KCAL-TV

KCAL-TV (channel 9) is an independent television station in Los Angeles, California, United States. It is owned by the CBS News and Stations group alongside CBS West Coast flagship KCBS-TV (channel 2). The two stations share studios at the Radford Studio Center on Radford Avenue in the Studio City section of Los Angeles; KCAL-TV's transmitter is located atop Mount Wilson. Channel 9 signed on the air as commercial station KFI-TV on August 25, 1948, owned by Earle C. Anthony alongside KFI radio (640 AM). However, the station was originally licensed as experimental W6XEA about 1940, and in 1944 applied for the call letters KSEE (which are now used by the NBC affiliate in Fresno, California). It is unknown whether any transmissions occurred under either call sign. The station initially broadcast a limited schedule with six hours weekly, and formally began operations on October 6, 1948, with 3+1⁄2 hours that day. Though KFI had long been affiliated with NBC Radio, KFI-TV did not affiliate with the then-upstart NBC Television Network as NBC was building its own station, KNBH (channel 4, now KNBC), which went on the air in January 1949. KFI general manager William B. Ryan indicated a willingness to affiliate with a network other than NBC or start a mutual regional network. Channel 9 has been an independent station for virtually its entire history, though it carried DuMont programming from 1954 up until that network's 1956 demise.