| ATSC 3.0 station | |
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| Channels | |
| Branding | KSAT 12;KSAT 12 News (pronounced "K-Sat") |
| Programming | |
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| Ownership | |
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| History | |
First air date | January 21, 1957 (68 years ago) (1957-01-21) |
Former call signs | KONO-TV (1957–1968) |
Former channel numbers |
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| NTA (secondary, 1958–1959) | |
Call sign meaning | San Antonio, Texas (also theICAO airport code forSan Antonio International Airport) |
| Technical information[1] | |
Licensing authority | FCC |
| Facility ID | 53118 |
| ERP | 74kW |
| HAAT | 448 m (1,470 ft) |
| Transmitter coordinates | 29°16′12″N98°15′32″W / 29.27000°N 98.25889°W /29.27000; -98.25889 |
| Links | |
Public license information | |
| Website | www |
KSAT-TV (channel 12) is atelevision station inSan Antonio, Texas, United States, affiliated withABC. Owned byGraham Media Group, the station maintains studios on North St. Mary's Street on the northern edge ofdowntown, and its transmitter is located offUS Highway 181 in northwestWilson County (northeast ofElmendorf).
Channel 12 was the last commercial VHF allocation in San Antonio to be awarded. The first applicant for the allocation came in June 1952, fromBexar County Television Corporation, a subsidiary of Alamo Broadcasting Company, owners of radio stationKABC.[3] Bexar County Television planned to operate channel 12 as an ABC Television affiliate, owing to the radio station's affiliation with the ABC radio network.[3] Shortly thereafter, Mission Broadcasting Company, owners of KONO radio (860 AM and92.9 FM), also applied for a channel 12 license.[4] By 1953, both Bexar County Television and Mission Broadcasting proper had dropped out of the running for channel 12. However, two new applicants filed applications: Sunshine Broadcasting Company, then-owners ofKTSA radio, and Mission Telecasting Company. Mission was majority (50%) owned by Eugene J. Roth, principal owner of Mission Broadcasting Company, with the other half of the company split among seven individuals.[5]
Sunshine would later withdraw its application, although another player would throw their hat into the ring in January 1954: the Walmac Corporation, owners ofKMAC radio.[6] In an attempt to avoid long, drawn-out hearings for a license, Walmac and Mission met in May 1954 to work out an agreement between the two parties.[7] On March 12, 1956, the FCC heard final oral arguments between Walmac and Mission, with an FCC examiner having already favored Mission's application the previous year.[8] In May 1956, the FCC granted a license to Mission and denied Walmac's bid.[9] Mission officials proceeded to construct a new, 16,000-square-foot (1,486 m2) studio building and 574-foot (175 m) tower on North St. Mary's Street, adjacent to the studios for KONO radio.[9]
Originally targeting a sign on date of December 1, 1956,[10] the station would not begin regular testing until the evening of January 14, 1957.[11] Assistant station manager Jack Roth noted that viewers from as far asCorpus Christi,Austin,Kerrville,Boerne, andCamp Wood were all receiving the test pattern.[11] The station finally came on the air for good on January 21, 1957, as KONO-TV, becoming San Antonio's fourth television station and the third to broadcast inEnglish.[2] The station took its call letters from its partially co-owned sister radio stations.[2] Channel 12 has been a full-time ABC affiliate since its debut, more or less by default. The first program broadcast by KONO-TV was theinauguration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower beginning at 10 a.m. that morning.[2]
Mission announced on July 31, 1967, that it had sold channel 12 toProvidence, Rhode Island–basedThe Outlet Company for $10.5 million.[12] Eugene Roth, Mission chairman, said that the reason he decided to sell the station was because of the increasing costs needed to keep pace with the rapidly growing television industry.[12]
Outlet took control of the station in January 1968 and announced that the call letters would be changing to the present KSAT-TV on February 1.[13] The change was necessitated by an FCC regulation at the time in which stations that were not co-owned could not share the same base call sign.
Outlet was takenprivate in 1986 and the company's new owners sold KSAT toH&C Communications. KSAT nearly lost its ABC affiliation to KENS in 1990.[14] In July of that year, management at KENS were in discussions about switching their station to ABC. KENS management cited that the poor performance of CBS programming would jeopardize the station's overall dominance in the San Antonio market. However, after negotiations did not go anywhere, both KENS and KSAT signed new affiliation agreements with CBS and ABC respectively in August.[15]
KSAT was nearly sold toYoung Broadcasting in 1992, but the sale was cancelled due to Young's failure to obtain financing.[16][17] On April 22, 1994,[18] H&C sold KSAT andHouston sister stationKPRC-TV to The Washington Post Company (now Graham Holdings Company), which placed the two stations within its Post-Newsweek Stations subsidiary.
In the early 2000s, Post-Newsweek adopted a unified "Local" brand for most of its television stations. KSAT briefly rebranded as "Local 12" in 2004, before reverting to the station's previous branding of "KSAT 12" (the call letters are pronounced syllabically as "K-Sat"). Although the station does not follow this brand standardization, the "Local" wording is periodically visible in thelogo bug seen during the station's newscasts, which cycle between both brands (mimicking a similar behavior used by sister stations KPRC-TV andWDIV-TV inDetroit, whose logo bugs cycle between the station's call letters and channel number and their respective on-air brands "Local 2" or "Local 4").
In March 2014, KSAT relocated from its longtime St. Mary's Street studios to a new, state-of-the-art two-story facility that was built in an area that was formerly part of the station's parking lot. The building houses a large newsroom, numerous offices and meeting spaces, a convenience store-style breakroom for staff and a courtyard with outdoor seating as well as a grill and garden area. Demolition began on the former KSAT studio building shortly after the station relocated; by May 2014, that space will be transformed into a new parking lot for station employees and news vehicles.[19]
KSAT-TV presently broadcasts 43 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with seven hours each weekday,4+1⁄2 hours on Saturdays and3+1⁄2 hours on Sundays).
