Owned by Tegna Inc., the station maintains studios on North 3rd Street in downtown Temple, with a news bureau and sales office in Killeen; its transmitter is located along I-35 south of Eddy.

As such, it simulcasts all network and syndicated programming as provided through KCEN-TV but airs separate local newscasts, commercial inserts and legal identifications, and has its own website.

Although KAGS-LD maintains its own studios on South Texas Avenue in Bryan, master control and some internal operations are based at KCEN-TV's facilities.

KCEN signed on with one of the tallest transmitter towers in the southwestern United States, operating at a height of 830 feet (250 m).

[4] The station switched its primary affiliation to ABC in March 1984, while continuing to carry some NBC programs during off-hours.

However, over time, channel 6 became one of several ABC affiliates nationwide that were disappointed with the network's weak programming offerings, particularly on Thursday nights, which were bogging down KCEN's otherwise successful lineup.

On July 3, 2011, London Broadcasting announced that KMAY would be converted to a semi-satellite of KCEN for the Bryan–College Station market under the new callsign KAGS-LD, with local news programming and commercial advertisements from KCEN replaced with newscasts and commercials targeted to the Brazos Valley area.

In January 2016, KCEN announced it would vacate its longtime studios in Eddy and move to the former complex of First Baptist Church in downtown Temple.

On February 1, 2010, KCEN became the first television station in the Waco–Temple–Killeen market to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition.

[12] The station's signal is multiplexed: KCEN-TV shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 6, on February 17, 2009, the original target date on which full-power television stations in the United States were to transition from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate (which was later pushed back to June 12, 2009).