Article · Wikipedia archive · Last revised Jul 30, 2026

KLRA-CD

KLRA-CD is a low-power, Class A television station in Little Rock, Arkansas, United States, affiliated with the Spanish-language network Univision. Owned by Pinnacle Media, KLRA-CD maintains studios on Shackelford Drive in the Beverly Hills section of Little Rock, and its transmitter is located on Shinall Mountain, near the city's Chenal Valley neighborhood.

Last revised
Jul 30, 2026
Read time
≈ 7 min
Length
1,542 w
Citations
29
Source
Wikipedia ↗
KLRA-CD
Channels
BrandingUnivision Arkansas
Programming
Affiliations
Ownership
Owner
  • Larry Morton
  • (Pinnacle Media, LLC1)
KKYK-CD
History
FoundedMay 15, 1995
Former call signs
  • K22FA (1995–1996)
  • KKYK-LP (1996–2005)
  • KKYK-CA (2005–2011)
  • KKYK-CD (2011–2013)
Former channel numbers
Analog: 22 (UHF, 1995–2006), 20 (UHF, 2006–2009)
Call sign meaning
Little Rock, Arkansas
Technical information2
Licensing authority
FCC
57545
ClassCD
ERP15 kW1
HAAT350.2 m (1,149 ft)
Transmitter coordinates
34°47′56″N 92°29′45″W / 34.79889°N 92.49583°W / 34.79889; -92.49583
Links
Public license information
Websitelatinotvar.com

KLRA-CD (channel 20) is a low-power, Class A television station in Little Rock, Arkansas, United States, affiliated with the Spanish-language network Univision. Owned by Pinnacle Media, KLRA-CD maintains studios on Shackelford Drive in the Beverly Hills section of Little Rock (alongside KKYK-CD), and its transmitter is located on Shinall Mountain, near the city's Chenal Valley neighborhood.

History

The station began as K22FA, 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 15, 1995,3 and originally signed on as an affiliate of Network One. The station later changed its callsign to KKYK-LP on August 13, 1996; and in January 1997, the station became an affiliate of The WB,4 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, 199856—first signed on the air in Camden on June 7, 1999, as KKYK-TV, and KKYK-LP became 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.789

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.10111213 On June 30, 2005, KYPX and KKYK-LP—which retained the callsign—disaffiliated from Pax TV (as that network was relaunching as i: Independent Television), and became the flagship station of Equity's Retro Television Network classic television service. On June 30, 2006, the station's callsign was modified to KKYK-DT, becoming among the few U.S. television stations to bear the "-DT" suffix. KKYK-LP was re-designated as a Class A station, with its call letters being modified to KKYK-CA (formerly broadcasting on channel 22, KKYK-CA was forced to move to UHF channel 20 to accommodate KATV's digital signal).

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,14 resulting in Luken terminating the network's agreements with KKYK and the rest of its Equity-owned affiliates;15 (RTN—under its new modified initialism, RTV—later affiliated with KATV, being carried on that station's second digital subchannel.)

The station became an affiliate of This TV on February 1, 2009, lasting five months until August 1, when it switched to Tuff TV.16 (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.17 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,18 which acquired the station through the subsidiary Hallmark National Mortgage Corporation.19202122 The sale received FCC approval on December 13, 2009, and was approved on January 7, 2010.23 On August 2, 2010, it was announced that KKYK-CA would sell to Pinnacle Media for $250,000.2425 On January 3, 2011, KKYK-CA began broadcasting digitally as KKYK-CD.26

On February 28, 2013, KKYK-CD swapped call letters with KLRA-CD (channel 30), taking over the Univision affiliation of the former KLRA.27

Subchannels

The station's signal is multiplexed:

Subchannels of KLRA-CD28
Channel Res. Short name Programming
20.1 1080i KLRA-CD Univision
20.2 480i Faith
20.3 Spirit Spirit TV
20.4 Silver SilverSpur TV
20.5 JTV Jewelry Television
20.6 HSN HSN
20.7 RVTV Quinnly TV
20.8 HLand Heartland
20.9 cstone Infomercials (4:3)
20.10 NewsMa2 Newsmax2
References

