It is owned by Second Generation of Iowa, Ltd., which maintains a local marketing agreement (LMA) with Sinclair Broadcast Group, owner of dual CBS/Fox affiliate KGAN (channel 2), for the provision of certain services.
The two stations share studios at Broadcast Park on Old Marion Road Northeast (along IA 100) in Cedar Rapids; KFXA's transmitter is located in Van Horne, Iowa.
In January 1983, Stanley G. Emert Jr., an attorney from Knoxville, Tennessee, applied to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for a new television station on ultra high frequency (UHF) channel 28 in Cedar Rapids.
[6] Construction had accelerated by August 1987, when Fitzgerald announced he was negotiating to affiliate with Fox; studios on Boyson Road Northeast in Cedar Rapids were nearly complete.
Before broadcasting, Fitzgerald sought to modify the construction permit to again reflect a Cedar Rapids transmitter site instead of one in Garrison, where Benton County officials declined to approve the erection of a taller tower.
In what Fitzgerald later called a "procedural problem", the Garrison site was still active in FCC records when the station began operating from the Cedar Rapids location.
The commission granted verbal approval on April 22 for the station to resume;[12] the next year, the FCC levied a $20,000 fine against Metro Program Network for the construction of KOCR at the then-unauthorized location.
On April 8, while the station was off the air, Fitzgerald paid nearly $5,000 to settle a mechanic's lien on the property brought by a Cedar Rapids drywall firm; this nullified a public auction of the Boyson Road studio.
[16] The case went to trial in November 1990; in April 1991, a federal judge ordered KOCR and Fitzgerald to pay more than $250,000 to Paramount in his ruling on the 1988 lawsuit, finding that the contract with the syndicator carried no pro rata provisions.
This left Waterloo, located within the market, completely out of Fox broadcast coverage; the city's main cable provider TCI carried Foxnet instead of KOCR since it could not reliably receive the station's signal.
Under a capital crunch in 1989, Fitzgerald sold KOCR's facilities to two landlords, Don Tauke and Joan Nickol, who then leased the property back to the station.
While Linn County sheriff's deputies who had fretted about how to explain the loss of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and Beverly Hills, 90210 to their children were relieved, station officials were forced to take equipment back inside after work crews had already removed it.
[27][28] After Fitzgerald missed payments on a short-term lease that was supposed to run through June 1995, Tauke and Nicol finally lost patience with KOCR.
[40] In September 1996, a new transmitter facility 6 miles (9.7 km) south of Vinton, featuring a 1,500-foot (460 m) tower and broadcasting with an effective radiated power of 5 million watts, was commissioned to provide parity with the other major network affiliates in the market.
[41][42] In 1999, KFXA began selling advertising for KPXR-TV (the former KTVC, built as the local outlet of Pax TV) in a joint sales agreement.
The program, hosted by Eadie Fawcett and Craig Johnson—both former anchors at other Eastern Iowa TV stations—failed to attract significant ratings to ensure its survival.