KMYS
KMYS, virtual channel 35, is a CW-affiliated television station serving San Antonio, Texas, United States that is licensed to Kerrville. Owned by Deerfield Media, the station is operated under joint sales and shared services agreements by the Sinclair Broadcast Group, making it sister to Sinclair's duopoly of NBC affiliate WOAI-TV and Fox affiliate KABB, both licensed to San Antonio. The three stations share studios between Babcock Road and Sovereign Drive in northwest San Antonio; KMYS' transmitter is located in rural southeastern Bandera County. On cable, the station is available on Charter Spectrum and Grande Communications channel 7, and AT&T U-verse channel 35.
History
Early history
The station first signed on the air on November 6, 1985 as KRRT; it was the first English-language general entertainment independent station in the San Antonio market, as well as the first English-language commercial television station in San Antonio since KONO-TV signed on in January 1957. Prior to the station's launch, San Antonio was the largest television market in the United States that did not have an independent station. Despite the large population of San Antonio proper, San Antonio has always been a medium-sized market because the surrounding suburban and rural areas, then as now, were not much larger than San Antonio itself. San Antonio had been large enough to support an independent since at least the early 1970s. However, the market is a fairly large one geographically, and UHF stations do not carry very well across large areas. By the early 1980s, cable had gained enough penetration for a locally based independent to be viable.The station was founded by the TVX Broadcast Group, and operated from studio facilities located in Loop 410, near Ingram Park Mall, on the northwest side of the city. Shortly before its sign-on, the station built a, guy-wired aerial transmitter near Lakehills to house its transmitter.
Affiliations with Fox and then UPN
As part of a groupwide affiliation deal with TVX, KRRT became a charter affiliate of the Fox Broadcasting Company when the network launched on October 5, 1986. Paramount Pictures acquired a minority ownership interest in TVX in 1989; it would acquire the remaining interest in the company in 1991, changing its name to the Paramount Stations Group. At the time, KRRT was Paramount's smallest television station by market size.In 1994, Paramount entered into a partnership with Chris-Craft Industries—which ironically owned NBC affiliate KMOL-TV at the time—to create the United Paramount Network, with KRRT serving as the network's San Antonio affiliate; while Chris-Craft Industries was the sole owner of the network initially, Paramount supplied most of its programming. Subsequently, River City Broadcasting signed an affiliation agreement for independent station KABB to become the market's new Fox affiliate. On January 16, 1995, KRRT became a charter affiliate of UPN, with KABB assuming the Fox affiliation. Later that year, Paramount sold the station to Jet Broadcasting, which then entered into a local marketing agreement with River City. As part of the agreement, KABB took over KRRT's operations.
The arrangement was inherited by the Sinclair Broadcast Group following its acquisition of River City in 1996. Jet Broadcasting then sold the station to Glencairn, Ltd. in 1997. The family of Sinclair founder Julian Sinclair Smith owned 97% of Glencairn's stock. For all intents and purposes, KABB and KRRT were a duopoly in violation of FCC rules of the period. Glencairn had owned eleven television stations nationwide that Sinclair operated under LMAs; a later plan to sell five of its stations to Sinclair outright prompted the Rainbow/PUSH coalition to file challenges, citing concerns over a single company holding two broadcast licenses in one market and arguing that Glencairn passed itself off as a minority-owned company when it was really an arm of Sinclair, and used the LMA to gain control of the station. KRRT moved its operations to KABB's studios on Babcock Road.
As a WB affiliate
On July 21, 1997, Sinclair signed an affiliation agreement with The WB to switch the affiliations of KRRT and its four other UPN affiliates to the network. Prior to the agreement, San Antonio residents were only able to receive The WB's programming through cable and satellite from the national superstation feed of the network's Chicago affiliate WGN-TV. KRRT affiliated with The WB on January 25, 1998, rebranding as "WB 35", although it later branded itself verbally as "San Antonio's WB". As a result, KMOL-TV began carrying UPN programming during the overnight hours as a secondary affiliation; the network would not have a full-time affiliate or have its prime time programming air in pattern until Fredericksburg-licensed KBEJ, which at that time served both Austin and San Antonio, signed on in August 2000.In the following years, KRRT's syndicated programming inventory shifted away from sitcoms and movies, towards running more talk, reality and court shows. It also gradually reduced cartoons from its schedule, The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest and Pocket Dragon Adventures. during the late 1990s, eventually limiting them mainly to the WB-provided programming block Kids' WB. After the FCC levied a $40,000 fine against Sinclair in 2001 for illegally controlling Glencairn, Sinclair purchased KRRT outright, creating the market's first television duopoly with KABB.
