KATV (channel 7) is a television station in Little Rock, Arkansas, United States, affiliated with ABC and owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group.

On December 9, 1952, the Central South Sales Co. (owned by John T. Griffin and James C. Leake) applied for a construction permit to build a new channel 7 TV station in Pine Bluff;[2] it was later joined by competing applications from the Pine Bluff Television Co. (owned by Dallas construction executive Burnett Estes) on December 27, 1952,[3] and the Arkansas Television Company (owned by construction and real estate executive Gaylord Shaw, and unrelated to the company of the same name that founded KTHV [channel 11]) on January 28, 1953.

[4] Shaw's application—filed as business colleague Estes withdrew his, with duplicate engineering data included in both applications—was accused of being a "strike" bid, purposely intended to delay the grant of the channel 7 permit.

On June 18, 1953, the FCC granted the construction permit to Central South and dismissed Shaw's application on the "strike" grounds.

KATV is Little Rock's oldest continually operating television station, beating NBC affiliate KARK-TV (channel 4) by almost five months.

During this time, in July 1958, KATV successfully filed to change its city of license from Pine Bluff to Little Rock, completing the move that October.

In November 1963, the Griffin-Leake interests reached an agreement to buy out the respective 25% interests in KWTV held by former Oklahoma Governor Roy J. Turner and Luther Dulaney—which had expanded their interest in the Oklahoma City station in August 1962, after RKO General sold its stake in KWTV to address ownership issues related to RKO's multi-layered purchase-swap transaction involving WRC-TV and WRC-AM-FM (now WTEM and WKYS) in Washington, D.C., WNAC-TV (now defunct; former channel allocation now occupied by WHDH), WNAC-AM (now WRKO) and WRKO-FM (now WBZ-FM) in Boston, the WRCV television and radio stations (now KYW-TV and KYW [AM]) in Philadelphia, and the Washington-based WGMS radio stations (now WWRC and WTOP-FM)—for an initial payment of $200,000 and title rights to the equipment used by KWTV, KTUL and KATV.

Griffin and the Leakes would own approximately all of the common voting stock and collectively own 84% of nonvoting common shares in KATV Inc. post-merger, with 10% of the remaining nonvoting interest held by Edgar Bell (who would remain executive vice president and general manager at KWTV).

Leake—who had moved from being a 3.5% minority partner in KATV to half-owner as a result of the earlier investor divestitures—retained ownership of KATV, KTUL, Ponca City, Oklahoma–based cable television operator Cable TV Co. and a controlling 80% interest in the construction permit for WSTE (now WORO-DT) in Fajardo, Puerto Rico, while Griffin retained ownership of KWTV under the licensee Century Communications Co. (Griffin's company would eventually return to Arkansas in September 1985, when it purchased NBC affiliate KPOM-TV [now Fox affiliate KFTA-TV] in Fort Smith from the Ozark Broadcasting Company; Griffin would sell KPOM and the Rogers-based satellite station it signed on in October 1989, KFAA-TV [now KNWA-TV], to the Nexstar Broadcasting Group—owner of KATV rival KARK-TV—in September 2003.

)[24][25][26][27] On November 3, 1982, Leake Industries sold KATV and KTUL to Washington, D.C.–based Allbritton Communications in an all-cash transaction for $80 million; the sale received FCC approval on February 14, 1983.

However, KATV's analog signal remained off the air for two weeks, until it built temporary transmitter facilities from an auxiliary tower on Shinall Mountain used by CBS affiliate KTHV.

[38][39] On July 29, 2013, Allbritton announced that it would sell its seven television stations, including KATV, to the Hunt Valley, Maryland–based Sinclair Broadcast Group for $985 million, to concentrate the company's operations exclusively around its political news website, Politico.

[49][50][51][52] On February 20, 2019, KATV announced that it would relocate to a renovated facility in the city's Riverdale district in a building Sinclair purchased for $4.36 million.

Upon its move to the Riverdale building, the Main Street facility is to be redeveloped as part of the planned Little Rock Technology Park complex.

On July 6, 2004, a spectacular intense high MUF Sporadic-E opening allowed Mike Bugaj[66] to receive KATV[67] in Enfield, Connecticut, 1,176 miles (1,893 km) from Little Rock.