KTVU (channel 2) is a television station licensed to Oakland, California, United States, serving the San Francisco Bay Area.

The two stations share studios at Jack London Square in Oakland; KTVU's transmitter is located at Sutro Tower in San Francisco.

The Ingrim–Pabst–Pauley group attempted to sell KTVU to NBC in 1960, as the network sought to acquire a television station in the Bay Area to operate alongside KNBC radio.

[7] A second sale attempt proved successful in July 1963, when KTVU was sold to Miami Valley Broadcasting Company, precursor to Cox Media Group, for $12.3 million.

[12] Wilkins retired in 1979, ending Captain Cosmic; former San Francisco Chronicle reporter and occasional co-host John Stanley took over hosting Creature Features until its 1982 cancellation.

KTVU exercised discretion and limited the number of commercial break interruptions during the movie telecasts, often airing the films uncensored and with commentary, either by a studio host or via slides.

During the early 1970s, the station began employing a different programming strategy to stand out from the other independents in the market, acquiring first-run syndicated sitcoms and drama series, several comedies and dramas from the United Kingdom (such as Upstairs, Downstairs and The Benny Hill Show, the latter of which had some episodes re-edited by the station to remove scenes of frontal nudity accidentally left in the broadcast prints), and various nature series (including National Geographic specials) as alternative offerings.

In 1992, KTVU ran a station-edited version of the 1984 science fiction film Dune, which combined footage from the Alan Smithee television cut with the original theatrical release (thereby restoring all the violence featured in the latter cut, while eliminating some of the objectionable edits that caused director David Lynch to remove his name from the credits of the television print).

[27][28] From 1958 until the early 1970s, KTVU aired the space-themed afternoon children's program Captain Satellite, which was hosted by Bob March and was set in a fictional spaceship known as the Starfinder II.

The series—which was originally produced at Moose Hall in Oakland, before moving to the KTVU studios in 1959—showcased cartoons between segments (including among others The Space Explorers), as well as film clips provided by NASA and live in-studio visits from astronauts.

[29][30] Until the 1980s, the station produced a series of classic public service shorts titled Bits and Pieces, often featuring two talking puppets, Charley and Humphrey, which Pat McCormick had brought over to KTVU from his tenure at KGO-TV.

[32] Other local programs that aired on KTVU during its run as an independent station included the film showcase/trivia game show franchise Dialing for Dollars, which was first hosted by Mel Venter and later by Pat McCormick, who later served as a weather anchor at the station; National All-Star Wrestling,[33] which aired on Friday nights during the early and mid-1960s from the KTVU studios or Daly City's Cow Palace and was hosted by Walt Harris; and Roller Derby, which Harris also hosted for many years and featured San Francisco Bay Bombers roller derby games until the demise of the International Roller Derby League in 1973.

[44][45][46] Richmond's co-anchors were Judd Hambrick (1976–1977), Andy Park (1977–1978), Barbara Simpson (1978–1986),[47] Elaine Corral (1986–1998),[48][49][50] Leslie Griffith (1998–2006)[51][52][53] and Julie Haener (2000–2008).

[61][62] Bob MacKenzie was a fixture for many years as a feature reporter and commentator, winning 13 Bay Area Emmy Awards during his tenure at the station from 1978 to 2006.

The May 1999 retirement of Zehnder brought changes to the newsroom; however, KTVU was ranked as the highest quality local newscast in the nation in 2000 by the Project for Excellence in Journalism under his immediate successor, Andrew Finlayson (who began his tenure at KTVU as a noon news producer in 1988 and left the station in 2003), while maintaining the top rating slot at 10 p.m. and throughout the noon and morning newscasts.

[71][72][73] Varying prime time numbers and improvements at competitors (as well as audience erosion for local programming in general) have since led to a decline in the once-dominant news operation's ratings, although it retains the No.

[76] In 2010, the KTVU news department was honored with a Peabody Award for its coverage of the January 2009 shooting of unarmed African-American male Oscar Grant in a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) terminal.

During the station's coverage of Asiana Airlines Flight 214, anchor Tori Campbell on July 12, 2013, read the names of four people purported to be the pilots, but were satirical names playing off Asian stereotypes—Captain Sum Ting Wong ("something wrong"), Wi Tu Lo ("way too low"), Ho Lee Fuk ("holy fuck"),[a] and Bang Ding Ow—inadvertently vetted by a summer intern at the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).

[93] That September, he was suspended indefinitely after attempting to add personal commentary to a report on the disappearance of Gabrielle Petito alluding to "missing white woman syndrome".