List of television stations in the San Francisco Bay Area

 ( Television ) 

The San Francisco Bay Area is currently defined by Nielsen Media Research as the tenth-largest Media market in the United States, with all of the major U.S. television networks having affiliates serving the region. All the major network affiliates are directly owned by the networks. KRON-TV had been the one exception when it was a primary, and later secondary, MyNetworkTV affiliate. It's now exclusively affiliated with The CW and is owned by CW majority-owner Nexstar Media Group.

Despite the fact that Philo Farnsworth first demonstrated fully electronic television in San Francisco in 1928, there were no experimental prewar television stations broadcasting in the Bay Area. KPIX, San Francisco's first television station, started broadcasts in 1948, with KRON and KGO-TV soon following suit. Until 1952, the FCC had allocated only 6 television channels to the Bay Area, but in 1954 KSAN began transmitting on UHF channel 32 and KQED began educational programming on channel 9. By 1956, the Sacramento area had KCRA, KXTV KOVR, and KCCC on the air, the San Jose area had KSBW and KNTV, and San Francisco had KRON, KPIX, KGO-TV, KQED, and KSAN broadcasting. The ownership and programming of these stations has changed significantly over the decades, but most of these channel assignments and call signs remain the same. With the conversion from analog NTSC to digital ATSC broadcast modulation in 2009 and the subsequent "repacking" of the frequency assignments, only KSBW, KICU, and KMTP (originally KSAN) have kept their original RF channel. For branding and audience-familiarity reasons, most broadcasters have kept their virtual channel numbers through all the transitions.

Thanks to the sub-channels that are enabled by ATSC modulation, over 350 channels broadcast on the 33 RF frequencies allocated for digital television may be received within the Bay Area (UHF channels 16 and 17 are allocated for T-band business radio). Television stations whose terrestrial broadcast signals can be received in the San Francisco Bay Area include:

• Words in quotation marks indicate what is broadcast in the "station info" area instead of the call sign or the network being broadcast.

KBKF-LD additionally transmits with an experimental analog FM broadcasting subcarrier that is accessible at . "Re: Request for Special Temporary Authority: KBKF-LD, San Jose, CA" (correspondence from Barbara A. Kreisman, Chief, Video Division, Media Bureau), June 10, 2021 (FCC.gov)

• 27 KEXT-CD/San Jose (1994–2017)
• 32 KSAN-TV–KNEW-TV–KQEC/San Francisco (1954–1972, 1977–1979, 1980–1988)
• 38 KVOF-TV/San Francisco (1968–1985)
• 42 KCFT-TV/Concord (1966)

• CBS News Bay Area - Pairs with KPIX (CBS) & KPYX (KPIX+)
• Comcast Hometown Network - Defunct
• CreaTV San Jose - Public access channel
• NBC Sports Bay Area - Broadcasts some games on KNTV/San Jose & KSTS/San Jose
• NBC Sports California - Broadcasts some games on KNTV/San Jose & KSTS/San Jose