The station was founded in 1986 by
Chester Smith and his company
Sainte Partners II, L.P. of
Modesto, California, and started broadcasting as KBCP on channel 30 on November 14, 1990. It was the first Sainte station to broadcast in English; its programming consisted of Christian and
home shopping programming, though Smith expressed an interest in a potential Fox affiliation at that time. The call letters changed to KCVU on October 16, 1992, and the station returned to air October 6, 1993. On January 1, 1994, the station finally obtained a Fox affiliation. It replaced an affiliation on KRCR-TV seen during non-ABC hours since the network's inception in 1986. KRCR's other two satellites in Eureka and
Fort Bragg carried both Fox and ABC programming. Additional Fox coverage was provided by
KTXL and
KTVU on Chico and Redding cable systems.
Carriage dispute with Northland Cable On May 6, 2007, KCVU replaced
Medford, Oregon Fox affiliate
KMVU on
Northland Cable Television channel 13 in both
Mt. Shasta and
Yreka when KMVU and Northland could not come to an agreement for KMVU to remain on the cable system. (Northland also carried sister station
MyTV Northern California on cable channel 2, but it was replaced with
KFBI-LP of Medford.) As a result, Northland was blocked from airing Fox network programming. On February 8, 2008, the
Siskiyou Daily News reported that the dispute was being resolved and Northland was working with KMVU and KCVU to return either channel to both cable systems.
KNVN replaced KMVU on channel 13 in Mt. Shasta and channel 11 in Yreka.
KHSL-TV started to air on channel 6 in Yreka and
KDRV is also on channel 6 in Mt. Shasta. KMVU won the
carriage dispute, and KCVU is no longer available on any cable system outside the Chico–Redding market because all Fox affiliates are under
syndex. KMVU and all other local stations are fed to Yreka via OTA translator. These stations all have
fiber optic links to Mt. Shasta, except for KNVN, which uses a
Dish Network feed.
Death of Chester Smith The
Sacramento Bee and
Chico Enterprise Record reported that the founder of Sainte Partners, Chester Smith, died on August 8, 2008, at
Stanford University Medical Center in
Palo Alto, California, at the age of 78. He was survived by his wife and his children. Despite Smith's death, Sainte continued to own and operate KCVU and its sister stations in the Sainte family. The family continued to operate the station group despite poor financial practices. In August 2012, it was announced that Sainte would sell KCVU and KBVU to Esteem Broadcasting of California and would fully merge its operations with ABC affiliates KRCR and KAEF.
Sale to Cunningham; then to Sinclair On April 21, 2017,
Sinclair Broadcast Group announced its intent to purchase the
Bonten stations, including KRCR, for $240 million. As part of the deal, Sinclair's
sidecar Cunningham Broadcasting acquired the Esteem stations, including KCVU. The sale was completed September 1, 2017. Sinclair filed to buy KCVU outright from Cunningham in August 2025, following a decision by the
United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit that struck down limitations on ownership of two of the four highest-rated TV stations in a market. On December 9, 2025, the Fox affiliation was moved to KRCR-TV's second subchannel, while KCVU's main channel flipped to
Roar. The sale was completed on March 1, 2026. ==Newscasts==