On May 2, 1951, the KCMC Inc. subsidiary of the Camden News Publishing Company—owned by Clyde E. Palmer (owner of the "Texarkana Gazette" and several other newspapers and radio stations across Arkansas and Texas) and his son-in-law Walter E. Hussman, Sr.—filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to obtain a license and construction permit to operate a commercial television station on VHF channel 6, the only television allocation assigned to Texarkana, Texas. The FCC granted the permit to the Palmer/Hussman-led group on February 5, 1953. The group subsequently requested and received approval to assign KCMC-TV as the television station's call letters, using the base callsign that had been used by Camden News Publishing's Texarkana radio station on 740 AM since it signed on in 1933 and applied to its radio sister on 98.1 FM (now KTAL-FM) when it signed on in 1948.