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KVCW (channel 33) is a
television station A television station is a set of equipment managed by a business, organisation or other entity, such as an amateur television (ATV) operator, that transmits video content and audio content via radio waves directly from a transmitter on the ea ...
in
Las Vegas, Nevada Las Vegas (; Spanish for "The Meadows"), often known simply as Vegas, is the 25th-most populous city in the United States, the most populous city in the state of Nevada, and the county seat of Clark County. The city anchors the Las Vega ...
, United States, affiliated with
The CW ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the ...
and
MyNetworkTV MyNetworkTV (unofficially abbreviated MyTV, MyNet, MNT or MNTV, and sometimes referred to as My Network) is an American commercial broadcast television syndication service and former television network owned by Fox Corporation, operated by its ...
. It is owned by
Sinclair Broadcast Group Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc. (SBG) is a publicly traded American telecommunications conglomerate that is controlled by the descendants of company founder Julian Sinclair Smith. Headquartered in the Baltimore suburb of Cockeysville, Maryland, ...
alongside
NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...
affiliate KSNV (channel 3). 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 KVCW's transmitter is located on Black Mountain, near
Henderson Henderson may refer to: People * Henderson (surname), description of the surname, and a list of people with the surname *Clan Henderson, a Scottish clan Places Argentina *Henderson, Buenos Aires Australia *Henderson, Western Australia Canada * ...
(southwest of I-515/ US 93/
US 95 US Route 95 (US 95) is a major north–south United States Numbered Highways, US Highway in the western United States. It travels through the states of Arizona, California, Nevada, Oregon, and Idaho, staying inland from the Pacific Coast ...
).


History


Early years

On April 22, 1987, the
Federal Communications Commission The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisdicti ...
(FCC) issued an original
construction permit Planning permission or developmental approval refers to the approval needed for construction or expansion (including significant renovation), and sometimes for demolition, in some jurisdictions. It is usually given in the form of a building perm ...
to 4-A Communications to build a new full-power television station, on UHF channel 33, to serve the Las Vegas market. 4-A Communications, owned by Lawrence and Teri DePaulis, became Channel 33, Inc. (which remained the station's licensee until 2015) in August 1987. The station, known as KFBT, went on the air on July 30, 1989, under a program test authority and was given a license one month later. The station's original transmitter was located in the
McCullough Range The mountains in the McCullough Range lie mostly above the city of Henderson in the U.S. state of Nevada. The range has two distinct areas with the northern portion being primarily volcanic in origin, while the southern part of the range is prima ...
southwest of Henderson. On July 20, 1990, a family ownership group headed by Daniel "Danny" Koker purchased Channel 33, Inc. Under the Kokers, KFBT was an
independent station An independent station is an independent radio or terrestrial television station which is independent in some way from broadcast networks. The definition of "independence" varies from country to country, reflecting governmental regulations, marke ...
with a firmly local flavor and soon garnered much acclaim with features such as the scary
B-movie A B movie or B film is a low-budget commercial motion picture. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified films intended for distribution as the less-publicized bottom half of a double feat ...
showcase ''Saturday Fright at the Movies'', hosted by Count Cool Rider, which aired at 10 p.m. Count Cool Rider was actually Danny Koker II, son of the station president and also one of the station's owners, who has since gone on to become a respected builder of custom
motorcycle A motorcycle (motorbike, bike, or trike (if three-wheeled)) is a two or three-wheeled motor vehicle Steering, steered by a Motorcycle handlebar, handlebar. Motorcycle design varies greatly to suit a range of different purposes: Long-distance ...
s, as well as a regular expert on the
History Channel History (formerly The History Channel from January 1, 1995 to February 15, 2008, stylized as HISTORY) is an American pay television network and flagship channel owned by A&E Networks, a joint venture between Hearst Communications and the Disney ...
series ''
Pawn Stars ''Pawn Stars'' is an American reality television series shown on History and produced by Leftfield Pictures. The series is filmed in Las Vegas, Nevada, where it chronicles the daily activities at the World Famous Gold & Silver Pawn Shop, a 24 ...
'' and host of its spinoff, '' Counting Cars''.


