KMCC

History

On May 14, 1996, the FCC issued a construction permit to Meridian Communications Company (later Mojave Broadcasting Company) for a full power television station on UHF channel 34 to serve Lake Havasu City, Arizona. Its original call letters were to be KAUE, adopted in February 1997, but changed to KMCC a month later.

In July 1996, while preparing to build the station, Mojave Broadcasting determined that the proposed transmitter location was inadequate for a full-power television operation and that the alternate site near Oatman, Arizona could not provide city-grade service to Lake Havasu City due to terrain. In early 1999, they requested to move the station and both the analog and digital allotments to Laughlin, Nevada, with the transmitter at the Oatman site. They later modified their proposal to specify a transmitter in Laughlin, allowing it to secure an affiliation with NBC, since the new location would not interfere with Las Vegas NBC station KVBC (now KSNV); the children of James Rogers, chairman of KVBC owner Sunbelt Communications Company, owned Mojave Broadcasting, and Sunbelt had signed a time brokerage agreement with KMCC.

The FCC formally granted the request in June 2000 [1] and Mojave Broadcasting began building the station in Laughlin. The FCC granted a construction permit for a digital companion channel, UHF 32, on January 15, 2002, and granted Special Temporary Authorization (STA) on April 6, 2004 to broadcast in digital at reduced power from the analog transmitter location.

The analog station signed on August 21, 2003 as a satellite of KVBC, and was granted a license on May 28, 2004. The arrangement was temporary, as before the station was licensed, Cranston II LLC had agreed to buy KMCC from Mojave Broadcasting. The sale was approved by the FCC in October 2004 and consummated in July 2005. Upon taking ownership, Cranston changed the station to Spanish-language programming from TeleFórmula, the cable news arm of Grupo Fórmula. In March 2006, equipment failure forced the station to reduce power significantly; in November, it switched to Multimedios Television.

On January 26, 2009, KMCC switched to Mega TV, an independent television network based in Florida. The station again changed affiliations on January 1, 2010, affiliating with VasalloVision. KMCC then became an affiliate of MundoFox (now MundoMax) when it launched on August 13, 2012.

Entravision Communications agreed to purchase KMCC for $2.75 million on March 1, 2017; the sale will create a duopoly with Univision affiliate KINC.

Digital television

KMCC has a construction permit to broadcast on UHF channel 32 from a transmitter location approximately 40 km (25 mi) NNE of the analog transmitter location. The site, located near Dolan Springs, Arizona is over 1200 m (4000 ft) higher in elevation than the analog site, so while the analog station serves the Mohave Valley from Bullhead City, Arizona and Laughlin down to Needles, California, the digital station, when fully built and operational, will not only serve Laughlin and the Colorado River Valley, but most of central Mohave County, Arizona and will reach beyond Las Vegas. As of October 2007 however, the station is broadcasting on STA from the analog site at 15 kW with coverage approximately that of the analog signal. Cranston has filed a request to extend the STA until January 1, 2007. As of 2015, KMCC channel 32 is now airing a music video format 24/7 called TheCoolTV on digital channels 32.2, 32.3 with some local programming. On December 1, 2016, with the demise of MundoMax, KMCC switched to Luken Communications' The Action Channel and Heartland networks.

Translators

The following stations rebroadcast the signal of KMCC:

Of note, KNBX-CD (meaning Nevada BoX) was owned by Equity Media Holdings and previously broadcast programming from TeleFórmula. Before that, it had aired programming from MTV2. Like most over-the-air MTV2 affiliates, it was an affiliate of The Box until that network's acquisition by Viacom in 2001.

KNBX-CD was sold at auction to Mako Communications on April 16, 2009.