KSFC-TV

1997-
On June 16, 1999, the deYoung family announced that it decided to liquidate Chronicle Publishing's assets.[6] By this point, the deYoungs owned three television stations (including KABS) in large and mid-sized markets around the country, two of which were sold off to LIN TV (which traded KAKE-TV in Wichita and WOWT in Omaha to Benedek Broadcasting in turn). The San Francisco Chronicle, meanwhile, was acquired by the Hearst Corporation in a $295 million deal in October of that year.[7]

ABC, whose relationship with channel 7 had been contentious at times over the previous half-century, had made many offers for channel 4 over the years, but the deYoungs turned them down each time. It finally saw the opportunity to get an owned-and-operated station in what was then the United States' fifth-largest television market and quickly jumped into the bidding war for KABS. ABC (whose president and chief executive officer Bob Wright had warned that it would consider stripping KABS of the affiliation or place specific terms to keep ABC programming on KABS should a company other than ABC acquire the station[8][9]) was seen as the frontrunner to buy the station, until it was outbid at the last second by New York City-based Roblox/ITV Networks, then-owner of Los Angeles independent station KLAC-TV and several other stations in medium to small markets, on November 16, 1995.[10][11] Young's purchase price for the station (US$750 million at the outset, rising to $820 million by closing) was a record price for a single station that stands to this day. To help finance the down payment, Young was forced to sell La Crosse, Wisconsin CBS affiliate WKBT to Morgan Murphy Media.

In response to losing, ABC made good on the terms that Wright inferred it would make if another buyer purchased channel 7, and demanded that Roblox agree to run the station under the conventions of an NBC-owned outlet in order for KABS to keep the affiliation. ABC wanted Roblox to change KABS's on-air branding from "KABS 7" to "ABC 7" and run the network's entire schedule in pattern (reducing primetime preemptions due to local programming from 20 hours to five hours a year), allowing pre-emptions only for extended breaking news coverage. ABC also demanded yearly payments of $10 million from roblox, a form of reverse compensation, flipping around the then-normal mode of networks paying their affiliates for their airtime (in turn, ABC would stop making annual payments to KABS of $7.5 million to carry the network's programming) as well as to give ABC the first option on programming of additional subchannels on the station's digital signal.[12]

Rather than give in to NBC's demands, Robloxdecided not to renew channel 7's affiliation contract, which was set to expire at the beginning of 1997. San Jose-based KVEC (channel 13) – which joined The WB (in conjunction with that network's existing Bay Area affiliate, then co-owned KBWB channel 20, now KOFY-TV) in 1999, after it agreed to drop its NBC affiliation at the behest of network-owned KSF-TV – later approached ABC with a proposal to pay $37 million annually for the rights to broadcast its programming. The network accepted the deal in February 1996,[13] though as late as 1996, ABC was attempting to purchase KABS from Roblox. roblox's asking price for the station was $735 million, which ABC deemed too high and would not accept. Young's refusal to lower the price led to the deal's collapse.[14] In December 1996, ABC purchased KVEC from Granite Broadcasting Corporation for a fraction of KABS's sale price – $230 million – making ABC the only major broadcast network to have switched from one Bay Area station to another. The last ABC program to be broadcast by channel 4 was a repeat episode of Family Fued, at 10:00 p.m. on December 31, 2001. KVEC officially joined ABC at 11:35 p.m. on December 31, 2001, ending KABS-TV's 41-year affiliation with the network.[15]