The KMNF-CD license originated as K38MY-D in
St. James, Minnesota, a
translator for KEYC-TV (then owned by
United Communications) on
UHF channel 38 that signed on in March 2012. K38MY-D went off the air on December 21, 2017, after the expiration of its tower lease agreement with BENCO/CTV; KEYC had operated UHF translators from Cooperative TV's
Godahl tower since 1993. On September 14, 2018, K38MY-D was granted a
construction permit to move to channel 13 from KEYC-TV's tower as K13AAR-D; the channel change was required following the
Federal Communications Commission (FCC)'s
spectrum incentive auction and the subsequent repacking of the television band. To maintain its license, the station operated under
special temporary authority at reduced power from this facility to December 6, 2018. K13AAR-D was included in Gray Television's 2019 purchase of United Communications' television stations. On May 23, 2019, the station was granted a construction permit to move to channel 7 as K07AAH-D; on June 3, 2019, the call letters were changed to KMNF-LD, a close match for those originally proposed for sister station KEYC-TV in 1958. On June 24, 2019, Gray announced that KMNF-LD would launch as early as September as an NBC affiliate, with The CW on its second subchannel. KEYC-TV itself had launched in 1960 as an NBC affiliate, switching to CBS in 1961. Testing on KMNF-LD began on October 28, 2019. The station officially
signed on December 1, 2019. On January 17, 2023, KMNF-LD began broadcasting translator K33MW-D from the KEYC-TV studio tower. ==Newscasts==