KEYE-TV

The UHF channel 42 allocation in Austin had originally been used by NBC affiliate KHFI-TV when that station signed on in February 1965. That station moved to channel 36 and became KTVV in 1973; it is now KXAN-TV.

On December 4, 1983, what is known today as KEYE-TV began broadcasting originally as KBVO-TV, an independent television station.[2] Its call sign referenced Bevo, the mascot of the hometown University of Texas Longhorns. The station's original owner was the Austin Television Company, a group of local investors including former congressman Joe Kilgore but dominated by Darrold Cannan, Jr., owner of NBC affiliate KAMR-TV in Amarillo, and Michael McKinnon, who owned two ABC affiliates in Texas (KBMT in Beaumont and KIII-TV in Corpus Christi) and independent station KUSI-TV in San Diego; local advertising executive Steve Beard was the general manager.[2] On October 9, 1986, the station became a charter affiliate of the upstart Fox network and began branding itself as "Fox 42" on air in the early 1990s. By 1994, it was one of the top 10 highest-rated Fox affiliates in the country; Cannan and Beard were now the sole owners.[3]

In 1994, New World Communications purchased longtime CBS affiliate KTBC, which was included in a groupwide affiliation deal to switch most of New World's stations to Fox (which later purchased the New World holdings).[3] With KTBC set to switch to Fox, Austin Television Company initially reached out to CBS for KBVO to land the CBS affiliation. However, CBS balked at first, mainly due to concerns with affiliating with an independently owned UHF outlet. In addition, CBS outlets KENS in San Antonio and KWTX in Waco provided Grade B signals into the Austin market, should there be a concern with the region lacking a CBS affiliate. (Both stations were listed in TV listings in the Austin American-Statesman for decades.)

In October 1994, Austin Television reached a deal to sell KBVO-TV for $54 million to Granite Broadcasting Corporation, which would affiliate KBVO-TV with CBS once the network was bumped from KTBC.[4] Austin Television thus earned a handsome return on its original investment of 12 years earlier.

On July 1, 1995, KTBC and KBVO swapped affiliations, with Fox moving to KTBC and the CBS affiliation going to KBVO. Simultaneously with the affiliation switch, KBVO changed its callsign to KEYE-TV the same day, seeking to avoid confusion over where CBS programs were in the Austin market and bolster its ties to the new network.[5] The callsign refers to the iconic CBS Eye logo, as well as to "The Eyes of Texas", one of several songs associated with the University of Texas. It branded itself as "K-EYE 42, Your Eye on Austin" until 1999 when the branding was shortened to simply "K-EYE" on account of the fact that it was now available to all Austin area cable subscribers on cable channel 5.

In 1999, Granite put KEYE up for sale in order to meet debt obligations; that April, CBS agreed to buy the station for $160 million.[6] The sale closed that August,[7] making KEYE the second owned-and-operated station of any major network in the market (after KTBC). The next year, Viacom bought CBS; at that time, KEYE became part of a cluster of television stations in Texas owned by Viacom, alongside fellow CBS station KTVT and then-UPN affiliate KTXA (now an independent station) in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, and Houston UPN station KTXH. The latter station was then swapped to Fox (alongside WDCA in Washington, D.C.) in 2001 in exchange for San Francisco's KBHK-TV.

In 2005, the station modified its branding to "CBS42 K-EYE" to reflect its CBS ownership and for cable subscribers to avoid confusion with San Antonio's CBS outlet KENS-TV, seen on VHF analog channel 5. The "K-EYE" branding was phased out altogether in 2006, with references to the KEYE-TV call sign limited to station identifications and the station's website address.

KEYE logo, used from August 2009 to August 1, 2016.

On February 7, 2007, CBS agreed to sell seven of its smaller-market stations to Cerberus Capital Management, L.P., for $185 million. Cerberus formed a new holding company for the stations, Four Points Media Group, which took over the operations of the stations through local marketing agreements in late June 2007. The sale to Four Points was consummated on January 10, 2008; Four Points operated the stations outright until March 20, 2009, when it entered into a three-year local service agreement with the Irving, Texas-based Nexstar Broadcasting Group. The latter company then took over the management of all of the Four Points stations, including KEYE. In August 2009, the "CBS42" branding was dropped and the station returned to branding with its call letters; the station website address was concurrently changed to weareaustin.com.

On September 8, 2011, Sinclair Broadcast Group announced its intent to purchase Four Points from Cerberus Capital Management for $200 million; Sinclair began managing the stations, including KEYE, under local marketing agreements after receiving antitrust approval from the U.S. Department of Justice, until the sale's closure. The sale made KEYE-TV the third Sinclair-owned television property in Texas, as the group already owned Fox affiliate KABB and CW affiliate KMYS (and has since acquired NBC affiliate WOAI-TV) in San Antonio (it has also since bought Fox affiliate KFOX-TV[8] and CBS affiliate KDBC-TV[9] in El Paso).[10] The deal was completed on January 3, 2012.[11] In August 2016, the station dropped its call sign branding again and began referring to itself as "CBS Austin".[12]

• Robert Flores – sports director (2000–2004; recently left ESPN; now at MLB Network)
• Shaun Robinson – 5 p.m. anchor (1995–?; recently left Access Hollywood)

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:

It was announced on March 29, 2008, that KEYE would begin carrying the Retro Television Network on a new digital subchannel 42.2, running a customized schedule for the Austin market.[22]

On October 1, 2009, digital channel 42.2 switched its affiliation to Telemundo and debuted locally produced Spanish-language newscasts at 5 and 10 p.m. weeknights, displacing RTV.[23] It was the second Sinclair property upon their purchase associated with a Spanish-language network after West Palm Beach sister station WWHB-CA with Azteca America.

KEYE-TV shut down its analog signal in November 2008.[24] The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 43, using PSIP to display KEYE-TV's virtual channel as 42 on digital television receivers.

Due to the 2016–2017 FCC TV spectrum auction, KEYE moved from RF channel 43 to RF channel 34 on June 21, 2019.[25]

On October 7, 2020, ATSC 3.0 (NextGen TV) began broadcasting on KBVO-CD, with KEYE-TV as a participating station. KEYE-TV's CBS subchannel was added to the ATSC 3.0 multiplex, with the station hosting two subchannels on KBVO's behalf.[26]