Television
The San Francisco Bay Area is currently the sixth-largest television market in the United States, with all of the major U.S. television networks having affiliates serving the region, and it is host to various local, national, and international programming. With a large, diverse population spread throughout the region, the Bay Area provides channels specific to their needs, including Asian and Hispanic television stations, as well as foreign programming on digital sub-channels.
When television channels broadcast their identities, they would usually identify their channel in this order (it can be altered depending on the network's city of license, but always include San Francisco in the list): (channel/station ID), San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose. This also happens when radio stations (listed below) identify themselves on the top of each hour.
Currently, television stations that primarily serve the San Francisco Bay Area include: (Note: list does not include the stations' digital sub-channels)
| Station | Channel | Network Affiliation | City of License | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| KAXT | 1 | Independent | Santa Clara | Owned and operated by KAXT |
| KTVU† | 2 | Fox | Oakland | Owned by Cox Communications |
| KRON | 4 | MyNetworkTV | San Francisco | Owned by New Young Broadcasting |
| KPIX† | 5 | CBS | San Francisco | Owned and operated by network |
| KBKF | 6 | Independent | San Jose | Simulcast of 87.7 FM |
| KGO | 7 | ABC | San Francisco | Owned and operated by network |
| KQED | 9 | PBS | San Francisco | Public broadcasting |
| KNTV† | 11 | NBC | San Jose | Owned and operated by network |
| KDTV† | 14 | Univision | San Francisco | Owned and operated by network |
| KOFY | 20 | Independent | San Francisco | Owned by Granite Broadcasting |
| KTSF | 26 | Independent | San Francisco | Ethnic (Asian) broadcasting |
| KFTL | 28 | HSN | San Francisco | Owned by Family Radio |
| KMTP | 32 | Independent | San Francisco | Ethnic broadcasting |
| KICU† | 36 | Independent | San Jose | Owned by Cox Communications |
| KCNS | 38 | RTV | San Francisco | Ethnic (Asian) broadcasting |
| KMMC | 40 | Tr3s | San Francisco | Ethnic (Hispanic) broadcasting |
| KTNC | 42 | Estrella TV | Concord | Owned by Titan Broadcasting |
| KBCW† | 44 | The CW | San Francisco | Owned and operated by CBS |
| KSTS† | 48 | Telemundo | San Jose | Owned and operated by NBC |
| KEMO | 50 | Azteca America | Santa Rosa | Owned by Una Vez Mas Holdings, LLC |
| KQEH | 54 | PBS | San Jose | Public broadcasting |
| KCSM | 60 | PBS | San Mateo | Public broadcasting |
| KKPX | 65 | ION | San Jose | Owned and operated affiliate of network |
| KFSF† | 66 | Telefutura | Vallejo | Owned and operated by Univision |
| KTLN | 68 | TLN | San Rafael | Christian broadcasting |
Note: † - channel involved in a duopoly with another channel, owned by the same company or network.
In addition to local television channels, several television networks have regional news bureaus in the San Francisco Bay Area, including BBC, CNN, ESPN, MSNBC, and PBS. The Bay Area will also have its own news channel as well, NBC California Nonstop, which will be broadcast along with sister NBC O&O stations, KNBC-TV and KNSD-TV, on KNTV's secondary digital subchannel.
Read more about this topic: Media In The San Francisco Bay Area
Famous quotes containing the word television:
“Television ... helps blur the distinction between framed and unframed reality. Whereas going to the movies necessarily entails leaving one’s ordinary surroundings, soap operas are in fact spatially inseparable from the rest of one’s life. In homes where television is on most of the time, they are also temporally integrated into one’s “real” life and, unlike the experience of going out in the evening to see a show, may not even interrupt its regular flow.”
—Eviatar Zerubavel, U.S. sociologist, educator. The Fine Line: Making Distinctions in Everyday Life, ch. 5, University of Chicago Press (1991)
“So why do people keep on watching? The answer, by now, should be perfectly obvious: we love television because television brings us a world in which television does not exist. In fact, deep in their hearts, this is what the spuds crave most: a rich, new, participatory life.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“The television screen, so unlike the movie screen, sharply reduced human beings, revealed them as small, trivial, flat, in two banal dimensions, drained of color. Wasn’t there something reassuring about it!—that human beings were in fact merely images of a kind registered in one another’s eyes and brains, phenomena composed of microscopic flickering dots like atoms. They were atoms—nothing more. A quick switch of the dial and they disappeared and who could lament the loss?”
—Joyce Carol Oates (b. 1938)