It is owned by Nexstar Media Group, which acquired the station in 2003 as part of its purchase of Quorum Broadcasting, and also holds a majority stake in The CW.

[4][5] During this incarnation, KYAY, again, aired news and off-network Westerns and movies, as well as ABC, NBC and CBS programming not carried on KNOE and KTVE, such as That Girl, The Mod Squad, Hawaii Five-O, The Courtship of Eddie's Father, The Lawrence Welk Show, Engelbert Humperdinck, The NBC Tuesday Night Movie, and The Merv Griffin Show.

This change enabled KARD to have at least Grade B coverage in a region encompassing all of Northeast Louisiana including portions of the Alexandria and Shreveport markets.

[12] KARD began airing Fox programming when that network started up late at night in 1986 and in the same year was the first station in the Monroe area (and one of the first in Louisiana) to broadcast in stereo.

Banam sold KARD along with three of its stations (WTVW in Evansville, Indiana, KDEB in Springfield, Missouri, and KLBK-TV in Lubbock, Texas) to Petracom Broadcasting in 1995.

This resulted in Nexstar, already the owner of KARD, taking over control of KTVE under a local sales agreement (LSA); the Internet presence of both stations were also merged into one website.

The station's digital signal is multiplexed: In March 2009, KARD and KTVE informed the Federal Communications Commission that they needed to end analog operations sooner than June 12, 2009 (the earliest they could do so is April 16).

Used parts were deemed unreliable, and staffers had to travel 50 miles (80 km) to the transmitter from the studio; two to three visits per week were required to monitor the analog facilities, according to Nexstar.