KFMB-TV Channel 8 first launched its local news broadcasts in high definition in January 2007 — a week before the Super Bowl. Nearly 18 months later, the CBS affiliate remains the only San Diego broadcast channel to offer newscasts in HD, but that’s about to change.

Patrick Givans, director of technology for ABC affiliate KGTV-Channel 10, says the station will start broadcasting local news in HD before September. “It hasn’t been cheap,” says Givans. “We’re spending nearly $5 million for the conversion. Competitively we have to do it.”

Farther behind is KNSD-TV Channel 7/39, the NBC owned and operated station. News director Greg Dawson says the station is still in the planning stages of converting local news broadcasts to HD. He can’t say whether it will happen this year. “The company (owner NBC Universal) is in the process of converting its stations, but at what point they get to us is still in the works,” says Dawson.

Steve Cohen, news director at KUSI-TV Channel 51, the independent station owned by McKinnon Broadcasting, says everything on the channel, including local news broadcasts, will be broadcast in HD beginning in February. “It’s expensive, but we have to move forward,” says Cohen. That means acquiring new studio cameras, acquisition cameras, laptops for editing and switching out the control room from analog to HD.

Fred D’Ambrosi, news director at Channel 8, says the switch to HD, though costly, was a forward-looking move. “We felt that this is where the audience is going,” he says. “We felt like it was one of the great innovations in broadcasting and we wanted to be in the forefront of it.”

Rich Goldner, the newly announced news director for KSWB-TV, which becomes Fox 5 San Diego on Aug. 1, says the “Fox 5 Morning News” and the full hour “Fox 5 News at Ten” will be in high def. “We will be adding 27 hours of weekly local news programming for our viewers, all of it in high definition,” adds Goldner. The new Fox 5 San Diego is a Tribune Broadcasting station.

— Manny Cruz