KMYA-DT, virtual channel 49, is a MeTV-affiliated television station serving Little Rock, Arkansas, United States that is licensed to Camden. The station is owned by LR Telecasting, LLC. KMYA's studios are located on Shackelford Drive in the Beverly Hills section of Little Rock, and its transmitter is located along AR 335 northwest of El Dorado. KMYA-LD in Sheridan operates as a low-poweredtranslator of KMYA-DT for the immediate Little Rock area; this station's transmitter is located on Shinall Mountain. KMYA is also repeated on digital subchannels of two low-powered Univision affiliates in Arkansas owned by Pinnacle Media: KQRY-LD in Fort Smith, and KWNL-CD in Winslow/Fayetteville. Although KMYA brands itself as a Little Rock station and is officially assigned by Nielsen to the Little Rock market, the station's transmitter is located near El Dorado, resulting in it serving most of the El Dorado–Monroe, Louisiana market and not reaching Little Rock proper. Therefore, in addition to the Sheridan translator, KMYA relies on satellite and cable television to cover the entire Little Rock market.
History
The station's repeater, KLRA-CD, was founded on May 5, 1995 as K22FA; it later changed its callsign to KKYK-LP in 1996. The low-power station was originally an affiliate of Network One, but later became an affiliate of The WB. The full-power station now known as KMYA first signed on the air in Camden on June 7, 1999, as KKYK-TV, with KKYK-LP becoming its repeater. The station was originally owned by Equity Media Holdings, which was headquartered in Little Rock and housed the master control hub for all of the company's television stations. In 2001, the station changed its call letters to KYPX, and swapped affiliations with then sister-station KWBF, becoming an affiliate of Pax TV. The station, and its repeater, remained affiliates of Pax TV until June 30, 2005, when it became i: Independent Television. KYPX disaffiliated from the newly rebranded network, and instead became the flagship station of the Retro Television Network. On June 30, 2006, the station modified its call sign to KKYK-DT, becoming one of the few U.S. television stations to bear the suffix. KKYK's analog repeater on UHF channel 20 in Little Rock, had been designated as a Class A station with its call letters being modified to KKYK-CA. On January 4, 2009, a contract conflict between Equity and Luken Communications resulted in the station losing RTN programming. As a result, Luken moved the Retro Television Network's operations to its headquarters in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and terminated all agreements with affiliates owned by Equity, including KKYK, immediately; RTN later affiliated with KATV, being carried on that station's second digital subchannel. The station also reneged on a deal with the Southland Conference to carry University of Central Arkansasbasketball games in the interim. The station became an affiliate of This TV in February 2009, lasting five months until June of that year. On April 10, 2009, Equity Media Holdings announced a fire sale of all television stations; KKYK was set for an asking price of $15 million, the highest price for any of the stations in the sale. In the auction, which took place on April 16, the station was sold to the Bank of Little Rock, which acquired the station through the subsidiary Hallmark National Mortgage Corporation. On January 3, 2011, the repeater began broadcasting digitally as KKYK-CD, and then changed its call sign to the current KLRA-CD on February 28, 2013. The station's call letters were changed to KMYA-DT on July 8, 2011. That November, Hallmark National Mortgage Corporation announced that it would sell KMYA to Ellis-Wilson, LLC, a company controlled by two former Equity executives. The sale was consummated on March 30, 2012.
KMYA-DT shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 49, on June 30, 2006. The station flash-cut its digital signal into operation UHF channel 49. The station's digital signal had been operating at reduced power and was also relayed on then-sister station KWBF 's digital subchannel 42.2, until Nexstar Broadcasting Group assumed ownership of channel 42 in January 2009.
Newscasts
In 1998, KMYA began producing a half-hour 9 p.m. newscast, which became the first primetime newscast in the Little Rock market ; the newscast was broadcast from a virtual set inside the station's studio complex. The program was canceled after less than a year on the air due to low ratings. As a Pax affiliate, the station ran rebroadcasts of the 6 and 10 p.m. newscasts from ABC affiliate KATV, one of a few Pax affiliates to rebroadcast local news programming from a station affiliated with a network other than NBC.
