KNWA-TV

The station began on October 1, 1989 as KFAA-TV, a satellite of KPOM-TV in Fort Smith.[4] Both stations were owned by the Oklahoma City, Oklahoma-based Griffin Television. Its sign-on marked the first time that NBC had been seen over-the-air in much of the northern part of the market since KFSM-TV (channel 5) lost the area's NBC affiliation to KPOM in 1983. KPOM only provided Grade B coverage of Fayetteville and could not be seen at all in Rogers and points north. In the early 2000s, KPOM and KFAA began a regional local newscast targeting the Fort Smith and Fayetteville areas, Arkansas NBC News. The newscast was anchored by Don Elkins, Rhonda Justice and Donna Bragg, weather by Steve Gibbs and Rick Katzfey, and sports with Mike Nail. Justice, Bragg, Gibbs, and Nail were all formerly of rival station KHBS (channel 40). The newscast was unable to break into the market successfully however and in 2004, Griffin Television sold KPOM-TV and KFAA-TV to Nexstar.[5] The stations changed their calls to KNWA-TV and KFTA-TV respectively on August 13, 2004 and KNWA became the main station. At the same time, the two stations' operations both were merged in a new studio located in the historic Campbell-Bell building on South Block Avenue in Downtown Fayetteville. KFTA's original studio on Kelley Highway in Fort Smith remained in use as KNWA's Arkansas River Valley bureau.

In April 2006, Nexstar announced that it would sell KFTA to Mission Broadcasting, though it would continue to operate the station under a local marketing agreement with KNWA. Under the plan, KFTA would become the Fox affiliate for the area leaving KNWA as the sole NBC affiliate for Northwest Arkansas. Equity Broadcasting, owner of the Class A Fox-affiliate KPBI-CA, challenged the sale of KFTA to Mission with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Nonetheless, the separation occurred on August 28 while both were under Nexstar ownership. Until the sale of KFTA to Mission was approved, the stations continued to simulcast from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays. KFTA now runs a separate programming schedule from KNWA, even though Nexstar (As of May 19, 2013) still owns both KNWA and KFTA outright. This station took its analog transmitter off-the-air for a few days in mid-August to relocate it to another site for improved coverage.[6]

This did not pose as much of a problem as it may have seemed, given the high penetration of cable and satellite service in this area. The only station that has adequate coverage throughout the market from a single transmitter is AETN's KAFT. Cable and satellite are all but essential for acceptable television in Northwest Arkansas due to its rugged terrain. For example, Dish Network and DirecTV carried KPBI-CA while it was the Fox affiliate even though those carriers usually do not offer low-power stations. After the split, KPBI-CA was dropped in favor of KFTA. On the other hand, the split improved Fox's coverage and enables high definition Fox programming in this market as KPBI-CA is low-power and does not have a digital transmitter, unlike KNWA and KFTA. According to their FCC filings, both stations have digital transmitters licensed for one million watts each compared to five million watts for an analog UHF transmitter. Thus, their digital coverage areas well exceed the analog coverage areas of both KFTA (2.5 million watts) and especially KNWA.

On December 3, 2018, Nexstar announced it would acquire Chicago-based Tribune Media—which has owned CBS affiliate KFSM-TV and MyNetworkTV affiliate KXNW (channel 34) since December 2013—in an all-cash deal valued at $6.4 billion, including the assumption of Tribune-held outstanding debt. Because KNWA and KFSM both rank among the four highest-rated stations in the Fort Smith–Fayetteville market in total day viewership, and broadcasters are not currently allowed to legally own more than two full-power television stations in a single market, Nexstar may be required to sell either KNWA/KFTA or KFSM/KXNW to another broadcasting company in order to comply with FCC ownership rules and alleviate potential antitrust issues preceding approval of the acquisition. On March 20, 2019, it was announced that Nexstar would keep the KNWA/KFTA duopoly (through an existing satellite station waiver that predated KFTA's conversion into a separately programmed Fox affiliate in 2006) and sell KFSM to McLean, Virginia-based Tegna Inc., as part of the company's sale of nineteen Nexstar- and Tribune-operated stations to Tegna and the E. W. Scripps Company in separate deals worth $1.32 billion. KXNW was not named in the sale, which would effectively result in the formation of a de facto triopoly between KFTA and KNWA. The deal—which would make Nexstar the largest television station operator by total number of stations upon its expected closure late in the third quarter of 2019, pending regulatory approval by the FCC and the U.S. Department of Justice's Antitrust Division—would make the KNWA/KFTA duopoly sister stations to Tribune's Oklahoma City duopoly of NBC affiliate KFOR-TV and independent station KAUT-TV (which, in turn, would result in Nexstar owning stations in every market serving portions of the state of Oklahoma, except for the Tulsa and Ada–Sherman markets).[7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18] The sale was approved by the FCC on September 16 and was completed on September 19, 2019.

KNWA-TV currently broadcasts the entire NBC schedule; unlike most of Nexstar's legacy NBC affiliates, the station clears most of NBC's weekend overnight lifestyle lineup and its weekday overnight lineup (consisting of a rebroadcast of the fourth hour of Today and the customary loop of the network's early morning newscast Early Today). Syndicated programs broadcast by KNWA include Entertainment Tonight, The People's Court, Right This Minute and Judge Judy.

The station also produces the news/talk/lifestyle program Good Day NWA, which airs weekday afternoons at 12:30 p.m.; the half-hour program, which debuted on April 23, 2018, is currently hosted by Jason Suel (who also hosts the lifestyle/variety program Later With Jason Suel, which airs on KFTA following the Saturday edition of its 9:00 p.m. newscast) and Jaclyn House (who also serves as entertainment correspondent for KNWA Today and KFTA's weekday morning newscast Fox 24 News at 7:00).[23]

As of September 2017, KNWA-TV presently broadcasts 19½ hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with 3½ hours each weekday and one hour each on Saturdays and Sundays). Unlike most NBC-affiliated stations in the Central Time Zone, it does not produce a midday newscast of its own; instead KNWA airs the statewide news program Arkansas Today (which is simulcast on other Nexstar-owned or -managed stations serving Arkansas and border markets including portions of northern Louisiana).

In addition, KNWA produces 13½ hours of locally produced newscasts each week for Fox-affiliated sister station KFTA (with 3½ hours each weekday and a half-hour each on Saturdays and Sundays). KNWA may also simulcast long-form severe weather coverage on KFTA-TV in the event that a tornado warning is issued for any county in its viewing area within northwest Arkansas and east-central Oklahoma.

• Official website
• KNWA-TV in the FCC's TV station database