KSLA


KSLA, virtual channel 12, is a CBS-affiliated television station licensed to Shreveport, Louisiana, United States and also serving Texarkana, Texas. The station is owned by Gray Television. KSLA's studios are located on Fairfield Avenue and Dashiel Street in central Shreveport, and its transmitter is located near St. Johns Baptist Church Road in rural northern Caddo Parish.
On cable, the station is available on Comcast Xfinity channels 13 and 1012 in Shreveport; Suddenlink channel 10 in Bossier City; NewWave Communications channels 5 and 201 in Blanchard, Vivian, Springhill and Mansfield; and Cable One channel 12 and 1012 in Texarkana and Fouke, Arkansas. KSLA is also carried on some cable providers in the Tyler–Longview–Lufkin–Nacogdoches market in East Texas, although certain programs are subject to blackout due to the Federal Communications Commission 's network non-duplication and syndication exclusivity rules.

History

Early history

The VHF channel 12 allocation was contested between three groups that competed for approval by the FCC to be the holder of the construction permit to build and license to operate a new television station on what was originally the second commercial VHF allocation to be assigned to Shreveport. 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.
On August 24, 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 temporary corporation, Interim Television Corp., held equal one-third interests in the group and would share in construction costs and operation of the proposed "interim" television station until the permanent holder of the license was determined, at which point the grantee would purchase the other shares from the two overruled applicants, 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. The group subsequently requested and received approval to assign KSLA as the television station's call letters.
The station first signed on the air on January 1, 1954, as the second television station to sign on in the Shreveport–Texarkana market – following Texarkana, Texas-based primary CBS and secondary ABC and DuMont affiliate KCMC-TV, which launched five months earlier on August 16, 1953 – and the first to be licensed to Shreveport. 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 a 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 in November 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.
KSLA and KTBS-TV continued to share limited amounts of ABC programming until 1960, 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 affiliate of 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 1973, 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 it 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 1978, KSLA constructed 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.

Ellis and Raycom ownership

In 1994, following the completion of Viacom's acquisition of Paramount Pictures from Gulf+Western, Viacom transferred its five television stations—KSLA; fellow CBS affiliate KMOV in St. Louis; and NBC affiliates WHEC-TV in Rochester, New York; WNYT in Albany, New York; and WVIT in New Britain, Connecticut—into Paramount's broadcasting arm, the Paramount Stations Group.
Not long after that, Paramount announced the formation of the United Paramount Network, which started operating on January 16, 1995, with channel 12 as a charter owned-and-operated station; due to its CBS programming commitments, KSLA carried UPN's Monday and Tuesday prime time programming between 11:35 p.m. and 1:35 a.m. on both nights. This arrangement ended on August 22, 1995, six days before KSHV-TV —through a programming revamp tied to a shared services agreement it reached with Associated Broadcasters Inc.-owned Fox affiliate KMSS-TV—took over as the UPN affiliate for the Shreveport–Texarkana market.
Following the merger with Paramount, Viacom also announced it would sell off all of its non-UPN stations. On May 12, 1995, Viacom announced that it would sell KSLA to Englewood, New Jersey-based Hillside Broadcasting for $30 million. Viacom had planned to sell channel 12 both as part of its sale of the company's non-UPN affiliated stations and to comply with FCC rules of the time that prohibited a single company from owning more than twelve television stations nationwide; the sale to Hillside hinged on the completion of Viacom's $27-million purchase of Atlanta independent station WVEU from Broadcasting Corp. of Georgia. Hillside Broadcasting backed out of the deal on June 27; subsequently on July 1, Ellis Communications —which was formed two years earlier with the purchase of the original New Vision Group stations, and was an investor in Hillside Broadcasting—announced it would acquire KSLA for $30 million. The transaction was approved by the FCC on August 24, and was completed eight days later on September 1, 1995. Ellis was a longtime fan of his hometown's long-dominant ABC-affiliated station, WSB-TV, and styled his new broadcast group after that station, resulting in KSLA adopted a logo inspired by the design WSB had introduced in February of the previous year in November 1995, after it adopted a graphics package originally developed for WMC-TV.
On May 16, 1996, Ellis Communications announced it would sell its fifteen television and two radio stations and sports production/syndication firm Raycom Sports to Atlanta-based Ellis Acquisitions Inc. in an all-cash deal worth $732 million; the Ellis Communications stations as well as subsequent purchases of television stations owned by AFLAC and Detroit-based Federal Enterprises Inc. served as the charter properties of Raycom Media. The purchase of KSLA and the Ellis stations received FCC approval on July 26. 1996.

