List of Television Stations in The San Francisco Bay Area - UHF Channels

UHF Channels

UHF channels in the Bay Area began with KSAN, operating on Channel 32, in 1954. KBAY, which was to operate on Channel 20, was intended to be another early UHF station in San Francisco, but it didn't sign on the air until 1968. KSAN had a limited audience because most television sets could only receive UHF with a special converter. Only in markets such as Fresno and Bakersfield, which had only UHF channels, was there any real reason to purchase such a converter in the 1950s.

Later, in the early 1960s, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ruled that all television sets had to have tuners for both VHF and UHF channels. On October 12, 1964, KCSM began broadcasting on Channel 14 with studios and transmitter on the new College Heights campus of the College of San Mateo in San Mateo. The station later switched to Channel 60 and recently began transmitting DTV on Channel 43 (where it will remain after the analog shutdown in 2009).

By the mid 1960s, more sets were being equipped to receive UHF signals and this led to additional UHF stations, beginning on January 2, 1968, with KBHK, operating on Channel 44, a station owned by Kaiser Broadcasting. In 1968, KSAN was acquired by Metromedia and renamed KNEW, then donated to KQED in 1970, which operated it as a secondary PBS channel under the call letters KQEC. The station changed hands again in 1988, becoming a foreign language station known as KMTP-TV.