KVMY

KVMY, branded as MyLVTV is a full-service television station in Las Vegas, Nevada, broadcasting locally in digital on UHF channel 22 as an affiliate of MyNetworkTV. Founded March 8, 1982, the station is owned and operated by the Sinclair Broadcast Group. Its transmitter is located in Henderson, Nevada.

History

The station began its existence March 8, 1982 with a construction permit issued by the FCC to build a new full-service television station on UHF channel 21 to serve Las Vegas.^[1] The original owner Frank Scott, an early independent casino pioneer in Las Vegas, named his company- Dres Media Inc., and chose KRLR, which contained the first letter of each of his three children's names, for the station's call letters in December 1982.^[2] In August 1984, after a couple of extensions to the original construction permit, the station applied for its license to cover construction and went on the air under Program Test Authority. KRLR was an independent station branding itself as Vusic 21, and at first, aired only music videos. In addition to its over-the-air broadcast on channel 21, the station was carried by Prime Cable on channel 2.

The station's first music video aired, was "Video Killed the Radio Star", per Rick Scott, General Manager.

In mid-1985, KRLR began to introduce a few classic television programs, and in mid-1985 began airing World Class Championship Wrestling, a popular one-hour wrestling program originating from Dallas, Texas. KRLR was licensed by the FCC on April 11, 1986. By 1987, the station had replaced the music videos with more conventional fare, and added more pro wrestling programs, inclding the UWF, AWA (moving from KTNV-TV) and the NWA.

In May 1994, Dres Media sold the station for $2.85 million to new owners- Channel 21, LP, a subsidiary of Lambert Broadcasting of Los Angeles. In January 1995, after nearly eleven years of being an independent, the station became an affiliate of the new UPN television network, and changed its call letters to KUPN to reflect the new affiliation.^[2] One of the most successful turn-around stories in broadcasting, Channel 21 L.P. sold the station just 3 short years later to Sinclair Broadcast Group in April 1997 for $87 million. Sinclair created the company KUPN Licensee to manage the station's license. The station remains licensed to KUPN licensee as of March 2007. On March 1, 1998, Sinclair changed the station's affiliation to The WB Television Network (The WB) and on May 27, 1998, changed the station's call letters to KVWB, again in honor of its new affiliation.^[2] The station moved to channel 12 on the local cable system in 1999, when Cox Communications acquired Prime Cable.

In 2003, the station launched a local newscast, combined with Sinclair's own "News Central" national broadcast, at 10:00 p.m.. The local news department was shared with co-owned independent station KFBT "Gold 33", which aired its News Central newscast at 7:00 p.m.. The news department was shut down at the beginning of March 2006. KVWB later entered into an agreement to air a 10:00 p.m. newscast produced by KVBC (now KSNV-DT), the local NBC affiliate. The newscast debuted on April 6, 2006, titled "NEWS 3 at 10 on The WB Las Vegas" and later renamed to "NEWS 3 at 10 on My LV TV". It was discontinued on December 15, 2006, and "NEWS 3 at 10 on The CW Las Vegas" was launched the following Monday on sister station KVCW. That newscast was also discontinued on September 28, 2009 (only to be revived on KTUD-LD a month later) and today neither KVMY nor KVCW airs any newscasts at all.

In January 2006, UPN and The WB announced that in September 2006, both networks would cease operations. In their place would be a new network called The CW. In February 2006, Fox announced that they would also launch a new network, which they eventually named My Network TV. Sinclair chose to put The CW on their other station in town, the then-independent KFBT, and to put My Network TV on KVWB. In June 2006, anticipating the start of My Network TV, Sinclair changed the station's call letters yet again, and the station became KVMY.^[2]

Digital television

When the FCC released its initial DTV allocations on April 21, 1997, it had assigned UHF channel 20 to KUPN-DT as its digital companion channel.^[3] The allocations met with considerable resistance from low-power broadcasters who would be displaced by the DTV allocations, and on February 17, 1998, the FCC issued a revised final DTV allocations table.^[4] KUPN's original allocation would have displaced LPTV station KKJK-LP (now KHDF-CA) and a co-channel TBN station in Bullhead City, Arizona, so the FCC substituted UHF channel 22. The station, renamed KVWB-DT, was granted a permit to construct its digital facilities on November 24, 2000. Technical difficulties delayed construction of the full-power facilities, requiring extensions of the construction permit,^[5] and on November 8, 2002, KVWB was granted Special Temporary Authority (STA) to construct a low-power facility in order to comply with the FCC deadline for commencing digital broadcasting while the full-power facilities were still being built. The station, now known as KVMY-DT, completed construction of its full-power digital facilities in January 2007, but as of April 2007, has not yet been granted a license.

In 2006, the FCC required each station with a digital companion channel to select which station it would continue to use after the end of the transition period. KVMY-DT has selected channel 22 as its final digital channel and will return the channel 21 license to the FCC. Televisions will still tune to KVMY on channel 21 per the ATSC virtual channel standards. Regular programming was dropped on February 18, 2009 and was replaced with a broadcast explaining how to switch to digital reception.

External links

• MyLVTV.com (Official Website)
• Query the FCC's TV station database for KVMY
• BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on KVMY-TV

References