KSLA
KSLA is a television station in Shreveport, Louisiana, United States, serving as the CBS affiliate for the Ark-La-Tex region. It is owned by Gray Media alongside low-power, Class A Telemundo affiliate KTSH-CD. The two stations share studios on Fairfield Avenue and Dashiel Street in central Shreveport; KSLA's transmitter is located near St. Johns Baptist Church Road in rural northern Caddo Parish.
History
Early history
The VHF channel 12 allocation was contested between three groups that competed for approval by the Federal Communications Commission to be granted a construction permit on one of Shreveport's two television channels. On June 27, 1952, one week before the FCC released a Report and Order reallocation memorandum that lifted a four-year moratorium on new television broadcast license applications, two Shreveport-based groups filed respective applications for the permit: Radio Station KRMD Inc., and the Shreveport Television Co.. The Southland Television Co.—a group led by Lester Kamin, John H. Pace, and Dallas-based attorneys Pat Coon and Billy B. Goldberg—became the third applicant for the license on July 10, 1952. Several Shreveport residents bought a majority share in Southland in early 1953. In hearing, Southland attacked the KRMD facilities proposal as inadequate.In August 1953, citing a desire to speed the arrival of television to Shreveport, Radio Station KRMD Inc., the Shreveport Television Co., and the Southland Television Co. submitted a joint application to the FCC to operate VHF channel 12 pending the outcome of the comparative hearings on their individual applications. The applicants held one-third interests in a new venture, Interim Television Corp., which would build operate the station until the FCC determined a grantee; at that time, the designated winner would buy out the others, with the permit becoming invalidated no longer than 10 days after the regular permit was issued to the winning applicant. The FCC granted the permit to the temporary corporation on September 18, and the construction permit took the call sign KSLA-TV, representing the station's location, Shreveport, Louisiana.
The station first signed on the air on January 1, 1954, as the first station in Shreveport proper and the second in the market, after KCMC-TV, which had gone on the air from Texarkana, Texas, on August 16, 1953. Channel 12 has been a CBS television affiliate since its debut, inheriting those rights through KWKH radio's longtime relationship with the CBS Radio Network; it also maintained secondary affiliations with ABC, NBC and the DuMont Television Network. Channel 12 – which is one of two stations in the market to have never changed its primary network affiliation, along with Fox affiliate KMSS-TV – originally operated out of studio facilities housed inside the Washington Youree Hotel, located on Edwards and Travis Streets in downtown Shreveport. KSLA temporarily transmitted its signal from a broadcast tower located near the intersection of Lake and Market Streets in downtown Shreveport.
Shreveport Television Company and ''Shreveport Journal'' ownership
On June 8, 1954, FCC hearing examiner Fanney N. Litvin issued an initial decision looking to grant the Shreveport Television Company the construction permit application for channel 12, citing its lack of radio facilities and better television programming proposals, facilities and staffing commitments. The FCC Broadcast Bureau granted exclusive rights to the permit to Shreveport Television Company on May 19, 1955, formally denying KRMD and Southland Television's respective bids. Both competitors filed exception petitions to the FCC examiner's initial decision favoring Shreveport Television on the grounds Litvin cited in the 73-page order. The FCC reaffirmed its prior decision on November 17, 1955, denying the Southland petition for rehearing and reconsideration of the grant and formally dismissing the competing bids. On March 5, 1955, Elvis Presley made his television debut on KSLA on the local music program Louisiana Hayride, which was produced from the Municipal Auditorium. That same year, D. L. Dykes, Jr., who launched a 30-year career as the pastor of the First Methodist Church at the Head of Texas Street in downtown Shreveport, began having his sermons televised on KSLA; over the years, other churches followed Dykes's lead.KSLA disaffiliated from NBC after KTBS-TV signed on as Shreveport's second television station on September 3, 1955. DuMont ceased operations in September 1955; KSLA remained a primary CBS affiliate with secondary ABC and DuMont affiliations until the latter network discontinued operations in August 1956, amid various issues that arose from DuMont's relations with Paramount Pictures that hamstrung it from expansion; that year, the station also added an additional affiliation with the NTA Film Network. KSLA activated its permanent transmission facility on November 24, 1955; at, the tower helped to significantly increase the station's reach from 177,100 viewers to 1.089 million viewers throughout northwestern Louisiana, northeastern Texas and southwestern Arkansas. It also marked the end of more than two years of interim operation.
