KFMB-TV (channel 8) is a television station in San Diego, California, United States, affiliated with CBS. It is owned by the Tegna subsidiary of Nexstar Media Group; Nexstar also owns CW station KUSI-TV (channel 51) and Fox affiliate KSWB-TV (channel 69). KFMB-TV's studios are located on Engineer Road in the Kearny Mesa section of San Diego, and its transmitter is atop Mount Soledad in La Jolla.
History The station first signed on the air on May 16, 1949. It was the first television station in San Diego. The station was founded by Jack O. Gross, who also owned local radio station KFMB (760 AM). San Diego mayor Harley E. Knox was present at the station's first broadcast. The station cost Gross $300,000 to build.Engstrand, Iris. "San Diego: California's Cornerstone". San Diego: Sunbelt Publications, 2005, pg 180. KFMB-TV has been a primary CBS affiliate since its sign-on and is the only television station in the market that has never changed its network affiliation. In its early years, channel 8 also maintained secondary affiliations with ABC, NBC and the DuMont Television Network.
In October 1949, KFMB-TV signed an affiliation agreement with the short-lived Paramount Television Network. Channel 8 quickly became its strongest affiliate. The station received a network feed of Paramount programs that included among others, Hollywood Opportunity, Meet Me in Hollywood, Magazine of the Week, Time for Beany and Your Old Buddy. KFMB-TV aired six hours of Paramount programs each week. Since there was no technical transmission network to distribute Paramount programs to its affiliates, KFMB-TV instead carried the network's programming via a transmitter link from the broadcast tower of Paramount's Los Angeles affiliate KTLA atop Mount Wilson, from the KFMB-TV transmitter site on Mount Soledad.
Changes in ownership In November 1950, Gross sold KFMB-AM-TV to John A. Kennedy, a former publisher of the San Diego Daily Journal newspaper."KFMB sale; Kennedys to buy." Broadcasting – Telecasting, November 20, 1950, pg. 68. Three years later, Kennedy divested KFMB to a partnership of television producer Jack Wrather and industry executive Helen Alvarez."$7 1/2 million mark passed in bumper transfer crop." Broadcasting – Telecasting, February 2, 1953, pp. 27–28. That same year, channel 8 lost its television monopoly in San Diego when two new stations went on the air—Tijuana-based XETV (channel 6) and San Diego–licensed KFSD-TV (channel 10, now KGTV), the latter of which assumed the NBC affiliation from channel 8. KFMB-TV continued to air ABC programs until 1956, when XETV was granted permission to take the ABC affiliation under a special agreement between the FCC and Mexican authorities, most notably the Secretariat of Communications and Public Works.
After the Wrather-Alvarez partnership broke up in 1957, Wrather kept the San Diego outlets and KERO-TV in upstate Bakersfield for his renamed broadcasting company, Marietta Broadcasting."Wrather buys out Alvarez." Broadcasting – Telecasting, May 12, 1958, pg. 9. In 1959, Wrather merged Marietta Broadcasting with Buffalo, New York–based Transcontinent Television Corporation."New station combine formed." Broadcasting – Telecasting, February 16, 1959, pg. 9."Transcontinent tie with Marietta gets ok." Broadcasting – Telecasting, May 18, 1959, pp. 74, 76. In 1964, as part of Transcontinent's exit from broadcasting, the KFMB stations were sold to Midwest Television, controlled by the family of Champaign, Illinois, banker August Meyer."Transcontinent sale: last of its kind?." Broadcasting, February 24, 1964, pp. 27–28. In 1999, Midwest Television divested its other outlets, WCIA/WCFN in Champaign–Springfield and WMBD-AM-TV and WPBG in Peoria, Illinois, leaving the KFMB stations as the company's only remaining properties.
In 2005, Midwest Television signed a ten-year affiliation contract extension for KFMB-TV to remain a CBS affiliate through 2015. The station restored its on-air branding to News 8 on September 19, 2005, after four years of using the "Local 8" brand. In early 2007, the station began to phase in a new branding as "CBS 8", although newscasts maintained the News 8 title until 2013, when the station introduced a new logo similar to Miami's CBS O&O WFOR-TV and renamed its newscasts CBS News 8.
Switch to digital broadcasting KFMB-TV shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 8, on February 17, 2009, the original target date on which full-power television stations in the United States were to transition from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate (which was later pushed back to June 12, 2009).
The station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition UHF channel 55, which was among the high band UHF channels (52–69) that were removed from broadcasting use as a result of the transition, to its analog-era VHF channel 8.
Tegna ownership On December 18, 2017, Tegna Inc. announced that it would acquire the KFMB stations for $325 million. The sale was completed on February 15, 2018, ending the Meyer family's stewardship of the stations after 53 years. On March 12, 2019, former KFMB owner Elisabeth Kimmel, the granddaughter of Midwest Television founder August Meyer, was arrested for her role in the 2019 college admissions scandal, which involved conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud to boost her son's college admission credentials for pole vaulting.
KFMB-TV was separated from its radio sisters on March 17, 2020, when Tegna sold KFMB (760 AM) and KFMB-FM 100.7 to Local Media San Diego, which in turn spun KFMB (AM) to iHeartMedia. Under the terms of the deal, Tegna retained exclusive control of the KFMB call sign for KFMB-TV, with the radio stations required to change their call letters within 30 days of the sale; LMSD changed KFMB-FM to KFBG that April. Meanwhile, iHeartMedia changed KFMB (AM) to KGB on July 4.
