KSAT-TV

The station first signed on the air on January 21, 1957, as KONO-TV; it was founded by the Mission Telecasting Corporation, which was owned by the Roth family, owners of KONO radio (860 AM and 101.1 FM). Channel 12 has been an ABC affiliate since its debut, taking the affiliation from WOAI-TV (channel 4) and KENS (channel 5), which each carried select programs from the network on a secondary basis (WOAI began carrying ABC programming when it signed on in December 1949, followed by KENS, when it signed on two months later in February 1950); from 1956 to 1961, it was also an affiliate of the NTA Film Network. The station originally operated from studio facilities located at 1408 North St. Mary's Street in downtown San Antonio.

KSAT-TV logo, used from 1994 to 1998.

KSAT-TV's former studio facility on North St. Mary's Street.

The Roths sold channel 12 to Providence, Rhode Island-based The Outlet Company in 1968 (the Roths later sold the KONO radio stations to Duffy Broadcasting in 1985, both stations are now owned by Cox Radio); the following year, in 1969, the station changed its call letters to KSAT-TV (in reference to the station's city of license). Outlet was taken private in 1986 and the company's new owners sold KSAT to H&C Communications. On April 22, 1994,[1] H&C sold KSAT and Houston sister station KPRC-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 the logo bug seen during the station's newscasts, which cycle between both brands (mimicking a similar behavior used by sister stations KPRC-TV and WDIV-TV in Detroit, whose logo bugs cycle between the station's call letters and channel number and their respective on-air brands "Local 4" or "Local 2").

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.[2]

KSAT-TV carries the entire ABC programming schedule along with some syndicated programs and the KSAT-produced variety and lifestyle program, SA Live.[7][8][9] However, it is one of the two ABC stations (along with KMBC-TV in Kansas City) that airs The View on a one-hour delay at 11 a.m. (Central). Also, Strahan, Sara and Keke and General Hospital are aired on a two-hour delay at 2 p.m. and 3 p.m., respectively.[10] Prior to March 2017, the station aired The Chew (formerly All My Children prior to its 2011 cancellation) on a one-day delay at 11 a.m. instead of the recommended time of noon in favor of a noon newscast; while General Hospital was aired on a one-hour delay (along with the ABC-owned stations) at 2 p.m. beginning in 2014. Until late 2018, Jimmy Kimmel Live! and Nightline were aired on a half-hour delay at 11:05 p.m. and 12:05 a.m.

In early 1973, to maintain the viewer loyalty the program had on ABC, the station aired the syndicated iteration of The Lawrence Welk Show in place of the sitcoms A Touch of Grace and Here We Go Again.[11]

KSAT-TV also airs select NBA games involving the San Antonio Spurs through the league's contract with the network. The station carried the Spurs' 2003, 2005, 2007, 2013 and 2014 NBA Finals appearances, including the team's championship victories in all of their appearances except for 2013.

KSAT-TV presently broadcasts 40½ hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with 6½ hours each weekday, 4½ hours on Saturdays and 3½ hours on Sundays); in addition, the station produces the hour-long sports highlight and discussion program Instant Replay, which airs Sundays at 11:00 p.m. Unusual for a television station, traffic reports that are seen during KSAT's weekday morning newscasts are provided by officers from the San Antonio Police Department, Robert Dart and Marcus Trujillo.

In 2002, weeknight co-anchor Leslie Mouton (now anchor of the station's weekday morning newscast) was diagnosed with breast cancer; Mouton courageously decided to anchor the evening newscasts without a wig while she was undergoing chemotherapy treatments that resulted in her going bald. Mouton chronicled her treatment and recovery on KSAT, earning accolades from local oncologists and cancer patients. Mouton recounted her battle with the disease in a 2004 interview on The 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 in high definition. prior to the upgrade, only in-studio cameras recorded in HD, with video downconverted to widescreen standard definition; certain field cameras and other station camera feeds are in standard definition and upconverted to a 16:9 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 4:00 p.m., titled First News At Four; the program (along with its lead-out Inside Edition) replaced The 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 10:00 p.m. newscast to one hour; as a result, it is one of the few television stations affiliated with the Big 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 by Jimmy Kimmel Live! at 11:05 p.m. and Nightline at 12:05 a.m.). However, ABC's newest affiliation contract has required all its affiliates to carry Kimmel 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 newscast Good Morning San Antonio to 2½ 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 of Good 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 of Good 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.[10] 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 major digital media player platforms.[12]

The 2000 comedy film Miss Congeniality, which was set around a beauty 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 by Sandra Bullock), is interviewed at The Alamo.

• Official website
• MeTVSanAntonio.com - KSAT-DT2 ("MeTV San Antonio") official website
• Query the FCC's TV station database for KSAT-TV
• BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on KSAT-TV