In October 1955, the Beehive Telecasting Corporation, owned by Samuel B. Nissley, filed to build channel 11, with studios in Orem and a transmitter on Lake Mountain.

The independent station struggled against larger outlets in Salt Lake City, facing the burden of having to buy an additional 18 hours of programming per day.

[7] In March 1962, BYU filed an application to buy KLOR's license, but not its Orem studio facilities.

[8] The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved the sale on September 25, 1962, with the stipulation that channel 11 become non-commercial; the KBYU-TV callsign was instituted on October 15.

In 1964, BYU filed to relocate the studio to the Fine Arts Center on the campus and the transmitter to Mount Vision in the Oquirrh Mountains.

For most of the next half-century, Salt Lake City was one of the smallest markets with two PBS member stations; its main competition was the University of Utah's KUED (channel 7).

On July 2, 2018, the station ended its membership with PBS and began simulcasting BYU's co-owned specialty channel BYUtv on its primary subchannel.

[10] This leaves KUED as the sole PBS station for the Salt Lake City market and the state of Utah.

The only exception that KBYU-TV currently airs from the straight simulcast of BYU TV is the weekday student-produced half-hour newscast, Eleven News at Noon.