The two stations share studios at Jack London Square in Oakland; KICU-TV's transmitter is located on Monument Peak in Milpitas.

[2] Channel 36 first signed on the air on October 3, 1967, as KGSC-TV (for Greater Santa Clara County), from studios located at 1536 Kerley Drive in San Jose.

The two characters often made jokes about the movies being showcased (similar to the humor used in Mystery Science Theater 3000), as well as engaged in comedic banter with guests promoting local businesses.

After a 1978 sale application to Booth American Corporation fell through,[2] Continental sold the station to Ralph Wilson Enterprises, another business owned by the Detroit businessman and Buffalo Bills founder/owner, in 1979.

[9] Over the years, the station ran a number of drama series and older movies; it also added more classic sitcoms and children's programs by the mid-1990s.

In November 2014, when KTVU transitioned from Cox's in-house digital platforms to the WorldNow platform used for Fox Television Stations' websites and mobile apps,[26] KICU discontinued its standalone website, with Fox reducing the station's web presence to a minimalist subpage on the revamped KTVU site, incorporating only listings for KICU and KTVU, FCC-required disclosures for Children's Television Act and employment requirements and forms of contact, and the default TMZ on TV video portal.

The service's programming airs in the graveyard slot on KICU Tuesday through Saturday mornings from 3 to 5 a.m. (the latest possible time it can in a broadcast day), and is sparingly promoted.

[27] KICU previously aired select NBC programs pre-empted by the network's designated Bay Area affiliates at three separate times throughout its history.

[29][30] Ten years later, after KNTV became the broadcast home of the Giants in 2008, KICU took on the role of airing NBC daytime and prime time programs pre-empted by the NBC-owned station.

The duty of being NBC's backup affiliate in the Bay Area in the event that KNTV broadcasts Giants games and breaking news coverage reverted over to KICU in 2012.

KICU obtained the broadcast rights to carry NBA games involving the Golden State Warriors beginning with the 1984–85 season.

The Warriors' relationship with KICU ended after the 2001–02 season, when the team moved its local broadcasts exclusively to Fox Sports Net Bay Area through the signing of a ten-year deal with the cable channel.

[36] Under the initial deal in which it became the team's broadcast television flagship, which began with the 1999 season, Channel 36 offered an expanded schedule of 55 regular season games, 25 more than what KRON was able to offer within its schedule due to difficulties with its programming obligations with NBC (all other A's games that were not televised nationally aired in the market on now-defunct Fox Sports Bay Area).

[38] After it was purchased by Cox, the duopoly of KICU and KTVU, which held the over-the-air rights to the Giants, essentially had exclusive control of the local broadcast television contracts to both of the Bay Area's MLB teams; this lasted until Channel 2 lost the rights to the Giants to NBC owned-and-operated station KNTV following the 2007 season.

[42] On April 24, 2017, KTVU relocated the rain-delayed Food City 500 to KICU, marking the first time a NASCAR Cup Series race has been broadcast on the station.

And at one time the station rebroadcast the KTVU-produced public affairs program Bay Area People, Sundays at 9 a.m. until KTVU canceled it.

In August 1981, five months after the Wilson acquisition, KICU-TV debuted a half-hour early evening newscast at 7:30 p.m., focusing on Santa Clara Valley news.

In January 2000, the station began airing a rebroadcast of The Ten O'Clock News immediately following its initial broadcast on KTVU each night at 11 p.m., under the title The Eleven O'Clock Edition of the Original Ten O'Clock News (the "Original" branding was used during that period to differentiate from other prime time newscasts that aired in that hour a few years prior on KRON-TV and CBS station KPIX-TV—both of which pushed their network evening schedules one hour early in August 1992, in an attempt to improve prime time viewership and to compete with KTVU—as well as a KNTV-produced program that aired on KBWB-TV [channel 20, now KOFY-TV] at the time); the simulcast was dropped from the schedule on September 14, 2001.

Concurrent with the station's rebranding under the "KTVU Plus" moniker on April 25, 2016, in addition to retaining the late rebroadcast of The Ten O'Clock News, KICU expanded its 7 p.m. newscast to one hour.