KSNV
KSNV is a television station in Las Vegas, Nevada, United States, affiliated with NBC. It is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group alongside CW/MyNetworkTV affiliate KVCW. The two stations share studios on Foremaster Lane in Las Vegas; KSNV's transmitter is located on Black Mountain, near Henderson.
What is now KSNV traces its origin to the launch of KLRJ-TV on channel 2 on January 23, 1955. KLRJ-TV was owned by and named for the Las Vegas Review-Journal newspaper; it was licensed to the Las Vegas suburb of Henderson and maintained studios in between the two cities. Shortly after starting KLRJ-TV, Donrey acquired Las Vegas radio station KORK; channel 2 became KORK-TV in 1962, when the FCC permitted KLRJ-TV to change its city of license to Las Vegas. The station moved from channel 2 to channel 3 on January 3, 1967, as part of a transmitter site relocation.
In 1971, the Las Vegas Valley Broadcasting Company, headed by attorney James E. Rogers, filed a competing application for channel 3. The Federal Communications Commission called a hearing to weigh the new station proposal versus KORK-TV's renewal; the case centered on KORK-TV's use of "clipping", an illegal practice of airing local commercials over network-furnished material and advertising. The ensuing legal fight lasted throughout the 1970s: the FCC and federal appeals courts consistently denied KORK-TV a renewal of its broadcast license, but the Las Vegas Valley Broadcasting application was not finally approved until the end of the decade. On October 1, 1979, KORK-TV was replaced by KVBC, which continued with the same staff but built new studio and transmitter facilities at their present sites.
While fending off a second and unsuccessful license challenge, under Rogers's ownership, KVBC rapidly improved in the late 1980s and 1990s from a distant second-place in local news ratings to a contender and market leader. In the late 2000s and early 2010s, the station's programming strategy evolved to remove many syndicated programs and replace them with newscasts. After Rogers died in 2014, Sinclair Broadcast Group acquired KSNV's assets and conducted a switch of technical facilities that allowed it to retain all of its programming while divesting the former KSNV license, now KHSV.
KLRJ-TV: Early years
Channel 2 was originally assigned by the Federal Communications Commission to Henderson, a city south of Las Vegas, when the commission lifted its multi-year freeze on TV station assignments in 1952. The action lay unused for nearly a year until it suddenly had two applicants in the span of several weeks. The first was the Southwestern Publishing Company, publisher of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the city's afternoon newspaper. In the first television station application filed in the state, Southwestern had applied on August 16, 1950, for channel 8 at Las Vegas. When the freeze lifted, more applicants sought channel 8, including Las Vegas Television, a sister company to local radio station KLAS. Southwestern Publishing and Las Vegas Television entered into discussions to merge their bids, which fell apart when the talks were reported on the radio. That prompted Hank Greenspun, the publisher of the morning Las Vegas Sun, to file for channel 8. There were now three applications on file for the one channel. At the time, the FCC, seeking to work through a massive backlog of applications, prioritized uncontested channels. Southwestern Publishing then filed for channel 2 in Henderson on February 26; one day later, the Boulder City Broadcasting Company, owners of radio station KRAM in Boulder City, joined them, putting every commercial channel in or near Las Vegas in contested status.For channel 2, the logjam broke when Boulder City Broadcasting Company withdrew from channel 2 contention so that some of its stockholders could participate in the contest for channel 13. The studios and transmission tower and antenna were built at a site on Boulder Highway, midway between Henderson and Las Vegas; the new station boasted that its studio was the largest between the Mississippi River and Los Angeles. Southwestern Publishing also signed to affiliate channel 2 with NBC.
KLRJ-TV began telecasting on January 23, 1955, as Nevada's third television station. It was the second Nevada station owned by Donald W. Reynolds, publisher of the Review-Journal; he also started KZTV, channel 8 in Reno. Reynolds then expanded his media interests with the 1955 acquisition of KOLO radio in Reno and Las Vegas radio station KORK. The sale was initially approved in April but held up until July after KLAS-TV, the station built on channel 8, charged that Reynolds was offering discounted rates for advertising between the Las Vegas-area TV station and newspaper as well as for the two Nevada TV stations. In addition to NBC programming, the station broadcast some programs from ABC, which did not have a primary local affiliate until KSHO-TV signed a contract in December 1957; it also briefly affiliated with the NTA Film Network, which began in 1956.
On November 19, 1962, KLRJ-TV became KORK-TV. The move coincided with the city of license changing from Henderson to Las Vegas after a petition by the station, though it remained in its Boulder Highway studios and was required by the commission to continue serving the Henderson area.
In 1965, KORK sought to move its transmitter to Potosi Mountain. However, if it did so, it would no longer be adequately spaced to other stations on channel 2. As a result, in May 1966, the FCC approved changes in four television allocations, including moving KORK-TV to channel 3 and changing a channel allocation for Boulder City from channel 4 to channel 5; it also switched channel assignments in Goldfield and Cedar City. The changeover to channel 3 was made on January 3, 1967. Simultaneously, Donrey inaugurated a microwave transmission link between Reno and Las Vegas, enabling Southern Nevadans to see news events in Northern Nevada.
