KSBW

KSBW (channel 8) is a television station licensed to Salinas, California, United States, serving the Monterey Bay area as an affiliate of NBC and ABC. Owned by Hearst Television, the station has studios on John Street (Highway 68) in downtown Salinas, and its transmitter is located on Fremont Peak in the Gabilan Mountains.

KSBW-TV began broadcasting on September 11, 1953. It was originally a shared-time operation with KMBY-TV, which operated from Monterey; the stations were outgrowths of radio stations KSBW and KMBY and shared programs from all four major television networks. KSBW bought out KMBY in 1955, becoming the sole station on channel 8. In 1957, its owners began operating KSBY in San Luis Obispo as a semi-satellite; the two stations remained commonly owned for more than three decades, and KSBW became the dominant local news outlet in the area. It retained this status despite a series of ownership transfers in the 1980s and 1990s, during which time Elisabeth Murdoch and her husband briefly owned KSBW and KSBY.

Hearst acquired KSBW in 1998 as part of a trade with Sunrise Television Corporation. Under Hearst, KSBW was the first station in the area to broadcast a digital signal. In 2011, it launched Central Coast ABC, a local in-market ABC affiliate, as a digital subchannel.

When the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) allocated television channels in 1952 and ended a multi-year freeze on station applications, it placed two channels—very high frequency (VHF) channel 8 and ultra high frequency (UHF) channel 28—in the Salinas–Monterey area. Two applications were received for channel 8, each from a major local radio station: KSBW of Salinas and KMBY of Monterey.

To break the logjam that awaited the competing applications, including a possible comparative hearing, KSBW and KMBY set television precedent when they agreed to share use of channel 8. On that basis, the FCC approved both stations on February 19, 1953, as the first shared-time TV operation in the country. Channel 8 would be broadcast from Mount Toro, where a defunct FM radio station, KSNI, had already built a tower and transmitter facilities. KSBW-TV and KMBY-TV would provide the programs on an alternating basis from separate studios in Salinas and Monterey, respectively. The commission assented in large part because it found KSBW and KMBY were not competing for the same sponsors, each primarily serving their own city. KSBW–KMBY announced a May 1 start date, but this was held up when the grantee for channel 28, Salinas–Monterey Television Company (with the call letters KICU), protested to the FCC, which stayed its authorization of channel 8. Its contention was that the two radio stations—each with separate network ties—KSBW with NBC and KMBY with CBS—had the intention to air programming from all four major networks (those two plus ABC and DuMont), thus tying up all networks in the area and leaving nothing for channel 28. It raised the possibility that the San Francisco Chronicle, which owned San Francisco NBC affiliate KRON-TV and was a minority owner of KSBW, would do everything it could to protect KSBW-TV; likewise, it believed CBS would be highly protective of KMBY-TV, given that KMBY radio was owned by entertainer and CBS personality Bing Crosby. The FCC heard arguments on the matter in late June, rejecting KICU's protest and permitting KSBW-TV and KMBY-TV to begin construction.

KSBW-TV and KMBY-TV began broadcasting on September 11, 1953, as primary affiliates of CBS with additional programs from ABC and DuMont. At the outset, the only local programming originated from the Salinas studios of KSBW-TV. The two stations sold advertising separately for network programs when they aired on assigned nights and planned to split advertising sales for special events.

After four months of negotiations, KSBW-TV agreed to buy KMBY-TV in November 1954. KMBY radio was marked for divestiture. By then, the station was also airing NBC programs. The transaction was approved in February 1955, leaving KSBW-TV as the full-time user of channel 8. The DuMont network wound down operations later that year.

In 1956, John Cohan, the lead stockholder in KSBW radio and television, agreed to acquire KVEC radio and television in San Luis Obispo for $450,000. In June 1957, the San Luis Obispo station became KSBY and began receiving its programs via a microwave link from Salinas. While the pairing maintained studios in Salinas and San Luis Obispo, the combination was promoted as the Gold Coast Stations, and they began carrying the same mix of CBS, ABC, and NBC network programming.