About KARK 4

KARK is a television station located in Little Rock, Arkansas that first signed on the air on April 15, 1954. It is the city's second-oldest continuously operating television station, after KATV (channel 7), which began broadcasting almost five months earlier. When it first launched, KARK operated from studios located on Spring Street in Little Rock.

In 1966, the Barton family sold KARK to Mullins Broadcasting, the owner of KBTV (now KUSA) in Denver. After the company's owner, John C. Mullins, died in 1969, the Mullins estate sold both KBTV and KARK to Combined Communications in 1972. In 1976, the station moved to a new facility on West 3rd Street in downtown Little Rock. Seven years later, in 1979, Combined's television station properties, including KARK, were acquired by the Gannett Company in what was then the largest media merger in United States history. In 1983, Gannett sold KARK to Southwest Media, a subsidiary of United Broadcasting, a company that also owned KDBC-TV in El Paso, Texas, WTOK-TV in Meridian, Mississippi, and WMUR-TV in Manchester, New Hampshire. Gannett would re-enter the Little Rock-Pine Bluff market in December 1994 when it acquired rival CBS affiliate KTHV (channel 11) from the Arkansas Television Company.