KNBC - History

History

Channel 4 first went on the air as KNBH (standing for NBC Hollywood) on January 16, 1949. It was the penultimate VHF station in Los Angeles to debut, and the last of NBC's five original owned-and-operated stations to sign on. Unlike the other four, KNBH was the only NBC-owned television station that did not benefit from having a sister radio station. The NBC Radio Network had long been affiliated with KFI in Los Angeles, though that relationship did not extend into television in August 1948 when KFI-TV (channel 9, now KCAL-TV) signed on the air. When KNBH signed on, it marked the debut of NBC programs on the West Coast.

The station changed its callsign to KRCA (for NBC's then-parent company, the Radio Corporation of America) on October 18, 1954. The call letters were changed again on November 11, 1962, when NBC moved the KNBC identity from its San Francisco radio station (which became KNBR) and applied it to channel 4 in Los Angeles.

Channel 4 originally broadcast from the NBC Radio City Studios on Sunset Boulevard and Vine Street in Hollywood. In November 1962, after more than 13 years broadcasting from Hollywood, the station relocated to the network's color broadcast studio facility in suburban Burbank. NBC Color City, as it was then known, had been in operation since March 1955, and was at least four to five times larger than Radio City, and could easily accommodate KNBC's locally-produced studio programming. NBC Radio's West Coast operations eventually followed channel 4 to Burbank not too long after.

On October 11, 2007, NBCUniversal announced that it would put its Burbank studios up for sale and construct a new, all-digital facility near the Universal Studios backlot in Universal City, in an effort to merge all of NBCUniversal's West Coast operations into one area. As a result, KNBC, KVEA and NBC News' Los Angeles bureau will move to a new digital facility on the Universal lot formerly occupied by Technicolor SA. The studio is expected to open by 2014.

On January 16, 2009, KNBC celebrated its 60th anniversary with an hour-long tribute to the station, featuring past and present anchors, hosts, other popular on-air staff, and major news stories. KNBC and its other NBC owned-and-operated stations introduced a new layout for their websites in July 2009.