KHSV

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.[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 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".[3]

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.[4] 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.[2] 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.[2] 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.[5][6] On February 22, News Corporation announced that it would start up another new network called MyNetworkTV.[7] 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.[2]

On May 15, 2012, Sinclair and Fox agreed to a five-year affiliation agreement extension for the station group's 19 Fox-affiliated stations until 2017. This included an option, that was exercisable between July 1, 2012 and March 31, 2013, for Fox parent News Corporation to buy a combination of six Sinclair-owned stations (two CW/MyNetworkTV duopolies and two standalone MyNetworkTV affiliates) in three out of four markets; KVMY and KVCW were included in the Fox purchase option, along with stations in Cincinnati (WSTR-TV), Raleigh (WLFL/WRDC) and Norfolk (WTVZ).[8] In January 2013, Fox announced that it will not exercise its option to buy any of the Sinclair stations in the four markets included in the option.[9]

On September 3, 2014, Sinclair announced the purchase of NBC affiliate KSNV-DT (channel 3) from Intermountain West Communications Company for $120 million. As Sinclair already owned KVMY and KVCW, the company was required to sell the license assets (though not the programming) of one of the three stations to comply with FCC ownership restrictions, with the divested station's programming being relocated to the other stations.[10] On November 1, 2014, KVMY's digital subchannel affiliations were swapped with KSNV—moving Cozi TV and Antenna TV to KSNV in exchange for Estrella TV and GetTV. MyNetworkTV programming was moved to KVCW's second digital subchannel, and was replaced by a simulcast of KSNV's NBC programming. On November 4, the two stations also switched callsigns, with KVMY being renamed to KSNV, and KSNV-DT taking on the former KVMY callsign.[11] In January 2015, KVMY stopped simulcasting NBC programming from KSNV, solely carrying Antenna TV and Cozi TV. On January 28, 2015, Intermountain West Communications filed to sell KVMY to Howard Stirk Holdings (a company controlled by Armstrong Williams). HSH had agreed on January 14 to purchase for $150,000 the stock of the Sinclair subsidiary that was a party to IWCC's sale of KSNV-DT and currently holds the license of KVCW; KVCW and KSNV themselves remain under Sinclair ownership.[12] The transaction was finalized on October 30.[13] This transaction was necessary because Las Vegas has only seven full-power stations—not enough to legally permit a duopoly under then-policy.

Cozi TV was dropped by the station on January 1, 2016; it was later replaced by Decades.

On March 7, 2016, the callsign was changed to KHSV.[14]

In 2003, KHSV (as KVWB) established a news department and began airing a primetime newscast at 10 p.m. It was part of Sinclair's centralized News Central operation that was based at the company's headquarters on Beaver Dam Road in Hunt Valley, Maryland. National and international news segments, weather forecasts and some sports segments originated from the company's Hunt Valley facility, while local news and sports segments were based at KFBT/KVWB's Las Vegas studios. The news department was shared with then-independent station KFBT (channel 33; now KVCW), which aired its own local newscast at 7 p.m. It also aired The Point, a one-minute conservative political commentary, that was required to be broadcast on all Sinclair-owned stations with newscasts. The news department was shut down at the beginning of March 2006, as were the majority of Sinclair's news operations under the News Central format.

KVWB later entered into a news share agreement with NBC affiliate KVBC (channel 3, now KSNV) to produce a nightly 10 p.m. newscast for channel 21. The newscast debuted on April 6, 2006, under the title News 3 at 10 on The WB Las Vegas and was later renamed to News 3 at 10 on MyLVTV following the September switch to MyNetworkTV. The 10 p.m. newscast originated from KVBC's studios on Foremaster Lane in Las Vegas near the border with North Las Vegas. The program was discontinued on December 15, 2006, and moved to KVCW the following Monday. That newscast was also discontinued on September 28, 2009, but was revived in 2015.

• KHSV on Facebook
• BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on KHSV-TV