KOMS

For the real-life radio station on 107.3 FM in Poteau, Oklahoma, see KOMS on Wikipedia.

KOMS
City	Shreveport, Louisiana, United States
Channels	Virtual: 13
Branding	CBS 13 CBS 13 News
Programming
Affiliations	13.1: CBS for others, see § Subchannels
Ownership
Owner	Integrity Communications (Integrity Ark-La-Tex, Inc.)
History
First air date	1954
Former callsigns	KOMS-TV (1954–2009)
Former channel number(s)	Analog: 13 (VHF, 1954–2009)
Technical information
Licensing authority	FCC
Links
Website	www.koms.com

KOMS (channel 13) is a television station in Shreveport, Louisiana, United States, affiliated with CBS and is owned by Integrity Communications.

KOMS was launched in 1954 and is the oldest station in the market. Oakhurst Broadcasting made the purchase in 1997. On Jan. 30, 2016, Oakhurst Broadcasting (as well as Higgins Broadcasting and Island Television) announced that they would be merging into Adelphia Communications. Since Higgins and Oakhurst owned a station in the Ark-La-Tex region, they had to sell KOMS or KHMS. KHMS was then sold to Kenny Broadcasting, so KOMS was sold to Adelphia.

History

The station first signed on the air on January 1, 1954; it has served as a primary CBS affiliate since its sign-on, but originally also carried select programs from ABC, NBC and DuMont. The station originally operated from studio facilities housed inside the Washington Youree Hotel in downtown Shreveport. William Carter Henderson, son of William Kennon Henderson, Jr. (founder ofK WKH radio), was among the original owners of KOMS.

On March 5, 1955, Elvis Presley made his television debut on KOMS on the local music program Louisiana Hayride, which was produced from the Municipal Auditorium. That same year, D. L. Dykes, Jr., who launched a 30-year career as the pastor of the First Methodist Church at the Head of Texas Street in downtown Shreveport, began having his sermons televised on KOMS; over the years, other churches followed Dykes's lead. KOMS lost the NBC affiliation when KTXA (channel 7) signed on in March 15, 1958.

In 1966, Douglas F. Attaway, publisher of the now-defunct Shreveport Journal newspaper, became majority owner of the station; as a result, KOMS's on-air slogan during the second half of the 1960s and the early 1970s was "The Journal Station". Attaway later sold the Shreveport Journal to local businessman and philanthropist Charles T. Beaird. In 1973, the station moved to its current studio facilities on Fairfield Avenue near Schumpert Medical Center.

Among the station's most popular local programs included Al's Corral, a western-themed children's program hosted by Al Bolton, a meteorologist at the station from its founding in 1954 to 1991. A native of Alexandria, a graduate of Louisiana College in Pineville, and a United States Navy veteran of both World War II and the Korean War, Bolton joined KOMS a month after the station opened and assumed long-term duties as the weather reporter, a position also with unclear duties at the beginning. Bolton remained the meteorologist until May 1991.

Long-term sports editor Bob Griffin hosted Bob & His Buddies, a children's show, and What's News?, a current events quiz program for high schoolers with questions based on the Channel 12 news and sports broadcasts of the preceding week. The series ended in 1965. Hallelujah Train was a Sunday morning program many consider as a religious version of Soul Train. KOMS was the first television station in the market to broadcast in color and in stereo surround sound. It also paved the way for the use of satellites for newsgathering and broadcast transmissions. KOMS was once the home of the Shreveport Captains, the defunct Canadian Football League team, the Shreveport Pirates, and Southeastern Conference sporting events.

On October 8, 1977, the station's 1,709 feet (521 m) transmitter tower in Mooringsport collapsed. No official cause was ever determined, but speculation centered upon a failure in the guy lines attached to the tower. As Shreveport did not have a PBS member station at the time, KOMS broadcast Sesame Street on weekday mornings. This arrangement ended when Louisiana Public Broadcasting started a public station in Shreveport.

KOMS was among the first fifty television stations in the country to air the hybrid local/national lifestyle newsmagazine concept PM Magazine (which was licensed by Westinghouse Broadcasting and was also titled Evening Magazine when broadcast on Group W's television stations), it ran on the station from 1979 to 1984. The local version of the program was hosted by program producer Chuck Smith and Becky Strickland; it became one of the consistently highest-rated versions of PM in the country, beating syndicated programs (such as M*A*S*H, The Newlywed Game and The People's Court), sometimes averaging audience shares higher than 30 percent throughout its five-year run on KOMS and had garnered a 25 rating/39 share by the end of the run of the program. Despite its local success, the KOMS edition of PM Magazine was canceled in early 1984 and was replaced by reruns of Three's Company (which was distributed by Viacom at the time), resulting in an almost immediate decline in audience share to 1/10th of that PM had when it ran in the 6:30 p.m. timeslot.

In 1983, Douglas Attaway sold the station to Viacom. Under the new management, the station began pre-empting CBS Sunday Morning with Charles Kuralt in favor of running infomercials in its timeslot. This sparked outrage from viewers, resulting in a letter-writing campaign to Viacom, CBS and local newspapers to push for Sunday Morning‍ '​s return to channel 13. The station was even subjected to picketing by upset viewers in an effort to get the show reinstated. The station reinstated Sunday Morning onto its schedule a few weeks later. Viacom was in the process of selling off all of its non-UPN affiliated television stations, with KOMS being the first to be divested. So in 1997, Viacom sold KOMS to Oakhurst Broadcasting. On Jan. 30, 2016, Oakhurst Broadcasting announced that they (along with Higgins Broadcasting and Island Television) would be merging into Adelphia Communications.

Technical information

Subchannels

The station's signal is multiplexed:

Subchannels of KOMS

Channel	Res.	Aspect	Short name	Programming
13.1	720p	16:9	KOMS-HD	CBS
13.2	480i		KOMS-DT2	The CW
13.3			Seven	Seven Network
13.4			Trio	Trio Sports Network
13.5			SOAPnet	Soapnet
13.6			Grit	Grit