KVMY

**KVMY** (channel 21) is a television station in Las Vegas, Nevada, United States, airing content provided by the ACME network. It is owned and operated by the network's ACME Television Stations Group branch. It has facilities on West Sahara Avenue (NV 589) in Las Vegas; its transmitter is located on Black Mountain, near Henderson (southwest of I-515/U.S. 93/U.S. 95).

It was the flagship station of the Intermountain West Communications Corporation, which the late James E. Rogers established until the gradual sale of the company's other stations began in 2013. Before that, it served in that position for many years.

## History

### Early years

On March 8, 1982, the station was established with the approval of a construction permit issued by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to create a new full-power television station on UHF channel 21 to serve the Las Vegas area. The station has been in operation ever since. In December of 1982, the station's first owner, Frank Scott, an early pioneer in the independent casino industry in Las Vegas, decided to name his firm Dres Media Inc. and select **KXTZ** as the station's call letter. In August of 1984, following a couple of extensions to the initial construction permission, the station applied for its license to cover construction. It began broadcasting under the auspices of a Program Test Authority. Throughout this time, the station was operating illegally. KXTZ was an independent station that initially broadcast music videos solely and branded itself as Vusic 21. In addition to its free-to-air broadcast on channel 21, the station could be received on channel two by subscribers of Prime Cable. The music video for the song "Video Killed the Radio Star" was the first played on the station.

Towards the middle of 1985, KXTZ began airing World Class Championship Wrestling, a well-known one-hour professional wrestling program that originated in Dallas, Texas. At the same time, the station started broadcasting a few other classic television programs. On April 11, 1986, the FCC granted KXTZ an operating license. By 1987, the station had stopped airing music videos in favor of programming more typical for television, such as sitcoms, dramas, movies, and sports. KXTZ was most well-known for being the broadcast home of the Los Angeles Lakers, the UNLV Runnin' Rebels in basketball, the San Diego Padres, and the Oakland Athletics in Major League Baseball. In 1989, KXTZ faced competition from the independent and family-friendly station KQOL (channel 33, now KVGS). However, they could still maintain their position as the number two independent station in Las Vegas (counting Fox-affiliated KHBV-TV, which was still programmed like an independent during its early Fox years).

In May of 1994, Dres Media sold the station for a price of $2.85 million to Channel 21, LP, which was a subsidiary of Lambert Broadcasting and was situated in Los Angeles. The station changed its call letters to **KJMZ** on January 16, 1995, the same day it became an affiliate of the newly formed United Paramount Network (UPN). The call letters were changed to reflect the station's new affiliation. In April 1997, Lambert sold the station to Sinclair Broadcast Group for $87 million in only two years, making it one of the most successful turnaround stories in broadcasting history. The station became affiliated with The WB on March 1, 1998, after Sinclair decided to switch affiliations. Following the acquisition of Prime Cable by Cox Communications in 1999, the station relocated to channel 12 on the cable provider serving the local area.

On January 24, 2006, CBS Corporation, the parent company of UPN, along with the Warner Bros. unit of Time Warner, announced that both The WB and UPN would be shut down in September of that same year. Their highest-rated programs would be merged into a new network, The CW, jointly owned by the two companies. On February 22nd, News Corporation announced it would launch a new network, MyNetworkTV. This new service, a sister network to Fox, would be administered by Fox Television Stations and its syndication division, Twentieth Television. Twentieth Television would also be responsible for programming the new service. To compete with The CW and give stations previously connected with UPN and The WB but were not identified as CW affiliates, another alternative besides becoming independent stations, MyNetworkTV, was established. This was done for both of these reasons. Sinclair decided to put The CW on the company's other station serving the Las Vegas market, which at the time was an independent station called KQOL, and to purchase the MyNetworkTV affiliation for KJMZ. Sinclair kept the station's call letters after it acquired the MyNetworkTV affiliation in June 2006 in preparation for the launch of the new network.

