Media in Little Rock, Arkansas

The major daily newspaper published in Little Rock is the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, which is circulated statewide and publishes standalone print and digital editions focusing on the Arkansas River Valley and Ozark regions from a satellite facility based in Lowell. Founded as the Arkansas Gazette by William E. Woodruff in November 1819, it was the first newspaper to begin publication in the then-Arkansas Territory and was originally published in the pre-statehood territorial capital of Arkansas Post, before relocating to Little Rock shortly after it became the capital city in 1821. The Gazette and the rival Arkansas Democrat were consolidated into a single publication in October 1991, after Gannett sold the Gazette, which had been in financial decline for several years, to Democrat parent WEHCO Media. The Democrat-Gazette transitioned from print delivery to offering digital-only replica editions of its Monday-Saturday editions statewide in 2019, though it continues to produce a Sunday print edition.[3]

In addition to the Democrat-Gazette, a number of other regional and special-interest newspapers are published in the area such as the alternative weekly Arkansas Times and business publication Arkansas Business. Several local magazines are also published in the city, most of which maintain a focus on business, lifestyle or religious interests.

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The first television station to operate in Arkansas, KRTV (channel 17), signed on from Little Rock on April 4, 1953; however, the station faltered mainly because it transmitted on the then-unviable UHF band, as television sets were not required to be manufactured with built-in UHF tuners at the time of its sign-on (requiring a more expensive external tuner to be able to view KRTV's signal). In April 1954, KRTV forfeited its license to the Federal Communications Commission and sold its studio facility to Central-South Sales Co. to serve as an auxiliary studio for the state's first VHF station, KATV (channel 7), which began operations in Pine Bluff in December 1953 and moved its city of license to Little Rock in 1958.[15][16] KETS (channel 2) signed on as the state's first educational station on December 4, 1966; between 1976 and 2006, the Arkansas Educational Television Commission (a statutory non-cabinet state agency operated through the Arkansas Department of Education) expanded its Little Rock-based station into a statewide education television network, now known as Arkansas PBS, signing on five satellite stations to provide educational programming throughout Arkansas.

Most of the transmitters belonging to television and radio stations in the area are located atop Shinall Mountain, just west of the immediate Little Rock city limits and near its Chenal Valley neighborhood; transmitter facilities for certain other area broadcasters are maintained near Redfield in Jefferson County.

WOK was the first radio station in Arkansas, founded by Arkansas Power & Light Co. (AP&L) founder Harvey Couch and debuting in Pine Bluff on February 18, 1922. In its two-year existence, among other firsts, it became the first broadcaster in Arkansas to broadcast a sermon (presented by Little Rock-based Missionary Baptist minister Ben Bogard, whose program often promoted Initiated Act 1, a proposed legislative ban on the teaching of evolution), to broadcast a sports event (an October 1922 high school football game between Pine Bluff and Prescott high schools), and to broadcast a concert (conducted during the station's inaugural broadcast by The Federation of Music Clubs of Arkansas). The non-commercial station was entirely financially supported by AP&L, ultimately becoming a financial drain on the utility company, the limited number of frequencies then available led to complaints of WOK's signal causing interference with other stations. WOK ceased operations in June 1923 and its license was terminated by the FCC in June 1924. (Couch loaned WOK's equipment to help start a student-run station at Henderson-Brown College in Arkadelphia, where he was a trustee board member, in February 1924.)[25][26][27] The first radio station in Little Rock was WSV, which debuted on April 8, 1922. Little Rock's first continuous radio station, KLRA (1470 AM, later on 1420 and then 1010 AM), began in Fort Smith as WLBN in June 1927 and was reassigned to Little Rock in January 1928 (after having broadcast from the city since the previous October). The station, which would become a CBS Radio affiliate in 1929, employed an on-staff band for live in-studio broadcasts and often conducted remote broadcasts. KLRA-AM would remain popular into the 1980s and was among the last Little Rock stations with a staff of full-time news reporters.[26][28]

