KMYS (channel 35) is a television station licensed to Kerrville, Texas, United States, serving the San Antonio area as an affiliate of the digital multicast network Dabl. It is owned by Deerfield Media, which maintains joint sales and shared services agreements (JSA/SSA) with Sinclair Broadcast Group, owner of dual NBC/CW affiliate WOAI-TV (channel 4) and Fox affiliate KABB (channel 29), for the provision of certain services. The stations share studios between Babcock Road and Sovereign Drive (off Loop 410) in northwest San Antonio, while KMYS' transmitter is located in rural southeastern Bandera County (near Lakehills). Despite Kerrville being KMYS' city of license, the station maintains no physical presence there. History Early history The station first signed on the air on November 6, 1985, as KRRT. Despite being licensed to Kerrville, the original call sign stood not for its city of license, but rather for Washington, D.C.-based communications attorney Raul Robert Tapia. Tapia was the principal owner of Republic Communications Corporation, the station's founding ownership group. Republic Communications took its name from the Republic of Texas. TVX Broadcast Group originally held a 49% interest in Republic; by 1986 it had exercised an option to buy an additional 31% stake in the station, and would eventually acquire control of the remaining shares it did not own from Tapia. It was the first English-language general entertainment independent station in the San Antonio market, as well as the first English-language commercial television station in San Antonio since KONO-TV (channel 12, now KSAT-TV) signed on in January 1957. In addition, it was the second television station in the market on the UHF dial, launching 30 years after what is now Spanish-speaking and Univision owned and operated station KWEX-DT. Prior to the station's launch, San Antonio was the largest television market in the United States that did not have an independent station. Despite the large population of San Antonio proper (it had around 900,000 residents at the time the station signed on), San Antonio has always been a medium-sized market because the surrounding suburban and rural areas, then as now, were not much larger than San Antonio itself. San Antonio had been large enough to support an independent since at least the early 1970s. However, the market is a fairly large one geographically, and UHF stations do not carry very well across large areas. By the early 1980s, cable had gained enough penetration for a locally