Owned by Sarkes Tarzian, Inc., the station maintains studios on Energy Way in Reno, and its transmitter is located on Slide Mountain in unincorporated Washoe County.

[4] After a delay induced by an unsuccessful legal action from KOLO-TV, which sought to block the grant of the permit,[5][6] then an objection by radio station KNEV to the location of its transmitter site,[7] KTVN signed on the air on June 4, 1967, as an ABC affiliate.

[12] Channel 10 in Elko is currently used by KENV-DT, which formerly operated as a satellite of KRNV-DT until its disaffiliation from NBC on January 1, 2018; it is now a TBD-operated station.

The station's signal is multiplexed: KTVN ended regular programming on its analog signal, over VHF channel 2, on June 12, 2009, the official date on which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate.

As part of the SAFER Act, KTVN kept its analog signal on the air until June 30 to inform viewers of the digital television transition through a loop of public service announcements from the National Association of Broadcasters.