The two stations share studios on Television Circle off D Street in downtown Sacramento; KCRA-TV's transmitter is located in Walnut Grove, California.

By the time KCRA-TV went on the air, the KRCA call letters had already been taken the previous year by NBC's owned-and-operated station in Los Angeles (originally KNBH, now KNBC).

The radio stations were sold to the Tribune Company in September 1977, with the sale being finalized in July 1978; KCRA (AM) changed its calls to KGNR in August of that year.

KCRA's noon newscast was broadcast from the complex until late 2008 when production of the program was moved back to the 3 Television Circle studios.

On August 2, 2010, digital subchannel 3.2 was reformatted as "MoreTV Sacramento", a locally programmed channel that featured second-runs of syndicated programs seen locally on KCRA and sister station KQCA; the "MoreTV" branding had previously been used by Tampa sister station WMOR-TV and KCWE in Kansas City during the early and mid-2000s.

As part of the renewal, Hearst also signed agreements to add the network as digital subchannels of KCRA and sister stations WCVB-TV in Boston, WBAL-TV in Baltimore, KOCO-TV in Oklahoma City and WXII-TV in Greensboro.

Eventually, Another World would air instead on future sister station KQCA (at the time, under a local marketing agreement) until the show's cancellation in 1999.

However, despite NBC's historically low tolerance towards program preemptions, the network has been more than satisfied with KCRA, given its near-total ratings dominance in the Sacramento market.

The early prime time idea led to only a slight decrease in KCRA's ratings, and its 10 p.m. newscast remained the highest-rated late local news program on the West Coast.

[16] From about 1960 until the late 1980s, its logo was an Arabic numeral 3 inside a green square with rounded corners and convex sides (to represent the shape of a TV tube).

In addition to KCRA's own Doppler weather radar system at Walnut Grove, range and accuracy were increased by adding data from NEXRAD sites operated by the National Weather Service located north of Reno on Virginia Peak, south of San Jose on Mount Umunhum, and at Beale Air Force Base.

On February 12, 2007, KCRA became the first television station in the Sacramento market and the first among Hearst-Argyle's station portfolio to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition (with the exception of its noon newscast until 2008 as it was still broadcasting in standard-definition at Arden Fair Mall); this came with the introduction of a new news set designed by FX Group and upgrades to its news helicopter, LiveCopter 3.

In March 2020, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, the station added an additional hour of news and launched a new 7 p.m. newscast that airs on weekdays.

[21] Despite forcing the evacuation of some staff, the station remained on-air, broadcasting the West Coast feed of Saturday Night Live while firefighters worked to extinguish the blaze.

On April 17, 2020, San Joaquin County Bureau Chief Melinda Meza filed a news story on the difficulties hair stylists were facing during a state-mandated quarantine order.

[25] In December 2020, KCRA and several other news organizations were sued in federal court for copyright infringement[26] stemming from the re-use of a Canadian photographer's wildlife images without authorization or payment.

The cheering drew strong condemnation from people in attendance immediately after the ceremony, and from the public after a local journalist posted a clip of the incident online.

For years, residents in South Lake Tahoe received KCRA via cable, even though the latter community fell outside the Sacramento media market as defined by Nielsen.

Charter said its decision was based on an FCC rule that required it to only carry programming from a network affiliate in a designated media market.

The move angered residents of South Lake Tahoe, with many saying Charter's decision to drop KCRA left cable customers without access to local news and election information.

[33] Similarly, due to Hearst's demands for additional funds to carry out–of–market stations, KCRA was dropped by Comcast in Chico, Redding, Benicia, and Vallejo, which are served by KNVN and KNTV.