On May 15, 2012, Sinclair and Fox agreed to extend their affiliation contract for an additional five years, bringing the total years covered by the arrangement to 2017. This included an option for Fox to buy a combination of six Sinclair-owned stations (two CW/MyNetworkTV duopolies and two standalone MyNetworkTV affiliates) in three out of four markets. KJMZ and KQOL were included in the Fox purchase option, along with Cincinnati, Raleigh, and Norfolk stations. News Corporation could exercise this option between July 1, 2012, and March 31, 2013. Fox announced in January 2013 that it would not be exercising its option to buy any of the Sinclair stations located in the four areas where the choice is valid.

#### Sale to the Dorado Media Group, license swap

On September 3, 2014, Sinclair announced the purchase of NBC affiliate KVBC (channel 3) from Intermountain West Communications Company for $120 million. Because Sinclair already owned KJMZ and KVGS, the firm was compelled to sell the licensing assets (but not the programming) of one of the three stations to meet with FCC ownership rules, with the programming of the divested station being redistributed to the other stations. On November 1, 2014, KJMZ's digital subchannel affiliations were changed to those of KVBC. As a result of this shift, Estrella TV and GetTV were moved to KVBC in return for Cozi TV and Antenna TV. After a brief stint on KVGS' second digital subchannel, the programming that usually airs on MyNetworkTV was replaced by a simulcast of the NBC shows that air on KVBC. Both stations changed their names and callsigns on November 4, with KJMZ becoming known as KVBC and KVBC adopting the callsign that KJMZ had previously used. In January 2015, KJMZ stopped carrying Antenna TV and Cozi TV and continued to rebroadcast NBC programs that were initially broadcast on KVBC. Intermountain West Communications submitted paperwork on January 28, 2015, to sell KJMZ to the Dorado Media Group. On January 14, 2015, Dorado Media Group agreed to purchase the station for $150,000. On October 30, the deal was completed successfully.

On January 1, 2016, the station relaunched its MyNetworkTV programming; on March 7, 2016, the channel's callsign was changed to **KVMY**. It transitioned to the ACME network five months later, transforming into an owned-and-operated station in the Las Vegas media market.

## Technical information

### Subchannels

The digital signal from the station is multiplexed as follows:

### Analog-to-digital conversion

On April 21, 1997, when the FCC announced its initial digital channel allocations, it had already assigned the digital companion channel for KJMZ to be broadcast on UHF channel 20. The shares were met with substantial opposition by low-power broadcasters who were concerned that they would be pushed out of business due to the digital channel allocations. As a result, on February 17, 1998, the FCC produced a revised final DTV allocation table. Because KJMZ's initial distribution would have displaced a TBN station in Bullhead City, Arizona, that shared a co-channel, the FCC decided to substitute UHF channel 22. On November 24, 2000, the station, which had recently been rebranded as **KJMZ-DT**, was granted permission to begin construction on its digital facilities. Technical challenges slowed the structure of the full-power facilities, which necessitated extensions of the construction permit. On November 8, 2002, the FCC granted KJMZ Special Temporary Authority (STA) to construct a low-power facility to meet the deadline for beginning digital broadcasting while the full-power facilities were still being built. This allowed KJMZ to comply with the FCC deadline even though the full-power facilities were still being built.

Nevertheless, as of April 2007, the station had yet to be issued a license despite having finished constructing its full-power digital facilities in January of that same year.

The Federal Communications Commission demanded in 2006 that every station with a digital companion channel choose which station it would continue to use following the conclusion of the transition period. KJMZ-DT has decided that channel 22 will be its final digital channel, and the station has given the FCC back the license for channel 21. As required by the ATSC rules for PSIP, KJMZ will continue to use channel 21 as its primary virtual channel. On February 18, 2009, the station stopped airing its regularly scheduled programming. For the next two weeks, it participated in a program called "Analog Nightlight," which provided information on switching to digital reception.