TV readded the 4 p.m. newscast. On October 21, 2020, KRON unveiled a newly renovated studio during its 5 p.m. newscast. On October 1, 2024, KRON debuted new graphics to commemorate the station's 75th anniversary. From July to December 2024, KRON simulcast two hours of news programming from its KRONOn streaming service weeknights from 11:30 p.m. to 1:30 a.m.
Notable current on-air staff •
Catherine Heenan – anchor / reporter
Notable former on-air staff •
Roz Abrams – anchor (1982–1985) •
Cheryl Casone – reporter (2002–2004) •
Steve Centanni – reporter (1989–1996) •
Sylvia Chase – anchor (1986–1990) •
Claudia Cowan – reporter (1995–1998) •
Art Finley – children's show host (as "Mayor Art"); host of
Pick A Show (c. 1966); reporter (1959–1968) •
Pat Finn – weatherman •
Michelle Franzen – reporter and fill-in anchor (1998–2001) •
Emil Guillermo – reporter (1982–1989) •
John Hambrick – (1975–1980) •
Janice Huff – meteorologist (1990–1994) •
Marc Jampole – reporter (1980–1981) •
Vic Lee – reporter (1972–2006) •
Sam Chu Lin – reporter (1981–1984) •
Dave Malkoff – reporter (2003–2004) •
Mark Mullen – morning anchor (1991–1995, 2002–2003) •
Soledad O'Brien – reporter (1993–1996) •
Jim Paymar – anchor (1982–1987) •
Gary Radnich – sports director (1985–2018) •
Wayne Shannon – commentator (1982–1988) •
Ray Taliaferro – anchor (1972–1977) •
Mark Thompson – chief weather anchor (1984–1990) •
Wendy Tokuda – anchor/reporter (1997–2007) •
Patrick Van Horn – co-host of
T.G.I.4. (1983–198?), host of
Claim to Fame (1985–1989) •
Marta Waller – freelance writer (1984) •
Pete Wilson – anchor/reporter (1990–2001) •
Emerald Yeh – anchor (1984–2003) ==Technical information==