As a WB affiliate and return to independence

The station primarily broadcast older movies, sitcoms, and dramas during this era, as well as some Christian religious programs (as the senior Koker was a gospel musician) and
professional wrestling Professional wrestling is a form of theater that revolves around staged wrestling matches. The mock combat is performed in a ring similar to the kind used in boxing, and the dramatic aspects of pro wrestling may be performed both in the ring or ...
(most notably
World Class Championship Wrestling World Class Championship Wrestling (WCCW), later known as the World Class Wrestling Association (WCWA) (1986–1991) was an American professional wrestling promotion headquartered in Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas. Originally owned by promoter Ed ...
and the
National Wrestling Alliance The National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) is an American professional wrestling promotion and former professional wrestling governing body operated by its parent company Lightning One, Inc. Founded in 1948, the NWA began as a governing body for a ...
). KFBT became a charter affiliate of
The WB The WB Television Network (for Warner Bros., or the "Frog Network", for its former mascot, Michigan J. Frog) was an American television network launched on broadcast television on January 11, 1995, as a joint venture between the Warner Bros. ...
at the network's launch on January 11, 1995, and remained an affiliate while owned by the Koker family. On December 18, 1997, the Koker family sold Channel 33, Inc. to Montecito Broadcasting Corporation with the sale being finalized on February 3, 1998. The same day that Montecito closed on its purchase of KFBT, it immediately entered into an agreement to be acquired by the
Sinclair Broadcast Group Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc. (SBG) is a publicly traded American telecommunications conglomerate that is controlled by the descendants of company founder Julian Sinclair Smith. Headquartered in the Baltimore suburb of Cockeysville, Maryland, ...
, which Montecito entered into a
local marketing agreement In North American broadcasting, a local marketing agreement (LMA), or local management agreement, is a contract in which one company agrees to operate a radio or television station owned by another party. In essence, it is a sort of lease or tim ...
(LMA) to operate KFBT, until the transaction was completed. On March 1, 1998, Sinclair moved the WB affiliation to KUPN (channel 21, which later changed calls to KVWB, now KHSV) and KFBT was to affiliate with UPN but did not sign a contract and instead became an independent station leaving no local provider of the network over the air caused public outcry for Las Vegas viewers. Eventually the next year, KCNG-LP signed on and picked up the UPN affiliation, immediately asserting network exclusivity in the market and causing providers to drop KCOP and WWOR on their request. The station was rebranded as "Gold 33" and began showing mainly newer syndicated programming. Sinclair completed its purchase of Montecito and Channel 33, Inc. in February 2000, resulting in the creation of the market's first
duopoly A duopoly (from Greek δύο, ''duo'' "two" and πωλεῖν, ''polein'' "to sell") is a type of oligopoly where two firms have dominant or exclusive control over a market. It is the most commonly studied form of oligopoly due to its simplicit ...
between KFBT and KVWB.


