KNSD (channel 39) is a television station in San Diego, California, United States, serving as the market's NBC outlet. It is owned and operated by the network's NBC Owned Television Stations alongside Poway-licensed Telemundo station KUAN-LD (channel 48). KNSD and KUAN-LD share studios on Granite Ridge Drive in the Serra Mesa section of San Diego; through a channel sharing agreement, the two stations transmit using KNSD's spectrum from an antenna southeast of Spring Valley.
KNSD's on-air branding, NBC 7 San Diego, is derived from its cable channel position in the market on Charter Spectrum, Cox Communications and AT&T U-verse. The station is also available on channel 39 on satellite providers DirecTV and Dish Network.
History
Early history
The station first signed on the air on November 14, 1965, as KAAR, owned by San Diego Telecasters. It was the first television station in the San Diego market to operate on the UHF band and was the market's first independent station. The station originally operated from a building that was once occupied by the National Pen Company, located in the neighborhood of Kearny Mesa, northeast of downtown San Diego. Initially broadcasting from 12 noon to either midnight or 12:30 a.m. (based on the length of its late movie), the station aired a mix of local and first-run syndicated programming, both vintage and more recent films, and reruns of several 1950s dramatic series. However, in the summer of 1966, KAAR cut its operating hours significantly, with sign-on time moved up to 5 p.m., and by that fall, the station was only broadcasting on weeknights with a 15-minute 7 p.m. newscast, a travelogue and a single black-and-white movie (which ran for a week at a time).
A short time later, in January 1967, KAAR made an arrangement with San Diego State College to air programming produced by the San Diego Area Instructional Television Authority from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily, which was followed by two hours of cartoons; this lasted until the sign-on of educational station KEBS on June 12 of that year. Channel 39 then went dark and was subsequently sold to Western Telecasters Inc., controlled by the Texas-based Bass family, and returned to the air on February 2, 1968, as KCST (standing for "California San Diego Television").
For a four-year period from the late 1960s to the early 1970s, Western Telecasters tried to take the ABC affiliation from XETV (channel 6)–a station licensed across the Mexican border in Tijuana but which broadcast exclusively in English, with a studio facility based in San Diego. XETV had been San Diego's ABC affiliate since 1956 under a special arrangement between the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and Mexican authorities, subject to renewal by the Commission every year. Upon the FCC granting its annual renewal to ABC/XETV in late 1968, Western Telecasters countered, claiming that the presence of KCST made it no longer necessary for an American television network to affiliate with a Mexican television station.
In May 1972, the FCC revoked XETV's permission to carry ABC programming. As the only commercial station in the market other than CBS affiliate KFMB-TV (channel 8) and then-NBC affiliate KGTV (channel 10), KCST took over the ABC affiliation in two stages: daytime programming moved to channel 39 in June 1973, followed by prime time programs and all other shows (including children's programs, network newscasts and sports) by July 1, 1973. Four months earlier in March, Western Telecasters agreed to sell KCST to Storer Broadcasting, which owned major network affiliates in the Eastern and Midwestern United States. The sale was completed on September 30, 1974; on January 1, 1975, Storer added a "-TV" suffix to the KCST callsign. The switch and sale changed channel 39's fortunes, transforming the low-rated independent into a major player in the market. Riding on the heels of ABC's ascent to first place nationally during the 1975–76 season, KCST also out-rated its network-affiliated rivals locally. By 1976, KCST had actually become the highest-rated station in San Diego, displacing longtime leader KFMB-TV. XETV, meanwhile, operated as an independent station until October 1986, when it became a charter affiliate of the Fox Broadcasting Company (the station is now an exclusive Spanish-language outlet for Canal 5).