KPBA (1270 AM) was an American AM

radio station Radio broadcasting is the broadcasting of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based rad ...

transmitting from

Pine Bluff, Arkansas Pine Bluff, officially the City of Pine Bluff, is the List of municipalities in Arkansas, tenth-most populous city in the U.S. state of Arkansas and the county seat of Jefferson County, Arkansas, Jefferson County. The population of the city wa ...

. Launched as KADL in 1960 by Jefferson County Broadcasting Company, as part of the Southwestern Broadcasting group, KPBA had its license cancelled by the FCC in 2005.

History

Beginning

Jefferson County Broadcasting Company was granted a

construction permit Planning permission or building permit refers to the approval needed for construction or expansion (including significant renovation), and sometimes for demolition, in some jurisdictions. House building permits, for example, are subject to bu ...

by the

Federal Communications Commission The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, internet, wi-fi, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains j ...

for a new AM radio station in July 1959. Authorized to transmit with 5,000

watt The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of Power (physics), power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantification (science), quantify the rate of Work ...

s of daytime-only power on a frequency of 1270

kHz The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), often described as being equivalent to one event (or cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose formal expression in terms of SI base uni ...

, KADL began licensed broadcast operations on August 19, 1960. At launch, Louis Alford was the station's

general manager A general manager (GM) is an executive who has overall responsibility for managing both the revenue and cost elements of a company's income statement, known as profit & loss (P&L) responsibility. A general manager usually oversees most or all of ...

with Philip D. Brady acting as technical director and Albert Mack Smith serving as secretary-treasurer. License holder Jefferson County Broadcasting Company was in turn owned by Southwestern Broadcasting and operated as one of several stations owned by that group across the

Arkansas Arkansas ( ) is a landlocked state in the West South Central region of the Southern United States. It borders Missouri to the north, Tennessee and Mississippi to the east, Louisiana to the south, Texas to the southwest, and Oklahoma ...

and

Mississippi Mississippi ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Deep South regions of the United States. It borders Tennessee to the north, Alabama to the east, the Gulf of Mexico to the south, Louisiana to the s ...

. Southwestern Broadcasting was originally jointly owned by Louis Alford, Philip D. Brady, and Albert Mack Smith.

1960s and 1970s

By 1961, Albert Mack Smith took over as general manager of KADL with Chester Pierce serving as both station manager and commercial manager. By 1965, the station was playing at least 50 hours of

country & western Country (also called country and western) is a music genre originating in the southern regions of the United States, both the American South and the Southwest. First produced in the 1920s, country music is primarily focused on singing sto ...

music each week and Leon Soles joined the staff as chief engineer. By 1971, KADL had transitioned to a "100%" country & western music format. The station would maintain this music format throughout the 1970s with Albert Mack Smith still serving as general manager of the station and Chester Pierce serving as both station manager and chief engineer. In the late 1970s, the FCC authorized KADL to broadcast with 5,000 watts of power on an unlimited basis, no longer just during daylight hours.

Decade of changes

After nearly 23 years of operation as KADL, the station was assigned new

call sign In broadcasting and radio communications, a call sign (also known as a call name or call letters—and historically as a call signal—or abbreviated as a call) is a unique identifier for a transmitter station. A call sign can be formally as ...

KABS by the FCC on April 6, 1983. The station's call sign was changed to KZLR on March 30, 1987, in support of a new format under new ownership but faced with serious economic challenges, the station went

dark Darkness is the condition resulting from a lack of illumination, or an absence of visible light. Human vision is unable to distinguish colors in conditions of very low luminance because the hue-sensitive photoreceptor cells on the retina are ...

until new ownership could be found. The station resumed broadcasting in 1988 with new owners and the call sign was changed yet again, this time to KPBA on December 29, 1988. (The KPBA call letters had been previously used at 1590 AM, which became KYDE in 1976.) Those owners also struggled financially in the shrinking media market of Pine Bluff and by the early 1990s the station was under the ownership of Family Time Ministries of

Berlin, New Jersey Berlin is a Borough (New Jersey), borough in Camden County, New Jersey, Camden County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. As of the 2020 United States census, the borough's population was 7,489, a decrease of 99 (−1.3%) from the 2010 United Sta ...

. Dr. R.J. Lightsey, a minister and later founder of the Jubilee Christian Center, served as KPBA's

from August 1991 through April 1993 when the station was sold to Wheeler Chapel Missionary Baptist Church.