As a CW affiliate

On January 24, 2006,
CBS Corporation The second incarnation of CBS Corporation (the first being a short-lived rename of the Westinghouse Electric Corporation) was an American multinational media conglomerate with interests primarily in commercial broadcasting, publishing, an ...
(the parent company of UPN) and the Warner Bros. unit of
Time Warner Warner Media, LLC ( traded as WarnerMedia) was an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate. It was headquartered at the 30 Hudson Yards complex in New York City, United States. It was originally established in 1972 by ...
announced that The WB and UPN would be shut down that September and have some of their higher-rated programs migrated onto a new jointly owned network called
The CW ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the ...
. On February 22,
News Corporation News Corporation (abbreviated News Corp.), also variously known as News Corporation Limited, was an American multinational mass media corporation controlled by media mogul Rupert Murdoch and headquartered at 1211 Avenue of the Americas in New ...
announced that it would start up another new network called
MyNetworkTV MyNetworkTV (unofficially abbreviated MyTV, MyNet, MNT or MNTV, and sometimes referred to as My Network) is an American commercial broadcast television syndication service and former television network owned by Fox Corporation, operated by its ...
. This new service, which would be a sister network to Fox, would be operated by
Fox Television Stations Fox Television Stations, LLC (FTS; alternately Fox Television Stations Group, LLC), is a group of television stations located within the United States, which are owned-and-operated by the Fox Broadcasting Company, a subsidiary of the Fox Co ...
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 affiliate KVWB with MyNetworkTV leaving The CW to join with either low-power UPN affiliate KTUD-CA (channel 25) or KFBT. Sinclair began negotiations with The CW to affiliate KFBT, and in April, when KTUD decided to go independent instead of pursuing a CW affiliation, KFBT was virtually assured The CW affiliation. An affiliation agreement was announced on May 2 and KFBT changed its call letters to the current KVCW on June 19, reflecting its pending affiliation with the new network. KVMY (now KHSV) affiliated with MyNetworkTV, when the network launched on September 5, two weeks before The WB was scheduled to shut down and The CW made its debut; as a result, KVCW rejoined The WB for the network's last two weeks of programming before switching its affiliation to The CW on September 18. 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; KVCW and KVMY were included in the Fox purchase option, along with stations in
Cincinnati Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line w ...
( WSTR-TV),
Raleigh Raleigh (; ) is the capital city of the state of North Carolina and the seat of Wake County in the United States. It is the second-most populous city in North Carolina, after Charlotte. Raleigh is the tenth-most populous city in the Southeas ...
( WLFL/ WRDC) and
Norfolk Norfolk () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in East Anglia in England. It borders Lincolnshire to the north-west, Cambridgeshire to the west and south-west, and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the Nor ...
(
WTVZ-TV WTVZ-TV (channel 33) is a television station licensed to Norfolk, Virginia, United States, serving the Hampton Roads area as an affiliate of MyNetworkTV. Owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, the station maintains studios on Clearfield Avenue in ...
). In January 2013, Fox announced that it would not exercise its option to buy any of the Sinclair stations in the four markets included in the option. On August 13, 2013, KSNV-DT announced that the
NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...
soap opera ''
Days of Our Lives ''Days of Our Lives'' (also stylized as ''Days of our Lives''; simply referred to as ''Days'' or ''DOOL'') is an American television soap opera that streams on the streaming service Peacock. The soap, which aired on the American television net ...
'' would move to KVCW as of August 19. The move of the program was necessitated after KSNV changed its schedule to accommodate a 3 p.m. newscast. On September 3, 2014, Sinclair announced the purchase of KSNV from
Intermountain West Communications Company Intermountain West Communications Company was an American telecommunications company, formerly owned by James E. Rogers (1938–2014), that remains as the licensee company for a number of local television stations in the United States, operated ...
for $120 million. As Sinclair already owns KVCW and KVMY, the company will 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. On November 1, 2014, KVMY's programming was moved to KVCW's second digital subchannel. Sinclair could not buy KSNV-DT outright because Las Vegas has only seven full-power stations—four too few to legally permit a duopoly. With the sale's completion, Sinclair now controls half of those stations. It also created a situation in which a CW affiliate is the nominal senior partner in a duopoly involving an NBC affiliate and a "Big Four" station.


Programming


Syndicated programming

Syndicated programming seen on KVCW includes ''
Judge Mathis ''Judge Mathis'' is an American syndicated arbitration-based reality court show presided over by Judge Greg Mathis, a former judge of Michigan's 36th District Court and Black-interests motivational speaker/activist. The courtroom series premi ...
'', '' The Doctors'', ''
The People's Court ''The People's Court'' is an American arbitration-based reality court show, featuring an arbitrator handling small claims disputes in a simulated courtroom set. Within the court show genre, it is the first of all arbitration-based reality sty ...
'', ''
Jerry Springer Gerald Norman Springer (born February 13, 1944) is a British-American broadcaster, journalist, actor, producer, former lawyer, and politician. He hosted the tabloid talk show '' Jerry Springer'' between September 30, 1991 and July 26, 2018, an ...
'', '' Steve Wilkos'', '' Maury'', and ''
2 Broke Girls ''2 Broke Girls'' (stylized ''2 Broke Girl$'') is an American television sitcom that aired on CBS from September 19, 2011, to April 17, 2017. The series was produced for Warner Bros. Television and created by Michael Patrick King and Whitney Cum ...
''.


Sports programming

On February 3, 2021, the Henderson Silver Knights announced a partnership with KVCW to broadcast 10 home games during the team's inaugural season. This partnership would continue in the 2021–22 season. On May 21, 2021, the WNBA's
Las Vegas Aces The Las Vegas Aces are an American professional basketball team based in the Las Vegas metropolitan area. The Aces compete in the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) as a member club of the league's Western Conference. The team play ...
announced a partnership with MyLVTV to televise 25 games during the
2021 WNBA season The 2021 WNBA season was the 25th season of the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA). The Seattle Storm were the defending champions. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, teams played a 32-game season (rather than the 36 games agreed to in the ...
.