The studios of KORK-TV on Boulder Highway were destroyed by fire on the afternoon of March 6, 1972, leaving only the walls standing. The blaze broke out in an attic in the rear of the structure, where film and scripts were kept. These combustible materials were being heated by hot air rising from the transmitter room below, which was trapped in the storage area. KORK-TV moved into a disused studio in the new humanities building at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, paying for the facilities by installing new lighting that would remain with the university. The station returned to the air a week after the fire; a new transmitter was installed inside a trailer, while the station rented a mobile production unit to provide a control room and color cameras. It was the second fire at an NBC affiliate in two weeks; a humorous NBC bulletin advised stations to "check their fire extinguishers". The station rebuilt in its existing footprint but with a new internal layout, moving back to Boulder Highway in September.
1970s license challenge
On September 1, 1971, a group of 18 Las Vegas professionals known as the Las Vegas Valley Broadcasting Company and headed by attorney James E. Rogers filed an application to establish a station on channel 3 in Las Vegas, conflicting with the renewal of KORK-TV's broadcast license. Two months later, KORK-TV responded with a full-page newspaper advertisement that compared Valley Broadcasting to the claim jumpers of the Old West, touted the station's advancements in technology, and declared, "We have too many years of painfully-gained experience, too much thought, planning and money invested, and too much consideration for the best interests of the viewing public to give up without a fight which we are confident we will win." The Las Vegas Valley Broadcasting Company application followed a court ruling that threw out an FCC policy statement favorable to incumbent broadcasters at license renewal time and was one of the first challenger bids received by the commission in the wake of the court's action.In the face of the license challenge, the two firms initially reached a deal to merge their television interests, pending FCC approval. By that time, the FCC was investigating Donrey and its stations for a practice called "clipping", a practice whereby the station aired local commercials over network commercials or other material while continuing to charge the network for the air time. This was not the only complaint about Donrey's operation of KORK-TV; William Hernstadt, the president of competitor KVVU-TV, charged that the Review-Journal gave preferential treatment in news articles, magazine covers, and TV listings to channel 3. In June 1972, the FCC sent the two applications to comparative hearing. For Donrey, the clipping investigation proved immediately costly. The commission held up a proposed purchase of KVOA in Tucson, Arizona, over the matter, and the seller of KVOA instead reached a deal with another group shortly after the hearing designation for KORK-TV.
Hearings opened in Las Vegas in March 1973. Reynolds admitted to "overloading", crowding local advertisements into network continuity and "clutter"; Ed Tabor, the general manager, downplayed clipping by calling it "a common practice in the industry". Valley Broadcasting stumbled in presenting its case. A full day of testimony, consisting of a key witness whose complaints to the FCC kickstarted the clipping case, was struck from the record; administrative law judge Chester Naumowicz rejected additional documentation provided by the challengers to support their bid. Naumowicz issued his initial decision in June 1974: a double denial. He found against Donrey's operation of KORK-TV, finding its correspondence "rife with inaccurate and misleading statements", but he also refused to grant a permit to Valley Broadcasting over a series of financial complications, opting not to "gamble the public interest". Among the issues he cited in Valley's application was the conditioning of financing on a network affiliation and vice versa, as well as difficulties in obtaining the proposed transmitter site.
Naumowicz's initial decision was appealed to the full commission, which issued an identical ruling on a 6–0 vote in July 1976. The commission denied Donrey a renewal for KORK-TV while denying Las Vegas Valley Broadcasting Company a permit over financial qualifications. It instead moved to open the channel 3 facility to all filers. This decision was appealed by both parties, which asked the commission to reconsider. Donrey argued that the commission made an error and alleged that Broadcasting magazine had been leaked a copy of the decision; Valley Broadcasting objected to being found financially unqualified. The case came before the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which in 1978 likewise denied KORK-TV a renewal. However, the D.C. Circuit reversed and remanded to the FCC the part of the order denying the Las Vegas Valley Broadcasting Company application. One last attempt by Donrey to appeal this order to the Supreme Court was rebuffed on April 30, 1979, marking the end of a legal fight that had stretched nearly eight years.
KORK-TV continued to operate for five more months; the FCC did not grant a construction permit to the Las Vegas Valley Broadcasting Company until August. The commission permitted the station to remain on the air by way of two short-term license extensions. Had the commission not granted the time extensions, KORK-TV would have been forced to cease broadcasting. A pause in the operation of channel 3 could have resulted in NBC switching stations and affected the financial viability of channel 3. KVVU-TV, the market's independent station, had recently been bought by a group led by Johnny Carson and Herb Kaufmann, the latter of whom reportedly went to New York and negotiated with network executives.