KMSS-TV


KMSS-TV is a television station in Shreveport, Louisiana, United States, serving as the Fox affiliate for the Ark-La-Tex region. It is owned by Mission Broadcasting, which maintains a shared services agreement with Nexstar Media Group, owner NBC affiliate KTAL-TV and independent station/MyNetworkTV affiliate KSHV-TV, for the provision of certain services. The three stations share studios on North Market Street and Deer Park Road in northeast Shreveport; KMSS-TV's transmitter is located southeast of Mooringsport.

History

Early history

The UHF channel 33 allocation was contested between seven groups that competed for approval by the Federal Communications Commission to be the holder of the construction permit to build and license to operate a new television station on the first commercial UHF allocation to be assigned to Shreveport. The initial application to broadcast over the frequency was filed on June 12, 1982, when Poughkeepsie, New York–based Great Central Communications applied with the FCC to obtain the construction permit and license. Washington, D.C.–based Media South Broadcasting Corp. filed a separate license application for channel 33 three weeks later on July 6.
Five additional prospective applicants filed for the channel 33 permit on September 9: Minden-based Drew & Kemmerly, Shreveport-based Godfrey & Associates, Pacoima, California–based Seattle Community TV Network Inc., Cleveland, Tennessee–based Shreveport Metro Communications 33 Ltd., and Atlanta-based Shreveport TV Co..
On December 7, 1984, administrative law judge Byron E. Harrison—who oversaw the dispute over the UHF channel 33 construction permit—granted a motion for resolving disqualifying issues levied against Media South Communications as well as a joint settlement agreement request and applications dismissals by Shreveport Metro Communications 33 Ltd, Godfrey & Associates, and Shreveport Television Co. with prejudice. The decision also granted a merger between Great Southern TV Broadcasting and Media South Broadcasting, whose amended application for channel 33 was given approval. In February 1985, Media South requested and received approval to assign KMSS-TV as the call letters for its television station.
Channel 33 first signed on the air on April 11, 1985. It was the fifth commercial television station in the Shreveport–Texarkana market, and the second UHF station to have signed on in the market. The station originally operated from studio and office facilities located at 3519 Jewella Avenue in southwestern Shreveport. Originally broadcasting daily from 6 a.m. until 3 a.m., KMSS-TV—which was also the first independent station to sign on in the market—initially maintained a programming format consisting of a mix of recent and classic sitcoms, westerns and drama series, cartoons, religious programs and some older movies. Channel 33 also aired CBS programs that KSLA-TV declined to air, mostly the network's late night and morning lineup and most of its Saturday morning children's programming. From its sign-on, KMSS was the first television station in the state of Louisiana to broadcast in stereo.

Fox affiliation; ComCorp ownership and JSA/SSA with KSHV-TV

In the summer of 1986, News Corporation approached Media South about turning KMSS into a charter affiliate of the Fox Broadcasting Company. Channel 33 joined Fox when the network inaugurated programming on October 9, 1986. Though it was technically a network affiliate, KMSS continued to be programmed as a de facto independent station as Fox's initial programming lineup consisted solely of a late-night talk show, The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers. Even after its programming expanded with the launch of a three-hour Sunday night lineup in April 1987, Fox aired its prime time programming exclusively on weekends until September 1989, when it began a five-year expansion towards a nightly prime time schedule. Until Fox began airing prime time programs on all seven nights of the week in January 1993, KMSS continued to air a movie at 7 p.m. on nights when the network did not offer any programming.
For its first four years as a Fox affiliate, KMSS-TV—which, in compliance with Fox's stricter branding requirements, began identifying as "KMSS Fox 33" in on-air verbiage in 1989 and within its logo in 1991—served as a default Fox station for the Tyler–Longview market. This status continued until April 1, 1991, when the Tyler-Longview market gained over-the-air access to Fox programming when present-day sister station, KLMG-TV—which concurrently changed its call letters to KFXK-TV—disaffiliated from CBS and switched to Fox. On May 1, 1987, Media South announced it would sell KMSS-TV to Austin, Texas-based Southwest Multimedia Corp. for $7 million; the sale received FCC approval on June 24.
After Fox began offering programming on a nightly basis in January 1993, KMSS became less reliant on movies during the period, due to the growing cable television industry impacting the ability of broadcast stations to acquire film content; channel 33 relegated its movie presentations to weekend afternoons and late nights. It would also rely on the network's Fox Kids block for its children's programming inventory, resulting in many syndicated children's programs that KMSS had aired to occupy portions of the weekday daytime and Saturday morning time periods being relegated to early morning time slots as well as around the morning and afternoon network blocks.
On April 15, 1993, Southwest Multimedia filed an FCC application seeking to transfer 525 shares in KMSS-TV common stock to Arthur Lanham and Mitchell A. Levy at $1 per share, which would expand Lanham and Levy's interest to encompass 1,050 shares in station common stock; the application was dismissed on June 4. In September 1993, KMSS-TV began maintaining a secondary affiliation with the Prime Time Entertainment Network, an ad hoc syndicated programming venture between Chris-Craft Television and Warner Bros. Domestic Television; because its Fox programming commitments precluded PTEN programming from airing during prime time, KMSS carried the latter's offerings in late night until the programming service ceased operations in September 1997.
On March 21, 1994, Southwest Multimedia announced it would sell KMSS-TV to Lafayette-based Associated Broadcasters Inc. for $1.5 million; the sale received FCC approval on October 3, 1994. On June 1, 1995, White Knight Broadcasting—an arm of Associated Broadcasters/ComCorp, which purchased the station from Word of Life Ministries for $3.8 million that April—entered into a local marketing agreement to operate upstart independent station KWLB, which subsequently changed its call letters to KSHV-TV on July 26, under which Associated Broadcasters/KMSS would provide programming, advertising and other administrative services for KSHV. Channel 45 subsequently migrated its operations from the Word of Life Center on West 70th Street/Meriwether Road in southwestern Shreveport into KMSS's Jewella Avenue studios. During the early- and mid-2000s, KMSS lessened its reliance on running cartoons and classic sitcoms, and began acquiring more talk shows, reality series and court shows, although more recent sitcoms remained as part of its schedule.

