CBS grew frustrated with having to maintain affiliations with two stations in order to carry its programming in an otherwise effectively consolidated market. In December 1960, CBS announced that it would disaffiliate from KCMC-TV and assume a full-time affiliation with Shreveport-based KSLA-TV (channel 12)—which had carried the network's programming since it signed on the air on January 1, 1954—citing that KSLA's signal decently covered Texarkana; with there being enough television stations serving the eastern two-thirds of the Ark-La-Tex region to allow it to maintain an exclusive affiliation, CBS therefore considered KCMC to be redundant. KCMC-TV was faced with the prospect of having to fall back on its secondary affiliation with the then-weak ABC (which would not gain a major foothold in the Nielsen ratings nationally until the latter part of the 1960s) or become an independent station—neither of which was a viable option for such a small market. Hussman thus persuaded the FCC to formally collapse Texarkana and Shreveport into a single television market.