KION-TV (channel 46) is a television station licensed to Monterey, California, United States, affiliated with CBS and Fox. Owned by the News-Press & Gazette Company, it serves the Monterey Bay area from studios located on Moffett Street in Salinas, immediately south of Salinas Municipal Airport, and a transmitter on Mount Toro, about 10 miles (16 km) south of Salinas. The station is rebroadcast on subchannels of KMUV-LD (channel 23), the local Telemundo affiliate, with transmitter on Fremont Peak.

This station was the second established in the Salinas–Monterey area proper, beginning broadcasts in 1969; it has been affiliated with CBS since it signed on. Traditionally a second- or even third-place operation in the market, its operations were merged with KCBA (channel 35), then the region's Fox affiliate, between 1996 and 2013. The Fox subchannel on KION-TV, "Fox 35", represents the continuation of what was KCBA's programming after this station reacquired the Fox affiliation in 2021. KION produced English- and Spanish-language local newscasts covering the northern Central Coast until the news department was shuttered in September 2025.

On November 4, 1966, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) granted a construction permit to Monterey–Salinas Television, Inc., to build a new commercial television station on channel 46 in Monterey. The company was led by Stoddard P. Johnston, owner of radio stations KMBY and KMBY-FM in Monterey, and also featured William H. Schuyler. Schuyler had been the president of KTVU in Oakland, California, and Johnston chaired its board of directors before it was sold to Cox Broadcasting. In 1968, a planned start date of September 1 was announced for the new KMBY-TV, which Johnston said would benefit from the recent addition of UHF tuning to all new televisions and from the widespread use of cable TV systems in Salinas, Monterey, and Santa Cruz. On June 1, 1968, the unbuilt station changed its call sign to KMST, and though the September start was missed, construction moved along and the station picked up the CBS affiliation; at the time, KSBW (channel 8) in Salinas, a primary NBC affiliate, aired some CBS programs. Schuyler would later note that one of the reasons the Central Coast was picked was because CBS had an interest in adding an affiliate in the area, with NBC already spoken for and KNTV in San Jose then serving the Salinas and Monterey area with ABC programming but no CBS outlet between KPIX-TV in San Francisco and KCOY-TV in Santa Maria. KMST would remain on cable in San Jose until 1993, when the TCI system there demoted it and then dropped it altogether.

KMST intended to begin broadcasting on January 25, 1969, but bad weather kept the station off the air; the microwave link to receive KPIX-TV and CBS programming had not yet been installed. KMST made its debut on February 1, a week later than planned. Leased quarters off the Monterey–Salinas highway were used as an interim studio site, but the acoustics were poor; eventually, the station relocated to a purpose-built site near the Monterey Peninsular Airport. In December 1973, the Johnston-led group filed to sell KMST to a new company, also named Monterey–Salinas Television, which featured Johnston and other new owners. The new owners were brought in to provide additional needed capital for equipment improvements.

Retlaw Enterprises, a company owned by relatives of Walt Disney, purchased KMST for $8.25 million in 1979. The sale offer was chosen because it was all-cash; five different groups had sought to purchase the station. KMST was traditionally a training ground for broadcasters; one former reporter, Kathryn Pratt, noted that many staffers called it the "KMST School of Broadcasting".

The late 1980s and early 1990s would prove to be turbulent times for the station. Citing poor working conditions, KMST employees voted 43–2 to unionize with the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists in 1989. Retlaw constantly fought the unionization effort; when it fired a production director who had been active in the organizing effort, the National Labor Relations Board filed a complaint against ownership. The news department struggled; newscasts were cut, and six staffers defected to KCBA (channel 35), which started a news department in 1990. Union negotiations remained incomplete in 1991, with AFTRA blaming station management for stalling and stating that the two-year turnover rate at KMST had reached 80 percent. Meanwhile, the station experimented with an early prime time schedule, airing prime time from 7 to 10 p.m. instead of from 8 to 11, for a year in 1992; other Northern California stations also tried out the time change.

In 1993, Retlaw sold KMST for $8.2 million to Harron-Smith Television Partnership, a joint venture of Harron Communications and Smith Broadcasting. Amid a major retooling of the station, the call letters were changed in October to KCCN-TV, representing the new title of its newscasts, "Central Coast News". The call letters were shared with two stations in Honolulu, Hawaii, KCCN AM and KCCN-FM.

A year into the partnership, Smith sold its half back to Harron; the next year, it bought KSBW-TV, channel 46's longtime competitor. Meanwhile, Harron began to realize it was in over its head with the task it confronted at KCCN-TV, having underestimated the dimensions of the challenge posed by turning it around. In late 1995, Harron began to shop KCCN-TV—or its assets—for sale. Smith then looked at buying back KCCN-TV's assets and programming the station under a local marketing agreement (LMA). A deal with Smith was far along enough that it was reported as confirmed by the Santa Cruz Sentinel newspaper. However, negotiations then stalled, and Harron sought another buyer.