Jackie Harris years

In October 1996, the FCC approved the sale of KPBA by the church to

National Football League The National Football League (NFL) is a Professional gridiron football, professional American football league in the United States. Composed of 32 teams, it is divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National ...

player

Jackie Harris Jackie Bernard Harris (born January 4, 1968) is an American former professional football player who was a tight end in the National Football League (NFL) for the Green Bay Packers, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Tennessee Oilers / Titans and Dallas Co ...

, a native of Pine Bluff. Harris, then a

tight end The tight end (TE) is an offense (sports), offensive position in American football, arena football, and Canadian football. It is a hybrid that combines the characteristics and roles of both an offensive lineman and a receiver (football), receiv ...

with the

Tampa Bay Buccaneers The Tampa Bay Buccaneers (colloquially known as the Bucs) are a professional American football team based in Tampa, Florida. The Buccaneers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC S ...

, told the ''

Fort Worth Star-Telegram The ''Fort Worth Star-Telegram'' is an American daily newspaper serving Fort Worth and Tarrant County, the western half of the North Texas area known as the Metroplex. It is owned by The McClatchy Company. History In May 1905, Amon G. Car ...

'' that he decided to buy KPBA shortly after giving an interview on the station. Harris continued KPBA's

Christian radio Christian radio refers to Christian media radio formats that focus on Christian religious broadcasting or various forms of Christian music. Many such formats and programs include contemporary Christian music, gospel music, sermons, radio dramas, ...

format. By 1999, he had expanded his media holdings to three radio stations, all playing a

format. In June 2001, Jackie Harris and his wife Letrece were honored for their "commitment to downtown Pine Bluff" as Small Business Persons of the Year by the Greater Pine Bluff Chamber of Commerce. Six weeks later, Harris and his company, Metro Media Group Inc. of Pine Bluff, were being sued for non-payment of debts related to the purchase of two

sister station In broadcasting, sister stations or sister channels are radio or television stations operated by the same company, either by direct ownership or through a management agreement. Radio sister stations will often have different formats, and somet ...

s to KPBA. Harris owed Delta Radio Inc. more than $150,000 for the purchase of those two stations, one in Pine Bluff and the other in Dumas, and owed Claud Solley back rent for the relay tower used by the Dumas station. The suits were dropped after Harris paid both Delta Radio Inc. and Claus Solley in full on August 8, 2001. After completing two years of a four-year contract to play for the

Dallas Cowboys The Dallas Cowboys are a professional American football team based in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. The Cowboys compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC East, East division. T ...

, Harris was released by the team in late February 2002 to "create salary cap room". This deprived Harris of a scheduled $400,000 roster bonus and effectively ended his NFL career. A creditor in the August 2001 lawsuit noted that Harris "lives from contract to contract" and that he relied on his income as a professional football player to subsidize his many business ventures.

Shutdown

On July 22, 2002, the

New Orleans New Orleans (commonly known as NOLA or The Big Easy among other nicknames) is a Consolidated city-county, consolidated city-parish located along the Mississippi River in the U.S. state of Louisiana. With a population of 383,997 at the 2020 ...

Enforcement Bureau issued a Notice of Apparent Liability (NAL) against the station's licensee, Metro Birch Enterprises, Inc., a license-holding subsidiary of Metro Media Group Inc. of Pine Bluff. The NAL states that "The agent observed that the station's antenna tower, which had radio frequency potential at the base, was not enclosed inside a fence or other protective enclosure. Additionally, the station's public inspection file consisted of only a few letters from the public." On January 28, 2003, the station was fined $17,000 "for wilfully violating Sections 73.49 and 73.3526(a)(2) of the Rules." KPBA was deleted from the FCC database on June 24, 2005.

