KARK-TV serves as a master hub for Nexstar and Mission stations in Little Rock and Fayetteville, Arkansas, and Monroe and Shreveport, Louisiana.

It was owned by oil magnate Thomas Harry Barton, and was first operated from studios located on Spring Street in Little Rock.

Combined's television station properties would eventually be acquired by the Gannett Company seven years later in 1979, in what was the largest media merger in United States history at the time.

In 1983, Gannett sold KARK to Southwest Media, a subsidiary of United Broadcasting, a one-time owner of WMUR-TV in Manchester, New Hampshire, and also the owner of KDBC-TV in El Paso, Texas, and WTOK-TV in Meridian, Mississippi; Gannett would re-enter the Little Rock-Pine Bluff market when it acquired rival CBS affiliate KTHV (channel 11) from the Arkansas Television Company in December 1994.

In October 2008, Nexstar Broadcasting announced that it would purchase MyNetworkTV affiliate KWBF (channel 42) from Equity Media Holdings for $4 million.

In the interim, Nexstar took over the operations of KWBF through a time brokerage agreement; that station's call letters were changed to KARZ-TV on February 1, 2009.

On February 2, the operations of KLRT and KASN were migrated from facilities on Colonel Glenn Road and consolidated with KARK and KARZ at the downtown Little Rock studios that already house the two stations, making it the first instance in which four full-power television stations in one market, carrying affiliations with four of the six major English-language networks (NBC, Fox, The CW and MyNetworkTV) were controlled by one company; and all four having been housed out of one facility.

Occasionally as time permits, KARZ-TV may air NBC network programs whenever KARK-TV is unable to in the event of extended breaking news or severe weather coverage.

During the 1970s and 1980s, KARK produced multiple locally-produced shows including Matter of Conscience, First Saturday, Kids Like You, and Bozo's Big Top (a revival of a series that previously aired on KATV).

[6] KARK made national news in early 2006 when it decided not to air the NBC dramedy series The Book of Daniel.

In 2007, the two stations began co-producing a daily newscast titled Arkansas at Noon, with news anchors based in both Little Rock and Fayetteville.

[4][9] At the beginning of the 2010–11 television season, Nexstar took the initial steps in upgrading the station's newscasts to high definition[10] through the purchase of JVC HD cameras for in-studio segments,[11] followed by the start of construction of a new news set in early April.