Owned by Gray Media, the station has studios on Second Avenue Southeast in downtown Cedar Rapids, and its transmitter is located near Walker, Iowa.

During the late 1940s, the Cedar Rapids Gazette, then-owners of KCRG (1600 AM), filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for a TV station license.

[8] As Quincy owned the market's KWWL, Gray intended to divest that station and retain KCRG in order to satisfy FCC requirements.

The sale was completed on August 2, with KWWL going to Allen Media Broadcasting and KCRG becoming a sister to KTIV in Sioux City and KTTC in Rochester, Minnesota, the latter of which serves the north-central portion of Iowa.

Over time, syndicated and locally produced programs were added, culminating in the addition of MyNetworkTV to the subchannels in October 2011, one month after KWKB dropped the service and became a sole CW affiliate.

However, MyNetworkTV's programming runs as a late-night offering on 9.2, airing from midnight to 2 a.m., five hours later than its usual prime time slot.

Also featured are coverage of the Dubuque Fighting Saints (USHL hockey), Cedar Rapids Kernels (Midwest League baseball), and University of Northern Iowa athletics.

Ancillary sports programming includes the discussion show On Iowa Live and the Zach Johnson Foundation pro-am golf tournament.

On October 1, 2013, the WXNow loop was moved to an online-only streaming channel on the station's website and replaced on 9.3 by the lifestyle-oriented Live Well Network.

Also, Heroes & Icons was moved to KWWL-DT2 with Start TV and Circle leaving the Cedar Rapids market due to KCRG using up all available bandwidth within its multiplexer to allow broadcasting The CW and MyNetworkTV in HD.

KCRG-TV was one of three remaining broadcast television stations in the United States employing the "24 Hour News Source" format in one way or another as a slogan, which it began using in 1990.

[16][17] KCRG's first use of a satellite to broadcast 'live' (local) news was December 31, 1982 when Sports Director John Campbell reported the Iowa Hawkeyes had defeated the Tennessee Volunteers 28-22 to win the Peach Bowl at Fulton County Stadium in Atlanta.