Owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, the station maintains studios on Metric Boulevard in North Austin and a transmitter on Waymaker Way on the city's west side.

During this time, the station flipped one of its digital subchannels to an affiliate of Telemundo, complete with Spanish-language local newscasts produced by the KEYE-TV newsroom.

[3] The Spanish International Network applied for a translator of KWEX-TV from San Antonio using channel 42 in 1977;[4] this application remained pending by 1979,[5] but K42AB began broadcasting on January 24, 1982.

A Christian group and an Austin entrepreneur each analyzed filing, but neither did, and the first official application came from Texas Television, Inc.—the broadcasting business of the McKinnon family, which owned stations in Beaumont and Corpus Christi.

[13] For the new independent station, he formulated a program schedule highly dependent on movies, with an estimated 25 feature films a week.

[16] From its studios on Metric Boulevard, KBVO-TV (named for Bevo, the live longhorn steer mascot of the University of Texas' sports teams) began broadcasting on December 4, 1983.

[19] Beard attributed the station's success to good timing and its movie identity, which helped it weather a regional economic downturn later in the 1980s.

Granite wanted to bolster channel 42's ties to its new network, whose main symbol is an eye, and eliminate any confusion about where CBS programming could be found in Austin.

[27] At the start of 1999, Granite put KEYE up for sale to help debt obligations it incurred in acquiring two larger-market affiliates of The WB, KBWB in San Francisco and WDWB in Detroit.

[28] Several large broadcast companies, including Raycom Media and Hearst-Argyle Television, expressed interest in acquiring KEYE.

[34] Four Points operated the stations outright until March 20, 2009, when it entered into a three-year management agreement with the Irving, Texas–based Nexstar Broadcasting Group.

[39] In June 2008, KEYE began broadcasting a second digital subchannel offering programming from the Retro Television Network as well as a repeat of its morning newscast.

[41] Before it switched to CBS, KBVO-TV had no newscasts with the exception of nightly updates aired during Fox prime time programming from a small closet studio.

[42] After the affiliation swap, on July 3, 1995, KEYE immediately launched a full slate of newscasts, under the moniker K-EYEWitness News.

Veteran anchorman Neal Spelce, formerly of KTBC, was hired as part of the new operation, and the station's Metric Boulevard studios were expanded to house the news department.

[47] CBS also made investments in weather forecasting and anchor salaries[32] as well as $15 million to make KEYE the city's first TV station with high-definition local newscasts in 2007, with the Four Points sale in progress.

[48] The station canceled its 5 p.m. newscast in September 2009, replacing it with We Are Austin Live, an hour-long 4 p.m. lifestyle show anchored by Michelle Valles and Jason Wheeler.

[56] The station's signal is multiplexed: KEYE-TV broadcasts two subchannels of KBVO-CD as part of Austin's ATSC 3.0 (NextGen TV) deployment plan.