KNSD - News Operation

News Operation

With the addition of California Nonstop, KNSD currently produces 29½ hours of local news each week (with 5½ hours on weekdays and one hour on weekends), however due to NBC Sunday Night Football, the Sunday 6 p.m. newscast is typically preempted during the NFL season. Unlike most NBC owned-and-operated stations, KNSD does not carry a newscast on weekend mornings. The 11 p.m. newscast was rebroadcast at 4 a.m. weekdays (immediately before the network's early morning news program Early Today, which leads into its local morning newscast) until October 24, 2012. On October 25, 2012; Early Today was moved to 4 a.m. weekdays to accommodate the newly expanded NBC 7 News in the Morning starting at 4:30 a.m.

In 1973, as KCST, the station started a news department, with Harold Greene (later to gain fame in Los Angeles) as news director and lead news anchor. On October 28, 2005, KNSD began producing a nightly half-hour 10 p.m. newscast for Tribune Broadcasting-owned KSWB (channel 69; which was a WB affiliate at the time), following the shutdown of KSWB's in-house news department, although KSWB continued to produce local news updates during its simulcast of Los Angeles sister station KTLA's weekday morning newscast from the station's Kearny Mesa studios (two other NBC-owned stations partnered with Tribune to produce outsourced 10 p.m. newscasts: WCAU/Philadelphia produced WPHL-TV's late evening newscast from 2005 to 2012 (ABC-owned WPVI-TV now produces the program), while WTVJ/Miami produced a newscast in that slot for WSFL-TV from 1996 to 2008). KNSD's news outsourcing agreement with KSWB ended on July 31, 2008, when that station resumed in-house news operations upon switching its affiliation from The CW to Fox.

From June 2009 to October 2011, weather forecasts during the evening newscasts were presented by meteorologists from Los Angeles sister station KNBC, making KNSD the only network-owned station in the United States and one of the few stations in North America to outsource weather forecasts to a co-owned station; that month, KNSD moved all weather forecasts in-house with the hiring of three weather anchors (including chief weather anchor Dagmar Midcap, previously with Atlanta CBS affiliate WGCL-TV) and the promotion of Jodi Kodesh from reporter to morning weather anchor. In December 2010, KNSD underwent major renovations for the first time since moving to the new studios in 2001. The new look debuted on December 13, 2010. The studio itself mainly mirrors that of Today, and served as its first step towards HD newscasts.

On January 29, 2011, KNSD became the fifth television station in the San Diego market, and the last NBC-owned station to produce its local newscasts in high definition, although not all field reports are shot in true HD. This was accompanied by a new on-air appearance featuring new graphics and a 360 Music-composed news theme, as well as the discontinuance of the "NBC 7/39" moniker and in turn, the "7/39" branding in general after 23 years, in favor of branding as "NBC San Diego" (the branding was revised to the current "NBC 7 San Diego" by June 2011). The "block" graphics and branding used in this period (which featured similarities to the design of NBC's "Nonstop" channels) were intended to be rolled out on the other NBC-owned stations (and was also used on the websites of those stations during the same period) – KNSD was the only one that ultimately used the graphics and logo scheme on-air.

In July 2012, KNSD introduced another updated logo and graphics package, this time adopting graphics (known under the name "Look F") designed by NBC's in-house design firm NBC ArtWorks that did become standardized on NBC's owned-and-operated stations (except for KXAS-TV, which continues to use a different ArtWorks-designed package).