KOTA-TV (channel 3) is a television station in Rapid City, South Dakota, United States, affiliated with ABC.

The stations share studios on Skyline Drive in Rapid City, where KOTA-TV's transmitter is also located.

KHSD-TV (channel 11) in Lead, South Dakota, serves the Black Hills proper; it can also be seen over the air in Rapid City.

It was owned by The Heart of the Black Hills Stations, a company controlled by John, Eli, and Henry Daniels, along with KRSD radio (1340 AM, now KTOQ).

[2] Two years later, in January 1960, KRSD-TV started a satellite station on channel 5 in Lead, KDSJ-TV; the Daniels brothers already operated KDSJ radio (980 AM) in nearby Deadwood.

[3] For most of its history, Heart of the Black Hills was under scrutiny from network officials, the viewing public, and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for substandard technical operations.

[4] On September 13, 1970, NBC struck an affiliation deal with KOTA, and CBS programs moved to KRSD-TV.

However, the next year, the full commission unanimously voted 5–0 (with two abstentions) to overrule Donahue and deny the renewals outright.

[7] Nonetheless, the FCC allowed the Daniels to operate the stations under special temporary authority for another four years while it searched for a new licensee.

[8] Construction permits for a new channel 7 in Rapid City and a new channel 5 in Lead were granted to Dakota Broadcasting Company, owned by a group of Rapid City businessmen, in April 1975;[9] that November, the stations were assigned the call signs KEVN-TV and KIVV-TV.

[10] Dakota Broadcasting soon announced a planned July 6, 1976, debut; meanwhile, financial difficulties prompted Heart of the Black Hills Stations to finally shut KRSD-TV and KDSJ-TV down for good on February 29, 1976, leaving the Black Hills region without a local CBS affiliate.

[11] However, area cable systems already carried Sioux Falls CBS affiliate KELO-TV, which had been trying to get into Rapid City for some time.

[19][20] Heritage Media announced in September 1995 that it would sell KEVN-TV and KIVV-TV to Blackstar, LLC, a minority-controlled company in which nonvoting equity interests were held by Fox Television Stations and Silver King Communications, for $14 million;[21][22] the deal was completed on February 7, 1996.

[25] USA mainly acquired Blackstar in order to incorporate its Orlando station, WBSF, into its planned "CityVision" group of independent stations, and soon sold KEVN-TV and KIVV-TV to Mission TV, LLC, an independent private company led by California attorney William Reyner, who at that time held partial stakes in fellow Fox affiliates KKFX-LP in Santa Barbara, California, and Smith Broadcasting-owned WFFF-TV in Burlington, Vermont.

On December 18, 2013, it was announced that Mission TV would sell KEVN-TV and KIVV-TV to Gray Television for $7.75 million.

[36] The stations' signals are multiplexed: KSGW-TV previously carried a subchannel of KCWY-DT, the NBC affiliate in Casper, Wyoming, also owned by Gray.

That prompted KNBN to assert its exclusive rights to NBC programming in Sheridan, supported by the network.

KNEP in Sidney, Nebraska, formerly was a semi-satellite of and simulcasted KOTA, airing separate commercials from studios in Scottsbluff.