It is owned by Public Television 19, Inc., alongside adult album alternative radio station KTBG (90.9 FM) and online magazine Flatland.

KCPT and KTBG share studios on East 31st Street in the Union Hill section of Kansas City, Missouri.

In part by acquiring assets of the defunct KCIT-TV at bankruptcy auction, channel 19 improved its signal and began color telecasting.

Since 2013, KCPT has expanded into related public media businesses by purchasing a radio station and moving it into the Kansas City area as KTBG, starting Flatland, and setting up a local newsroom.

[6] The construction permit was awarded on March 24, 1960,[7] but the school system was still noncommittal about proceeding with the station, even though the 11th floor of the library and administration building was being refitted as a television studio.

[12][13] As with the schools, the public would need to convert TV sets to receive KCSD-TV, the only UHF station in Kansas City at the time.

[17] Efforts were made toward regional planning to give school districts in the expanded coverage area a voice in KCSD-TV's educational programming.

[23][24] Others, including Wadsworth and former University of Missouri–Kansas City chancellor Carleton Scofield, noted that federal funding for public television was increasing and called any cuts to that portion unwise.

A press conference to announce locally the fall lineup of PBS, which was replacing NET as the national network for public television stations, met with poor attendance from the news media.

[27][28] Community Service Broadcasting of Mid-America (CSB) was formed in January 1971 with a board of 23 local civic and business leaders.

[35] RCA, a major creditor of the failed station, had repossessed the transmitter facility, and a bankruptcy auction was scheduled in late October for 10 acres of land and a building in Blue Summit.

[41] In mid-1972, work took place to ready the studios in Blue Summit and to prepare a new instructional television program, benefiting from CSB's superior financial resources compared to the Kansas City School District and a cooperative equipment purchase plan to aid schools without color TV sets.

[47] By 1976, CSB had changed its name to Public Television 19, Inc.[48] KCMO-TV (channel 5) and KCMO radio announced in 1976 that they would leave their longtime home on 31st Street—now considered in the Union Hill neighborhood[49]—to a new facility to be built in Fairway, Kansas.

In 1996, KCPT followed KCET in Los Angeles by opening a Store of Knowledge in Kansas City's Country Club Plaza.

Rare Visions & Roadside Revelations, a travel program, became a regular series after positive response to a special produced the previous year.

[63][64] KCPT became the first Kansas City station to begin digital telecasting when KCPT-DT on channel 18 began operating on November 6, 1998.

[65] Initially, KCPT received high-definition programs directly from PBS in Virginia, as its master control facility could not handle them.

At the time, the station had just completed a $6 million renovation of its studios, including an expansion in which KCPT extended the facility to cover where other businesses had stood.

A capital campaign to pay for the digital television conversion also was intended to start a $2 million local program endowment in honor of Masterman.

As a result of declining revenues, in 2002, Reed canceled plans for the endowment and discontinued the public affairs series Ruckus, laying off four staffers.

Reed retired in 2005 and was replaced by Victor Hogstrom, who had built a reputation as a revenue generator in his previous position at WTCI in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

[76] The national transition allowed KCPT to send out a higher-power digital signal because of the closure of analog KAAS-TV in Salina, Kansas.

[77] In December 2013, KCPT gained a sister radio station when Public Television 19, Inc. finalized its purchase of KTBG (90.9 FM) in Warrensburg from the University of Central Missouri for $1.1 million, plus $550,000 in in-kind services.

The transmitter for the station was moved 20 miles (32 km) west to adequately cover most of the Kansas City area.