History
The station traces its existence to K22FA (channel 22, now Univision affiliate KLRA-CD on channel 20), a low-power station serving the immediate Little Rock area that was founded by the locally based Kaleidoscope Affiliates LLC (founded by Larry E. Morton, and renamed Equity Broadcasting Corporation in 1998), which received Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approval for the construction permit on May 5, 1995.[1] The low-power station, which later changed its callsign to KKYK-LP on August 13, 1996, originally operated as an affiliate of Network One; in January 1997, the station became an affiliate of The WB,[2] allowing Little Rock-area viewers that could receive the signal to watch the network's programs without subscribing to cable or satellite service. (For the first two years of the network's existence, The WB had exclusively been available on Comcast and other cable and satellite providers in the Little Rock market via the superstation feed of Chicago affiliate WGN-TV [later conventional basic cable channel WGN America, now NewsNation].) The station branded itself as "WB22", using a derivative of the logo then used by Denver affiliate KWGN-TV.
The full-power channel 49—for which the construction permit, filed on March 31, 1997, was granted to Equity by the FCC on August 20, 1998[3][4]—first signed on the air in Camden on June 7, 1999, as KKYK-TV, with KKYK-LP becoming its repeater. The station has operated from the Shackleford Drive facility—which continue to house the station's operations as KMYA, and at the time had served the master control hub for all of Equity Broadcasting's television stations nationwide—since its sign-on. Supplementing WB prime time and children's programming, KKYK-TV/LP—which, as a WB affiliate, usually branded by its call letters but occasionally identified as "WB 22/49"—carried a blend of first-run syndicated shows, recent and classic off-network sitcoms and drama series, animated and live-action syndicated children's programs, and movies in late-night and on weekends, and by 2000, St. Louis Cardinals Major League Baseball games. Following Equity's purchase of a 49% interest in Arkansas Sports Entertainment in March 2000 (it purchased the remaining 51% in October 2001), channel 49 began televising Arkansas RiverBlades ECHL hockey and Arkansas Twisters AF2 football games (many of which were shown on tape delay after WB and, later, Pax programming), starting with the Twisters' 2000 season and the Riverblades' 2000–01 season respectively.[5]
On January 29, 2001, Equity transferred KKYK's WB network and syndicated programming to Pax TV owned-and-operated station KYPX (channel 42, now MyNetworkTV affiliate KARZ-TV), which the group had purchased from Paxson Communications [now Ion Media] in March 2000, a decision made by the company to provide The WB more substantial over-the-air coverage within the Little Rock–Pine Bluff market. (That station initially changed its callsign to KLRA-TV upon the switch, then to KWBF-TV on August 22.) The former channel 42 intellectual unit—call letters, Pax TV affiliation and local programming—concurrently moved to channel 49, which adopted the KYPX call letters.[8][9][10][11] Around that time, KKYK as well as KWBF frequently aired ABC sports telecasts and occasional non-sports programs preempted by KATV (channel 7) due to that station's commitments to Arkansas Razorbacks sporting events or to run infomercials for additional revenue.
On January 4, 2009, the station lost access to Retro Television Network programming amid a dispute over a service contract between Equity and Luken Communications (which had acquired RTN in June 2008, and moved RTN's operations to its headquarters in Chattanooga, Tennessee) that expired that morning without renewal,[12] resulting in Luken terminating the network's agreements with KKYK and the rest of its Equity-owned affiliates;[13] (RTN—under its new modified initialism, RTV—later affiliated with KATV, being carried on that station's second digital subchannel.) The station also reneged on a deal with the Southland Conference to carry University of Central Arkansas Bears basketball games in the interim.[14]
The station became an affiliate of This TV on February 1, 2009, lasting five months until August 1, when it switched to Tuff TV.[15] (This TV would later resurface on the DT2 subchannel of Fox affiliate KLRT-TV [channel 16] in July 2012, lasting until the subchannel was dropped after Nexstar Broadcasting Group partner company Mission Broadcasting took over operations in February 2013.) On April 10, 2009, Equity announced a fire sale of its television stations; KKYK had been set an asking price of $15 million, the highest price for any of the stations being auctioned.[16] In the auction, which took place on April 16, KKYK-DT and KKYK-CA were sold alongside Equity's four other Little Rock stations for $1.15 million to the Bank of Little Rock,[17] which acquired the station through the subsidiary Hallmark National Mortgage Corporation.[18][19][20]
On November 3, 2011, Hallmark National sold KMYA to Ellis-Wilson, LLC (a company controlled by Equity founder Larry Morton and former Equity executive Greg Fees) for $1 million. The sale received FCC approval on February 27, 2012, and was finalized on March 30.[23] On February 28, 2013, the original KKYK-CD swapped call letters with KLRA-CD (channel 30), taking over the Univision affiliation of the former KLRA; Sheridan-licensed KMYA-LP (channel 47, now KMYA-LD on channel 49), which acted as a repeater of KWBF-TV until that station's 2009 sale to Nexstar Broadcasting Group, then took over as the station's Little Rock repeater. On June 17, 2014, Ellis-Wilson sold KMYA-DT and KMYA-LP to I Squared Media LLC (principally owned by Stuttgart-based hotelier Shashwat Goyal) for $1.9 million; the sale received FCC approval on August 21, and was finalized on September 18.[24][25]
On January 5, 2016, I Square Media sold the KMYA stations to LR Telecasting LLC (owned by William Pollack, part-owner of Pollack/Belz Communications, and Gina Robbins) for $2.75 million. The sale's completion was held up for 26 months amid a legal dispute filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas involving Soul of the South's investors as to whether I Square Media or Rock City Media LLC (which allegedly bought the station in 2014, but never filed a transfer application to the FCC) legally owned the KMYA licenses and how proceeds would be shared if the license was resold in the spectrum auction. The sale received FCC approval on June 21, 2017, and was finalized on March 21, 2018.[26][27][28]
