Originally scheduled to debut on 1½ months earlier on July 1, the station first signed on the air on August 16, 1953. Channel 6 was the first television station to sign on in the Shreveport–Texarkana market and the first such station to be licensed to a city outside of Shreveport; it is also the only full-power television station in the Shreveport–Texarkana Designated Market Area that is licensed to a municipality not within the Louisiana portion of the market. It originally operated as a primary affiliate of CBS—an affiliation that was inherited through KCMC radio's longtime relationship with the television network's direct predecessor, the CBS Radio Network—although it also maintained secondary affiliations with NBC, ABC and the DuMont Television Network, carrying select programs from all three networks. KCMC-TV originally maintained studio facilities located on Summerhill Road and College Drive in northwestern Texarkana, Texas; the station originally maintained transmitter facilities on a broadcast tower, originally transmitting at an estimated power of 28,200 watts, located on Summerhill Road and College Drive ( to the southwest).