The stations share studios on North Market Street and Deer Park Road in northeast Shreveport, while KSHV-TV's transmitter is located southeast of Mooringsport.

The UHF channel 45 allocation in Shreveport was contested between three groups that competed for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)'s approval of a construction permit to build and license to operate a new television station.

Three months later on December 9, an application by the third applicant for UHF channel 45, Shreveport-based Godfrey & Associates, was dismissed with prejudice by Joseph Chachkin, the administrative law judge appointed in its dispute over the construction permit with Word of Life, for failure to prosecute; this resulted in the FCC granting the permit to Word of Life.

In March 1995, Lafayette-based White Knight Broadcasting (owned by media executive Sheldon Galloway) purchased the station from Word of Life Ministries for $3.8 million; the sale received FCC approval on May 9, 1995.

On July 7, 1997, KSHV became a secondary affiliate of The WB, allowing viewers throughout the Ark-La-Tex who did not have a cable or satellite subscription to watch that network's programs for the first time.

The switch, which also resulted in its original Pax TV (now Ion Television) affiliation being shifted to secondary status, coincided with KPXJ's operations being assumed by KTBS, LLC (owner of ABC affiliate KTBS-TV [channel 3]) under a local marketing agreement, and resulted in some first-run and off-network syndicated programs whose rights had been held by KSHV being moved to KPXJ to fill that station's new general-entertainment-based schedule.

[19][20][21][22] However, on June 6, 2014, Nexstar announced that it would instead sell KMSS-TV to a new minority-owned company, Houston-based Marshall Broadcasting Group (founded by Pluria Marshall, Jr.) for $58.5 million, an agreement that was among the company's first television station acquisitions, along with the concurrent acquisitions of Fox affiliates KPEJ-TV in Midland, Texas, and KLJB in Davenport, Iowa.

The sale of ComCorp to Nexstar, as well as that of KMSS to Marshall and a concurring acquisition of the time brokerage agreement with KSHV, received FCC approval on December 4, 2014, and was completed on January 1, 2015.

[28] As part of the agreement, on September 1 of that year, KSHV-TV launched a digital subchannel on virtual channel 45.2 to serve as an affiliate of Escape.

The program primarily focuses on local news stories centered on the Texarkana, Arkansas–Texas metropolitan area (the latter being sister station KTAL's city of license), along with national and international headlines.

(The program is currently the only 5:30 p.m. newscast produced for a Nexstar-owned-or-operated station in the Central and Mountain Time Zones that is not carried on a Fox affiliate operated by the group.