History
KUMV-TV signed on February 6, 1957, after Meyer obtained the construction permit on July 18, 1956.[1] It was a semi-satellite of KFYR for a year. KMOT signed on January 23, 1958, as the third station in the Meyer group, and KUMV became a semi-satellite of KMOT.
Until KBMY/KMCY signed on in 1986, the Meyer stations carried a secondary affiliation with ABC. Until KXMD-TV signed on in 1969, KUMV carried CBS on a per-program basis.
In the late 1970s, KUMV became one of the first stations to be transmitted via terrestrial cable television into most of Saskatchewan; it even maintained a sales office in Saskatoon, as did KXMD and KFBB-TV, the ABC affiliate in Great Falls, Montana. This arrangement continued until early 1985, when the three North Dakota network affiliates were replaced by CANCOM feeds of the Detroit stations by Saskatchewan cable providers who felt the switch would improve signal quality.[2]
The Meyers sold off their broadcast holdings in 1997, with the television stations going to Sunrise Television Corporation. Sunrise sold them to The Wicks Group of Companies of New York City in 2002.
Hoak Media bought KFYR-TV, KMOT, KUMV, and KQCD in July 2006, as well as KVLY-TV in Fargo and KSFY in Sioux Falls, South Dakota and its satellite stations. On November 17, 2006, the sale was approved by the FCC.
KUMV began broadcasting digital-only on February 16, 2009.[3]
KUMV picked up MeTV in April 2013, with an official launch date of May 1, 2013.[4]
On November 20, 2013, Hoak announced the sale of most of its stations, including KUMV-TV, to Gray Television. Gray initially planned, through Excalibur Broadcasting, to also acquire Fox affiliate KXND and its Williston translator from Prime Cities Broadcasting and operate it under a shared services agreement, which would have made it a sister station to KUMV.[5] On March 25, 2014, Prime Cities Broadcasting requested that the FCC dismiss the sale of KXND to Excalibur;[6] Gray would instead acquire the non-license assets of KXND, as well as the license of Williston repeater KXND-LP.[7] The sale of the Hoak stations was completed on June 13;[8] at that time, Gray shut down KXND's full-power signal and moved Fox programming to the second digital subchannel of KUMV.[9]