Virtual triopoly with KTAL-TV

On April 24, 2013, Irving, Texas-based Nexstar Broadcasting Group announced that it would acquire the nineteen television stations owned by Communications Corporation of America and White Knight Broadcasting, including KMSS and its time brokerage agreement with KSHV-TV, for $270 million in cash and stock. Because Nexstar could not legally purchase KMSS under FCC ownership rules as Shreveport has only eight full-power stations, and KTAL and KMSS were among the four highest-rated stations in the Shreveport market at the time of the transaction, plans called for KMSS to be acquired by Westlake, Ohio-based Nexstar partner company Mission Broadcasting for $27 million, while KSHV was to be sold to a female-controlled company, Denton, Texas-based Rocky Creek Communications, for $2.1 million. Nexstar planned to operate KMSS and KSHV under a shared services agreement, forming a virtual triopoly with KTAL.
However, on June 6, 2014, Nexstar announced that it would instead sell KMSS-TV, along with two other Fox affiliates—sister station KPEJ-TV in Midland, Texas and KLJB/Davenport, Iowa—to Houston-based Marshall Broadcasting Group for $58.5 million, an agreement that marked the company's first television station acquisitions. The minority-owned Marshall intended to fund the acquisitions—which were subject to FCC approval of Nexstar's acquisition of the ComCorp and White Knight Broadcasting stations as well as its concurring purchase of Grant Broadcasting—through borrowings guaranteed by Nexstar; Marshall planned to launch news operations and provide sports and minority-oriented public affairs programming on KMSS and the other two stations, with Nexstar providing sales and certain non-programming services including engineering, master control and other administrative functions.
The sale of ComCorp to Nexstar, as well as that of KMSS to Marshall and a concurring acquisition of the time brokerage agreement with KSHV, received FCC approval on December 4, 2014, and was completed on January 1, 2015. As a result, Nexstar began operating KMSS and KSHV under separate shared services agreements with Marshall and White Knight, forming a virtual triopoly with KTAL, leaving Shreveport's six major commercial stations under the control of just three broadcasting companies ; KMSS and KSHV subsequently migrated their operations into KTAL's North Market Street studios in northeastern Shreveport.
On April 3, 2019, Marshall filed a lawsuit against Nexstar in the New York Supreme Court, accusing it of sabotaging the value of KMSS, KPEJ and KLJB for future direct acquisition under a waiver of duopoly rules, being undermined in favor of Nexstar under the terms of Marshall's financing deal with that group, being given a $16-million overevaluation of the collective worth of the stations, and withholding retransmission fees. Nexstar issued a statement calling the allegations "spurious and without merit.”
On December 3, 2019, Marshall Broadcasting Group filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Mission Broadcasting, another company associated with Nexstar Media Group, agreed to purchase Marshall Broadcasting's stations for $49 million on March 30, 2020. The transaction was completed on September 1, 2020.