Switch to MyNetworkTV
On January 24, 2006, the Warner Bros. unit of Time Warner and CBS Corporation announced that the two companies would shut down The WB and UPN and combine the networks' respective programming to create a new "fifth" network called The CW. On February 22, 2006, News Corporation announced the launch of a new "sixth" network called MyNetworkTV, which would be operated by Fox Television Stations and its syndication division Twentieth Television.KRRT was considered to be the likely candidate to become San Antonio's CW affiliate, since KBEJ had a rimshot signal that barely covered portions of the San Antonio and Austin metropolitan areas; most residents in both markets needed cable or satellite to get an acceptable signal from KBEJ. However, on March 2, 2006, Sinclair announced that most of its WB and UPN affiliates, including KRRT, would instead join MyNetworkTV; the CW affiliation ultimately went to channel 2—which changed its call letters to KCWX shortly afterward; this resulted in the station being dropped from Time Warner Cable's Austin system due to syndication exclusivity claims made by KNVA, which became that market's CW affiliate. To reflect the new affiliation, channel 35's call letters were changed to KMYS on June 19, 2006.
In September 2006, KABB stopped carrying Fox's children's program block, 4Kids TV; that station had carried the network's children's programming since the January 1995 affiliation swap with channel 35, it was moved to KMYS in order to accommodate the launch of a weekend expansion of its morning newscast Fox News First. The lineup remained on KMYS until 4Kids TV was discontinued by Fox in December 2008, after which Fox permanently discontinued providing network-supplied children's programming. The infomercial block that replaced 4Kids TV, Weekend Marketplace, was also rejected by KABB and likewise, airs instead on KMYS.
As a CW affiliate
On February 12, 2010, Sinclair Broadcast Group signed an agreement with The CW to move its San Antonio affiliation from KCWX to KMYS; as a result, KMYS became the market's CW affiliate on August 30, with the MyNetworkTV affiliation moving to KCWX. This affiliation swap made KMYS the only television station in the United States to have been affiliated with all five of the major television networks that have debuted since 1986.KMYS retained Weekend Marketplace on Saturday mornings, but opted to air The CW4Kids/Toonzai over two shorter blocks with the first two hours airing from 3:00 to 5:00 a.m. on Sunday mornings and the last three hours of the block airing from 2:00 to 5:00 a.m. on Monday mornings. Toonzai was replaced by Vortexx on August 25, 2012; however, KMYS continued to air that block in those same timeslots. Likewise, Vortexx's successor, Litton Entertainment's One Magnificent Morning, is carried in the same scheduling pattern. As such, it is one of a handful of CW affiliates that does not air the network's children's program block in pattern, and one of the few stations in the country that air their affiliated network's children's programming at a time when the lineup's target audience would likely require the use of a DVR or the network's website to watch. On October 9, 2017, the OMM block began airing on the station locally from 1:30 a.m. to 4:30 a.m.
On July 19, 2012, Sinclair announced that it would sell the license assets of KMYS to Deerfield Media, in order to comply with FCC duopoly regulations following its purchase of WOAI-TV from Newport Television. As WOAI and KABB respectively ranked at fourth and fifth place with KMYS ranking sixth overall in the San Antonio market in terms of sign-on to sign-off viewership, the formal creation of the new duopoly between WOAI and KABB and the sale of KMYS to Deerfield received Federal Communications Commission approval that November. The transactions were completed on December 3, 2012; however, Sinclair retained control of KMYS' operations through joint sales and shared services agreements.
Although Sinclair controls all three stations, the operations of KMYS and KABB initially remained separate from that of WOAI-TV. Sinclair is in the process of moving certain WOAI operations from its longtime downtown studio on Navarro Street to a new building adjacent to KABB and KMYS' shared Babcock Road facility, which is expected to be finalized by the summer of 2014, with the news staffs of both stations fully operating out of a shared newsroom on the second floor of the main building.
Digital television
Digital channels
The station's digital signal is multiplexed:| Channel | Video | Aspect | PSIP Short Name | Programming |
| 35.1 | 720p | KMYS-HD | Main KMYS programming / The CW | |
| 35.2 | 480i | Stadium | Stadium |
KMYS is one of many CW affiliates owned and/or operated by Sinclair that transmits their main channel in the 720p high definition format, instead of The CW's default 1080i resolution format.
KMYS carried MundoMax on its subchannel until May 2016. It started airing programming from the American Sports Network at the start of June 2016.
Analog-to-digital conversion
On February 2, 2009, Sinclair told cable and satellite television providers via e-mail that regardless of the exact mandatory switchover date to digital-only broadcasting for full-power stations, the station would shut down its analog signal on the original transition date of February 17, making KABB and KMYS the first television stations in the market to convert to digital-only broadcast transmissions.KMYS discontinued regular programming on its analog signal, over UHF channel 35, on February 17, 2009, the original target date for full-power television stations in the United States to transition from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 32, using PSIP to display its virtual channel as its former analog channel 35.
Programming
Outside of the aforementioned delay of The CW's One Magnificent Morning block to early Monday mornings, KMYS carries the entire CW programming schedule. Syndicated programs broadcast by KMYS include The Wendy Williams Show, Maury, TMZ on TV, The People's Court and Jerry Springer. The station also carries the local Latino-oriented music program Tejano y Mas, which airs Saturday nights at 11:00 p.m.KMYS has also televised select San Antonio Spurs games since 1997.