CBS News and Stations is a division of the CBS Entertainment Group unit of Paramount Global that owns and operates a group of American television stations along with CBS News. , the division owns 28 stations: 14 are the core stations of the CBS television network, thirteen independent stations, and one primary-channel affiliate of the digital subchannel network Start TV. It also maintains a half-interest in Start TV, which is co-owned with Weigel Broadcasting.
CBS began its television operations on July 1, 1941, with its initial owned-and-operated station, WCBS-TV (then known as WCBW) in New York City. Other owned-and-operated stations were acquired through an ownership stake or outright purchase instead of being built by the network. The Westinghouse Electric Corporation's purchase of CBS in 1995 then merged the network's owned-and-operated stations with those of Westinghouse Broadcasting (Group W). With the subsequent 2000 merger with Viacom, the CBS-owned stations were combined with Viacom's Paramount Stations Group to form the Viacom Television Stations Group. The group was then renamed CBS Television Stations in 2006, and later CBS News and Stations in 2021.
History
Experimenting with New York City station and expansion (1941–1994)
CBS's involvement in television dates back to the opening of experimental station W2XAB in New York City on July 21, 1931. On June 24, 1941, W2XAB received a commercial construction permit and program authorization as WCBW. Later renamed WCBS-TV, it would ultimately be the only station () originally built and signed on by CBS. The rest of the stations would be acquired by CBS, either in an ownership stake or outright purchase.
In 1950, when rival NBC was dominant in television and black and white transmission was widespread, CBS began to buy or build their own stations (outside of New York City) in Los Angeles, Chicago, and other major cities. Up to that point, CBS programming was seen on such stations as KTTV in Los Angeles, in which CBS – as a bit of insurance and to guarantee program clearance in that market – quickly purchased a 50% interest, partnering with the Los Angeles Times. CBS then sold its interest in KTTV (now the West Coast flagship of the Fox network) and purchased outright Los Angeles pioneer station KTSL in 1950, renaming it KNXT (after CBS's existing Los Angeles radio property, KNX), later to become KCBS-TV. In 1953, CBS bought pioneer television station WBKB in Chicago, which had been signed on by former investor Paramount Pictures (and would become a sister company to CBS again decades later) as a commercial station in 1946, and changed that station's call sign to WBBM-TV, moving the CBS affiliation away from WGN-TV.
The network bought Washington, D.C. affiliate WOIC (now WUSA) in a joint venture with The Washington Post in 1950, only to sell its stake to the Post in 1954 due to tighter FCC ownership regulations. CBS would also temporarily rely on UHF technology by owning WXIX in Milwaukee (now CW affiliate WVTV) and WHCT in Hartford (now Univision affiliate WUVN), but as UHF was not viable for broadcasting at the time (due to the fact that most television sets of the time were not equipped with UHF tuners), CBS decided to sell those stations off and affiliate with VHF stations WITI and WTIC-TV (now WFSB). More long-term, CBS bought stations in Philadelphia (WCAU, now owned by NBC) and St. Louis (KMOX-TV, now KMOV), but would eventually sell these stations off as well; before buying KMOX-TV, CBS had attempted to purchase and sign on the channel 11 license in St. Louis, now KPLR-TV.