KSLA and KTBS-TV continued to share limited amounts of ABC programming until 1961, when Texarkana, Texas–licensed KTAL-TV assumed the local rights to the NBC affiliation after KTAL owner Palmer Newspapers received FCC permission to relocate that station's transmitter closer to Shreveport, effectively folding the Texarkana area into the Shreveport television market. As a consequence, KTBS-TV chose to become an exclusive ABC affiliate; this left KSLA affiliated with CBS and the NTA Film Network, the latter of which KSLA continued to provide select programs from until that network ceased operations in 1961. Another local program aired on KSLA during this time was Hallelujah Train, a Sunday morning program many consider as a religious version of Soul Train. In 1959, KSLA became the first television station in the Shreveport market to broadcast in color.
In January 1960, the Shreveport Television Company to KSLA-TV Inc.—a local group headed by the Journal Publishing Company, Eugenie B. George, Dolores George LaVigne and various additional stockholders that included Winston B. Linam —for $3.396 million; the sale received FCC approval on May 25. Under Journal Publishing ownership, KSLA was referred to as "The Journal Station" in on-air and print promotions during the second half of the 1960s and the early 1970s. In January 1965, the Journal Publishing Company filed a petition asking to deny a construction permit application by Television Broadcasters Inc. to build a new -tall transmission tower for ABC affiliate KBMT in Beaumont, Texas, at a site west of Mauriceville. Journal Publishing charged that the new KBMT transmitter—which was proposed to be placed north of its existing transmitter location—would be short-spaced closer to the KSLA transmitter than permitted by standard mileage separation rules to prevent signal interference and that the FCC's order granting the application had not afforded KSLA "equivalent protection" that Television Broadcasters stated that it would in the original application. On October 29, 1966, the FCC granted construction permits to KSLA and KBMT to install precise frequency control systems to limit signal interference between the two stations.
For one month, in May 1967, KSLA maintained a secondary affiliation with the United Network, a short-lived attempt to create a fourth national commercial television network; it was one of several stations nationwide to broadcast United/Overmyer's short-lived late night program, The Las Vegas Show. In 1972, the station relocated its operations into its current studio facilities on Fairfield Avenue and Dashiel Street.
Local ownership by KSLA-TV Inc.; Viacom ownership
After Attaway sold the Shreveport Journal to local businessman and philanthropist Charles T. Beaird, in February 1976, the Journal Publishing Company announced it would sell the station to KSLA-TV Inc. for $2.823 million; the transfer received FCC approval on May 27. During the early morning of October 8, 1977, the station's transmitter tower located east-southeast of Mooringsport collapsed. Speculation centered upon a failure in a guy wire cable attached to the tower at the level that swayed significantly in winds sustained at, with the rippling to be so great that it caused to the wire to snap and the tower broke at the aforementioned level and fell on the reinforced concrete transmitter building below, which was undamaged; however, no official cause was ever determined. The KSLA-TV signal was knocked off the air until the station set up temporary transmitter facilities that afternoon from a nearby auxiliary tower, although the shorter tower resulted in the station's coverage radius being significantly reduced from about to. In March 1978, KSLA constructed and activated a new tower on the site of the former transmitter facility.On January 19, 1983, KSLA-TV Inc. announced it would sell the station to the Viacom International subsidiary of New York City–based Viacom in a tax-free stock swap valued at $29.9 million. Under the terms of the deal, KSLA-TV Inc.—which became a wholly owned subsidiary of Viacom International—exchanged its stock for one million shares in Viacom. The sale received FCC approval two months later on March 30. In 1984, KSLA-TV became the first television station in the Shreveport–Texarkana market to broadcast in stereo, initially broadcasting CBS network programs, local programs and certain syndicated shows that were transmitted in the audio format. In March 1989, the station began preempting CBS Sunday Morning with Charles Kuralt in favor of running religious programming and infomercials in its timeslot. This sparked outrage from viewers, resulting in a letter-writing campaign to Viacom, CBS and local newspapers to push for Sunday Mornings return to channel 12. The station was even subjected to picketing by upset viewers in an effort to get the show reinstated. Following a change in station management, KSLA reinstated Sunday Morning onto its schedule on August 27, 1989.