References

{{reflist, 2, refs= {{cite news , title=Call Letter Origins , volume=238 , url=http://nelson.oldradio.com/origins.call-list.html , publisher=The Broadcast Archive , last=Nelson , first=Bob , date=June 2, 2009 , accessdate=June 22, 2009, url-status=dead , archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20160218013408/http://nelson.oldradio.com/origins.call-list.html , archivedate=February 18, 2016 {{cite book , title=1960 Broadcasting Yearbook , year=1960 , chapter=Directory of AM and FM Radio stations in the U.S. , publisher=Broadcasting Publications, Inc , location=Washington, DC , page=A-114 {{cite book , title=1960 Broadcasting Yearbook , year=1960 , chapter=Group Ownership of Broadcast Stations in the United States , publisher=Broadcasting Publications, Inc , location=Washington, DC , page=B-48 {{cite book , title=1961-1962 Broadcasting Yearbook , year=1962 , page=B-113 , chapter=Directory of AM and FM Radio stations in the U.S. , publisher=Broadcasting Publications, Inc , location=Washington, DC {{cite book , title=1965 Broadcasting Yearbook , year=1965 , page=B-12 , chapter=Directory of AM and FM Radio stations in the U.S. , publisher=Broadcasting Publications, Inc , location=Washington, DC {{cite book , title=Broadcasting Yearbook 1971 , year=1971 , chapter=Directory of AM and FM Radio Stations in the U.S. , publisher=Broadcasting Publications, Inc , location=Washington, DC , page=B-16 {{cite book , title=Broadcasting Yearbook 1979 , year=1979 , chapter=Directory of Radio Stations in the United States and Canada , publisher=Broadcasting Publications, Inc , location=Washington, DC , page=C-16 {{cite web , title=Call Sign History , publisher=FCC Media Bureau , url=http://licensing.fcc.gov/cgi-bin/ws.exe/prod/cdbs/pubacc/prod/call_hist.pl?Facility_id=72158&Callsign=DKPBA , work=CDBS Public Access Database , accessdate=June 22, 2009 {{cite web , publisher=Federal Communications Commission , title=Broadcast Actions (Report No. 43847) , url=http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Mass_Media/Public_Notices/Brdcst_Actions/pnmmac16.txt , date=October 16, 1996 {{cite web , publisher=Jubilee Christian Center , title=Dr. Lightsey's Bio , url=http://www.jubileechristiancenter.com/site/os/editorial.asp?page=1 , accessdate=June 22, 2009 {{cite news , work=

, title=High Voltage: Harris spreads word over own stations , url=http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=ST&s_site=dfw&p_multi=ST&p_theme=realcities&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=0EAF929D926ED5E5&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM , date=October 11, 2000 , quote=The Cowboys tight end became the owner of KPBA/1270 AM, a Christian radio station in Pine Bluff, Ark., in 1996. {{cite news , first=Ray , last=Buck , work=

, title=Life becomes a joy for Cowboys' Harris , url=http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-7357671_ITM , date=December 24, 2001 {{cite news , first=Bill , last=Nichols , work=

Dallas Morning News ''The Dallas Morning News'' is a daily newspaper serving the Dallas–Fort Worth area of Texas, with an average print circulation in 2022 of 65,369. It was founded on October 1, 1885, by Alfred Horatio Belo as a satellite publication of the ' ...

, title=Spotlight on... Jackie Harris , url=http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=DM&p_theme=dm&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=0EDABE41C676985B&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM , date=September 13, 2000 {{cite news , work=Arkansas Business , title=Football Star Jackie Harris Fumbles in Radio , publisher=Journal Publishing, Inc. , url=http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-10351994_ITM , first=Mark , last=Friedman , date=August 6, 2001 {{cite news , first=Glenn , last=Hunter , work=

Dallas Business Journal American City Business Journals, Inc. (ACBJ) is an American newspaper publisher based in Charlotte, North Carolina. ACBJ publishes ''The Business Journals'', which contains local business news for 44 markets in the United States with each market ...

, title=DBJ Confidential , url=http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-27108010_ITM , date=August 17, 2001 {{cite news , work=Arkansas Business , url=http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-27119452_ITM , title=Change of Momentum: Jackie Harris pays Delta Radio Inc. debt , date=August 20, 2001 {{cite news , first=Jean-Jacques , last=Taylor , work=

, title=Cowboys cut three starters , url=http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-8668318_ITM , date=February 28, 2002 {{cite web , publisher=Federal Communications Commission , title=Enforcement Bureau Field Offices: List of Notices of Apparent Liability Issued (DA #02-2037) , url=http://www.fcc.gov/eb/Public_Notices/DA-02-2037A1.html , date=August 23, 2002 {{cite web , publisher=Federal Communications Commission , title=Notice of Apparent Liability for Forfeiture (EB-02-OR-195) , url=http://www.fcc.gov/eb/FieldNotices/2002/DOC-238012A1.html , date=July 22, 2002 {{cite web , publisher=Federal Communications Commission , title=Station Search Results (72158) , url=http://licensing.fcc.gov/cgi-bin/ws.exe/prod/cdbs/pubacc/prod/sta_list.pl?Facility_id=72158 , accessdate=May 21, 2009

External links

Facility details for Facility ID 72158 (KPBA)
in the FCC Licensing and Management System
FCC History Cards for KPBA
(covering 1956-1981 as KADL) PBA Defunct radio stations in the United States Radio stations established in 1960 Radio stations disestablished in 2005 Pine Bluff, Arkansas Defunct religious radio stations in the United States 1960 establishments in Arkansas 2005 disestablishments in Arkansas PBA