What Channel Is CBS? Local Numbers, and the Two Channels People Confuse It With

Quick Answer: CBS is a local broadcast station, so there is no national channel number. Over the air it sits on 2, 3, 4, 5, 11 or 13 in most large markets, and it is free with an antenna. Your cable or satellite provider gives it a completely different number. Before you go looking, be sure which CBS you actually want, because CBS Sports Network is a separate channel that carries none of the CBS primetime schedule, and Paramount+ only streams your live local CBS on the more expensive tier.

Three Different Things Get Called “CBS”

This is where most searches go wrong, so it is worth two minutes before you start hunting for a number.

What it is	What it carries	Where to find it
CBS (your local station)	Survivor, NCIS, 60 Minutes, AFC football, your local news	A local number that changes by city
CBS Sports Network	College sports, studio shows, niche events. No NFL, no primetime	A national number in the 90s to 300s
Paramount+	The CBS library on demand, plus live local CBS on one tier only	An app, not a channel

If you are trying to watch an NFL game, a new episode of a CBS drama, or the local evening news, you want the first one. CBS Sports Network will not have any of it.

Your Local CBS Number Over the Air

These are the numbers an antenna scan will display. They are the station’s own identity and they do not change. If you do not own an antenna yet, our guide to watching live TV for free covers what you will actually receive with one.

Market	Station	Over-the-air number
New York	WCBS	2
Los Angeles	KCBS	2
Chicago	WBBM	2
Pittsburgh	KDKA	2
Philadelphia	KYW	3
Boston	WBZ	4
Miami	WFOR	4
Denver	KCNC	4
Minneapolis and Saint Paul	WCCO	4
San Francisco Bay Area	KPIX	5
Seattle	KIRO	7
Dallas and Fort Worth	KTVT	11
Baltimore	WJZ	13
Sacramento	KOVR	13
Detroit	WWJ	62

Note: Detroit is the one that surprises people. WWJ sits on 62 rather than a low number, which is a leftover from its UHF history. If your market is not on this list we are not going to guess at it. Run an antenna scan, or look your provider number up by ZIP in our TV Channel Finder.

Why Your Cable Number Does Not Match Any of That

Cable and satellite companies do not use the station’s broadcast number. They rebuild the whole channel map for their own system, and your local CBS gets slotted wherever that system has room. So a viewer in Boston with an antenna finds CBS on 4, and their neighbour on cable might find the same station on 9, or 705, or something else entirely.

Three things follow from that, and they explain most of the confusion:

1. Two people on different providers in the same city will have different CBS numbers. Neither of them is wrong.
2. Satellite is the exception in reverse. DIRECTV and DISH usually map your local CBS to its real broadcast number, so if you are on satellite the over-the-air table above is often correct for you too.
3. The HD feed may be somewhere else again. Older cable systems still keep a separate standard-definition slot, which is why the same station can appear twice in your guide.

The reliable move on any provider is to press Guide and search the call sign, not the word “CBS”. Your station is WCBS or KDKA or KOVR, and that is what the listings are indexed under.

CBS Sports Network Is Not CBS

Unlike your local station, this one is a national cable channel with a fixed number, and it is the reason a lot of people think they have found CBS when they have not.

Provider	CBS Sports Network
DIRECTV	221
DISH	158
Verizon Fios	94
Xfinity	Around 106, varies by market
Spectrum	Around 315, varies by market
Cox, Optimum, Mediacom, Astound	Varies by market

Worth knowing: CBS Sports Network carries college football and basketball, some golf, and a lot of studio programming. It does not carry NFL games, and it does not simulcast anything from the CBS primetime schedule. If you turned to it expecting a Sunday afternoon game, that game is on your local CBS station instead. Our guide to what channel football is on today explains why CBS and Fox show different games in different cities.

Watching CBS Without a Cable Box

There is one trap here that costs people money, so take the tiers seriously.

Route	Cost	Live local CBS?
Antenna	One-off, about $30 to $50	Yes, in full quality, no account
Paramount+ Essential	$8.99 a month	No. This is the trap
Paramount+ Premium	$13.99 a month	Yes, in most markets
YouTube TV	Full live TV price	Yes in most markets
Hulu + Live TV	Full live TV price	Yes in most markets
Fubo	Full live TV price	Yes in most markets
DIRECTV STREAM	Full live TV price	Yes in most markets

The Essential tier is the one people buy by accident. It carries the CBS library on demand and it does carry NFL on CBS through a separate live feed, but it will not give you your local station running live, which means no local news and no non-NFL live programming. Premium is the tier that adds it, and the gap is five dollars a month.

Note: if you are a Spectrum TV customer, check before you pay for anything. Spectrum includes Paramount+ Essential at no extra cost on TV Select Signature and above, and a lot of subscribers never activate it because nobody told them it was there.

When CBS Will Not Come In

Problem	Likely fix
Antenna scan finds no CBS	Rescan, and check which direction your market’s transmitters sit. Indoor antennas are directional.
Guide search for “CBS” returns nothing	Search the call sign instead. Your station is WCBS, KDKA, KOVR and so on.
You found CBS Sports Network, not CBS	Different channel. It carries no NFL and no primetime.
Paramount+ will not play live CBS	You are on Essential. Live local CBS is the Premium tier.
The game is on CBS but not in your area	Sunday afternoon coverage is regional. That game is not licensed to your market.
CBS appears twice in the guide	One is the standard-definition slot and one is HD. Use the HD entry.
Channel vanished after a repack	Stations occasionally change frequency. A rescan restores it.