Plans for a new TV station in Central Louisiana occurred in the early 1990s. Tiger Eye Broadcasting of Miami, Florida held the license for the station, K36DS. In mid-2000, state representative Woody Jenkins purchased K36DS and launched it as Alexandria's first standalone UPN affiliate; prior to 2000, UPN's programming was carried on a secondary basis by KLAX-TV. The station went by the call letters "KCLA", even though the official call sign remained K36DS; this practice was similar to Jenkins' Baton Rouge station, KBTR-LP, which went by "WBTR" in order to be in line with other Baton Rougetelevision stations. Despite the UPN affiliation, KCLA was unable to attain cable coverage in the Central Louisiana area. On March 1, 2002, Pollack/Belz Broadcasting purchased KCLA from Woody Jenkins, and the station gained cable carriage in the region. At the time, KCLA also aired programming from America One and UATV on a secondary basis, similar to WBTR, but programming from those two networks soon disappeared after the acquisition. Pollack-Belz changed the call sign of the station to KWCE-LP in 2004. When UPN and The WB ceased operations in 2006, KWCE opted to become an affiliate of RetroTV, while The CW went to KBCA and MyNetworkTV affiliated with Fox affiliate WNTZ on a secondary basis. The station also moved to channel 27 to avoid interference with nearby Fox affiliate KARD of Monroe, which broadcasts digitally on channel 36 and whose signal reaches much of the Alexandria market. When KLAX upgraded to high definition in 2012, KWCE was moved to a subchannel of channel 31 and affiliated with Me-TV. Pollack/Belz Broadcasting agreed to sell KWCE-LP and KLAX-TV to Lost Coast Broadcasting, a subsidiary of Northwest Broadcasting, for $3.5 million on April 6, 2018. The sale was completed on August 31. In February 2019, Reuters reported that Apollo Global Management had agreed to acquire the entirety of Brian Brady's television portfolio, which it intends to merge with Cox Media Group and stations spun off from Nexstar Media Group's purchase of Tribune Broadcasting, once the purchases are approved by the FCC. In March 2019 filings with the FCC, Apollo confirmed that its newly-formed broadcasting group, Terrier Media, would acquire Northwest Broadcasting, with Brian Brady holding an unspecified minority interest in Terrier. In June 2019, it was announced that Terrier Media would instead operate as Cox Media Group, as Apollo had reached a deal to also acquire Cox's radio and advertising businesses. The transaction was completed on December 17.
