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KATV Move to Riverdale Will Proceed, GM Says

3 min read

A year-end check on comings and goings in Little Rock TV news reminded us to ask about a big, long-delayed move — KATV’s whole-station relocation from Main Street downtown to a Riverdale site that once housed the Arkansas Student Loan Guarantee Foundation.

Mark Rose, general manager of Channel 7, the Sinclair-owned ABC affiliate, tells Arkansas Business the move will proceed in 2021 after nearly a year of pandemic-related waiting.

KATV got a city variance in late 2019 for a higher transmission tower at the new address, 10 Turtle Creek Lane. The move was originally scheduled for last spring.

“We are still moving, but with COVID, it was delayed to 2021,” Rose said in an email. The station will begin discussing specific plans in January, he said.

After renovations, the station will occupy a two-story, 22,000-SF building built in 2006 for the foundation, which served as the state-designated guarantor for Federal Family Education Loans until 2014. Now known as Scholarships Leading to Graduation for Arkansans, the organization has moved to 2400 Crestwood Road in North Little Rock.

Rose didn’t answer questions seeking specifics on the project and timeline, but the station paid $4.4 million for the Turtle Creek building and its 4-acre site.

Plans to raise the property’s existing tower from 75 to 100 feet drew complaints from neighbors about ruined river views, but the Little Rock Board of Adjustment voted 3-2 to allow it. The tower will beam the station’s signal to a relay on the Regions Bank Building downtown, which will shoot it to KATV’s tall transmitter on Shinall Mountain.

The station’s two-story masonry structure at 401 Main was dedicated in 1928 as the new headquarters of Worthen Bank. The neoclassical-art deco building, which KATV acquired in 1969, was designed by George R. Mann, the architect known for the Arkansas state Capitol and dozens of notable buildings in Little Rock. 401 Main was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1986, and the station has indicated it will go on the market after the move.

Losing Lilley

Meanwhile, KATV News Director Nick Genty discussed “a lot of shakeups” in the Little Rock TV news market lately. One tough loss for the ABC affiliate was weekend anchor Janelle Lilley, who left for North Carolina with her husband, Jason Cline, a lawyer who set up practice in Wilmington. “She was an outstanding journalist and one of my first hires, if not my very first,” Genty said. “She shined in the political, legal and spot news world,” he said, and went to law school after fearing she lacked understanding to cover the state Legislature.

After graduating from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock’s Bowen School of Law, she finished No. 1 on the state bar exam.

Multimedia journalist Mandy Hrach, a University of Memphis grad, left Channel 7 for a job that started last week at WHBQ-TV in Memphis. Calling her time at KATV “two of the best years of my life,” the Jackson native declared on Twitter that “this TN girl is headed home!”

MORE: Little Rock TV Stations Fill Anchor Spots

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