KATV

The Gift

KATV, channel 7, is an ABC affiliated television station serving the Little Rock television market and central Arkansas. The station is owned by Allbritton Communications Company.

The station broadcasts its digital signal via UHF channel 22, using its former analog assignment of 7 as its virtual channel via PSIP. It is also available on Comcast analog cable channel 8, with its HD simulcast on Comcast Digital Cable channel 231 in Little Rock.

Until it collapsed January 11, 2008, both signals were broadcast from the KATV Tower near Redfield, Arkansas. Its analog license continued to reflect this site while the station was broadcasting in analog from a temporary site, and in HDTV on a subchannel of KWBF (channel 42, now KARZ-TV). It began broadcasts on February 1, 2009 from a new digital transmitter located on Shinall Mountain, near the Chenal Valley neighborhood of Little Rock.

KATV debuted on December 19, 1953, originally in Pine Bluff. The station was an ABC affiliate; during the late 1950s, the station was also briefly affiliated with the NTA Film Network. 

KATV is Little Rock's oldest continually operating television station, beating KARK-TV (channel 4) by a few months. Less than a year after sign-on, KATV moved from Pine Bluff to Little Rock and took over the studio of KRTV, a failed UHF station that had been Arkansas' first TV station. The new operations were on North Beech Street near Kavanaugh in the Pulaski Heights section of Little Rock; however, the station burned on Halloween night in 1957.

Air personalities during early years of operation included the station's first announcer, Don Curran, the first news director, Bill Hadley, and news announcer, Oscar Alagood. News cameramen included Bob Donaldson and Lou Oberste. Donaldson would later lead the film department at the University of Arkansas Medical School for many years, and Oberste would work at the Arkansas Department of Tourism.

KATV then moved to a two story building at 310 West 3rd Street. The first floor had been a furniture store. The second floor had been studios for a radio station and insurance agency. The television station called the tired old building home for about seven years and it was here where Robert Doubleday became one of the youngest television station managers in the country. He was 26 and it was 1959. It would be Doubleday who would lead the station into a competitive position in the Little Rock broadcasting market.

There was a major fight in federal court with the FCC and citizens of Pine Bluff over location of the facility in Little Rock. The station lost and until recently had maintained a major presence in Jefferson County.

Doubleday remained as manager until 1968 when he was promoted to President of both KATV and sister station, KTUL in Tulsa. Doubleday was replaced by Thomas Goodgame, who had served as General Sales Manager for a number of years. Goodgame would later move to Tulsa as General Manager and eventually become president of Westinghouse Television.

The station moved to the Worthen Bank building in October of 1970. The bank had constructed a new building in downtown Little Rock.

KATV, along with sister station KTUL (channel 8) in Tulsa, Oklahoma and original sister station KWTV (channel 9) in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, were founded by John Griffin (whose company would later become today's Griffin Communications) and Jimmy Leake. The Leake family became sole owners of KATV and KTUL in 1968, and owned the stations until 1983, when both stations were sold to the current owner, Allbritton Communications Company.

In February 1999, KATV aired ads for the theatrical animated film Doug's 1st Movie during a ABC network broadcast of Disney's Doug. Nearly eight years later, in 2007, the FCC fined KATV $8,000 for violating limits on commercials during children's programming. KATV appealed, claiming the error was due to a last-minute insertion order from ABC. However, it lost the appeal in April 2010. 

KATV has used the Circle 7 logo since 1965, though it is traditionally associated with owned-and-operated ABC stations, KATV is one of several non-O&Os to have used it. KATV's use of the Circle 7 logo predates even the variant Circle 7 once used by Allbritton's flagship WJLA in Washington D.C. before it switched to the standard version. However, unlike WJLA and most of the O&Os, KATV only uses the ABC logo with the Circle 7 occasionally, usually in screen-corner bugs where the Circle 7 covers the standard ABC bug. KATV also first placed the Circle 7 inside a square in the 1990s; WJLA now uses that as well, though neither station uses it consistently. In fall 2008, KATV discontinued use of the square Circle 7 logo.

KATV broadcasts a total of 28 hours of local news per week (with five hours on weekdays, two hours on Saturdays and one hour on Sundays), the most of any station in the Little Rock market. KATV is currently one of only two Little Rock stations (CBS affiliate KTHV debuted a Saturday morning newscast in April 2010) carrying a weekend morning newscast, a Saturday edition of Channel 7 News Daybreak. Until the 1990s, rival station KARK was the market leader. Since then, KATV has consistently placed second behind market leader KTHV.

From 2001 to 2005, KATV rebroadcast its 6 and 10 p.m. newscasts weeknights on then-Pax affiliate KYPX (now KKYK-DT). This ended in 2005 due to two factors: the first being Pax's rebranding as i: Independent Television (now ION Television) with KYPX instead becoming the flagship station of Retro Television Network, and Pax's earlier decision to cut ties with its news share agreements with major network affiliates in the markets it had an affiliate, due to financial troubles. KATV was one of a few non-NBC affiliates to rebroadcast its newscasts on a Pax affiliate.

On September 20, 2010, KATV expanded its weekday morning newscast to 2½ hours, moving the start time to 4:30 a.m. On October 28, 2010, KATV announced that it would begin broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition in within the next several months, although no set date for the upgrade was announced.