The Federal Communications Commission granted Southwest Louisiana Communications, Inc. a construction permit for a new commercial television station on channel 15 in September 1967. The permit was awarded on a 4–2 FCC vote; two commissioners dissented because of minimum mileage spacing concerns to a channel 14 allocation at Morgan City.[2] Construction proceeded quickly, and KLNI-TV went on air a year later, on September 16, 1968.[1] A week later, Leif Erickson, then the lead in NBC's The High Chaparral, was the featured guest at the station's open house.[3] KLNI-TV operated from the first color-designed television studios in the state of Louisiana, which featured a viewing room to allow the public to watch program production and an outdoor patio for shows and commercials.[4]
Channel 15 brought full NBC network service to Lafayette for the first time; previously, no NBC station put a Grade A signal into central Acadiana.[5] KLNI-TV also aired Sesame Street beginning in 1970, as Lafayette was not served by a public television station at the time; this was also done by a number of commercial stations elsewhere in places that likewise did not have access to PBS then.[6] However, channel 15 faced an uphill climb as a UHF outlet in a television market that had two VHF stations (KATC and KLFY-TV); long-ingrained viewing habits for those channels and, in some cases, the lack of UHF-compatible sets impeded KLNI-TV's progress, as was the case elsewhere in the country then with UHF startups in previously all-VHF markets. In 1969, the station filed an unsuccessful protest with the FCC when then-NBC affiliate WBRZ-TV in Baton Rouge sought to increase its tower height, saying it would cause a signal overlap for over 82,000 people, up from 5,300.[7] In 1970, the station sued the American Research Bureau ratings agency, seeking $625,000 in damages for having been wrongfully dropped from the November 1969 ARB survey; KLNI-TV claimed the omission caused a loss of advertising income and damaged its reputation.[8] When KPLC in Lake Charles and WBRZ activated taller towers in 1970 and 1971, respectively, the western and eastern parts of Acadiana began receiving Grade B coverage from VHF NBC affiliates, a direct assault on the fledgling KLNI-TV.
In 1970, Charles A. Castille, former president of a chain of pharmacies in the Lafayette area, bought stock in Southwestern Louisiana Communications; he was also elected president of the board.[9] In November 1974, Castille was elected to the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education; his opponent in that election believed a recall petition could be made against him because, among other allegations, he believed Castille was about to try to sell KLNI-TV to the state to reduce his debt. At that time, KLNI-TV was described as "financially troubled".[10] On February 21, 1975, channel 15 went dark: while it cited technical issues in the immediate aftermath of going silent,[11] it noted "severe financial troubles" as the reason for its cessation of operations in an FCC filing.[12] The three remaining board members, not including Castille, then actually made an attempt to sell the facility to the state-owned Louisiana Educational Television Authority;[13] the state network opted not to purchase the facility, citing technical limitations and noting it might have taken as long as two years to begin operating.[14]
Channel 15 would not be used again in Lafayette until a new group activated it as KADN-TV, which began telecasting March 1, 1980.[15] It would be more than 40 years before an NBC affiliate was launched again in the Lafayette market, when KLAF-LD affiliated with NBC on July 1, 2015.[16]
