Under federal law, CreaTV receives a share of the gross revenue of local cable franchisees Comcast and AT&T, which amounted to $1.2 million in 2009.

[4] CreaTV was founded on June 22, 2008, to take over San Jose community television from Comcast Cable, which for at least 15 years had made their 10th Street studio available for public access.

In 2023, CreaTV opened Open San José, an 18,000-square-foot (1,700 m2) community center on South Second Street, to serve as the organization's offices and that of several other local nonprofit media and art organizations, including Chopsticks Alley Art, Mosaic America, WORKS San José, LEAD Filipino, San José Spotlight, and Northern California Public Media.

[5] CreaTV operates four public-access and educational television channels for the City of San Jose.

It is coproduced with KMVT 15 in Mountain View and the Midpeninsula Community Media Center in Palo Alto.