KBAK-TV is a television station serving Bakersfield, California. It is a CBS affiliate, and transmits on UHF channel 29. KBAK also operates the local Fox affiliate, KBFX-CA, from a shared facility in Bakersfield, using an identical staff, including General Manager Wayne Lansche.
KBAK was the first television station on the air in Bakersfield, initiating broadcast in August of 1953. KERO followed one month later. At its inception, KBAK had been a CBS affiliate, under the call letters KAFY. In 1959, those call letters were changed to KBAK; and in 1974 changed its network affiliation to ABC, swapping with KJTV (now present NBC affiliate KGET-TV). As a CBS and later ABC affiliate, KBAK had aired all of its color programs in color, and went to full color in 1967.
During the 1970s and into the 1980s, KBAK was owned by Chicago-based Harriscope Broadcasting, which also owned WSNS in Chicago (now a Telemundo O&O;) and a partial stake in KRQE in Albuquerque (now owned by LIN TV). In the...
