The two stations share studios on South Regal Street in the Southgate neighborhood of Spokane; KREM's transmitter is on Krell Hill to the southeast, covering eastern Washington state and northern Idaho.

Under the successive ownerships of the Providence Journal Company, Belo Corporation, and Gannett (whose television stations were split as Tegna in 2015), KREM has competed closely with KHQ-TV for local news ratings and revenue leadership in the Spokane TV market.

After the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) lifted its years-long freeze on television station allocations in 1952, Spokane was allotted three commercial TV channels—2, 4, and 6.

KNEW's chief engineer collapsed on the witness stand during questioning; Wasmer suffered from food poisoning; and the wife of Burl Hagadone, a 40-percent owner of Television Spokane, was hospitalized in Montana, prompting the entire proceeding to be recessed.

[10] It never resumed, as the Television Spokane bid was withdrawn on March 1, 1954, in exchange for reimbursement of permit expenses by Wasmer and a right of first refusal should KREM-TV come up for sale.

[11][12] Following Television Spokane's withdrawal, an FCC hearing examiner recommended Wasmer be granted channel 2, and within two weeks he began construction on KREM-TV, including a studio expansion to KREM's existing radio facilities.

[14] KREM-TV signed on October 31, 1954, with an "inaugural program" at 6:30 p.m.[15] It was briefly an independent station[16] until December 6, 1954, when it affiliated with ABC.

[20][21] The FCC granted the sale in September[22] only to stay its approval when Television Spokane protested that its right of first refusal had not been respected.

[26] The FCC approved an application by a community translator organization to set up rebroadcasters of KREM-TV and KHQ-TV in Lewiston, Idaho, in 1958.

Though Lewiston's local station, KLEW-TV (channel 3), objected, at the time KREM was with ABC and KLEW was a CBS affiliate.

[42] In July 1996, KREM began programming KSKN (channel 22), an independent station, under a local marketing agreement.

[49] From 1968 to 1979, KREM's main anchor was Jeff Wasson, described by Deborah McBride of The Spokesman-Review as "the Walter Cronkite of Spokane's television media".

[61] For most of the decade, KREM continued to lead in early evening news—helped by the popular lead-in of The Oprah Winfrey Show—while the 11 p.m. news race was much tighter, primarily to the benefit of KHQ.

[68] Woodward departed KREM in 2009 amid a dispute with the station over a pay cut request that she said was not asked of her male colleagues.

[71][72] On October 17, 2021, the station apologized for showing a moving image from a pornographic video on a weather center monitor during that evening's 6 p.m. newscast.