Smith Radio and Appliance of Fayetteville began advertising sales of television receivers as early as 1950, suggesting that some residents already owned televisions and that those televisions were already receiving transmissions over the airwaves.
Due to the Boston Mountains south of Fayetteville, the earliest television broadcasts were more easily picked up in Fayetteville by antenna from broadcasts in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and to a lesser extent from Springfield, Missouri.
And when the weather conditions were right and a home antenna was pointed properly, broadcasts from as far away as Kansas City could be picked up.
The earliest regional broadcast was KOTV, which began airing a test pattern on October 15, 1949.
Of the estimated 3,500 owners of television receivers in northeastern Oklahoma, northwest Arkansas and southwest Missouri, only a handful watched.
The station now known as KTUL, first broadcast on September 18, 1954, from Muskogee but moved to Tulsa in 1957 and changed to its current call letters at that time.
The TV station now known as KFSM-Channel 5 signed on as KFSA-Channel 22 in Fort Smith on July 19, 1953. Its early signal did not reach Fayetteville very consistently due to the mountains.
In Springfield, KTTS and KYTV, now known as KOLR and KY3, respectively, began broadcasting in 1953.
A station based in Fayetteville didn’t begin broadcasting until 1969. KGTO began airing newscasts to Channel 32 on Feb. 8 from its studio in the SWEPCO Building at the northeast corner of College Avenue and Dickson Street.