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.[16] 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.[17] 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.[18][19][20] 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.[21] 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 (channel 3) 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.[22] KSLA activated its permanent transmission facility on November 24, 1955; at 1,195 ft, 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.[23] It also marked the end of more than two years of interim operation.[24]
KSLA and KTBS-TV continued to share limited amounts of ABC programming until 1961, when Texarkana, Texas–licensed KTAL-TV (channel 6) 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 (owned by Douglas F. Attaway, owner and publisher of the now-defunct Shreveport Journal), Eugenie B. George, Dolores George LaVigne and various additional stockholders that included Winston B. Linam (who remained KSLA's station manager)—for $3.396 million; the sale received FCC approval on May 25.[25][26] 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 1,000 ft-tall transmission tower for ABC affiliate KBMT (which also transmitted on channel 12) in Beaumont, Texas, at a site 2 mi west of Mauriceville. Journal Publishing charged that the new KBMT transmitter—which was proposed to be placed 33.5 mi north of its existing transmitter location—would be short-spaced 18 mi 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.[27][28]
For one month, in May 1967, KSLA maintained a secondary affiliation with the United Network (also known as the Overmyer 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 (near Schumpert Medical Center).[31]
