KNTV, channel 11 (branded on-air as NBC Bay Area), is an NBC owned-and-operated television station licensed to San Jose, California, USA and serving the San Francisco Bay Area. The station is owned by the NBC Owned Television Stations subsidiary of NBCUniversal; KNTV's studios and main office are located on First Street in San Jose, which it shares with co-owned Telemundo station KSTS (channel 48) and CNBC's Silicon Valley bureau. The station's transmitter is located on San Bruno Mountain, just south of San Francisco.

On cable, KNTV is available on Comcast cable systems in the Bay Area on channel 3. In the few areas of the western United States where an NBC station is not receivable over-the-air, KNTV is available as part of All American Direct's standard definition distant network package for Dish Network subscribers.

History

Early years

KNTV signed on the air on September 12, 1955, originally operating as an independent station covering the entire north-central California coast from Monterey to San Francisco. It was the first television station in the South Bay, and was originally operated by Standard Radio and Television Corporation, which was owned by Allen T. Gilliland. The station's studios and offices were adjacent to the Gilliland-owned Sunlite Baking Company on Park Avenue in downtown San Jose, and its antenna was originally located on Loma Prieta Peak, some 60 miles (100 km) south of San Francisco. Channel 11 often aired shows from CBS, DuMont and NBC that were respectively turned down by San Francisco's KPIX (channel 5) and KRON-TV (channel 4), as well as some ABC shows that also aired on KGO-TV (channel 7). The station was not viable as an independent, and the going got even more difficult when Oakland-based KTVU (channel 2) signed on in 1958.

KRON-TV, virtual channel 4 (UHF digital channel 38), is a MyNetworkTV-affiliated television station located in San Francisco, California, United States. The station is owned by Media General. KRON maintains studios in the KGO-TV building in the Financial District, and its transmitter is located atop Sutro Tower.

History

As an NBC affiliate

In the 1940's, when the channel 4 allocation in the Bay Area came open for bidding, it soon became obvious that the license would go to either NBC or the deYoung family, publishers of the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper. NBC wanted an owned-and-operated station in the Bay Area alongside its West Coast flagship radio station, KNBC (680 AM, now KNBR). However, in an upset, the deYoungs won the license. They brought KRON-TV on the air on November 15, 1949 as a full-time NBC affiliate, and was operated alongside co-owned radio station KRON-FM (96.5, now KOIT-FM). The station's call letters come from a modification of the Chronicle's nickname, "The Chron". It was the third television outlet in the Bay Area behind KGO-TV (channel 7) and KPIX-TV (channel 5) within a year, and the last license before the FCC placed a moratorium on new television station licenses that would last the next four years. For most of its run as an NBC station, KRON-TV was that network's second-largest affiliate (behind only Philadelphia's KYW-TV, now a CBS O&O), and its largest affiliate on the West Coast.

The San Francisco Bay Area is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California. The region encompasses the major cities and metropolitan areas of San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, along with smaller urban and rural areas. The Bay Area's nine counties are Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, and Sonoma. Home to approximately 7.44 million people, the nine-county Bay Area contains many cities, towns, airports, and associated regional, state, and national parks, connected by a network of roads, highways, railroads, bridges, tunnels and commuter rail. The combined statistical area of the region is the second-largest in California (after the Greater Los Angeles area), the fifth-largest in the United States, and the 43rd-largest urban area in the world.

The United States Office of Management and Budget (OMB) does not use the nine-county definition of the San Francisco Bay Area. The OMB has designated a more extensive 12-county Combined Statistical Area (CSA) titled the San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland, CA Combined Statistical Area which also includes the three counties of San Joaquin, Santa Cruz, and San Benito that do not border San Francisco Bay, but are economically tied to the nine counties that do.

The Bay Area most commonly refers to the urban area surrounding the San Francisco Bay in Northern California.

Bay Area may also refer to: