News Operations
KGO-TV had followed the lead of its sister station in New York City, WABC-TV, and adopted the Eyewitness News format for its newscasts in the late 1960s. However, the Eyewitness News name was already used on KPIX-TV, which inherited the version of it from its then-sister station KYW-TV in Philadelphia. As a result, KGO-TV instead called its newscasts Channel 7 News Scene throughout the 1970s, and Channel 7 News during the 1980s (beginning in 1982) and much of the 1990s before switching to ABC 7 News. Also, along with the other ABC O&O's, KGO-TV used an edited version of the "Tar Sequence" from the soundtrack of "Cool Hand Luke" as the opening/closing theme of news broadcasts starting in 1969.
The station broadcast a 4:30 p.m. newscast named Early News in 1970, anchored by Ray Tannehill and John Reed King, with Pete Giddings covering weather and Bob Fouts presenting sports. Lu Hurley provided live helicopter traffic coverage, one the first television programs in the San Francisco Bay Area to offer that feature. KGO-TV was one of the last ABC affiliates that broadcast the network evening news program in the 7:00 p.m. time slot. By early 1992, ABC World News Tonight had been displaced to 5:30 p.m, replacing the last half of the 5:00 p.m. news hour.
KGO-TV also produces an hour-long 9 p.m. newscast for independent station KOFY-TV (channel 20); the only other ABC O&O's to do this is WTVD in North Carolina and WPVI-TV in Philadelphia. It usually re-airs stories prepared for the 6 p.m. newscast and ABC News material. Dan Ashley often serves as the solo anchor.
KGO-TV has long broadcast an 11:00 p.m. newscast. It was a half-hour program known as "Channel Seven News Scene Tonight" in 1980 and "Channel 7 News Tonight" in the late 1980s. It expanded to 35 minutes in the early 1990s. Today it is called "ABC 7 News at 11 p.m." Occasionally it has been re-broadcast overnight, Tuesday through Saturday. In the 2000s, a staple of the 11 p.m. Sunday newscast was Richard Hart's segment about technological developments, alternatively titled "Next Step and "Drive to Discover."
The station did, however, follow other aspects of news branding at the other ABC O&Os. The station currently utilizes the market's first helicopter equipped to shoot and transmit high definition video. The helicopter branded "Sky 7HD" made its on-air debut in February 2006. Due to current logistical and equipment limitations, video from Sky 7HD at times is only available in standard definition television 4:3 aspect ratio. When this occurs, the helicopter is branded simply "Sky 7". Also following the leads of its sister stations, KGO began broadcasting its newscasts in high definition on February 17, 2007, becoming the second news operation in the Bay Area to make this transition (after KTVU). It should be noted that the KGO-TV cable-relay channel in the Monterey/Salinas area does not transmit a high definition signal.
As of August 2010, KGO is currently one of the very few ABC O&O stations that carries a 4:30 a.m. newscast. However, ABC does not air America This Morning live on KGO, as it normally airs in that timeslot, so the station currently broadcasts it on a tape-delay at 4 a.m. Since mid-2008, KGO is the second station to start its early morning newscast before 5 a.m., as KNTV added its 4:30 a.m. newscasts a few months later as a result of its 11 a.m. newscast being canceled. With that, KGO is the only station remaining in the San Francisco Bay Area to air an 11 a.m. newscast. On May 26, 2011, immediately following the end of The Oprah Winfrey Show which lasted for 25 years, KGO debuted a 4 p.m. newscast, anchored by Carolyn Johnson and Larry Beil. Beginning September 10, 2011, KGO-TV expanded its weekend 11 p.m. newscasts to one hour.
During the two weeks of the 2012 Summer Olympic Games, KGO broadcast a special seven-minute newscast at midnight, formally known as "ABC 7 News Special Edition" and informally referred to on the air as a "minicast." This was an effort to counter-program the special midnight local newscast on KNTV, just after primetime Olympics coverage ended each night on NBC-TV. KGO did not produce this newscast on days after NBC's special programming ended before midnight (August 8, for example, resulting in no KGO midnight newscast on August 9). At least one other ABC owned-and-operated television station, KABC in southern California, also produced a seven-minute midnight newscast during the 2012 Summer Olympic Games.
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