only major newspapers in Shreveport" and because Times Publishing would be the business agent for both newspapers and exert control of KWKH. On June 16, 1954, FCC Hearing Examiner Basil Cooper issued an initial decision looking to grant the construction permit application for channel 3 to KTBS Inc. The FCC Broadcast Bureau granted exclusive rights to the permit to Shreveport Television Company on February 16, 1955, formally denying KRMD and Southland Television's respective bids, finding that KTBS Inc. was a more qualified permittee due to its local ownership, integration of ownership and management, and had more extensive participation by its ownership in local affairs. The KWKH application was denied due to critical deficiencies under FCC's diversification of media of communications policy, citing its ownership of two clear channel radio stations (KWKH-AM and KTHS [now KAAY] in Little Rock, Arkansas) and its parent's ownership of three newspapers (the Times, and the Monroe Morning World and The News-Star in Monroe) in neighboring states would produce a concentration of broadcast and newspaper facilities by a single company, but noted that the Timess joint printing agreement with the Shreveport Journal produced "no disservice to the public interest" due to the lack of a forced combination in print advertising. (A petition by KWKH to reconsider the grant of the channel 3 permit to KTBS Inc. was denied in May 1955, with the FCC admonishing KWKH for "repetitious[...], reckless and unsupported" charges in its petition that a KTBS principal witness committed perjury, and its "assertions and insinuations" that the agency did not give "fair, impartial" consideration to the evidence submitted; a subsequent appeal by International Broadcasting/KWKH seeking to overturn the grant, was denied by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana in March 1956.) The Wray-led group subsequently requested and received approval to assign KTBS-TV as the television station's call letters; the base KTBS callsign – standing for "Tri-State Broadcasting System," the moniker that the Wrays used for the other radio stations they owned in Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas – had been used by the Wray-owned namesake radio station on 710 AM (now KEEL) since 1929, and applied to its FM sister on 96.5 (now KVKI-FM) upon its sign-on in 1953. (The calls can also be taken to reference the three cities in its service area, "Texarkana, Bossier, Shreveport".) KTBS-TV first signed on the air on September 3, 1955; it was the third