KCAL-TV (channel 9) is an independent television station in Los Angeles, California, United States. It is owned by the CBS News and Stations group alongside CBS West Coast flagship KCBS-TV (channel 2). Both stations share studios at the CBS Studio Center on Radford Avenue in the Studio City section of Los Angeles, while KCAL-TV's transmitter is located atop Mount Wilson. History KFI-TV (1948–1951) Channel 9 signed on the air as commercial station KFI-TV on August 25, 1948, owned by Earle C. Anthony alongside KFI radio (640 AM). However, the station was originally licensed as experimental W6XEA about 1940, and in 1944 applied for the call letters KSEE (which are now used by the NBC affiliate in Fresno, California). It is unknown whether any transmissions occurred under either call sign. The station initially broadcast a limited schedule with six hours weekly, and formally began operations on October 6, 1948, with hours that day. Though KFI had long been affiliated with NBC Radio, KFI-TV did not affiliate with the then-upstart NBC Television Network as NBC was building its own station, KNBH (channel 4, now KNBC), which went on the air in January 1949. KFI general manager William B. Ryan indicated a willingness to affiliate with a network other than NBC or start a mutual regional network. Channel 9 has been an independent station for virtually its entire history, though it carried DuMont programming from 1954 up until that network's 1956 demise. At the 3rd Emmy Awards in January 1951, the station won in the best educational show category for KFI-TV University. KHJ-TV (1951–1989) Channel 9's engineers threatened to go on strike in 1951, leading Anthony to sell the station to the General Tire and Rubber Company in August of that year. A few months earlier, General Tire had purchased the Don Lee Broadcasting System, a regional West Coast radio network (the original Don Lee television station, KTSL (channel 2), was sold separately to CBS; it evolved into future sister KCBS-TV). Don Lee's flagship station was KHJ radio (930 AM), and General Tire changed its new television station's call letters to KHJ-TV in September 1951. One former employee referred to the call letters as standing for "kindness, happiness and joy", although the call sign was likely randomly assigned. The Don Lee name was so well respected in California broadcasting that KHJ-TV called itself "Don Lee Television" for a few years in the early