Catamount Broadcasting
  
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Chico/Redding, California United States |
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| City | Chico |
| Branding | CBS 12 (general) Action News Now (newscasts) |
| Slogan | Your Community, In-Depth |
| Channels |
Digital: 43 (UHF) Virtual: 12 () |
| Subchannels | 12.1 CBS 12.2 CW+ |
| Translators | (see below) |
| Affiliations | CBS (Secondary through 1985) |
| Owner |
Heartland Media (California TV License Company, LLC) |
| First air date | August 29, 1953 |
| Call letters' meaning |
Harry Smithson and Sidney Lewis (founders of KHSL-AM) |
| Sister station(s) |
KNVN KDRV KEZI |
| Former channel number(s) |
Analog: 12 (VHF, 1953–2009) |
| Former affiliations |
All secondary: ABC (1953–1978) NBC (1953–1956, 1978–1985) DuMont (1953–1955) |
| Transmitter power | 235 kW |
| Height | 387.5 m |
| Facility ID | 24508 |
| Transmitter coordinates | 39°57′28.3″N 121°42′54″W / 39.957861°N 121.71500°W |
| Licensing authority | FCC |
| Public license information: |
Profile CDBS |
| Website | www.actionnewsnow.com |
KHSL-TV, virtual channel 12 (UHF digital channel 43) is a CBS-affiliated television station located in Chico, California, United States, that also serves Redding. The station is owned by Heartland Media as part of a duopoly with NBC affiliate KNVN (channel 24), which is owned by Maxair Media but operated by Heartland through a local marketing agreement. The two stations share studios at the corner of Eaton Road and Silverbell Road on the northwest side of Chico, while its transmitter is located along Cohasset Road in rural Butte County northwest of Paradise.
KHSL-TV signed on in 1953, owned by the McClung family's Golden Empire Broadcasting Company along with KHSL-AM 1290. The call letters are in honor of Harry Smithson and Sidney Lewis, who founded KHSL-AM in 1935 and sold it to Hugh and Ruth "Mickey" McClung a year later. Ruth "Mickey" McClung was one of the first women to own a television station.
The McClungs owned the station until October 1994, when they sold it to United Communications Corporation. On September 14, 1998, KHSL-TV was purchased by Catamount Broadcasting. A month earlier, it took over KNVN's operations. It had been the dominant station in the Northstate for almost half a century.
From its infancy, KHSL-TV was an affiliate of CBS. When KRCR-TV entered the Chico-Redding market as the NBC affiliate, the two stations occasionally cherry-picked ABC programming since no third commercial station yet existed. In 1978, KRCR-TV switched to ABC. KHSL-TV then picked up some NBC programming - notably The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. However, it was forced to switch to and from the signal of KRON-TV in San Francisco whenever NBC programming aired. This required somewhat awkward masking of KRON's IDs and commercials. Occasionally, KRON's IDs and commercials leaked through when KHSL-TV's engineers couldn't cover them up in time. Finally, when KCPM (now KNVN) launched and took the NBC affiliation, the sharing of a third network was no longer necessary in the Chico-Redding market. However, there may have been at least one attempt back in the mid-1960s to bring a third commercial station to the area that would have been an ABC affiliate, but it never materialized and even KCPM did not come without challenges and financial troubles of its own.
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