Historically, Lincoln viewers watched Omaha stations; in 1996, KLKN (channel 8) was launched as a Lincoln-based ABC affiliate.

To bring television to southwestern Nebraska, local residents contributed money to construct channel 6 at Hayes Center, originally designated KHPL-TV, which began broadcasting in February 1956.

On March 20, 1953,[3] the Bi-States Company, a group of businessmen from Holdrege and Alma, applied to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for permission to build channel 13 at Kearney.

[6] The station, KHOL-TV, was built on a plot of land near Axtell; it signed for affiliation with CBS in September[7] and the DuMont Television Network in October.

[21]: 48 Bi-States applied in February 1955 to have channel 6 allotted at Hayes Center after local residents petitioned the station to extend its service area further west.

[23] In North Platte, radio station KODY held a nine-hour radiothon that raised more than $12,000 in donations to support the effort to bring a television signal to the region.

[24] Once the FCC assigned channel 6, Bi-States filed for and received the construction permit for KHPL-TV, which was built 8 miles (13 km) north of Hayes Center.

[25][26] Even though the local fundraising goal fell tens of thousands of dollars short, the additional transmitter went into program service on February 8, 1956.

[50] On June 3, the new owners changed the call letters of all the stations: KHOL became KHGI-TV, KHPL became KWNB-TV, KHQL became KCNA-TV, and KHTL became KSNB-TV.

[54] KCNA was split off from NTV on November 1, 1983, to become an independent station under the call letters KBGT-TV;[55] Amaturo Group sold KHGI-TV, KWNB-TV, and KSNB-TV to Gordon Broadcasting for $10 million in 1985;[56] the sale separated the NTV stations from the money-losing KBGT-TV, which was separately sold a year later to Citadel Communications and became KCAN, a satellite of Sioux City, Iowa's KCAU-TV.

[59] While NTV had lost one of its four high-power stations with the failed Big 8, Gordon Broadcasting tried to extend and improve the network's reach in the late 1980s.

In January 1987, NTV attempted to enter Lincoln when it announced its intent to acquire a channel 45 construction permit held by Native American Communications Corporation.

[59] The permit had been awarded in April 1984 but never built; however, the deal fell apart when the FCC refused to grant additional time for channel 45 to be constructed.

[68] During this time, NTV was put on the market; a bid by Pappas Telecasting in 1990 received court approval, but the company failed to obtain financing,[69][70] while television meteorologist John Coleman later sought to purchase the stations.

[72] The Fant purchase took a year to come together because the receivership status required the company to buy NTV's assets on an individual basis.

[78] In July 1995, Fant announced a deal to sell KHGI, KWNB, and KSNB to Blackstar, LLC, a minority-controlled company in which nonvoting equity interests were held by Fox Television Stations and Silver King Communications, for $13 million.

[82][a] When the Blackstar sale agreement was filed with the FCC, Citadel protested, feeling that Fant Broadcasting had attempted to block its Lincoln proposal by applying for Albion; company president Anthony Fant denied this, noting that his main goal for seeking the Albion channel was to restore the coverage lost a decade prior and "try to put that part of the NTV puzzle back together".

[87] Pappas immediately assumed control of the NTV stations through a local marketing agreement that began on July 1 and, that September, switched KSNB, as well as the Lincoln and Beatrice translators, to rebroadcasting KTVG and Fox; KHGI and KWNB remained with ABC.

[91][92] In 2009 and 2010, KSNB-TV and KTVG-TV were supplanted by Pappas-operated KFXL-TV (channel 51) in Lincoln as the market's Fox affiliate when the other two stations closed.

At the same time, the station considered moving its studios from Axtell to a site in Kearney to reduce travel from the rural location.

[101] Seven years later, in August 2015, the liquidating trust for Pappas announced that it was soliciting bids for a bankruptcy auction of the company's central and western Nebraska stations—NTV and KFXL—which took place October 27, 2015.

[115] Bob Booe anchored the news in the late 1970s and then again from the early 1980s to 1992;[116] upon his death in 2011, he was remembered as a reason people tuned in to the station's newscasts and for training young journalists.