News operation
KGO-TV presently broadcasts 42 hours, 55 minutes of locally produced newscasts each week (with 6 hours, 35 minutes each weekday; six hours on Saturdays; and four hours on Sundays). The program usually rebroadcasts stories previously shown during the 6 p.m. newscast and national and international news reports from ABC News.
KGO-TV had followed the lead of its New York City sister station, WABC-TV, and adopted the Eyewitness News format for its newscasts in the late 1960s; however, the Eyewitness News title was already being used on KPIX-TV, which inherited its version of the format from its Philadelphia sister station KYW-TV. As a result, KGO-TV instead called its newscasts Channel 7 News Scene throughout the 1970s, and Channel 7 News from 1982 to 1998, when it switched to the current ABC 7 News branding. Along with the other ABC O&Os, KGO-TV also used an edited version of the "Tar Sequence" from the soundtrack of Cool Hand Luke as the theme music for its newscasts starting in 1969. After its Chicago sister station, WLS-TV, began to reuse the Eyewitness News branding in 2013, KGO-TV became the only ABC O&O that did not use the Eyewitness News or Action News brand for its newscasts, as with other ABC O&O stations. That all changed on February 1, 2026, when KGO-TV finally adopted the Eyewitness News name for its news operations for the first time, 13 years after KPIX-TV dropped the name from its newscasts.
The station broadcast a 4:30 p.m. newscast named Early News in 1970, anchored by Ray Tannehill and John Reed King, with Pete Giddings covering weather and Bob Fouts presenting sports. Lu Hurley provided live helicopter traffic coverage, one of the first television programs in the San Francisco Bay Area to offer traffic reports. KGO-TV was one of the last ABC affiliates that broadcast the network's evening news program in the 7 p.m. time slot. By early 1992, World News Tonight had been displaced to 5:30 pm, replacing the last half of the 5 p.m. news hour. KGO-TV has long broadcast an 11 p.m. newscast; it was originally a half-hour program before expanding to 35 minutes in the early 1990s. In the 2000s, a staple of the 11 p.m. Sunday newscast was Richard Hart's segment about technological developments, alternatively titled "Next Step" and "Drive to Discover".
The station previously used the market's first helicopter equipped to shoot and transmit high definition video, branded as "Sky 7HD", which made its on-air debut in February 2006. Due to logistical and equipment limitations, video from the helicopter was only available in 4:3 standard definition at times (when this occurs, the helicopter is branded simply "Sky 7"). KGO became the second television station in the Bay Area (after KTVU) to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition on February 17, 2007.
From January 8, 2007, until March 11, 2022, KGO-TV also produced an hour-long 9 p.m. newscast for independent station KOFY-TV (channel 20).[15] On September 6, 2021, KOFY moved ABC 7 News from 7 to 8 p.m. KGO aired its final news broadcast on KOFY on March 11, 2022, in anticipation of KOFY becoming a Grit affiliate and switching to western programming on April 16, 2022.
On July 20, 2007, longtime evening news anchor and KGO radio talk show host Pete Wilson died at age 62, following a massive heart attack that he suffered during a hip replacement procedure at Stanford University Medical Center in Palo Alto, California. The station aired extensive tributes to Wilson when his death was publicly announced the following day. His final newscast and radio show were on July 18, 2007.
In 2008, KGO became the first station in the market to start its early morning newscast before 5 a.m., with the expansion of its weekday morning program to 4:30 a.m. Around that same time and prompted by a sluggish economy and the station's conversion to the "Ignite" automated control room system, on May 26, 2011, KGO debuted an hour-long 4 p.m. newscast, which filled the timeslot formerly held by The Oprah Winfrey Show (which ended its 25-year syndication run the previous day).[16] On September 10, 2011, KGO-TV expanded its weekend 11 p.m. newscasts to one hour.[17]
On August 8, 2014, KGO announced a partnership with Univision O&O KDTV-DT to provide newsgathering resources to the station. It mirrors a similar partnership between Philadelphia sister station WPVI and WUVP-DT.[18]
On July 9, 2015, KGO became the first station in Northern California to fly a commercial drone under newly approved FAA guidelines. Called "DroneView7", the aircraft flew over the demolition of Candlestick Park, broadcasting live. On February 4, 2022, the station launched ABC 7 Bay Area 24/7, a continuous online streaming channel showing local news and information.[19]
Notable current on–air staff
Anchors
- Dan Ashley
- Larry Beil
- Kristen Sze
Anchors
- Dan Ashley
- Larry Beil
- Kristen Sze
