television station to sign on in the present day Shreveport–Texarkana market and the second to be licensed to Shreveport, after Shreveport-based KSLA (channel 12), which signed on the air on January 1, 1954; and Texarkana, Texas-licensed KCMC-TV (channel 6, now KTAL-TV), which debuted on August 16, 1953. The station originally operated as a primary NBC affiliate, owing to KTBS radio's longtime relationship with the progenitor NBC Red Network. It also maintained a secondary affiliation with ABC, the rights to which it shared with KSLA-TV, which had carried a secondary affiliation with that network since it signed on. The station has maintained studio facilities located at 312 East Kings Highway since its inception, sharing its facility with KTBS radio. The radio stations were sold off in the late 1950s, but the Wrays (who are also the owners of a car dealership franchise in Shreveport) have retained channel 3 to this day. As a full-time ABC affiliate In March 1961, NBC reached an agreement with KCMC-TV to become the network's primary affiliate for the enlarged Shreveport–Texarkana market. KCMC owner Camden News Publishing Co. – which, in 1960, received permission to move the station's transmitter to a site south-southwest of Vivian, in a move that would consolidate Shreveport and Texarkana into a single television market – was in the process of expanding its service area to encompass and its primary operations to serve the Shreveport area. KTBS's contract with NBC was not scheduled to expire until September 1962, though, with the planned relocation of KCMC to cover Shreveport, there had been speculation that KTBS and KTAL would swap primary affiliations before the contract was set to expire. On September 3, 1961, KTAL took over as the exclusive NBC affiliate for the Shreveport–Texarkana market; KTBS-TV concurrently became the market's exclusive ABC affiliate as well as the second full-time ABC affiliate in the state of Louisiana (after WVUE-TV [now a Fox affiliate] in New Orleans, which became a full-time ABC station in 1957). Over the years, KTBS has become one of the strongest ABC affiliates in the country. In an era where most broadcast television stations have become owned by larger chain broadcasting companies due to increased ownership consolidation in the broadcast television industry, KTBS is one of the few major network affiliates in the U.S. that has remained under local ownership. It became the first of the local "Big Three" affiliates in Shreveport and