Sale to Gray Television

On June 25, 2018, Atlanta-based Gray Television announced it had reached an agreement with Raycom to merge their respective broadcasting assets under Gray's corporate umbrella. The cash-and-stock merger transaction valued at $3.6 billion—in which Gray shareholders would acquire preferred stock currently held by Raycom—resulted in KSLA gaining new sister stations in nearby markets, including primary CBS/subchannel-only Fox and MyNetworkTV affiliate KXII in Sherman, Texas, primary CBS/subchannel-only ABC affiliate KNOE-TV in Monroe and primary NBC/subchannel-only CBS affiliate KALB-TV in Alexandria, in addition to its current sister stations under Raycom ownership; as a result, the combined company will have broadcast properties in six of the seven television markets serving Louisiana. The sale was approved on December 20, and was completed on January 2, 2019.

Subchannels

KSLA-DT2

KSLA-DT2 is the Grit-affiliated second digital subchannel of KSLA, broadcasting in standard definition on UHF digital channel 17.2. On cable, the subchannel is available on Xfinity digital channel 212 in Shreveport, Suddenlink digital channel 134 in Bossier City, and Cable One channel 32 in Texarkana.
KSLA launched a digital subchannel on virtual channel 12.2 in 2004, which originally served as a standard definition simulcast of the station's main channel. On April 1, 2006, KSLA-DT2 became an affiliate of The Tube Music Network, through a groupwide agreement with Raycom Media. The Tube ceased operations on October 1, 2007, citing "financial limitations" as well as due to disagreements between network parent The Tube Media Corp. and certain station group partners over compliance of newly enacted FCC requirements for digital subchannels; KSLA decommissioned the 12.2 subchannel as a consequence. KSLA-DT2 was relaunched on February 23, 2009 as an affiliate of This TV. On December 31, 2015, KSLA-DT2 converted into an affiliate of Grit, an action-adventure network owned by Katz Broadcasting.

KSLA-DT3

KSLA-DT3 is the Bounce TV-affiliated third digital subchannel of KSLA, broadcasting in standard definition on UHF digital channel 17.3. On cable, the subchannel is available on Xfinity digital channel 203 in Shreveport, Suddenlink digital channel 133 in Bossier City, and Cable One channel 34 in Texarkana.
KSLA launched a digital subchannel on virtual channel 12.3 in February 2007, which originally served as a local weather forecast channel, carrying a mix of updated, pre-recorded local forecast segments presented by meteorologists from the station's "StormTracker 12 Weather" staff, a live feed of the station's Doppler radar accompanied by an audio simulcast of NOAA Weather Radio station WXJ97 as well as loops of weather radar and satellite imagery. On September 26, 2011, through an affiliation agreement between Raycom and network parent Bounce TV LLC, KSLA-DT2 converted into a charter affiliate of the African-American-centric digital broadcast network Bounce TV.

Digital television

Digital channels

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:
ChannelVideoAspectPSIP Short NameProgramming
12.11080iKSLA-DTMain KSLA-TV programming / CBS
12.2480iCircleCircle
12.3480iBounceBounce TV
12.4480iGritGrit

Analog-to-digital conversion

KSLA discontinued regular programming on its analog signal, over VHF channel 12, on June 12, 2009, the official date in which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 17, using PSIP to display the station's virtual channel as its former VHF analog channel 12.

Programming

KSLA clears the entire CBS network schedule; however, the station airs certain programs out of pattern. Although the station airs Face the Nation in its full one-hour broadcasts, the second half-hour typically airs on early Monday mornings to accommodate The NFL Today and CBS' Sunday afternoon telecasts of National Football League games. Since 2014, channel 12 has eschewed syndicated programming from its weekday schedule in order to focus more of its schedule outside of CBS programming toward local newscasts; syndicated programs broadcast on KSLA as of 2019 include The Kelly Clarkson Show and Right This Minute.
As the Shreveport–Texarkana market did not have a PBS member station at the time, KSLA was among several commercial television stations in markets without a PBS station that carried programs from the service on a per-program basis. KSLA carried Sesame Street each weekday morning from February 7, 1972 until May 27, 1977, assuming the show from KTAL, which had carried it from 1970 until 1972. By the time KSLA removed the show from the airwaves, Louisiana Public Broadcasting was in preparation for signing on KLTS-TV as a satellite of the member network's Baton Rouge flagship, WLPB-TV, and other PBS member stations were carried on cable. KSLA was among the first fifty television stations in the country to air the hybrid local/national lifestyle newsmagazine concept PM Magazine, it ran on the station from 1979 to 1984. The local version of the program was hosted by program producer Chuck Smith and Becky Strickland; it became one of the consistently highest-rated versions of PM in the country, beating syndicated programs, sometimes averaging audience shares higher than 30 percent throughout its five-year run on KSLA and had garnered a 25 rating/39 share by the end of the run of the program. Despite its local success, the KSLA edition of PM Magazine was canceled in early 1984 and was replaced by reruns of Three's Company, resulting in an almost immediate decline in audience share to 1/10th of that PM had when it ran in the 6:30 p.m. timeslot.