KAAY (1090 AM) began operations on 800 AM in Hot Springs in December 1924; the station, which became an NBC Blue (later ABC Radio) affiliate in March 1929 and switched to CBS Radio in June 1953 (along with a short-lived secondary Mutual affiliation from 1938 to 1939), was reassigned to Little Rock—following an aborted attempt in 1949 to relocate it to West Memphis—and became the state's first 50,000-watt clear channel station—relocating its transmitter to a tower in Wrightsville, which produced a nighttime signal that covered much of the Great Plains and Mississippi Valley regions and could be received as far as parts of Cuba—in March 1953.[29] Following its 1962 purchase by LIN Broadcasting, the rechristened KAAY switched to an innovative mixed format for the time of top 40 music, news and agricultural reports, and religious programs; KAAY became known for its Arkansas Razorbacks football broadcasts and for being the originating station of Beaker Street, an underground music program that gained a cult following throughout the Central United States during its 1966–72 run. After earlier attempts to shift to adult contemporary, country music and oldies, following its sale to Beasley Broadcasting Group in 1985, KAAY adopted a religious format consisting of Southern gospel music and brokered religious programs, which it maintains to this day.[26][30][31]

KOKY (1440 AM) signed on as a daytime-only station in October 1956; as the first Arkansas radio station to employ an African American staff and to feature programming directed towards a Black audience, it gained a following among Little Rock's Black community due partly to the station's direct community involvement, including hosting and sponsoring various events throughout the city. Programming focused on Black rock-and-roll, blues and R&B music, religious programming (including several programs hosted by KOKY religious director R.L. Weaver, who became known as the "Top Religious Radio Personality in Arkansas") and specialty programs (such as Teen Time, a Saturday afternoon program hosted by Bill Hill, then a student at the city's Horace Mann High School). One of the station's DJs, Al Bell (who would later become an executive at Stax Records), regularly visited local restaurants, barbershops and record stores in the city's Black neighborhoods to help influence the content on his programs around the community's musical interests and tastes. (The station, now KTUV, switched to a Spanish-language variety format in 2006; the KOKY call letters and format—which also incorporates the all-day Saturday blues and Sunday gospel blocks that originated on the AM station—now reside on 102.1 FM.)[32][33]

The Arkansas Radio Network (ARN) syndication service was founded in Little Rock in 1967 as the Delta Farm Network, originating as an early-morning program hosted by Bob Buice (who was then farm news director at KARK-FM [103.7 FM, now KABZ] and also conducted farm reports for KARK-TV). Utilizing news staff from KARK radio (920 AM, now KARN), general manager Ted Snider founded ARN following his 1971 purchase of the KARK radio stations from the Arkansas Radio & Equipment Company (which concurrently sold KARK-TV to Mullins Broadcasting) and expanded its offerings to include statewide news, weather and sports updates as well as specialty programs, along with its agricultural reports. By the late 1980s, ARN programming was distributed to nearly 70 radio stations across Arkansas. On February 21, 2022, Cumulus Media (which acquired ARN through its 2011 purchase of Citadel Broadcasting) announced plans to suspend the network's operations effective March 20.[34]

• Arkansas media
  • List of newspapers in Arkansas
  • List of radio stations in Arkansas
  • List of television stations in Arkansas
  • Media of cities in Arkansas: Fayetteville, Fort Smith, Hot Springs, Little Rock, Rogers

Notes

¹ KMYA-LD is a translator of KMYA-DT in Camden; although KMYA-DT brands itself as a Little Rock station and is officially assigned by Nielsen to the Little Rock–Pine Bluff DMA, the station's transmitter is based in Union County (located four miles [6.4 km] northwest of El Dorado), which is within the boundaries of the El Dorado–Monroe, Louisiana market, and its signal contour extends as far north into the Little Rock–Pine Bluff DMA as Dallas, Cleveland and Clark counties. Because of this, KMYA relies on the Sheridan translator, and on cable and satellite distribution to cover Central Arkansas. ² Indicates clear-channel station with extended nighttime coverage.