Newscasts

In 2003, former sister station KVWB established a news department and began airing an hour-long 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 KFBT, which aired its own local newscast at 7 p.m. It also aired "The Point", a one-minute
conservative Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization in ...
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, originally titled ''News 3 at 10 on The WB Las Vegas'', debuted on April 4, 2006 and was later renamed to ''News 3 at 10 on MyLVTV'' to correspond with KVMY's affiliation switch to MyNetworkTV. The program was discontinued on December 15, 2006 and moved to KVCW the following Monday under the title ''News 3 at 10 on The CW Las Vegas''. On August 11, 2007, KVBC became the second station in the Las Vegas market to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition and the KVCW broadcast was included in the upgrade. The 10 p.m. newscast originated from KVBC's studios on Foremaster Lane in Las Vegas near the border with
North Las Vegas North Las Vegas is a suburban city in Clark County, Nevada, United States, in the Las Vegas Valley. As of the 2010 census it had a population of 216,961, with an estimated population of 251,974 in 2019. The city was incorporated on May 1, 19 ...
. KVBC also produced a 15-minute sports highlight program called ''Sports Zone'', that aired weeknights at 10:45. Both programs were discontinued on September 28, 2009 and replaced with syndicated programming. As of August 17, 2015, current sister station KSNV relaunched newscasts on KVCW. ''Wake Up with The CW Las Vegas'' airs from 7 to 9 a.m. and the half-hour broadcast of ''The CW Las Vegas News at Ten'', airs at 10 p.m. Both newscasts compete with KVVU's 7 a.m. segment of ''Fox 5 News This Morning'' and the 10 p.m. airing of ''Fox 5 News at Ten''.


Technical information


Subchannels


Analog-to-digital conversion

When the FCC released its initial digital channel allocations on April 21, 1997, it had assigned KFBT's digital companion channel to
UHF Ultra high frequency (UHF) is the ITU designation for radio frequencies in the range between 300 megahertz (MHz) and 3 gigahertz (GHz), also known as the decimetre band as the wavelengths range from one meter to one tenth of a meter (on ...
channel 32. The allocations met with considerable resistance from low-power broadcasters who would be displaced by the digital channel allocations, and on February 17, 1998, the FCC issued a revised final DTV allocation table. KFBT's original allocation would have displaced low-powered K31DO (now KNBX-CD), so the FCC substituted UHF channel 29 allowing channel 32 to be assigned to
Lake Havasu City, Arizona Lake Havasu City (, ) is a city in Mohave County, Arizona, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 57,144, up from 52,527 in 2010. It is served by Lake Havasu City Airport. History The community first started as a ...
station KMCC-DT and eliminating a displacement there. KFBT was granted a permit to construct its digital facilities on January 26, 2001. Technical difficulties delayed construction of the full-power facilities requiring extensions of the construction permit. On November 8, 2002, KFBT 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 KVCW-DT, completed construction of its full-power digital facilities in January 2007 and was granted a license on March 8. Back in 2006, the FCC required each station with a digital companion channel to select which one it would continue to use after the end of the transition period (at that time scheduled for February 17, 2009). KVCW-DT selected channel 29 as its final digital channel and returned the channel 33 license to the FCC. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's
virtual channel In most telecommunications organizations, a virtual channel is a method of remapping the ''program number'' as used in H.222 Program Association Tables and Program Mapping Tables to a channel number that can be entered via digits on a receiver's ...
as its former UHF analog channel 33. Regular analog programming was dropped on February 18, 2009, with the station participating in the " Analog Nightlight" program for two weeks, with a broadcast explaining how to switch to digital reception.


ATSC 3.0 lighthouse

The station's digital signal is multiplexed: On May 26, 2020, KVCW discontinued ATSC 1.0 broadcasts and became one of the first stations in the country (and the first in the
Western United States The Western United States (also called the American West, the Far West, and the West) is the region comprising the westernmost states of the United States. As American settlement in the U.S. expanded westward, the meaning of the term ''the We ...
) to begin broadcasting in ATSC 3.0. Its primary channel is simulcast on KTNV-DT5, MyNetworkTV on sister station KSNV-DT5, and KVCW-DT3, KVCW-DT4 and KVCW-DT5 on the fifth, sixth and seventh digital subchannels of KLAS-TV.


Translators


References


External links


CWLasVegas.com
- Official KVCW website
MyLVTV.com
- MyLVTV official website
LasVegas.ThisTV.com
- Official This TV Las Vegas website {{DEFAULTSORT:Kvcw Sinclair Broadcast Group The CW affiliates MyNetworkTV affiliates TBD (TV network) affiliates Television channels and stations established in 1989 1989 establishments in Nevada VCW ATSC 3.0 television stations