In addition to its main studio in Fargo, KVLY-TV operates a news bureau and sales office in the US Bank building in downtown Grand Forks.

When Gray Television acquired KVLY-TV in 2014, it could not inherit the agreement to operate KXJB-TV, resulting in the CBS affiliation moving to a subchannel of KVLY and, eventually, new low-power stations.

This changed in December 1953 after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) received a petition from a civic group in Bemidji, Minnesota, seeking the assignment of channel 13 there.

[4] Interest was rekindled in January 1957 when the Fargo Telecasting Company, controlled by Marvin Kratter of New York, applied for channel 11.

NDBC announced that, though the studios would be shared with KXJB-TV's Fargo site and the recently purchased KFGO (renamed KXGO), the new station would transmit from Sabin, Minnesota, and be named KXGO-TV.

[13] In 1962, Ferris Traylor of Evansville, Indiana, acquired KXGO-TV as well as KNOX-TV in Grand Forks and KCND-TV (channel 12) in Pembina.

[14] The station set up new local offices in the Manchester Building in Fargo[15] and began planning the construction of a new, 2,000 feet (610 m) television tower.

On May 15, 1963, to dissociate itself from KXGO radio, the station changed its call sign to KEND-TV (for "Eastern North Dakota"[16]); that month, the new tall tower received FCC approval.

It put KTHI-TV and KCND-TV on the market; despite an offer for the former by Don Burden of the Star Stations radio group,[27] channel 11 was never sold and remained in the Natco fold post-merger.

[32] In 1969, Fuqua Industries sold KTHI-TV for $1.491 million to Spokane Television, a subsidiary of the Morgan Murphy Stations group.

[33] The FCC waived a rule requiring new owners to hold stations at least three years except in cases of financial difficulty, noting that Pembina had not been able to find a buyer in 1966 even though the sale of KTHI-TV was provided for in the merger agreement.

The switch was initiated by ABC, which at the time was number-one in the ratings seeking affiliation upgrades nationally and had courted WDAY for several years.

It and KXJB-TV were removed when Canadian cable companies were granted permission to replace most of the North Dakota stations with network affiliates from Detroit provided via the CANCOM service, which were believed to have better picture quality.

It sold all its TV stations—KVLY-TV and KFYR-TV and satellites—to Sunrise Television, a division of the private equity firm Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst, for $63.75 million.

[43][44] In 2002, North Dakota Television LLC—a consortium of private equity firms The Wicks Group of Companies, JP Morgan Partners, and Halyard Capital—acquired KVLY-TV and KFYR-TV.

[46] Hoak Media of Dallas acquired KVLY-TV and KFYR-TV, as well as KSFY-TV in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and its satellites in 2006.

[53] To supplement the main transmitter for CBS service, Gray acquired three low-power stations, at Horace, Argusville, and Grand Forks, in 2015.

The new newscast was added in part, per general manager John Hrubesky, to beat a misconception national advertisers had about the Midwest, that few people were watching TV at 5 p.m. because they were on the farm.

In May 2013, while WDAY maintained a lead on total households, Valley News Live accounted for more viewership in key demographics favored by advertisers.

The tower—erected in 1963[19] by the Kline Iron and Steel Company of Columbia, South Carolina[18]—made the former KNOX-TV in Grand Forks redundant and vastly increased the station's coverage area.

[16] It was the tallest man-made structure at its completion, surpassed by the Warsaw radio mast in Poland from 1974 to its 1991 collapse and then again by the Burj Khalifa in Dubai in 2008.