• S. N. D. North; United States Department of the Interior (1884). "Catalogue of Periodical Publications: Arkansas". History and Present Condition of the Newspaper and Periodical Press of the United States. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office. OCLC 1850475.
• James T. Haley, ed. (1895), "Newspapers: Arkansas", Afro-American Encyclopaedia, Nashville: Haley & Florida, hdl:2027/inu.30000029292855, OCLC 219597043
• "Arkansas". American Newspaper Directory. New York: George P. Rowell. 1900. hdl:2027/umn.31951002273861a.
• Josiah H. Shinn (1906), "Early Arkansas Newspapers", Publications of the Arkansas Historical Association, Fayetteville, pp. 395–403
• Frederick W. Allsopp (1922). History of the Arkansas Press for a Hundred Years and More (PDF) (Reprint ed.). Little Rock, Ark: Parke-Harper Pub. Co. ISBN 9780893080730. OCLC 3576168 – via Southern Historical Press.
• "Arkansas". American Newspaper Annual & Directory. Philadelphia: N. W. Ayer & Son. 1922. pp. 55+. hdl:2027/umn.31951001295695n.
• "Newspapers and Radio", Arkansas: a Guide to the State, American Guide Series, New York: Federal Writers' Project, 1941, pp. 93–96, hdl:2027/mdp.39015002678947, OCLC 478887 – via HathiTrust
• Union list of Arkansas newspapers, 1819-1942. Little Rock: Works Progress Administration. 1942 – via HathiTrust.
• John A. Hudson; Robert L. Peterson (1955). "Arkansas Newspapers in the University of Texas Newspaper Collection". Arkansas Historical Quarterly. 14 (3): 207–224. doi:10.2307/40037988. JSTOR 40037988.
• G. Thomas Tanselle (1971). "General Studies: Arkansas". Guide to the Study of United States Imprints. Harvard University Press. p. 832. ISBN 978-0-674-36761-6. (Includes information about newspapers)
• Robert W. Meriwether (1974). A Chronicle of Arkansas Newspapers Published Since 1922 and of the Arkansas Press Association, 1930-1972. Little Rock, Ark: Arkansas Press Association. OCLC 2146483.
• Michael B. Dougan (2003). Community diaries: Arkansas newspapering, 1819-2002. ISBN 0874837227.
• Jack Alicoate, ed. (1939), "Arkansas", Radio Annual, New York: Radio Daily, OCLC 2459636 – via Internet Archive
• Chas. A. Alicoate, ed. (1957), "Amplitude Modulation Stations - AM: Arkansas", Radio Annual and Television Yearbook, New York: Radio Daily Corp., OCLC 10512206 – via Internet Archive
• "AM Stations in the U.S.: Arkansas", Radio Annual Television Year Book, New York: Radio Television Daily, 1963, OCLC 10512375 – via Internet Archive
• "United States TV Stations: Arkansas", Yearbook of Radio and Television, New York: Radio Television Daily, 1964, OCLC 7469377 – via Internet Archive

• Little Rock Media List
• Arkansas Newspaper List
• "Arkansas Newspapers". Little Rock: Arkansas Press Association.
• C. Dennis Schick, "Mass Media", Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture, Central Arkansas Library System. (Includes bibliography)
• Ethel C. Simpson, "Literature and Authors: Arkansas Newspapering", Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture, Central Arkansas Library System
• "News: Newspapers: Regional: United States: Arkansas". DMOZ. AOL. (Directory ceased in 2017)
• "Arkansas Newspapers". Historical U.S. Newspapers Online. Library Guides. Ohio: Bowling Green State University. Newspapers that are freely available on the Internet
• "US Newspaper Directory: Arkansas". Chronicling America. Washington, DC: Library of Congress.
• International Coalition on Newspapers. "Newspaper Digitization Projects: United States: Arkansas". Chicago: Center for Research Libraries.
• University of Florida. "Arkansas". NewspaperCat: Catalog of Digital Historical Newspapers. Gainesville.
• "United States: Arkansas". NewsDirectory.com. Toronto: Tucows Inc. Archived from the original on November 20, 2001.