KSNV (channel 3) is a television station in Las Vegas, Nevada, United States, affiliated with NBC. It is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group alongside dual CW/MyNetworkTV affiliate KVCW (channel 33). Both stations share studios on Foremaster Lane in Las Vegas (making them the only major television stations whose operations are based inside the city limits), while KSNV's transmitter is located on Black Mountain, near Henderson (southwest of I-515/US 93/US 95).
History
Early years
The station was founded on March 8, 1982, with grant of a construction permit issued by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to build a new full-power television station on UHF channel 21 to serve Las Vegas. 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. 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 a 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 first music video aired on the station, was "Video Killed the Radio Star".
In mid-1985, KRLR began to introduce a few classic television programs, and also began airing World Class Championship Wrestling, a popular one-hour professional wrestling program originating from Dallas, Texas. KRLR was given an FCC license on April 11, 1986. By 1987, the station had replaced the music videos with more conventional fare, such as sitcoms, dramas, movies, and sports. KRLR was best known for being the broadcast home of UNLV Runnin' Rebels and Los Angeles Lakers basketball, as well as San Diego Padres and Oakland A's Major League Baseball. KRLR received competition from movie-intensive KBLR (channel 39, now a Telemundo O&O) and family-oriented independent KFBT (channel 33, now KVCW) in 1989, but held their own to be the number two independent station in Las Vegas (counting Fox-affiliated KVVU-TV, which was still programmed like an independent during its early Fox years).
In May 1994, Dres Media sold the station to Channel 21, LP, a subsidiary of Los Angeles-based Lambert Broadcasting, for $2.85 million. On January 16, 1995, the station became an affiliate of the new United Paramount Network (UPN), and changed its call letters to KUPN to reflect the new affiliation. One of the most successful turnaround stories in broadcasting, Lambert sold the station just two years later to the Sinclair Broadcast Group in April 1997 for $87 million. On March 1, 1998, Sinclair changed the station's affiliation to The WB and on May 27, 1998, changed the station's call letters to KVWB, again in honor of its new affiliation. The station moved to channel 12 on the local cable provider in 1999, when Cox Communications acquired Prime Cable.
On January 24, 2006, CBS Corporation (the parent company of UPN) and the Warner Bros. unit of Time Warner announced that The WB and UPN would be shut down that September and have their higher-rated programs merged onto a new jointly owned network called The CW. On February 22, News Corporation announced that it would start up another new network called MyNetworkTV. This new service, which would be a sister network to Fox, would be operated by Fox Television Stations and its syndication division, Twentieth Television. MyNetworkTV was created in order to give stations affiliated with UPN and The WB that were not mentioned as becoming CW affiliates another option besides becoming independent stations, as well as to compete against The CW. Sinclair chose to put The CW on the company's other Las Vegas area station, the then-independent KFBT, and chose to acquire the MyNetworkTV affiliation for KVWB. In June 2006, anticipating the start of MyNetworkTV, Sinclair changed the station's call letters yet again to KVMY.