KECY-TV (channel 9) is a television station licensed to El Centro, California, United States, serving the Yuma, Arizona–El Centro, California market as an affiliate of Fox, MyNetworkTV, ABC and The CW Plus. It is owned by the News-Press & Gazette Company alongside low-power Telemundo affiliate KESE-LD (channel 35); NPG also provides certain services to dual CBS/NBC affiliate KYMA-DT (channel 13) through a shared services agreement (SSA) with Rincon Broadcasting Group. The three stations share studios on South 4th Avenue in downtown Yuma, with an advertising sales office on West Main Street in El Centro; KECY-TV's transmitter is located in the Chocolate Mountains.

On April 18, 1962, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) signed an agreement with Mexico, effective September 4, allowing the allocation of channels 7 and 9 to El Centro and giving the Imperial Valley its first opportunity for local VHF television. Before the channels were added to the Table of Allocations, Tele-Broadcasters of California, Inc., applied to build a station on channel 7 on July 5, 1962, requesting a waiver from the FCC to do so. KXO-TV, Inc., submitted a rival channel 7 bid on September 14, 1962, meaning that the FCC would need to decide who would be awarded the construction permit. To avoid delays in build-out, Tele-Broadcasters agreed to amend its application on November 9, 1962, to specify operations on channel 9. The FCC approved both applications on April 10, 1963, with channels 7 and 9 being designated as KXO-TV and KECC-TV respectively, and soon after, ABC announced that it would affiliate with KECC, who expected to be on the air by September 1.

The station would not be constructed on time, as the owner of KIVA, channel 11 in Yuma, filed for reconsideration of the grant of KECC's construction permit, claiming that the Yuma–El Centro market could not support multiple local television stations, and predicting economic injury to his station. KIVA's claim was denied by the FCC on July 30, 1963, but was referred to a federal appeals court, where the case was decided May 22, 1964, in favor of the El Centro stations. After the case was settled, KECC was still not ready to go to air, and the FCC had to extend its construction permit several times.

In April 1966, Tele-Broadcasters announced its sale to United Broadcasting Co., headed by Richard Eaton, in a $1.9 million deal, which included the KECC construction permit and two radio stations. United Broadcasting filed the purchase application on August 29, and the FCC approved it the following April.

The station received a significant boost in February 1968, when the FCC granted it permission to move its transmitter location from downtown El Centro to Black Mountain and to increase power from 55 kW to 120 kW, allowing its signal to serve both El Centro and Yuma. KECC-TV received program operation authorization from the FCC on December 6, 1968, and on December 11, more than six years after the station moved its application to channel 9, KECC-TV took to the air as an ABC affiliate, becoming the third station in the market, and giving each of the major commercial television networks a primary affiliate. Another boost in fortunes came in January 1970, when KIVA, the market's NBC affiliate, announced that it would cease operations at the end of the month. KBLU-TV (later KSWT and now KYMA-DT), the CBS affiliate at that time, announced that it would take over the NBC affiliation, and KECC moved to acquire the CBS affiliation.

It was not long before KECC-TV found itself embroiled in controversy. In March 1970, WKTR-TV (channel 16, frequency now occupied by WPTD) in Dayton, Ohio (then licensed to Kettering), was accused of bribing Thomas G. Sullivan to promote affiliation with the network for the station. Evidence from the Dayton investigation resulted in a hearing order issued in November 1971 for stations owned by Richard Eaton, including KECC, after Eaton was suspected of bribery in entering into a "consultancy agreement" with an ABC employee in 1969. Faced with the prospect of an FCC hearing, and financially drained from actions against two of his other TV stations, Eaton declared his intent to sell all of his TV stations. No sale would occur for years. Eaton was cleared of the bribery charges in September 1974, but was ruled by an FCC administrative law judge to have "strayed from conduct expected of licensee". The judge recommended granting KECC-TV its license provided that Eaton sell the station within 60 days, but the FCC Broadcast Bureau appealed the ruling.

United Broadcasting reached an agreement with Acton Corp. in December 1977 to sell the station for $1 million, pending resolution of the review of KECC's license request. The application for assignment of permit was filed in July 1978 under Acton Corp. subsidiary El Centro Communications, but by the start of 1981, the FCC had not yet resolved KECC's licensing issues and had not approved the sale of the station, and in January 1981, the application to sell the station to Acton was dismissed.

In March 1981, United Broadcasting requested to sell KECC-TV to Esquire, Inc. for $1.025 million. The sale was approved by the FCC in September and consummated in October. The new owners, operating under the subsidiary of Pacific Media Corporation, quickly began making changes at the station. In October, Pacific Media was granted permission to increase the station's power from 120 kW to 316 kW, the maximum allowed for an upper-band VHF station, changed the station's call letters from KECC-TV to KECY-TV in December 1981, and switched affiliation from CBS back to ABC on February 1, 1982, matching the affiliation of Pacific Media's other TV station, KESQ-TV. Nearly twenty years after first applying for a construction permit, and after more than thirteen years operating under Program Test Authority, KECY-TV was granted a license on June 30, 1982.