Sports programming

KSLA was once the home of the Shreveport Captains, the defunct Canadian Football League team, the Shreveport Pirates, and Southeastern Conference sporting events, the latter of which they continue to air via the SEC's deal with CBS Sports. From 1994 to 2009, KSLA was a charter outlet of Raycom Sports, an ad hoc syndication service that mainly carries college football and basketball games not carried by regional sports networks and select national broadcast and cable networks. The Raycom-produced game telecasts consisted of events involving teams in the SEC, airing between ten and twelve regular season games from each sport per year, with most college football and basketball telecasts airing on Saturday afternoons. Some games resulted in the station preempting sports broadcasts from CBS Sports and, occasionally, CBS prime time shows on its main channel; however, KSLA-DT2 served as an alternate feed of the service, carrying college basketball and football games that KSLA-DT1 could not carry due to CBS programming commitments.
Since 2001, KSLA has also held the local broadcast rights to NFL preseason games from the New Orleans Saints; the station carries roughly between three and five prime time game telecasts annually due to the Saints preseason games being produced by sister station WVUE.

News operation

, KSLA presently broadcasts 33 hours of locally produced newscasts each week. In addition, KSLA-DT3 broadcasts eight hours of locally produced newscasts each week: consisting of an hour-long extension of KSLA News 12 This Morning, and a simulcast of the hour-long 6:00 p.m. newscast carried on the station's main feed, both on weekdays.

News department history

The station's first news anchor and news director, Don Owen, established KSLA's news department. Initially serving as a weather anchor, Owen became a highly trusted figure among area viewers during his three-decade tenure at the station; a local columnist in the Shreveport Times once referred him "the Walter Cronkite of the Shreveport media market," comparing him to the legendary CBS News anchor. Al Bolton served as the station's first meteorologist; a native of Alexandria, a graduate of Louisiana College in Pineville, and a United States Navy veteran of both World War II and the Korean War, Bolton joined KSLA a month after the station opened and assumed long-term duties as the weather reporter, a position also with unclear duties at the beginning. Bolton also served as host of Al's Corral, a western-themed children's program that was one of the station's most popular local programs. Bolton remained the meteorologist until May 1991, when he began a ten-year association with KRMD radio before retiring. Bolton received the "Seal of Certification" from the National Weather Association in 1982 for "performance well above the media and meteorological standards".
In 1961, Bob Griffin joined KSLA as the station's sports editor. Griffin—who originally expected to stay in Shreveport for one or two years before deciding to embark on a 50-year-plus career in the Shreveport market—became personally acquainted with statistics of area athletes, some of whom reached national prominence. He also served as host of Bob & His Buddies, a children's show that aired on channel 12 during the 1960s, and the short-lived What's News?, a current events quiz program for high schoolers that ran from 1963 to 1965, which featured questions based on stories featured on KSLA's newscast and sports segments during the previous week. In October 1967, Nita Fran Hutcheson was hired by Owen to serve as an assignment reporter; her appointment made history, with Hutcheson becoming the first female television reporter in the Shreveport–Texarkana market. Under Owen's stewardship, the station also hired Margaret Pelley and Roseanne Colletti to serve as part of the station's reporting staff, along with local figures such as Wray Post, Tom and Barry Irwin, Carl Pendley, and Tony Taglavore.
In the late 1970s, KSLA was the first television station in the Shreveport–Texarkana market to update transition from film to videotape. In 1983, KSLA also became the first to operate a live satellite truck to assist in newsgathering purposes.
In September 2008, KSLA became the first television station in Louisiana to air a weekday morning newscast at 9:00 a.m. In September 2010, KSLA expanded its weeknight 6:00 p.m. newscast to one hour and expanded the weekend edition of its 10:00 p.m. newscast to one hour. On October 15, 2010, KSLA became the second television station in the Shreveport-Texarkana market to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition.
On September 7, 2016, KSLA launched a half-hour newscast at 4:00 p.m. on weekday afternoons.
In recent years, the station's news department has won several Regional Emmy Awards and four Regional Edward R. Murrow Awards for its news coverage. In 2019, the station was awarded a national Murrow Award for excellence in multimedia.

Notable on-air staff

Notable former on-air staff