KCRA-TV

KCRA-TV, virtual channel 3 (UHF digital channel 35), is an NBC-affiliated television station located in Sacramento, California, United States. The station is owned by the Hearst Television subsidiary of the Hearst Corporation, as part of a duopoly with MyNetworkTV affiliate KQCA (channel 58). The two stations share studio facilities and offices located at 3 Television Circle in downtown Sacramento, KCRA's transmitter is located in Walnut Grove.

History

The station first signed on the air on September 3, 1955. It was founded by the Kelly and Hansen families and their Central Valley Broadcasting Company, who also owned KCRA radio (1320 AM, now KCTC, and 96.1 FM, now KYMX); the AM station's call letters were intended to be KRCA, but the middle two letters were erroneously transposed by a typist at the Federal Communications Commission when that station's original license was drafted in 1945 and was never corrected. By the time KCRA-TV went on the air, the KRCA-TV call letters had already been taken the previous year by NBC's owned-and-operated television station in Los Angeles (originally KNBH, now KNBC). KCRA-TV inherited the NBC affiliation from KCCC-TV (channel 40, channel now occupied by KTXL), which became the Sacramento market's first television station when it signed on in September 1953, which had also carried affiliations with ABC, CBS and DuMont until other stations debuted in the market. However, it in turn, it also received the affiliation as a result of KCRA-AM's decade-long affiliation with the NBC Red Network.