References

  1. "Little Rock low LPTVs changing hands". Radio & Television Business Report. August 15, 2012. Retrieved May 11, 2026.
  2. "Facility Technical Data for KLRA-CD". Licensing and Management System. Federal Communications Commission.
  3. "Application Search Details". Federal Communications Commission. May 15, 1995. Retrieved February 23, 2022.
  4. "WB and UPN, Station By Station" (PDF). Broadcasting & Cable. Cahners Business Information. July 21, 1997. p. 6. Retrieved February 23, 2022 – via World Radio History.
  5. "For the Record" (PDF). Broadcasting & Cable. Cahners Business Information. April 28, 1997. p. 66. Retrieved February 23, 2022 – via World Radio History.
  6. "Application Search Details". Federal Communications Commission. August 20, 1998. Retrieved February 23, 2022.
  7. Lance Turner (March 13, 2000). "Twisters attendance up, despite record". Arkansas Business. Arkansas Business Publishing Group. Retrieved February 23, 2022.
  8. Lance Turner (April 3, 2000). "Equity Enters Sports Arena With Twisters, RiverBlades Buy". Arkansas Business. Arkansas Business Publishing Group. Retrieved February 23, 2022.
  9. Mark Friedman (November 12, 2001). "Equity hopes TV games will lure fans to RiverBlades, Twisters". Arkansas Business. Arkansas Business Publishing Group. Retrieved February 23, 2022.
  10. Lance Turner (January 15, 2001). "The Swap". Arkansas Business. Arkansas Business Publishing Group. Retrieved February 23, 2022.
  11. Lance Turner (March 13, 2000). "Equity Broadcasting To Acquire KYPX-TV". Arkansas Business. Arkansas Business Publishing Group. Retrieved February 23, 2022.
  12. "Changing Hands: TVS" (PDF). Broadcasting & Cable. Cahners Business Information. April 30, 2000. p. 88. Retrieved February 23, 2022 – via World Radio History.
  13. "Application Search Details". Federal Communications Commission. August 28, 2000. Retrieved February 23, 2022.
  14. Alaina Anderson (January 4, 2009). "What's Wrong with MyTV?". WSAV-TV. Media General. Archived from the original on January 13, 2009.
  15. Harry A. Jessell (January 5, 2009). "Financial Dispute Disrupts RTN Diginet". TV News Check. NewsCheck Media.
  16. "KKYK Little Rock Switches To TUFF TV". TV News Check. NewsCheck Media. August 5, 2009. Retrieved February 23, 2022.
  17. "Equity Media Sets Auction For Stations". Broadcasting & Cable. Reed Business Information. April 10, 2009.
  18. "Takers found for 60 Equity stations". Radio & Television Business Report. RBR-TVBR, LLC. April 18, 2009. Archived from the original on April 24, 2009. Retrieved April 20, 2009.
  19. "Report of the Bank Commissioner of Arkansas" (PDF). Arkansas State Bank Department. June 30, 2008. p. 131 (numbered p. 125). Archived from the original (PDF) on July 13, 2010.
  20. "KKYK Asset Purchase Agreement". Federal Communications Commission. July 20, 2009.
    "KKYK Asset Purchase Agreement (sourced from FCC sale application)". Federal Communications Commission. July 20, 2009.
  21. "FCC Form 314, Exhibit 12". Federal Communications Commission. July 20, 2009.
    "FCC Form 314, Exhibit 12 (sourced from FCC sale application)". Federal Communications Commission. July 20, 2009.
  22. "Three more Equity contracts filed". Radio & Television Business Report. RBR-TVBR, LLC. July 24, 2009. Retrieved May 11, 2026.
  23. "Application Search Details". Federal Communications Commission. January 7, 2010. Retrieved February 23, 2022.
  24. "Assignments". Licensing and Management System. Federal Communications Commission. Retrieved May 11, 2026.
  25. "Pinnacle Media doubles up in Little Rock". Radio & Television Business Report. August 4, 2010. Retrieved May 11, 2026.
  26. "License To Cover for Digital Class A TV Station Application". Licensing and Management System. Federal Communications Commission. Retrieved May 9, 2026.
  27. "04-2013EVUD.pdf" (PDF). WTFDA. Retrieved May 11, 2026.
  28. "RabbitEars TV Query for KLRA". RabbitEars. Retrieved January 27, 2025.
External links