Nexstar ownership and common operation with KUSI and KSWB-TV Nexstar Media Group, owner of KUSI-TV and KSWB-TV in San Diego, acquired Tegna in a deal announced in August 2025 and completed on March 19, 2026. The deal included approval for Nexstar to own three TV station licenses in markets including San Diego.
KFMB-DT2
KFMB-DT2, branded News 8 San Diego, is the second digital subchannel of KFMB-TV, operating as an independent station that carries the MyNetworkTV programming service. It broadcasts in 720p high definition on channel 8.2.
History On November 1, 2011, KFMB launched KFMB-DT2, an affiliate of MeTV, by way of an agreement between the network's owner, Weigel Broadcasting, and Midwest Television that was announced two months earlier on September 6.
On January 18, 2017, Midwest Television and network co-parent CBS Corporation announced that KFMB would become the San Diego affiliate of The CW, which would be carried on one of the station's digital subchannels; the station would replace Tijuana-licensed XETV-TDT (channel 6), which had been affiliated with the network since 2008. The move stemmed from a failure between CBS and XETV owner Grupo Televisa, during negotiations to renew an affiliation contract set to expire that September, to reach an agreement to keep the affiliation with XETV. KFMB-TV digital subchannel 8.2 was originally scheduled to take over the CW affiliation on September 1, 2017. However, these plans changed on January 26, 2017, when Televisa announced that it would drop all English-language programming (including its CW affiliation) from XETV on May 31, at the completion of a phased wind-down of the station's San Diego operations (this process began on March 31, with the closure of channel 6's news department); KFMB consequently moved up the date of the switch to May 31, to align with XETV's planned conversion into a repeater of one of Televisa's Spanish-language networks.
In preparation, Midwest sold the local rights to the MeTV affiliation to the E. W. Scripps Company, owner of ABC affiliate KGTV; MeTV moved from KFMB-DT2 to the second digital subchannel of KGTV–which was also simulcast on KZSD-LP (channel 41, now a KGTV translator on channel 20), which lost its Azteca affiliation to a subchannel of MyNetworkTV affiliate XHDTV-TDT (channel 49), in preparation for the network's July 1 move to XHAS-TDT (channel 33), which also lost its Telemundo affiliation to a subchannel of NBC-owned KNSD–on May 1 (to accommodate MeTV, KGTV relocated Laff onto the re-numbered 10.3 from digital channel 10.2, which, in the interim, was converted into a news channel that aired simulcasts and rebroadcasts of KGTV's local news programming). That same day, KFMB-DT2 began to air a pre-launch loop for the new affiliation with the network on its former MeTV space along with a message card of the MeTV affiliation moving to KGTV 10.2. The signal resolution for KFMB-DT2 was subsequently converted to 720p high definition on May 21.
KFMB-DT2 added programming from The CW on May 31, 2017 (XETV transferred its existing affiliation with co-owned Canal 5 from its decommissioned 6.2 subchannel to its main feed upon losing the CW affiliation). The subchannel–which was rebranded as "The CW San Diego"–concurrently adopted a general entertainment schedule featuring a mix of syndicated shows not carried by other San Diego stations, repeat airings of certain programs seen on KFMB's main channel, and many first-run and off-network syndicated programs (including talk shows and sitcoms) that previously aired on XETV prior to the switch to fill timeslots not occupied by CW network programs. It also launched a two-hour extension of KFMB's weekday morning newscast, along with separate, weeknight-only 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. newscasts produced for KFMB-DT2 (the newscasts shown on the subchannel are branded as News 8 on The CW San Diego, omitting all references to the CBS name included in KFMB's main news titling). The subchannel also took over XETV's slot on channel 6 on Cox, Spectrum and U-verse (those providers as well as DirecTV—which opted to carry KFMB-DT2 on channel 9, transmitting temporarily in standard definition only in the days immediately following the switch—and Dish Network dropped XETV from their lineups upon its switch to Canal 5, with the station's availability on the U.S. side of the market becoming limited to its existing over-the-air signal coverage).
KFMB became the third television station in San Diego to affiliate with The CW: the network was originally affiliated with KSWB-TV (channel 69) beginning at The CW's launch on September 18, 2006, before moving to XETV on August 1, 2008, after Tribune Broadcasting agreed to switch KSWB to Fox, reportedly due to that network's concerns about having its programming airing on a Mexican-licensed station, even though XETV had operated as an English-language station since its 1953 sign-on. The switch resulted in KFMB-DT2 becoming the largest CW station by market size that is carried over a digital subchannel, and San Diego becoming the largest market with a subchannel-only CW affiliate (overtaking WKRC-DT2 in Cincinnati) as well as the largest overall in which any of the six major networks maintains a subchannel-only affiliation. In 2021 it was overtaken by WZTV-DT2 in Nashville.
In September 2018, after XHDTV-TDT dropped MyNetworkTV to join Milenio Television, KFMB-DT2 added the programming service as a secondary affiliation. MyNetworkTV programming is carried as part of the subchannel's late-night schedule, an increasingly common fate for the service. In 2026, after Nexstar acquired Tegna, The CW moved to KUSI-TV.
Programming