In 2002, weeknight co-anchorLeslie Mouton was diagnosed withbreast cancer; Mouton courageously decided to anchor the evening newscasts without a wig while she was undergoingchemotherapy treatments that resulted in her going bald. Mouton chronicled her treatment and recovery on KSAT, earning accolades from localoncologists and cancer patients. Mouton recounted her battle with the disease in a 2004 interview onThe Oprah Winfrey Show (which aired on KSAT at the time), which included clips of Mouton's first anchoring appearance after she lost her hair, including the explanation she gave on-air of what she was going through at the time.
On February 5, 2009, KSAT became the second television station in the San Antonio market to begin broadcasting its local newscasts inhigh definition. prior to the upgrade, only in-studio cameras recorded in HD, with video downconverted towidescreenstandard definition; certain field cameras and other station camera feeds are in standard definition and upconverted to a16:9 widescreen format in the control room, as some field reports still remain in upconverted 16:9 standard definition.
On May 26, 2011, KSAT debuted a half-hour late afternoon newscast at 4 p.m., titledFirst News At Four; the program (along with its lead-outInside Edition) replacedThe Oprah Winfrey Show, which ended its syndication run on May 25, 2011.First News At Four ended its run on September 5, 2014.
On September 12, 2011, in a move announced in May 2011, KSAT-TV became the first station in San Antonio to expand its 10 p.m. newscast to one hour; as a result, it was one of the few television stations affiliated with theBig Three networks that airs an hour-long late evening newscast. Also coinciding with the expanded newscast,Inside Edition was reduced from two daily airings to one, as the newscast took over that timeslot;Nightline remained in its timeslot at 11:05 (later occupied byJimmy Kimmel Live! at 11:05 p.m. andNightline at 12:05 a.m.). However, ABC's newest affiliation contract has required all its affiliates to carryKimmel as scheduled at 10:35 p.m., and KSAT, along with several other ABC affiliates carrying extended newscasts, reduced their late newscasts to the traditional 35 minutes at the start of 2019.
In March 2012, KSAT expanded its weekday morning newscastGood Morning San Antonio to2+1⁄2 hours, becoming the third station (behind WOAI and later KENS) to expand its morning newscast to the 4:30 a.m. timeslot. That month, the station also added Saturday and Sunday editions ofGood Morning San Antonio, in the form of one-hour blocks (with the second half of the Saturday edition running two hours) surrounding the weekend editions ofGood Morning America.
In February 2017, KSAT announced the launch of a new hour of programming in the 9 a.m. block,Good Morning San Antonio at 9.[20] In September 2018, the station launched a 9 p.m. newscast, though unusually, the program is exclusive to the station's app on the three majordigital media player platforms.[21]
Tragedy struck the station on March 26, 1999, when anchor/reporter and rising star Michelle Lima was killed while reporting live during a newscast from the scene of a search for a 9-year-old boy. As she was helping pack up for a future assignment, Lima was hit by a truck on a dark rural frontage road in southern Bexar County. Lima was airlifted to a local hospital where she was pronounced dead two days later. She was 30 years old.[22]
KSAT airs selectSan Antonio Spurs games throughthe network's contract with the NBA; the station aired four of the team's five NBA Finals victories in2003,2005,2007, and2014, as well as the team's2013 NBA Finals appearance.
KSAT produces a one-hour lifestyle and variety show,SA Live, weekdays at 10 a.m.[23] In addition, the station produced the hour-long sports highlight and discussion programInstant Replay, which aired Sundays at 11 p.m. until the program's cancellation in March 2025.[24][25]
The 2000 comedy filmMiss Congeniality, which was set around abeauty pageant being held in San Antonio, used KSAT live trucks and microphones with the station's mic flags in a fictional sense; though none of KSAT's actual staff appeared during the film, instead using actors playing a KSAT reporter and a news photographer in a scene in which the film's lead character,FBI agent Gracie Hart (played bySandra Bullock), is interviewed atThe Alamo.
The station's ATSC 1.0 channels are carried on themultiplexed signals of other San Antonio television stations:
| Channel | Res. | Aspect | Short name | Programming | ATSC 1.0 host |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12.1 | 720p | 16:9 | KSAT-HD | ABC | KLRN |
| 12.2 | 480i | MeTV | MeTV | KVDA | |
| 12.3 | Movies! | Movies! | KLRN | ||
| 12.4 | H&I | Heroes & Icons | KENS | ||
| 12.5 | StartTV | Start TV | KNIC-DT |
KSAT-TV discontinued regular programming on its analog signal, overVHF channel 12, on June 12, 2009, the official date on which full-power television stations in the United Statestransitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transitionUHF channel 48 to VHF channel 12 for post-transition operations.[27][28]
On May 6, 2024, KSAT-TV converted from an ATSC 1.0 signal toATSC 3.0 (NextGen TV) broadcasting. The station's ATSC 1.0 subchannels were moved to other broadcasters for simulcasting, while KSAT-TV became the "lighthouse" host for the ATSC 3.0 transmission of KENS, KLRN, KSAT-TV, KWEX-DT and KVDA.
| Channel | Programming |
|---|---|
| 5.1 | CBS (KENS) |
| 9.1 | PBS (KLRN) |
| 12.1 | ABC |
| 41.1 | Univision (KWEX-DT) |
| 60.1 | Telemundo (KVDA) |
Includes English-language stations in out-of-state TV markets, but reaching a portion of Texas | ||
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