KVBC 11pm News, September 11, 2001 · 8:04pm Sep 11th, 2016
Weeknight newscast from the NBC affiliate in Las Vegas, NV. Due to extended coverage of the terrorist attacks, there were no commercial breaks.
The station went on the air as KLRJ-TV on VHF channel 2 on January 23, 1955; it was originally licensed to Henderson and was owned by Southwestern Publishing Company along with the Las Vegas Review-Journal and KORK radio (920 AM, now KBAD; and 97.1 FM, now KXPT). In September 1955, it changed its calls to KORK-TV to match its radio sisters, and soon after moved its city of license and studio facilities to Las Vegas. It has always been an NBC affiliate, but shared ABC with KLAS-TV (channel 8) until KSHO-TV (channel 13, now KTNV-TV) signed on in 1956. During the late 1950s, the station was also briefly affiliated with the NTA Film Network. In 1960, the Donrey Media Group (later Stephens Media LLC) bought the Review-Journal and the KORK stations.
In 1967, KORK-TV moved to channel 3 in order to operate from Potosi Mountain without being short-spaced to KNXT (now KCBS-TV) in Los Angeles, which also operated on channel 2. In 1971, a group of local residents led by Las Vegas attorney Jim Rogers began an effort to take control of channel 3. Rogers' group gained more support when Donrey began to heavily preempt programming from NBC—who had virtually NO tolerance of that practice—in order to sell more local advertising in the late 1970s. Most notable among those pre-emptions was that of the 1978 World Series, angering both NBC and several Las Vegas area viewers, some of whom filed complaints to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Facing pressure from both NBC and the FCC, Donrey was forced to sell the station to the Rogers group's holding company, Valley Broadcasting Company, in 1979. Donrey retained KORK radio and as a result on October 1, 1979, the station changed its callsign to KVBC, reflecting the new ownership.
In the late 1980s, KVBC's sign-on to sign-off ratings climbed to an all-time high, thanks in part to a strong primetime lineup by NBC.
Two major "events" aided KVBC's rise to the top. In May 1988, an explosion and fire rocked the Pacific Engineering and Production Company (Pepcon) in Henderson. KVBC was knocked off the air for a few minutes, because its transmitter facilities atop Black Mountain were positioned just above the blast site. Once KVBC was back on the air, it was the first local station to continuously broadcast its breaking news coverage of the explosion. Later that year, CBS (affiliated with KLAS-TV8 in Las Vegas) produced 48 Hours in Las Vegas, a feature about Las Vegas that portrayed the city as full of gamblers and riddled by crime. In response, KVBC produced a one-hour documentary entitled Las Vegas, Beyond 48 Hours, which painted a more realistic picture of "Sin City" and its residents.
KVBC was first to document the Mirage volcano explosion during its initial test in front of an unsuspecting nighttime audience.
With the digital transition completed, the station officially added the -DT suffix to its legal call sign on June 23, 2009.
On June 18, 2010, KVBC filed an application with the FCC to change the station's call letters to KSNV-DT, reflecting the renaming of Valley Broadcasting Company (which by this time, was a subsidiary of Sunbelt Communications Company that held the station's license) to Southern Nevada Communications, as well as better reflecting the station's relationship with sister stations KRNV-DT in Reno and KENV-DT in Elko. The change to KSNV-DT became official on July 9, 2010.
Jim Rogers died of cancer on June 14, 2014, at the age of 75. KSNV was the flagship station of the Intermountain West Communications Company until the gradual sale of its remaining stations that began a year before his death. The Sinclair Broadcast Group, who own Las Vegas's MyNetworkTV and The CW affiliate KVCW (and formerly owned KVMY, now KHSV), had acquired its Reno sister station KRNV-DT and satellite KENV-DT in late-2013, and announced its purchase of KSNV on September 3, 2014. Due to restrictions preventing Sinclair from owning all three stations, the company elected to swap KVMY's license to Intermountain West for that of KSNV. On November 4, 2014, the KSNV call letter, virtual channel number, and intellectual unit moved to the channel 21 license that was previously used for KVMY, effectively putting the station under Sinclair ownership.
